“Because apparently the U.S. government is one of the parties that’s after what I’m carrying. They tried to lock me up in Haiti.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you,” he said. “I’m not heading home anytime soon, and anyhow people-smuggling’s not my racket. I’d have to clear customs, so if there’s an APB on you, they’d nab you there. We’ve, uh, got one problem right here and now. I filed a flight plan that included a passenger list, and I made up a last name for you—a technicality that nobody would much attend to. But I did put your first name as ‘Jake’, nationality American, so that’s there for anybody looking for an American named ‘Jake’. Didn’t realize you had no passport. That’s a more serious technicality, but there’re ways. I’ll get you into Sint Maarten, and after that, my advice is, try your luck on the French islands—St. Barts, Guadeloupe, Martinique. They’re relatively civilized and orderly. You don’t need a passport traveling from one to the next. The official language is French, but where white people gather they’ll understand English. And greasing a palm or two will go a long way. You might even score a false passport if you can make your way to Martinique. Things are available there.”
The plane descended toward another beach-bordered, lush green island. “Thanks for the info and advice, Homer,” I said. “How much do I owe you for the gas? A couple hundred cover it?”
“You owe me nothing,” he said. “I was headed here anyhow. Appreciated your company, Jake. Let’s get on the ground, and I’ll show you how to get around customs on Sint Maarten.”
7 | I Shot the Sheriff
“We’re goin’ in on the French side of the island,” Homer explained. “The French airport, Esperance, is geared to private craft, smaller prop jobs, local commuter flights. The international airport’s on the Dutch side. Clearin’ customs here is more or less a formality, but they do expect it. What I’ll do is take the plane to the parkin’ area, down the runway from the terminal. There’s some cover adjacent to it. You slip out of the plane and duck into the bushes. From there you can make it to the road. I’ll tell the customs agent that you’re straightening out something in the plane, be along in a minute. Then I’ll be on my way. You’ll be on your own, of course.”
“Where should I go once I find the road?”
“Depends on what you want to do. You want to go to Martinique, you’d best take a cab to the Dutch side, catch a plane, but I think you might need a passport for that. For St. Barts, you could catch a ferry down at the Dutch marina. Don’t know about passports there, never used the ferry. Maybe your best bet’s to go into Philipsburg and get the lay of the land. Find a place to stay there, get a good night’s sleep and think out your plans. It’s a small island. Folks take American money.”
As we neared the Island I could see that it lacked Puerto Rico’s lushness. The center was scrub-covered hills, the shore areas built up and tourist-oriented. Homer brought the plane down and taxied over to where a clutch of small planes like his sat. “Follow the road east, you’ll reach the coast, it’s a mile or two. From there, you can get a cab to Philipsburg. Good luck.” I climbed down to the tarmac and shouldered my pack. “Hold on there, Jake,” Homer said. “Seems to be a welcomin’ committee comin’ our way.”
I squatted down and peered around the landing gear from beneath the plane. Three uniformed men had come out of the terminal buildings and walked briskly in our direction, focused on our plane. I kept low, using the plane as cover, and duck-walked down the side of the runway a few yards, then angled across the grassy verge toward the bushes. Then I noticed a pair of men get out of a car beside the road across the runway, scramble over the fence and take up tracking me from the other side. I straightened up and increased my speed. Both groups kept pace, gaining a little on me. They’d pulled within hailing distance, and I was considering making a run for it, when I heard a shot—pop—and one of the guys in uniform went down. Ranger training kicking in, I hit the deck too. It was like popcorn in a microwave oven. Pop—another shot as the uniforms dropped to crouches and one of them fired a shot across the runway, hitting nothing. The other guys took an answering shot—pop. A few more shots, from both sides—pop pop pop. And then a bunch erupted poppity-pop, both groups retreating in a hurry, firing wildly as they ran. Meantime, I slithered over the grass toward the scrub that lined the runway. I reached it, clambered over a low fence and dove in. Concealed, I parted some palm fronds to see what was going on. The guys with the car took off in it. The guys in the uniforms bustled into their building, propping up their buddy between them on their shoulders. Odd. I don’t think either group fired that first shot. Then where did it come from? From some other thugs on my trail? Where were they? Why provoke a gunfight?
