by Karen Harper
Finally, using broad gestures, just as the boatman had, Heck turned back to them to translate. Claire knew the fact that Nita had taken it all in and was crying was not a good sign.
Heck told them, “He is Hernando Hermez, called Nando, out of Cuba, but not Havana. He say—he says—no way his boat can reach Los Estados Unidos. That not allowed, against the law. He is from a small fishing village called Costa Blanca about forty miles west of Havana. He comes here to this spot, pretty far out, once a year on the date he lose—I mean, he lost—his son Alfredito. He fell in where sharks eating their catch in a net, but Nando not start fishing yet today. He like to kill them all, maybe same ones as these.”
“Mommy, are there sharks in the water? That kind with the really big, sharp teeth?”
Claire hugged Lexi harder. “Shh, it’s all right. They can’t get us.” But that reminded Claire that Lexi had seen too much killing. She prayed this Nando would take them aboard. Even that rattletrap of a boat and a small, Spanish-speaking fishing village or a prison cell—even facing Ames again if he did live in Cuba now—had to be better than this. She tried never to hate anyone, but she hated Ames and silently vowed again, despite their desperation, that she would help Nick and Jace bring him to justice someday.
Heck’s voice interrupted her frenzied fears. “These sharks are killers, Nando keeps saying, so he says we be careful if we come on board.”
“No kidding,” Jace muttered, then spoke in a louder voice just as Nick was about to say something. “Tell Nando I’ll try to get aboard first to help the others—Lexi first and the women after her.”
Claire wished that didn’t remind her of that old cry of “women and children first” when a ship was sinking. But surely that boat could hold them all, get them off the water, and then they could find a way not to go home but to hide out. But how to contact the FBI in Castro-controlled Cuba? Fidel was supposedly retired, but his brother Raul was in charge now. There were rumors that the US and Cuba might make peace someday soon, but it hadn’t happened yet. President Obama had even shaken hands with Raul at a foreign conference, but Cuba was still a hostile Communist nation.
Heck and Nando talked more in Spanish. “He say, maybe Jesu Christo and the Virgin Mary, they give to him your lives in place of his lost son, his only son, Alfredito. He will take us to his house, give us food, place to sleep. Then we go to Havana, pay someone to take us home, not get seen or caught, he says.”
“Not be seen? Fat chance of that,” Nick muttered. “We’ll have to do everything undercover—somehow.” He said louder, “Tell him we are grateful to him and to the Lord for bringing us together on this great sea. Everyone, tell him gracias.”
A little chorus followed with Lexi chiming in. “Nita,” the child called out to her nanny, “I remembered what you taught me, but I can’t tell his other words. Nada.”
“You will, my Lex—my Meggie,” Nita called to her. “You will.”
The boat gently bumped against the nearest life raft, the one holding Heck, Bronco and Nita. But Jace was determined to be the first aboard, in case there was a problem climbing up the side where Nando was now dangling a rope he’d tied to one of the posts of the canopy.
Jace put one leg over, then rolled into the other raft and secured both of them to the side of the boat near the stern. Oh, Claire thought, so that was what the single rope was for. She had been scared they must climb that to get on board the fishing boat.
Nando secured the heavy, hand-knotted rope net on the side of the boat. Jace, of course, went up it easily, shook Nando’s hand, then leaned over the side. Nick was on the move, coaxing Lexi from Claire’s arms and handing her into the other raft to Bronco. Both rafts tilted and rocked.
“Close your eyes, sweetheart,” Nick whispered to Lexi and shot a quick “trust me” look back at Claire. Her arms felt not only stiff and sore but so empty now. “Claire,” Nick said, when she made a move toward the other raft too, “stay put. As they say, don’t rock the boat. I’ll be back for you.”
Lexi wrapped her arms so tightly around Nick’s neck that his face went red, but he didn’t tell her to let go. Claire gripped her hands together, praying, trusting. When Nick passed Lexi to Bronco, who stood with Heck’s help and passed her up to Jace, Claire slid across the slippery inside of the raft to be closer.
