The Passage

by David Poyer

  “How does it feel?”

  “Not pain exactly. Like cramps.”

  “Contractions?”

  “It’s too early for that.”

  Aracelia nodded, wrinkled face serene. “Maybe yes, maybe no. Raise yourself.” She slid her hands under the younger woman’s buttocks, easing the cloth between her thighs, then bound it tightly.

  Just then, a rogue gust came over the sea.

  It caught Augustín, on the tiller, by surprise. It snatched the sail from the side and slammed the boom around, and suddenly the whole thing, mast and sail and all the ropes and rigging, collapsed and fell, half into the sea, half onto the people on deck. Cries and shouts came from under it.

  But even after knocking down their sail, the gust didn’t stop. It kept increasing, making the boat heel over crazily, dragging the mass of wreckage. It started to come broadside to the waves, dragging the skiff around after it. Julio grabbed the paddle, looking quickly aft.

  Shouting came from the boat ahead. “Pull it in. Roll it up. Get the end of that rope. Is it broken? Augustín—”

  Through the failing light, Graciela caught sight of the men struggling with the flapping cloth. Then heard, all too plainly, a long ripping sound as the boom rolled over the side, followed by intense and impassioned cursing. And all this time, the boats were still slowing, still skating slowly around.

  “Tomás!” Julio yelled. But Guzman didn’t answer. He was somewhere under the flapping, slamming sail.

  Then the wave hit them.

  It lifted and heeled them and the boat kept going on over, farther and farther. The twins and the Colon kids started screaming. Graciela, horrified, looked for an endless time at the tin bottom of the big boat.

  Then the kids screamed again and the wave passed under it and it came back down, rocking back so heavily it sent the water surging out from underneath it in a great wave. “Get it back around!” Julio was screaming, paddling furiously to keep their own stern backed into the seas. “Augustín! Start the motor!”

  Tomás appeared roaring from under the sail, pushing up the mast. His shoulders bulged as a hand and a stump levered the heavy pipe back into the sky. The forward rope came taut but the after one swung frayed, worn through. “Grab it!” he yelled. “Okay, tie it to something, coño, apirate!”

  “The boom’s gone, Tomás, and half the sail.”

  “That’s okay; we can fix that.”

  When Augustín yelled, “Okay, it’s tied,” Guzman sagged to his knees on the cabin top, one arm around the mast. When he had his breath back, he motioned weakly to take in the remnants of the sail, which was flapping loose, thundering and roaring ahead of the wildly rolling boat.

  LATER, the five people in the skiff sat in the darkness, watching the vanishing ghostly blur ahead. “That was not good,” Gustavo said softly.

  “It’s getting rougher. The wind keeps getting stronger.”

  “What if the sail falls down again?”

  “Tomás can run the engine,” said Miguel.

  “There’re only a couple liters of gas left,” Julio said.

  “He should just take it down,” said Gustavo. “The current’s taking us west. This is a big river out here. I used to fish out here, years ago.”

  “He can’t, Tio. Those waves hit us sideways, we’re going to turn over. You saw it; it almost happened.”

  “This river, it ends up in Miami?” Miguel asked them. “How much farther is it to Florida?”

  “I’m not sure. It can’t be too much farther; we’ve been going for a whole day.”

  “Those people from Holguín have been out for two days now.”

  “Yeah, but they had farther to go.”

  The men talked deep into the night. Graciela didn’t join their conversation. Neither did old Aracelia. They sat together near the bow, near the little pocket the pointed end of the chalanita made. And gradually, the men, too, passed into silence, till all was heaving, whistling dark. She lay down in the floorboards, wrapping her dress tightly around her, and listened to the sea gurgling past her ear.

  SHE started awake, the scream tearing her throat apart before she even knew what was wrong.

  In the black night, the skiff seemed to spin, sliding sidelong down the roaring black chest of a wave. She screamed again, grabbing at something soft to keep from being thrown out of the boat, and then her throat closed and all she could do was moan. Julio yelled and then everyone was yelling. Then, all at once, they stopped, listening to answering shouts across the water, but faint, so faint.

