Black Horizon

by James Grippando

  “Better stay in U.S. waters,” said Jack. “This half-Cuban boy has filled his quota for affronts to the Cuban people.”

  “Good, we’re on, then,” said Rick. “No way you guys will find a hotel tonight. You’re welcome to sleep here on the boat, if you don’t mind sharing the state cabin.”

  “No, we don’t mind,” said Theo. “We’re on our—”

  “Shut it,” said Jack. “Just shut it.”

  Chapter 7

  They left the Key West marina at dawn, heading south-southwest at twenty knots.

  The “little group” going out to see the spill, as Rick had advertised it, was more like a flotilla crossing the Florida Straits. Jack counted twenty-nine vessels, a mixed fleet of fully enclosed cruisers, charter dive boats, and fishing yachts like Rick’s refurbished Hatteras forty-five-foot convertible.

  Jack had seen countless sunsets on the water in his lifetime, but the only time he got anywhere near an “ocean” this early in the morning was when his seventy-five-pound golden retriever peed on the bedroom floor. He wondered how Max was doing. They’d boarded him for the honeymoon at Mitzi’s Boot Camp, which, despite the name, was more like the doggy version of Big Palm Island. Andie always spoiled him, and this time she’d done everything but hire Max his own escort from Babes R Us.

  Jack savored this rare morning at sea, watching Key West vanish on the eastern horizon as the glowing orange ball emerged from the Atlantic behind them. A warm southerly breeze foreshadowed another hot September day in the subtropics. Shorts, T-shirts, and sunglasses were the only gear required. An hour into the journey, the wind kicked up, and their pleasure cruise on gentle swells gave way to seas of eight to ten feet, with intermittent whitecaps that sent a geyser-like spray across the bow. Midway through the third hour, the chaise lounges on the beach were calling him back to Big Palm Island, tar balls or not.

  “How deep is it here?” asked Jack. He was with Theo and Rick on the open flying bridge, above the main deck and forward of the rumble of twin inboard engines. Rick was in the captain’s chair at the helm.

  “Deep,” said Rick, checking the instruments. “A mile, give or take a few hundred feet.”

  Jack tried to imagine a floating oil rig with a drill at such depths, the nautical equivalent of halfway to the Titanic—and that was before it even scratched the surface of the ocean floor. For a lawyer who couldn’t pump gas without getting it on his shoes, it was hard to fathom.

  “You’re looking a little green,” said Rick.

  “I’m fine,” Jack lied. He tightened his grip on the safety rail, bracing for the next whitecap. “How much farther?”

  “Twenty minutes, maybe.”

  That’s what you said twenty minutes ago.

  Jack gazed far into the distance, knowing better than to focus on the chop around them or the pitch and roll of nearby boats. The lead boat, way ahead of them, seemed to be slowing down. Jack figured it was just wishful thinking on his part, but then Rick cut their speed as well.

  “Are we getting close?” asked Jack.

  “Only so far we can go before we hit Cuban waters,” said Rick. He reduced his speed further, down to just a few knots. “Looks like everyone is stopped right at the boundary.”

  Jack rose from the bench seat and took a better look. The flying bridge was twenty feet above sea level, which extended visibility with the naked eye. Jack hadn’t committed every boat in their group to memory, but it was plain to see that they had joined up with many more boats than the twenty-nine he’d counted out of Key West. One in particular stood out as much bigger than the rest.

  “What’s that ship at two o’clock?” asked Jack.

  Rick aimed his binoculars in that direction. “That’s CCA.”

  “What’s CCA?”

  “Clean Caribbean and Americas. It’s an emergency-response cooperative out of Fort Lauderdale. I’ve watched their practice drills around Key West. As far as I know, they’re the only guys in the country who are licensed by the U.S. government to help clean up a spill in Cuban waters.”

  “I was under the impression that no U.S. company could help,” said Jack. “That’s what all the news reports have said.”