“Let go of me, honey,” Bronco told Lexi as he lifted her up. “Your daddy—Uncle Seth, I mean—he got you.”
And he did. Claire burst into silent tears of relief as the men handed Nita up to Jace and then, thank God, it was her turn. Not only did she want to be with Lexi, but it had suddenly seemed she was so terrifyingly small in the raft by herself, as if it was just her and the vast sea and sky.
Dragging her big purse with her essential narcolepsy meds, she rolled into the other raft. Nick helped her to her knees over to the rope ladder. Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she stood, rocking a bit on legs that were cramping, and he gave her a boost up. When Jace grabbed her wrists, Nick let go. It was, she thought, just the opposite of what had happened in her life with these men. Jace had left her; Nick had grabbed for her.
Her stomach scraped hard against the side and top of the boat as Jace hauled her in. If she was newly pregnant, she thought, that could do her in. She wasn’t sure but had missed her period. Still, with all the upheaval in her life, that didn’t mean a baby, and she hadn’t mentioned anything to Nick yet.
“Got you,” Jace said as Lexi left Nita’s embrace to hurl herself against Claire. Lexi hugged her hard before Nando urged them away to sit on the deck, leaning against what must be a bait box because it smelled bad.
Quickly, the three men followed up over the side, Nick last.
Nick told Heck, “Ask him if he’s going to cut the rafts loose or drag them. They might give our presence away when he puts in.”
“Forgot to tell you, boss,” Heck said. “He asked if he can have the rafts. If we don’t need them again, he can sell them on the black market for Cubans who want to escape. He say with rumors of a deal between US and Cuba, more people are leaving since they think the dry-foot-on-land-you-can-stay in US policy might end. You know, if a Cuban refugee makes it to dry land in the US, he gets to stay, but not if he’s caught at sea. He says—”
Nick cut in, “Tell him he can have the rafts but never to say where he got them. Why isn’t he heading toward shore?”
“He want to curse the sharks one more time. Even if El Senor—the Lord God—made them killers, he curses them for killing his son. He has a daughter but he has to fish alone now since his father died last month.”
“Tell him I am sorry his father died and his son too. I understand.”
Heck spoke at length to Nando, who nodded as he opened the box next to the seated women and took out a plastic pail of bait that now smelled even more horrible. Nita, looking green in the gills again, almost gagged, and Lexi buried her nose against Claire’s shoulder.
Nick asked Heck, “He’s not going to fish for these sharks, is he?”
“No, boss. He says he’s going to poison them.”
* * *
On the way toward the northern coastline of Cuba, Nando shared the bread and black beans with anyone who wanted some, which, Nick saw, only Heck and Bronco did. His own stomach was twisted so tight he would have heaved them up, and they were rocking again on the way in. Bronco was still tending to the seasick Nita. The big bruiser had fallen hard for her, and—when she wasn’t hacking over the side—she seemed to return the feeling. Heck had been upset at first, wanting to protect the young widow who was his cousin. But since he’d lost his laptop and cell phone in the plane crash, he seemed to be mourning the loss of all that. They all had bigger things to protect now, Nick thought, namely their lives.
With Heck translating, Nick had convinced Nando to let them off the boat at a more private location than his village fishing d
ock. They had directions of where to find the Hermez home, which sounded like it was a little ways out of the village. Unlike in Havana and other Cuban cities, Nando claimed, government men and informants were scarce in the area of fishing villages and farms with vast tobacco and sugarcane fields that used to be owned by rich Cubans before la revolucion.
Heck had whispered to Nick, “Everything was different before the revolution. Maybe if we go to Havana I can see my grandfather’s hotel and hacienda. I always dreamed I could see it someday, even if I never get any of it back.”
Nick had only nodded. Jace had overheard that and told Nick, “We’d better make it clear this is not some damned sightseeing vacation. One wrong move, and we’re staring at bare walls and bars. Same for you with your vendetta against Ames. If he’s here, no way you—or we—can go after him or let him know we’re here. Most we could do is tip off our contact where their number one most wanted is—when and if we get back to the US.”