  There was the distant pop of a shot, then nothing, nothing but roaring darkness, with the wind blustering and whining as they rose dizzyingly in the black, then dropped, leaving her stomach floating out somewhere above the waves. She felt strength drain from her fingers even as they gripped wet wood. She stared into black, praying for a glimpse of something, anything—a spark, a face, a star, a light. Nothing came.

  Then nausea grabbed her again, and this time acid stripped her throat raw and left her gagging. She hit at the wood, feeling her hands bruise but not caring. Then she felt Miguelito’s thin arms. He sounded scared, too. “Tia Graciela … Tia Graciela. Sit down! You’re going to make us go over!”

  “They’re gone; they’re gone.”

  Julio’s voice, grim as the night: “I’ve got the end of the rope.” Old Gustavo: “Yeah?”

  “It’s cut.”

  “That hijo de puta. He cut it, the fat one. The son of a bitch Communist chivato, he cut our rope.”

  “Or his fat wife.”

  “She’s a whore, but she wouldn’t do that. It was him, I tell you.”

  “Tomás will come back for us.”

  “If he can find us. But in the dark, how?”

  “We should have had a light—a candle, anything.”

  Miguelito said, “Maybe he can’t come back. You heard the shot. What if they killed Tomás, Julio?”

  Julio didn’t answer, and Graciela felt panic close her throat again. Oh God, oh blessed Virgin de la Caridad del Cobre, patron of the sea … Squatting on the floorboards, she pressed her fists tightly to her face.

  WHEN dawn came they were alone. She looked until her eyes hurt, but there was no sign of the others. There were other boats, but miles away, and she didn’t think any of them were Tomás’s. They were alone now, five people in a little leaking boat.

  Gustavo, Aracelia, and Miguelito lay in the water on the bottom, their mouths gaping in sleep. Only Julio was awake. He was staring out fixedly at an oncoming wave, the paddle poised in his hands like some kind of weapon.

  Then he bent, dark skin showing through the ragged T-shirt, and abruptly, furiously dug it into the water. The stern rose and the boat started to roll. But Julio dug harder and the stern swung back just in time to meet the sea. It drove under them, heaving them upward with arrogant power. As they rose, the wind punched at them in heavy cold gusts that ripped spray off the ragged waves and blew it in white trailing lines along the green surface.

  Then it was past, and her cousin sagged back. She saw the bloody smears his hands had dyed into the handle of the whittled wood. One by one, the others woke, opened their eyes blankly. She dragged herself up, trying to ease the ache in her back. She wasn’t hungry at all anymore … but so tired. She blinked burning eyes out at the sea. Something was missing, something that had been there before. Then she knew: the birds. They didn’t slant along the waves anymore, cocking an eye their way as they went by. There were no birds at all.

  They were alone under a vast sky that was sealed now with a low darkness from which filtered a cold mist. On the far horizon, a black ominous-looking wall of cloud barred off half the world. They looked at it speechlessly, staring for a long time as the boat went up and down, spinning and rolling in the whistling wind.

  31

  The Windward Passage

  THE sea, half an hour before dawn. The uneasy, faintly glowing waves grasp at the bleaching sky but fall back with a slapping noise before they re
ach it. As they break, the wind spatters spray across their glossy black bellies. They shoulder one another like a big-city crowd. Sometimes they merge into a crest. At other times, their meeting makes only a low place on the sea, a patch of illusory calm. Their surface is slaty, save for an occasional flecking of foam.

  The sky reflects the sea, lightless and uneasy. The gray clouds writhe as they ride the high wind.

  In these last minutes before dawn, lights rise gradually from the sea: red to port, green to starboard, masthead and range brilliant white. They move steadily closer, striking colored sparks off the tossing crests.

  A gray shape forms on a gray horizon. It grows, taking on shape, solidity, reality, detail. A low whine joins the sigh of the wind.

  Suddenly it looms over the restless water. Wave after wave, still black in the final minutes of night, is sliced and smashed apart under a blunt blade of gray steel. The waves spit silver fragments that skip away, swerving and dipping along the swell lines: flying fish. The sea parts unwillingly, tearing energy from the moving metal with a dull roar like a collapsing cliff. The high gray sides move past, rolling with the ponderous slow beat of a massive metronome.