  Rick kept the binoculars trained on the ship. “It’s hard to know who’s right. When they were doing practice drills in Key West, the guy from CCA said he had the only license for actual on-site cleanup. A handful of other companies are licensed to lend training and know-how to Cuba. But this is all new ground. I don’t think anyone really knows what they can and can’t do in an actual catastrophe.”

  “They can’t be much help sitting around here like the rest of us,” said Jack. “We still must be a long way from the actual blowout.”

  “A good five miles, I’d say. Let me get CCA on the radio. A guy named Bobby Timms is in charge of operations. He brought his whole crew by my bar after the training exercise, and I took good care of them. If he’s aboard, he’ll tell me what’s up.”

  Rick put the engines in neutral, bringing the boat to a dead stop in the water. He tried the radio—“CCA, this is Rick’s Café, do you copy?”—and after several attempts, a response came.

  “This is CCA. Bobby here. Go ahead, Rick’s Café. Over.”

  “That’s my buddy,” Rick told Jack and Theo, and then he keyed up the mic. “Bobby, it’s Rick. Why is the cavalry on the sidelines like the rest of us rubberneckers? Over.”

  “Can’t go in. License problem. Over.”

  “Why the problem? Over.”

  “OFAC tells us we can enter Cuban waters only if the drilling is being done by foreign oil companies that are members of CCA.”

  Rick went off-mic again. “OFAC is the Office of Foreign Assets Control.”

  “I know,” said Jack, “I dealt with them when I went to Guantánamo. But I want to understand exactly what he’s saying. Scarborough 8 was a consortium of companies from China, Russia, and Venezuela. Is that the problem?”

  “Let me ask,” said Rick. He keyed up the mic: “Lemme guess, Bobby: CCA has no member companies from China, Russia, or Venezuela. Over.”

  “Affirmative. Over.”

  Jack could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Member, schmember,” he told Rick. “Tell him to go in, clean up that mess, and ask for forgiveness later.”

  Rick repeated the gist of Jack’s message, without attribution.

  “No can do,” said CCA. “Have you seen what’s out there? Over.”

  “Oil?”

  “Besides oil. North latitude 23.374496 degrees, west longitude 82.492283 degrees. Check it out. Gotta go now. Over and out.”

  Rick found the coordinates on the map, then aimed his binoculars accordingly. “Can’t see that far from this level. Let’s go up.”

  Jack and Theo followed him up the side ladder to the fiberglass crow’s nest atop the flying bridge, but there was only room for Rick and Jack. Theo hung back, a few rungs down. Standing another eight feet above the helm, almost thirty feet above sea level, made the sway of the boat more noticeable, and Jack had to work his sea legs to keep his balance.

  Rick focused his binoculars on Cuban waters and froze. “Ho-lee shit.”

  Jack looked in the same direction. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “You bet it is,” said Rick.

  Theo borrowed the binoculars, still on the ladder. “Looks like the whole damn Cuban navy.”

  Jack shook his head in disbelief, then happened to glance down at the water. Floating past their boat was a black, oily stain on the dark-blue sea. He hadn’t noticed from the lower level of the flying bridge, but at this height he could see a long line of big black amoebas approaching from the southwest—headed toward the Florida Keys, just as the Texan at Big Palm Island had predicted.

  “Well, isn’t that just beautiful,” said Jack.

  Chapter 8

  They docked at noon. Oil stains at the waterline ran the length of Rick’s boat, so cleanup involved much more than simply hosing off salt water. An hour of scrubbi
ng still didn’t remove all the sludge. Jack was starving by the time they reached Rick’s Café, but he got a surprise phone call just as lunch arrived. He stepped out onto the sidewalk on Duval Street to take it.

  “I miss you,” he told Andie.

  “I was beginning to wonder,” she said. “You and Theo seem to be having quite the honeymoon.”

  He pressed the phone more firmly to his ear, not sure he’d heard her right. “How did you even know I was with Theo?”

  “The Bureau checks the Facebook pages of virtually everybody I know when I’m on assignment.”

  “Theo posted on Facebook that we’re on a honeymoon?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s become a running joke around here.”