So there I was, hunkered down in bushes, undergrowth, cacti and low trees. I fished out from my pack a shirt with earth colors, changed it with what I was wearing and crouch-walked through the scrub to a road. Following Homer’s advice, I quick-marched toward the east. This island was built up, out here with shabby shacks and businesses with hand-lettered signs lining the road. I thought the guys in the car might show up, so I kept to cover as best I could, but nobody bothered me.
After a few twists, turns and false starts the streets took me through a better district of nice villas and bungalows, and I soon found myself on a long beach of white sand and gentle surf. Several smaller islands dotted the deep blue ocean beyond the mouth of the bay. The stretch above the beach was thick with villas, beach houses, mid-range hotels and palm-festooned resorts. White slatted lounge chairs, brightly colored umbrellas and sunbathing tourists filled the strand. Kids scampered around, but few people played in the water. Several yachts with sails furled bobbed at anchor in the bay. Wind-surfers skimmed hither and thither. A couple of speedboats towed parasails high above—must be quite a view from up there. Locals, mostly colored men, hawked the usual beach paraphernalia and doo-dads, their patter alternating between French and English. I bought a straw beach hat from one, a little camo to suit the scene.
Not being in beach duds, I stuck close to the buildings that bordered the strand and walked along until a tiki-bar next to the sand caught my attention. It was getting toward late afternoon; the place was not crowded. I was ready for some refreshment and a bite to eat, so I took a table next to the beach, ordered a beer and a shrimp basket and scoped out the situation. As I weighed the alternatives Homer proposed, a dinghy from one of the anchored yachts came in through the surf. Its three passengers—two men and a woman—hopped out, pulled it up far enough that it wouldn’t drift away and trudged up the sandy slope into the bar. They took a table not far from mine and ordered Pina Colladas. I gathered from their conversation that they were Americans and that their next destination was St. Barts.
I shifted around in my seat. “Excuse me,” I said. “I couldn’t help but overhear. You’re heading for St. Barts? What, in one of those sailboats?”
“That’s right. You’re an American?” the woman in the group answered. She was a pert little brunette wearing a bikini under a loose, unbuttoned cotton top.
“From California. Malibu. You’re Americans too?”
“From Philadelphia.”
“And you’re cruising around these islands in a yacht? How do you do that? Do you own it?”
“We’re in a ski club,” one of the men, suntanned and husky, put in. The other man, though balding, looked a little younger, closer to my age. “In the off-season we have a sailing program, several weekend trips on Chesapeake Bay and one big trip. This is our big trip—two weeks around these islands. Last year we did two weeks around Greece.”
“What, you hire a boat and skipper and so forth?”
“Oh, no. We bareboat charter. We have four boats on this trip, six to a boat. We have our own skippers, and everybody else is the crew, and we do our own cooking. Everybody pitches in. It’s like camping out in an aqueous format. Are you into sailing?”
“More of a surfer, actuall
y,” I said. “I’ve been out on other people’s boats, but I don’t know much about it.”
“It’s a great sport,” said the woman. “The amazing thing, it’s so cheap when you do it this way. A resort here would cost you a fortune. What are you doing down here?” she asked, noting my pack. “Backpacking around the islands or something?”
“That’s about it,” I replied. “Drifting hither and yon as the breezes blow me. The reason my ears perked up is that I heard you mention St. Barts. That’s close by here? I could use a lift over there if you’ve got room and it’s on your way.”
“We’re having a last drink on Orient Bay here, then sailing over to St. Barts. It’s about 15 miles, but we’re going to sail around a little and then overnight at Ile Fourche, about halfway there. The bunks on the boat are all full, but if you don’t mind sleeping in the cockpit, sure, we’ll give you a ride over.”
“Oh wow!” the woman exclaimed. “Will you look at that!” She indicated a big, blubbery naked man sloshing along in the shallows. “It’s a nude beach, but there oughta be some kinds of restrictions. That’s gross.”
I hadn’t noticed the bare-ass aspect. I scanned the shore, and sure enough, lots of folks sported full body tans, most of them middle-aged couples, pot-bellied men or plain-faced, pudgy women and all of them Europeans. “It’s like what we used to say about Stanford when I went to UCLA,” I remarked. “Nine out of ten California girls are pretty, and the tenth one goes to Stanford. Seems to apply to nude beaches as well.” The woman laughed harder than the two men.
