TWENTY SEVEN
“I got a signal!” Alicia called up to the flybridge. She went back into the cabin and started typing. The further they had traveled from the US coast, the fewer and further apart the repeaters were. Reception was poor, but she had just gotten a notification that Mac’s phone had just turned on and she raced to pinpoint the location before she lost the signal.
TJ hovered over her as she worked. “Can we call him?”
“If I had more time, I could hack into the Cuban cell network, but it’s notoriously unreliable. Here is the position.” She handed him a piece of paper with the GPS coordinates.
“We can plug them in the unit on the bridge,” he said and shot out of the cabin.
Before she followed, she tried Norm’s phone again, but the screen remained blank. She left the cabin, glanced at the seas, gripped the narrow stainless steel ladder tightly and followed TJ to the bridge. Both men had their heads together entering the numbers in the chart plotter. He looked up at Alicia and pointed to the dot on the screen.
“In the middle of Havana Harbor.” He said the words as if the name held some evil menace.
“We have to assume he’s in trouble. There would be no other reason for him to be there,” she said, trying to figure out a scenario that explained his position on what must be a ship. “Why there?”
“We gotta save him,” Trufante said.
Alicia looked at the dot on the screen. She could feel her heart beat in her chest as she stared at the electronic connection like a frail umbilical cord. She knew policy and the danger of entering Cuban waters, but there was the bomb, and that should have been enough, with the lives of hundreds of people at stake. She also felt she owed something to Mac after he had saved her from the meth heads in the backwaters of Florida Bay.
“I have to go research international maritime law,” she said and started to walk away.
“The law ain’t going to save him,” Trufante said.
She knew he was right, but procedure was her crutch. There had to be another way. “I have an idea. How far are we from Cuban waters?”
“The line’s right there.” Trufante traced his finger on the screen. “Twelve miles offshore.”
An idea was blooming in her head. “TJ, have you heard about the Cuban government giving permission to US-based dive charters to enter their waters?” They had the perfect cover with the dive boat.
“Sure. I know a few guys running six-pack trips, overnighters from Key West.”
She could see the concern in his face when he realized what she was up to. “Let’s go,” she told Trufante, who wasted no time in changing course.
“Wait!” TJ pushed Trufante’s hand from the joystick and twisted it back towards Florida. “You can’t take my boat in there. They’ll blow us out of the water.”
“Do we have to go through this again?” she asked in her most authoritative voice.
“Damn, buddy, this shit’ll make you famous. Them gamers you chat up won’t believe it.” Trufante turned the wheel to the south. “Best listen to the lady.”
TJ stood back, a deep frown on his face.
“This is not just about Mac; there are hundreds of lives at stake, never mind the political fallout if that bomb goes off.” She hoped to guilt him into submission with the moral obligation argument. She could see him thinking. “And, I can show you a back door to dominate World of Warcraft.”
His expression changed and she knew they had won him over.
“Anything happens to the boat, the CIA takes care of it - right?”
“Add it to your bill,” she said, gaining confidence. “Now here’s our story when they question us.”
***
“Get up, Mr. Travis.”
Mac felt a hand tug at him and slowly opened his eyes. A man stood over him. He grimaced, put his hand to the lump on his head and rubbed it as if that would make the headache go away. His hand came back free of blood. He stared at the man.
“You have a visitor,” the pockmarked man said, signaling one of the soldiers to escort him from the storeroom.
Mac followed him onto the deck. It was night; how late he didn’t know. He tried to find the moon but was blinded by the ship’s lights. The only thing past the deck of the boat he could see was the twinkling from the shore and the white anchor lights from several boats. He followed the man to an open section of rail on the starboard side. They stood there watching the red and green bow lights of a fast boat approach. Mac struggled to see who was aboard. Fenders were tossed and it coasted to a stop against the steel hull, received the lines tossed to them by a crew member and tied off. A ladder was dropped from the deck and a man climbed aboard.
They stood facing each other, neither speaking until Norm motioned the soldiers away.
“Well, Travis, seems you’re in a bit of trouble here.”
Mac just stared at him, both thankful he had arrived and knowing he couldn’t trust him.
“They have Armando. I did what you asked,” Mac started.
“I know, and you want your girlfriend brought back from the dead, and your life and boat back. It sounds like a broken record,” Norm said and leaned on the rail. “Do I have to remind you there are only a handful of people that know you are alive.”
They both looked over the rust-stained rail at the lights of Havana. Mac saw what he thought was the ferry terminal. The ferry appeared to be where it had docked earlier in the day. He breathed in the humid night air and listened to the sounds of Havana brought into the harbor by the light breeze blowing in his face. There had to be a reason Norm had appeared and he didn’t expect it was to take him home and make everything better.
“You might be wondering what is next for you?” Norm asked.
Mac took his time; the only negotiation tactic he had ever mastered was silence. “Yes,” he finally answered. The CIA man seemed to be relishing the drama.