  But as soon as the squared-off counter moves past, the sea sweeps stubbornly in again. For two minutes, it swirls and leaps, frothing white in the growing metal light. A billion bubbles rise and froth and burst. Gradually, it subsides, healing itself with a smooth, gently heaving skin, a shallow smoothness that seethes beneath with whirlpools.

  Then another bladelike bow plows it apart again.

  HALF a mile apart, in line ahead at a thousand yards’ separation, USS Barrett followed USS Dahlgren on a northerly course at high speed. Far to port, the low hills of Cuba humped out of the sea like surfacing whales. To the east, just visible, was a bank of cloud that was Haiti. The dominant swell swept in from the northeast, but there was a cross swell, too, making the seas choppy and confused.

  Gradually, the sun emerged, visible in the intervals between the speeding clouds. First as a tentative lightening over Hispaniola, a gradual brightening that lighted the world from below. Then suddenly squirting up into sight, a swollen, shimmering ball like a condom filled with blood. Rays of red light shot across the water toward the racing ships, coppering masts and rotating radars, then moving down to paint their decks. Beneath the sodden orb the sea seethed like boiling aluminum, and low altocumulus hurtled overhead as if on motor-driven belts.

  On the bridge of the second ship, Dan stood behind Cannon as the navigator set his sextant carefully in its box, wedged it under a shelf, and booted up the computer in the nav shack. The screen flickered, then read:

  GOOD MORNING, DICKHEAD. I’M YOUR FUCKING DATA-EATING SLOPPY-PRINTING PIG. I’M HERE TO FUCK UP YOUR MORNING, PISS IN YOUR WHEATIES, AND MAKE YOU WISH YOU’D NEVER BEEN BORN. ENJOY YOUR STAY.

  Cannon hit ENTER and the screen blanked. He began typing in GMT, the DR position, star number, observed altitude.

  As Dan turned away, the barometer caught his eye. He tapped it, not because that did anything on a modern instrument but because that was what everyone did. Then he raised his eyes to look the length of the bridge. The morning was colorless through the slanted windows. Cold photons penetrated salt-spattered Plexiglas and glanced off waxed wood, gray paint, polished brass, plastic, aluminum. They showed him tired men with pallid faces.

  “What’s the trend, Dave?”

  “Dropping.”

  “Fast?”

  “Something wicked coming our way.”

  “What’s Fleet Weather calling it?”

  “A tropical depression now, and still strengthening.” The navigator pulled down the board and showed him the twenty-four-hour forecast. Dan read it, memorizing figures and locations in case the captain asked, then looked out again to the two points of distant land. The nearer was Cuba, emerging now from the westerly darkness. Successive ranges of hills were cut from steadily lighter shades of reddish gray paper. He looked at Dahlgren’s slowly rolling stern half a mile ahead; at the whitish river of churned-up sea that led to Barrett’s own bow; at the two long streamers of commingled, nearly invisible smoke that blew from the racing destroyers. The sea heaved between them, but the distance never varied. The water was taking on the faintest hint of blue as the rising sun burrowed its rays under the waves. Patches of foam showed here and there, but no streaks yet. He glanced at the relative wind indicator, bent to the radarscope, checked the surface board one last time.

  He said to Van Cleef, “Okay, it’s five-thirty. I’ll be on the horn for a while. Keep a sharp lookout.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  He pulled the phone off the bulkhead and buzzed the at-sea cabin. Leighty answered with a grunt. “Good morning, Captain. Mr. Lenson here,” Dan said.

  “Okay, I’m up. How’s it look up there?”

  “We’re passing Punta Maisi, coming up on the oh-six hundred turn. Dahlgren’s holding thirty knots—”

  “Thought it was twenty-eight-no, I remember you calling me when they went to thirty.”

  “Yes, sir. The only contacts are Skunk Charlie—bears zero-eight-six, range eighty-nine hundred, closest point of approach at the turn will be over six thousand yards—and Skunk Bravo, past and opening to the south. The morning is overcast, with true wind fifteen knots from zero-four-eight, gusting to twenty, seas four to five feet. Dahlgren’s the guide in line ahead, thousand yards’ interval.”