They finished their drinks. “Time to shove off,” said the older man. “You want to come along, let’s go.” I settled my check, took off my desert boots and socks, tied the laces and draped them around my neck, rolled up my khakis and followed them down to their skiff. I helped them launch it, pushed it out free of the bottom and hopped aboard. The younger man yanked the outboard motor to life and scooted us out to one of the anchored boats.
The older of the men was John, the woman was Sally, his wife. John skippered this boat and organized the trip. The younger man was George, Sally’s brother. On board were Bobbie, his wife, and Ray and Judy. Thinking it best to keep Jake Fonko low-profiled, I introduced myself as Jack Philco, my CIA cover name for my misadventures in Saigon and Cambodia. We climbed up a chrome-plated ladder onto a 40-foot sloop, as big a sailboat as I’d ever ridden on, though smaller than some where I’d enjoyed dockside parties. John got on the radio and checked with the other three boats in the group—all signaled readiness. I helped Ray haul up the anchor while John started the engine. We cleared the bay, George raised the mainsail, Sally and Judy unfurled the roller-jib, and the balmy breeze wafted us off toward St. Barts.
I’d puttered around with little sailboats—Sunfish and the like—and wasn’t bad at windsurfing, but this was a new deal for me. John, it turned out, worked for a utility company and was ex-Coast Guard. His wife sold real estate. George and Bobbie worked in a factory in North Carolina. Ray taught college, and Judy worked as a research scientist. I’d always assumed you had to be a millionaire to go yachting in the Caribbean, and here a bunch of ordinary Americans my age were having a whale of a time and saving money at it. Out at sea, sailing a yacht seemed pretty basic, though more complicated than running a Sunfish. Let the sails out wide when the wind’s behind you, crank them in closer amidships when you head closer to the direction of the wind. Steer the bow through the wind and shift the sails to the other side when you want to go the other way. It had an entirely different feel from powerboats, smooth and quiet. John explained that the tricky part with sailboats was handling them under power in close quarters.
The flotilla took its time getting to Ile Fourche, but nobody was in a hurry. Once out in the channel, the breeze picked up. Ray turned the boat upwind, heeling it over sharply, and we screamed forward through the wind, sea foam burbling past the leeward rail and us bracing ourselves up on our seats to windward. Cheap thrills at six miles per hour. It was fun. “You use a motor boat to get from one place to another,” John observed. “But in a sailboat, you’re where you want to be.” As we sailed along, they told me more about their cruising vacations. Boats could be chartered all over the world; companies brokered them for individual owners. With a 40 foot sloop, you had your sleeping accommodations and transportation right there under your feet. Beyond the price of the charter, you paid for food, booze and incidental expenses. Cooking on board was cheap, and you couldn’t beat a sailboat cockpit for atmospheric drinking and dining. You could drop anchor anywhere conditions permitted, for example near snorkeling reefs and off island towns and beaches. Plus, Ray pointed out, being on a sailboat gave you plenty of interesting things to do between meals. The catch was, you had to know how to sail, but there were classes you could take.
It brought to my mind Marina del Rey, that vast yacht basin near LAX that serves Los Angeles. I’d been down there for boat parties, to hit nautical-themed bars or to rendezvous with dates. All those big, gleaming yachts and cruisers sat lined up in their slips, so few of them venturing out to sea. Now I understood. Where would they go? Catalina offers the only offshore destination, and it boasts cold water, a small pebble beach and limited activity ashore. It was a long, hard sail for not much to do once you got there. Cruising up and down the coast took you into open sea, often in very fierce channel winds. To arrive where? This boat made about 5 or 6 knots, meaning 60 miles in a full day of sailing if all went well. So from Marina del Rey you could reach Newport Beach? Or Ventura? In ideal conditions. And then? So, California’s nouveau rich reached the pinnacle, realized their dream of owning a sailboat, bought a yachting cap, took their prize out a few times, discovered that it was a lot of work and travail, and after the first season used it mostly as an offsite rec room. But down here you had this chain of gorgeous islands offering warm, clear water. Coral reefs. Coconut palms. Sheltered anchorages. Palm-shaded beaches with soft sand. Steady, gentle breezes year ‘round (umm… hurricanes excepted). Exotic little ports. Further north lay Florida and the Bahamas. Sally said their ski club did weekenders on Chesapeake Bay. Lots of places to go there too. As glorious as it was, California didn’t have everything, I was forced to admit.