“At daybreak you will dive with the team that rescued you. They are training on this dive site we are anchored on, ironically the ‘USS Maine’. Do you know your history?”
Mac nodded, but Norm felt the need to talk.
“In 1898 she exploded right on this spot taking two-hundred-and-sixty men to the bottom of the harbor. It was the inciting incident that triggered the Spanish-American war.”
“They floated the ship and towed it to sea,” Mac said, wondering where this was going.
“So you are paying attention. Correct, but there are still armaments down there.” He looked at the dark water. “They built a cofferdam around what was left of the ship, floated and towed it to sea back in the early 1900’s. There have been several inquiries, but the Castro’s have had no interest.
Mac was starting to put the pieces together.
Norm continued. “Now that relations have improved, the government has authorized this training mission to find any personal effects or remains of the crew that they can pass to the families.”
“And under the cover of a relations building training mission, several men found live munitions which they have rigged the ferry with. That explains why the divers were on rebreathers and under the boat when we went in.”
“Very good, Travis.”
“So why don’t you bring in a demolitions team to diffuse the bomb?” Mac asked, but knew the answer before the words were out of his mouth.
“I have.” Norm stared at him.
***
Alicia stared at the screen showing the radar signatures of the ships from Palm Beach to St. Thomas. The Automatic Identification System required most vessels in international waters to have a transponder aboard, but apparently the Cuban government had not gotten that memo. The shipping lanes were crowded with icons representing the tankers, freighters and pleasure boaters, except for the large blank space around Cuba. She was looking for any threat, but TJ's boat rarely ventured further than the reef, only five miles from Key Largo, and had no need for radar. The AIS system was no help here.
TJ had told her they were anchored on
a reef in forty feet of water off the coast of Havana, just out of sight of the Castillo and the harbor entrance. She rubbed her eyes and decided to take a break. Needing some fresh air, she went on deck. The seas were close to flat and she felt strangely at ease standing in the same spot that had terrified her earlier. The moonlight promised good fishing to the handful of boats roaming the reef, and to an onlooker from shore they would look like any other boat. She looked back over the transom at the shore line and couldn’t help but notice the lack of light, at least compared to Miami. The darkness was interrupted occasionally by a car cruising the coastal road. Otherwise this part of the coast was barren. TJ had chosen well.
The two men had run out of beer before dark and she could hear Trufante snoring in the forward berth. TJ was on the flybridge keeping watch. Mac’s request to check on Mel nagged at her and she went back inside and sat down at her make-shift work station. The chatter on the radio had died and with no new information coming in, she minimized the window.
Hacking into the server was child’s play, except for the dial-up-like speed from the two repeaters she was able to connect to, but she was soon combing through the admitted patients records. She scrolled through the names, realizing that he had never called her anything except Mel. Melanie Woodson was the closest match and she clicked on her file. The entries were chronological, from her admittance earlier in the week until the latest, one only an hour ago. She was trained to notice inconsistencies in data and her eyes focused on an entry made earlier that day. The doctor’s name was unique and she clicked on the entry. As she read it, a tear formed in her eye. The entry described the test results, with a conclusive statement at the end that the patient was, in the doctor’s opinion, brain dead. With no training, the tests were meaningless, but her curiosity was not satisfied. She copied and pasted the doctor’s name into a search engine and waited for the results.
It wasn’t hard to find what she was looking for with a name like Dr. Moran Kowalski, and the page quickly populated. The first entries were basic info, but farther down the page were a series of articles from several Virginia newspapers about an inquiry into the doctor. She pulled up the first one, started reading, and held her breath when she saw the firm of Davies and Associates represented him. Further down, the article stated the all too similar case history. The doctor had been brought in to evaluate a patient and declared him brain dead without first ruling out the list of criteria that prevented the diagnosis. The patient had come out of his coma and the family sued. The next appearance of Moran Kowlaski was in Miami a year later.
She noticed the waning battery, dashed off an email to an associate who she hoped would look into the matter, and closed the cover. Exhausted, she leaned against the corner of the settee and closed her eyes.
TWENTY EIGHT
Mac felt like he was somewhere in the death march of a prisoner about to be executed, but was unsure how far off the end was. He had been woken before dawn, fed a bland breakfast, and led to the dive briefing room on the ship. Equipment was laid out on the deck in front of benches where a half-dozen men were checking their gear and talking quietly. He was directed to an empty section of the bench and started to fumble with the rebreather pack, watching the other divers as he copied their movements.
His first experience with this type of equipment, made to increase bottom time by recycling the air expelled by the diver through scrubbers and enrichers, had been buddy-breathing only yesterday. The equipment was in pieces. He tried to follow along with the diver next to him and assemble his. Everything connected, he checked the regulator, panicking that he had done something wrong when no air flowed. The diver next to him tapped the knob on the mouthpiece and he remembered having to turn on and off the air manually.