“I know. First things first. We’re off the plane, off the rafts. Now, all we’ve got to do is get all of us out of Cuba and to an island in Northern Michigan, damn it.”
“Look—shoreline. I’ve flown over this big island more than once but never wanted to put down like some of my pilot buddies have. I know a guy claimed engine trouble so he could make an emergency landing in Havana just to say he’d seen the place.”
“Yeah, well, you had real engine trouble, and we still need to find out why.”
“It could have been mechanical. Then too, I’ve known pilots who have crashed their own planes for their own reasons. Don’t look at me like that.”
“I wasn’t looking at you like that. I just want you to swear you can live with the idea of Claire being married to me and you passing as my brother and Lexi’s uncle.”
“I have to live with it, don’t I? One wrong move here or even in WITSEC protection, if we get that far, and I—we—won’t be living at all, not if Ames and who knows who else has his way.”
Nick nodded, and they shook hands. He could only trust and pray that Jace would continue to be helpful and protective, because, on top of everything else, he feared Jace wanted Claire and Lexi back.
* * *
The shoreline, Jace noted, as he looked through Nando’s beat-up pair of binoculars, was hardly how he’d pictured Cuba. On the one narrow, rutted road he could see two horse-drawn wagons instead of the 1950s vintage American cars he’d seen in photos. No palms but pines clinging to the hills and shadowing the short cliff hovering over pristine, deserted beaches. And red soil with rows and rows of tobacco plants waving in the breeze as far as the eye could see.
“Bonita, no?” Nando asked him with a proud grin, as if he owned every acre of the scenery. “Costa Blanca!” he said, pointing at the shoreline with a distant dock and cluster of small, tile-roofed houses on a gentle slope of hill. He pointed higher up, more to the west. “Mi casa,” he said and Jace nodded.
“Berto!” Jace called out, using Heck’s WITSEC name. “Be sure he’s going to let us out away from the dock and village.”
“Oh, yeah, he knows,” Heck said and rattled off more Spanish to Nando, who kept nodding. “He says, with us, his house will be crowded, some must sleep on the floor. His daughter, Gina, she comes home this weekend from university in Havana where she studies to be a doctor, very smart.”
“Then they will be a wealthy family someday,” Jace said.
Heck translated, then answered. “No, that’s why he wants to sell the rafts, even though he have to hide them for now. Doctors in Cuba, they only make as much money as someone lays bricks or sells T-shirts on the street.”
Claire’s voice came from behind him where she had stood up to stretch and flex the cramps in her legs. Lexi was sleeping on the deck with her head on Claire’s purse for a pillow, covered with a coat. His ex-wife, whom he’d discovered too damn late he still loved and wanted—much of the divorce was his stupid fault—was frowning at the nearing shoreline.
“Communist country, Jace,” she said. “We’re about to see what that really means.”
“If Ames is here, it doesn’t mean he makes as much as a bricklayer or street vendor. He may be helping to fund the Castro kingdom and somehow making big bucks here, I know it.”
Heck spit over the side of the boat and said, “The Castros ruined everything. Took my grandfather’s lands, his house, his money—my family, my heritage. Took a lot of lives, firing squads their favorite way. But we’re not gonna get caught. He’s not gonna take nothing else from us—maybe the other way ’round.”
Jace turned to him. “Just don’t do anything to screw this up—this secret mission we didn’t ask for but have to handle. Getting in and getting out of here, together, everyone in one piece.”
“’Course not. I’m gonna want out of here, fast as you. ’Specially ’cause I hear this place is locked up tight for social media, email, online research, all that I need to do my work. And what’s out there is monitored and controlled. Coupla dry-foot escapees told me that not long ago.”
“Great, just great,” Nick groused as he came to stand beside them. “With the internet off-limits or monitored, we’re going to have to use something like passenger pigeons to contact the FBI so they don’t think we’re dead, so they can help us get out of here.”