We reached Ile Fourche, essentially a crescent of scrubby hills surrounding a quiet little bay, at cocktail time. While Judy and Bobbie prepped dinner, George set up the barbecue on the stern railing, and John brought out ice, big cans of tropical fruit juice, and bottles of rum. We ate sitting around the cockpit. Food always tastes better by a campfire out in the wild, and the same held true watching the sun set from a yacht at anchor. I volunteered to wash the dishes, a task everyone was happy to give to me.
Two of the other boats had rafted together, and after dinner we all piled into the dinghy and rowed over. The others in the group were much the same as on our boat—a nurse, a teacher, a paving contractor, a farmer and his family, a couple engineers, secretaries and so forth—practical people. What they had in common was a love of sailing and an aura of competence. They represented what the Malibu/Hollywood crowd back home called “real people”—the butts on the seats, the eyeballs on the screen that the entertainment and advertising industries craved and courted. And how did the “real people” party? Rum punch based on whatever fruit juice was at hand. Cold beer from the can. Jokes. Sailing stories. The day’s adventures (Sally, given to dramatics, got a lot of mileage out of the 400 pound naked man). Reggae music, show tunes and sea shanties on the tape deck. Polite gossip and chit chat about families and friends. No big brandy sifters featuring a rainbow helping of pills. No coke lines. No haze of cannabis smoke. No perverts parading their depravities. No Egomobiles clogging up the street and the driveway. No battles of the bucks. No couples disappearing to back bedrooms in various combinations. No histrionics. No shrieking, phony laughter. No nervous deal seeking. No ambitious starlet wannabes requisitioned for purposes of jollying up stag men and wayward husbands.
It
was sort of refreshing. Me being a guest, an outsider and someone who sought a low profile, I perched out of the way atop the cabin and quietly appreciated a relaxing evening.
The party ended at around ten, and everyone returned to their boats. I set up on the cockpit’s starboard cushion and put on an extra shirt against night chill. A tropical shower passed over in the wee hours, but compared to some nights I’d spent on patrol in Nam, this was the Ritz. John woke up the boat by playing a “reveille” tape, then switched to local radio weather reports interspersed with reggae music. Sally came up the companionway in a bikini and demonstrated the principles of the “Joy bath.” No, not a tropical group-grope. Joy dish detergent sudses up in salt water, so boat hygiene consisted of diving overboard, climbing back onto the stern diving platform, lathering yourself up from a squeeze bottle of Joy, then diving back in to rinse it off. The final step was a quick rinse with the boat’s fresh water from the stern hose. George was about my size and lent me his extra bathing suit. In no time at all I was ready to face the day.
For breakfast, the cooking chores passed to John and George, I again washing up after we polished off eggs and sausage. We spotted some sea turtles in the bay. I had on George’s trunks, still damp, so I borrowed a mask and flippers and went over the side. The bay held no reefs to speak of, but there were tropical fish aplenty in the shallows, and I chased the turtles for a while. This was a routine I could get into.
We weighed anchor a little after nine. St. Bart’s wasn’t far, and we joined the traffic into Gustavia harbor, the four boats anchoring well before noon. I wanted to be on my way, so I offered to spring for lunch for shipmates as a parting gesture. Needless to say, no one said no. We dinghied in, tied up at the town dock and trooped up the hill to a restaurant with a view of the harbor. Gustavia, the main town on St. Barts, sat back in a spacious bay. Similarly to Port au Prince, the surrounding hills turned it into a heat-collector, sauna-muggy even by late morning. Unsimilarly to Port au Prince, it was well-kept and expensive-looking. The shops along the streets as likely sold designer goods as tourist trinkets. I noticed at a newsstand/bookstore the local newspaper headlining a story about a Marxist coup on Grenada, wherever that was. According to Clyde Driffter, rebellions and revolts regularly erupted around the Caribbean basin, so I passed it off as no big deal. I’d get current on the news when I found the time to sit still and catch my breath.
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 13