  “What’s Fleet Weather got to say about this low-pressure area?”

  “It’s a tropical depression now, sir.” He repeated back what he’d memorized, finishing, “As of oh-four hundred, the center was moving northwest at about eight knots.”

  “How are we on PIM?”

  PIM was position of intended movement, the moving point where the ship should be according to the movement report they’d filed in the hectic two hours between when he’d been awakened and the time the two destroyers had passed Windward Point. He leaned over the chart, at the extremity of the phone cord. “Sir, we’re about two miles ahead right now.”

  “Nothing from Dahlgren?”

  “Just the half-hour radio checks.”

  “Any beefs from the engineers?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And the next turn’s at six. Okay, somebody at my door. Must be Pedersen with breakfast. Call me if anything changes.”

  Dan said he would and hung up. He glanced at Van Cleef; the JOOD had his binoculars up to starboard. Dan followed them, caught for a moment a tiny tossing speck silhouetted by an immense bloody sun. It seemed to expand as it rose, growing more malevolent at each appearance between the bands of cloud.

  “Skunk Charlie’s a small boat, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  The overhead speaker of the radio remote hissed and said suddenly, making Van Cleef jump for the signal pad and codebook, “Juliet Papa, this is Lima Lima. Signal follows. Corpen port three-one-zero. I say again, corpen port three-one-zero. Standby—execute. Over.”

  “I break that to read, turn port, following in my wake, new course three-one-zero.”

  “Make it so. Give him a roger and turn in the knuckle,” said Dan. Van Cleef bawled over his shoulder, “Left five degrees rudder, steady course three-one-zero. Lima Lima, this is Juliet Papa. Roger, out.”

  Dan called the captain, told him the new course, then leaned against the plot table, feeling Barrett lean, then begin rolling as she picked up the swell. He couldn’t decide how he felt. It felt good leaving Gitmo. But there was disappointment, too—like showing up at the dentist’s office and finding it closed. They’d all been wound up for the battle problem. But how could you tell how you really felt until you knew where you were going? And they didn’t know that, not even a hint.

  All he knew was that at 0300, reveille had been passed throughout the ship for an emergency under way and that Barrett and Dahlgren were now en route to the Grand Bahama Passage. But no one aboard knew why, not even the radiomen, which meant the captain was in the dark, too.
The only concrete facts were that they’d done an emergency sortie and were now tearing ass for either north Cuba or South Florida.

  Or, to be more exact … He examined the chart again. Cannon had plotted their PIM. It curved northwest once they exited the Passage, angling gradually left around the tip of Cuba, where it ended, hanging out there in space. But if they continued on that last course, they’d be steaming parallel to the northern coast. Two hundred and forty miles, just eight hours at this speed, and they’d be entering the twisting bottleneck of the Old Bahama Channel—two to four hundred fathoms under their keel but only ten miles wide at Cay Lobos, and reefs on either side. Past that, the wedge of the Cay Sal Bank split the possibilities into two. They could go westward via the Nicholas Channel toward Havana and the Florida Keys or northward via the Santarén toward the east coast of Florida, Bimini, and Grand Bahama Island.

  Okay, short-fuze orders, unexpected changes of plan weren’t unknown in the U.S. Navy. The unexpected happened—coups, hostage situations, revolutions, disasters—and ships had to be scrambled. But the funny thing was that once they’d exited Gitmo, their readiness condition had actually dropped. They were back to peacetime steaming now, with five watch sections and no weapons manned.

  That meant there couldn’t be any sort of military threat. Finally, he had to admit he was beat. He checked the scope again, ran his binoculars across Dahlgren’s stern—a high rooster tail obscured her, then parted, blown downwind—and around the horizon. Nothing but the points of land, the two contacts, both falling astern, and the two destroyers tearing along to the north, alone in the waste of waters. No, he didn’t like the looks of that sky.

  He stood motionless before the windows, looking out as the last shadows fled. The forecastle brightened to where he could see individual wash-down nozzles, bolt heads in the missile launcher, the faint uneven weld seams in the deck plating. The boatswain, silver pipe dangling around his neck, brought the scope hood out from the charthouse and fitted it over the radar repeater. When he was done, Dan put his face to it.