He looked at the diver and pointed to the depth gauge, wondering how deep they were going to dive to judge the particular air mixture in the pack. Although he was not experienced with the equipment, he had been diving with mixed gasses since their introduction. The additional bottom time, lack of decompression issues and the better mental state at depth made it indispensable in all the time he had spent in the water.
The diver said something in Spanish, but Mac couldn’t count past ten and shrugged his shoulders. The man picked up the gauge and pointed to the fifteen foot line. Mac gave him a questioning look, but the diver pointed to the line again. He had not been able to see top to bottom when he was in the water the other day, but he could tell by the pressure changes in his ears that it was deeper.
Confused was no way to start a dive in murky, unfamiliar waters and he wondered what other problems he would have with the equipment. He picked up the booties left for him, looked at the European size and realized what the confusion with the depth gauge had been. Everything was in metric. He picked up the gauge again and realized it was in meters.
With that knowledge he checked the gear again, studying the gauges that would monitor his system. If he got it wrong, he could easily die. Satisfied for now, he knew he would have to second guess every decision he made while in the water, but at least he knew from the other diver that the maximum depth would be forty-five feet. Even with standard air and equipment, that would allow over an hour of bottom time.
An officer entered the room and the men stopped talking and directed their attention to him. He started speaking in Spanish, using a white-board with a diagram of what looked like the skeletal remains of the Maine drawn on it, its parts scattered across a vast area. He called out names and he drew stick figures on the board, telling each diver where they were expected to work. When he’d finished, he came over to Mac.
“That equipment is not for you.”
Mac looked up at the man, not wanting to give him any excuse to pull him from the dive. This could be his only chance for escape.
“We have a diver out. I have standard gear.” He went to a storage locker and pulled out the more familiar BC and regulator.
Mac accepted the gear and inspected it. The depth gauge read in feet and the pressure gauge in pounds per square inch, the units he was familiar with. His confidence rose when the man hauled a steel cylinder labelled nitrox out of the locker and set it on the deck. The gear eased his mind slightly, but he still had the problem of the bomb and his escape. He was about to ask for the rebreather, which would eliminate his bubbles, making him virtually invisible in the harbor water, but decided he had a better chance with the standard gear.
“What is the mixture?” he asked. Nitrox was a broad term for mixed gasses and in order for him to know his limits, the information was critical. Ideally he would have liked to verify the mix, but under these conditions he would have to trust the man.
“It is a thirty-six percent mix.”
Mac nodded at the familiar blend. The atmospheric air contained twenty-one percent oxygen; the enriched blend increased the oxygen levels and reduced the nitrogen. He ran the numbers in his head. At forty-five feet he would run out of air before he ran out of bottom time.
Norm had explained the scenario last night and it all worked until the end. His cover was that of an observer sent by the United States to oversee the work on the ‘Maine’. He was then to slip off and remove the munition placed on the propeller shaft of the ferry and return. Norm had promised him he would be a free man if he succeeded, but he had no confidence in that and saw this as his only chance to escape. He assembled the gear and suited up, carefully checking the straps and buckles on the BC. He swept his right arm around his side to retrieve the regulator, set it in his mouth and breathed in. One last check of the gauges and he was ready.
A red light came on by the door and the divers stood and shuffled single-file towards the hatch. Mac followed the group and heard the sound of water being pumped out of a compartment. The light turned green and the divers followed the lead man, who opened the hatch and entered the chamber. When all the men were inside, the door was closed and locked behind them. It began to fill with water. The men made final adjustments to their equipment and waite
d for the compartment to flood.
Mac waited until the water reached his neck before inserting the regulator in his mouth. Seawater reached the ceiling and the lead man opened the hatch, causing a slight bump as the pressures equalized. One by one, the men started to swim away from the boat.
They swam as a group towards the bow of the ship, reached the anchor line and followed it towards the bottom. Visibility was better than yesterday, probably the influence of the clear water brought with the incoming tide, but it was still murky, more like the polluted waters of Galveston where he had been trained, than the clear water of the Keys. As they descended, the bottom came into view and he cleared his ears to balance the increasing pressure in his head. The divers fanned out over the area, each going to his assigned position. Remnants of the cofferdam that had been used to float the ship were still visible, the area inside mostly void of wreckage, but as the divers moved into their positions outside of the wreck area, the flotsam became more common. Mac, although naturally intrigued, checked his compass and moved slowly in the direction of the ferry.
There was no way to tell if he was being followed as the water closed around him, and he guessed that even if he was being watched, it would appear the sea had swallowed him. The wreck was invisible when he looked back. He checked his course again and finned harder towards the ferry, writing his headache off to the blow by the general and the pressure from the depth of the dive, breathing slowly to conserve as much air as possible.
***
The wind had picked up and that comfortable feeling Alicia had felt the night before was gone. The orange life preservers were the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes and she wondered if it was a sign. She sat up and put her feet on the deck, slowly getting used to the motion of the boat before standing and moving towards the head.
Wood's Harbor: Action & Sea Adventure in the Florida Keys (Mac Travis Adventures Book 5) Page 17