  “I really am going to kill him.” Jack glanced back inside the café toward their table. Theo had already finished his lunch and was starting on Jack’s, but Andie said just the right thing to make everything else irrelevant.

  “I saw a doctor,” she said.

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Everything’s good. Due May 14.”

  “Wow! And how are you?”

  “Perfect. They cleared me to stay with the assignment. Even after I’m showing.”

  “But you won’t be showing for another two months, right? You’ll be home by then, I would assume.”

  Andie didn’t respond. Jack knew she couldn’t reveal the length of her assignment any more than she could tell him where she was or what name she was using.

  “Gotta keep this short,” she said. “I’ll call again when I can. I love you.”

  “Love you, too,” he said, and the call was over.

  Jack put his phone away and went back inside to their table. Before he could lay into Theo about their honeymoon on Facebook, Rick joined them.

  “There’s someone I want you to meet,” said Rick. “You got a minute?”

  It was clear he wasn’t talking to Theo. “Sure,” said Jack.

  Rick signaled across the bar. A waitress stepped from behind the cash register and walked toward them, negotiating the crowded maze of tables and lunch patrons. Most of the servers at Rick’s Café, men and women, were young and good-looking. This waitress was especially attractive, a long-legged Latina with gorgeous dark hair and a face you might see in an Abercrombie ad. But she didn’t smile—not when Rick introduced her, not after she joined the men at the table.

  “Bianca has worked with us for over a year now,” said Rick. “She started right after coming here from Cuba.”

  “Where in Cuba?” asked Jack.

  “Habana,” she said softly.

  “My mother was born right near there, in Bejucal,” said Jack.

  She didn’t answer, and there still was no smile.

  “So,” Jack asked, “are you one of the Cuban nationals who came here after Raúl Castro eased up the restrictions on travel from Cuba?”

  She lowered her eyes, then answered in good, but not perfect, English. “No. I didn’t believe that day would ever come. My husband and me, we saved for three years. We bought a spot on a boat.”

  “Bianca is an American citizen now,” said Rick. “I’m sure you know this, being a lawyer, but U.S. immigration policy toward Cubans has always been the same, both before and after the Cuban government started to let nationals travel off the island. Any Cuban refugee who sets foot on American soil can claim asylum.”

  The same policy allowed the Coast Guard to turn back Cuban refugees who couldn’t afford a visa under the new law, jumped on an old-fashioned raft, and weren’t lucky enough to swim all the way to U.S. shore. “I’m very familiar with wet foot/dry foot,” said Jack, and then he turned back to Bianca. “Did your husband come with you?”

  “No. I didn’t want to leave Cuba without him, but we had money only for one. The plan was that Rafael would come later, after he saved more money to buy a spot on a boat.”

  “Why doesn’t he come now? It’s a lot easier under the new Cuban laws.”

  “Not so easy as people think,” she said. “It can cost less to buy a spot on a smuggler’s boat than to buy a travel visa from the government. My husband was saving money. Got a good job.”

  “Doing what?” asked Jack.

  Bianca didn’t answer. The response seemed to catch in her throat.

  Rick said, “He was a derrick hand on the Scarborough 8. One of about two dozen Cubans who were allowed to work for the oil consortium.”

  “What did he do on the rig?” asked Jack.

  Again Bianca was silent. Finally, she looked at Rick and said, “You tell.”

  “From what I understand,” said Rick, “he worked the night shift on something called a ‘monkey board.’ It’s a platform high up on the rig’s derrick. I’m not an oil expert, but there are a ton of websites on offshore drilling. Basically a derrick hand’s responsibility is to monitor the drill fluids and circulation systems, control the drill pipe in and out of the drilling hole, and keep the pipe steady when parts are attached or removed. He does all this from his platform.”

  Jack was almost afraid to ask the next question. “Sounds like it could be dangerous,” he said.

  “One of the most dangerous on the rig,” said Rick. He glanced at Bianca, then confirmed Jack’s suspicions: “Rafael is one of sixteen workers reported dead.”

  Bianca sobbed but said nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jack. “Are you sure he’s gone?”