“We’re as good as back in the Dark Ages here,” Jace said. “Outnumbered and outranked, but we won’t be outthought or outfought. We got this far and we’ll make it in and out.”
“Just remember what Lincoln said during our own country’s terrible war,” Nick said, bouncing a fist off both Jace’s and Heck’s shoulders. “We have to hang together, or we’ll hang separately.”
As if they’d made a vow, both men nodded solemnly. Claire did too as she moved to stand between Jace and Nick. Suddenly, Nando spewed out behind them what sounded like an order.
“He says,” Heck told them, “he sees the place where he can drop us off and where we can hide the rafts for him. But we’ll have to wade a ways and wait for a couple of hours before we walk to his house.”
“Dry land sounds good—wading for it, dragging rafts or not,” Claire said.
“Piece of cake,” Jace added with a sarcastic snort. “All of this.”
“You can say that because you’ve been in combat,” Claire told him.
Nick said, “Nothing may be what it seems here, just like other things we’ve been through. To quote another wise man, ‘All for one and one for all,’ so let’s remember that—live by that until we all get out of here.”
3
In a small, lovely inlet edged by a narrow band of blinding white sand, the rescued party sloshed ashore in the late afternoon. Since the crystal clear water where Nando let them out was waist deep, Jace carried Lexi. Nick and Bronco tugged the two orange rafts in to shore, hoping they could find a spot in the lush greenery to deflate and hide them until Nando could find buyers.
It was the least that they could do for him, Nick thought. He didn’t want to tip off the man or his family that he had a lot of cash on him. It was obvious that money was tight on the island, at least for average people. He’d heard things had been tough after Castro’s 1950s revolution and got worse when the old USSR then Venezuela and China abandoned supporting Cuba. Evidently, Raul Castro had finally eased up restrictions on some small, private businesses. And, of course, if international billionaires like Clayton Ames were here, all cozy with the Castros while most Cubans had it hard, well, that was obscene.
“Strange, but this scary place seems like paradise,” Claire said to him, her voice shaky. “It’s so beautiful and serene, but evil lurked in Eden and led people astray.”
“We’ll be careful,” he assured her, but he was on edge too. Surely, if Ames was in Cuba, he would not have hired that rickety boat to come out to bring them into his latest realm, using Nando so they wouldn
’t suspect a trap. But he put nothing past his father’s murderer, a master manipulator with long arms.
Nick flinched as a brown pelican dived so close it splashed them when it scooped up the unsuspecting fish in its bill, swallowed it whole and wagged its tail in delight. Yeah, even this Eden had its dangers.
Waiting for dusk, when they would head for Nando’s house, they hunkered down in a patch of sun as their clothes dried stiff and salty against their skin. At least they weren’t cold now. When Lexi kept asking to play in the sand, things almost seemed normal. They didn’t want to be spotted, but finally they let her, over on the side of the little inlet, partly hidden by the cliff. Claire was with her. Would Lexi’s light hair and Claire’s red tresses draw attention? Obviously, some non-Cubans lived here, surely redheads, but his wife was a striking woman. Thank God, they had Heck and Nita to act as translators and buffers.
As if he’d read his mind, Heck said, “’Cording to what Nando said, we’re going to have to go into Havana to get to the internet. How else we gonna tell Patterson we’re not lost? Surprise! We are here, come get us—somehow.”
“I know,” Nick said. “We could try the British Embassy, where I read there’s a so-called American desk upon request. But some of us would stand out like sore thumbs there, and we need to stick together. The Brits might not believe us, and we’d have to go through red tape, declare who we really are to get American help. Then there’s Gitmo.”
“Guantanamo? The US prison for terrorist enemies here?”
“Everything’s up in the air right now, a long shot. At least there would be Americans there, officers and soldiers who go back and forth to the States. Let’s just take this one step—one very careful step—at a time.”
* * *
When the shadows grew long, Nick and Jace decided it was time to hike to the road above the beach and head for Nando’s house. Claire and Nita walked with Lexi between them up the curving path since they couldn’t get around the cliff to the thin stretch of shore under Nando’s home.