  “I picked up a BBC News broadcast out of Havana,” Rick said. “There were a hundred sixty-seven workers on the rig from seventeen different countries. None of the workers was from the U.S., of course. Two of the fatalities were U.K. citizens. The BBC report that identified the U.K. workers also listed Rafael Lopez among the dead.”

  “Man, that’s horrible,” said Theo.

  “It is,” said Rick, but he was looking at Jack. “I was hoping a good lawyer could help.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Again, I’m no oil expert, but I’ve done some quick homework on the Internet. The average payout to the widows of the eleven men killed in the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was between eight and nine million dollars.”

  “Are you asking me to file a wrongful death suit on Bianca’s behalf?”

  “Yeah. It’s a foregone conclusion that the Cubans, the Chinese, the Russians, and the Venezuelans won’t give her ten pesos. Her only hope is to file a lawsuit in this country.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” said Jack. “But it’s not so clear cut.”

  “Why not?” asked Rick. “Bianca is an American citizen.”

  “That’s true. But her husband was Cuban. The manufacturer of the rig is Chinese. And the consortium was drilling within the territorial waters of Cuba.”

  “So she has no rights in U.S. court?”

  “I’m not saying that. But it’s a definite hurdle.”

  “Do you think you can help her?”

  “Of course Jack can help her,” said Theo. “Compared to keeping me out of the electric chair, this has to be a piece of cake.”

  “We need to talk about this,” said Jack. “First, the fact that an oil rig exploded does not make this an open-and-shut case. To win a wrongful death lawsuit we have to prove that the oil consortium’s negligence or other wrongdoing caused the explosion.”

  Rick was unfazed. “BP coughed up twenty-three billion dollars. I find it hard to believe that the safety standards on Scarborough 8 were any better than they were on Deepwater Horizon.”

  “That’s probably true,” said Jack. “But in the Deepwater Horizon case, lawyers had court-issued subpoenas, and they used all the regular channels of discovery to get evidence and place the blame where it belonged. In this case, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that no one will ever uncover the truth about what really caused the explosion. Suing the Chinese, the Russians, and the Venezuelans for negligent operation of an oil rig in Cuban waters is the legal equivalent of running headlong into a stone wall.”

  Theo grabbed the last french fry f
rom Jack’s plate. “Which is why they came to you, Jack. You’re the world’s foremost legal expert on banging his head into walls.”

  “Thanks so much,” said Jack.

  Bianca was no longer gazing down shyly at her hands on the table. She looked right into Jack’s eyes. “Please, Señor Swyteck. I am new in this country and my husband is dead. Don’t make me look all over Florida to find a lawyer who I can trust. Can you take my case?”

  It was a double-barreled shot of pain for Jack. Not only was there a young widow at the table, but she was about to become the hunk of bloody red meat in the proverbial shark tank of lawyers who lived by the mantra “Have you been injured?”

  Rick said, “I’m happy to help work out the business side of it, if that would make it easier for Bianca. But I’m sure your standard contingency arrangement will be fine.”

  Theo literally kicked Jack under the table, and then he said what Jack himself was only thinking: “You’d have to be a horse’s ass to say no, Swyteck.”

  Jack knew that “standard contingency” in this situation could well mean pro bono, but he wanted to help. “All right. We’ll work something out.”

  “Gracias,” said Bianca.

  “But fair warning,” said Jack. “This stone wall I’m talking about could prevent us from gathering the evidence we need to prove a case in court.”

  “Sí, claro.”

  “And even if we overcome all the hurdles and win, I want you to understand something very important.”

  “What?”

  Jack paused, adjusting his tone to make sure that his words did not come across as insensitive. “Closure for you—and by that I mean the peace you might get from knowing what truly happened to your husband on that rig—is not something I can promise. I can’t stress it enough: we will be filing a lawsuit in U.S. court against a Chinese, Russian, and Venezuelan oil consortium operating in Cuban waters. Transparency will not come easy.”

  “I understand.”

  Rick reached across the table and shook Jack’s hand. “Thank you, counselor.”