North of Havana df-5

by Randy Wayne White

  I said, "In a way, I have."

  20

  I was looking to the northwest at a blazing white star…

  More likely, a planet. Venus…? Maybe Jupiter-a solitary ball that flamed above a moonless sea.

  I was crouched on a sand dune among bushes wondering if the damn thing, all by itself, provided too much backlight to cross the beach unseen. It seemed out of place in terms of my amateur's knowledge of astronomy.

  Or maybe a plane with its landing lights triggered, too far out to be heard.

  Yes, it had to be a plane…

  Geis was beside me. He had the black balaclava hood on; back in tactical uniform. Automatic rifle, his field satchel, webbed belt. Ready for business-although he had made it clear he thought we were wasting our time on Cayo de Soto. Now he had the thermal scope monocular to his eye, scanning the area. Looked to the east. Whispered, "Look what you found us-couple of raccoons… a dog, maybe. Nice work, Ford."

  Probably out scavenging turtle eggs.

  I waited while Geis scanned the casuarina forest ahead of us. Heard him say, "All clear there. Lots and lots of cold-blooded pine trees." Next the thread of beach that stretched westward. That took longer. He looked through the scope, looked with both eyes, then used the scope again. Finally, he said, "Well, well, well… we've got company. One man, I think. About a hundred meters out. Must have been in the woods because I didn't pick him up right away."

  I raised my head enough to see down the beach: a lone figure on the pale sand. He seemed to be coming pretty fast.

  "Is there a village on this island?"

  "Probably. But… maybe not, too. One of these islands, maybe it was this one, it used to be a leper colony. Back when they needed them fifty, sixty years ago. I can't remember the name."

  It was the first I'd heard of that.

  Geis had put the monocular away, now was unslinging his rifle. "I think this guy saw our boat. Wants to check us out."

  I put a warning hand on his arm. "You're not going to shoot him."

  "Give me some credit. That would make too much noise." As if that were the only consideration. Ironically, on the boat trip to Cayo Parafso, he had told me, "The greatest thing about working in Cuba? It's a place that never requires a silencer. Honest work, just as I told you." Now maybe he was rethinking it. I didn't react for a mo: ment when he said, "Mind if I give a few orders now thai we're on land?"

  Finally: "I'm open to suggestions."

  "What I'm going to do is slide over to the other side of this dune and away a little bit. Spread us out some. If he gets too close to you, I'll take him. You do the same."

  He was belly-crawling over the dune before I could answer.

  I watched the man on the beach come closer. He was dressed in white-not a good sign. The Santeros, they seemed to favor white. When he was abreast of me, I also saw that he carried something in his hand. There was starlight on the water, and when he turned just right I saw that it was a long, curved cane knife. He was tapping the flat part of the blade on his leg as he stopped and stared at the fishing smack-a dim shape bucking on the slow rollers. I thought he might produce a flashlight and search the boat… but no, in Cuba flashlights were probably only slightly less rare than flashlight batteries. Then he turned and looked in my direction.

  I pressed tight to the sand dune, my eyes on him. He stood there; seemed to be staring back at me. Was I visible in my khaki cargo pants and dark blue polo shirt? He took a few steps toward me… hesitated. Took a few more… then began to angle away to my right.

  It was the direction in which Geis had gone.

  I raised my head just enough to see what it was that had caught the man's attention: a gray shape on the next dune.

  Was it Geis?

  Saw something tiny and bright reflecting light. The lens of the thermal monocular, probably.

  Damn it.

  Yes… it was Geis.

  The man with the cane knife was walking slowly toward him. I got my hands under me, ready to push up and move. I expected Geis to react, but he didn't. I hoped he would react; take care of it himself. But no, he lay motionless as he was approached.

  Didn't he realize that he had been seen?

  The man was closing-no doubt about it now-only twenty yards or so away, and I was up, crouched… I began to move toward the man, not really sure what I would do. The. 45 Browning was wedged into the back of my belt, and I drew it as I started toward him. Maybe tackle and club him. I thought: Tackle a guy carrying a machete?

  The man was moving faster now… stopped abruptly- had he noticed me? No, more like he had confirmed something. I heard him give a loud yell-a war scream-as he raised the cane knife over his head and began to run toward Geis, who still had not reacted.

  I hadn't expected the man to run. The surprise of it froze me for a moment; just long enough so that now there was no way I could intercept him. Even so, I was sprinting heavily over the sand, shortening the distance, the man with the knife so focused on Geis that he didn't hear me… so I shouted, "HOLD IT!" to get his attention… which caused the man to slow slightly, the machete still raised… and I had the Browning up, pointing it at him as he began to swing downward at Geis, who finally, finally was reacting.

  My finger was on the trigger but wouldn't move, then I removed it from the trigger as I watched the bear shape of Geis collide with the man, knocking him backwards… then the two of them were on the ground, rolling, swinging their arms… now one was atop the other using only one hand… drew his arm back, hammered it into the man on the bottom; hammered again; hammered once… twice… and stopped. Then I watched one of them get slowly to his feet as the other man lay still.

  I'd stopped running. Still had the Browning pointed. "Lenny?"

  Heard a winded growl: "Who the fuck you expect?" Then heard, "What an idiot, huh? You timed that pretty good. Thought I was going to have to shoot him."

  He was kneeling now, wiping something in the brush. Then he returned to the dune on which he'd been lying and found the automatic rifle. He had his hand over the halogen sight light when he switched it on so that only a muted beam came through. He said, "This son-of-a-bitch was going to cut me in half. I'm lying there thinking: Where's Ford? Turns out you're not stupid. Only shoot when you have to."

  He was moving the light over a dead man. Pasty white face with dark stripes painted under the eyes, down the chin. Long arms and body, his knees drawn up to his chest as if frozen in a spasm. Probably late teens with a buzzed tough-guy beard, barefooted, wearing cheap white pants and guayabera shirt that showed two soaked red splotches. There was a third-more like a black puncture-where his jaw and neck met.

  I wanted to say I wouldn 't have shot.

  Instead, I listened to Geis tell me, "He's an Abakua. See the face paint? The assholes wear face paint. Like a bunch of fucking savages. And the beads."

  Red and white beads as a necklace. One bead of each color pierced into the dead man's nose, his ears. Same beads that Taino wore; follower of the god Chango.

  Now Geis was going through his pockets. "I used my knife on him. Got a good angle on the first try but hit him a couple of more times just to make sure. A Glock. Pretty nice knife. I'll show it to you when we get time."

  I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to see it because I had an old Glock attack knife hidden away with some other things in my stilthouse on Dinkin's Bay. If they were alike, I didn't want to know.

  I watched Geis, feeling a growing animus toward him and everything about him… or maybe it was just fear reconstructed into anger. I asked him, "Do you rob everyone you kill?" but said more with my tone of voice.

  He was taking two dirty one-dollar bills from a leather billfold, then looking at the photographs: an elderly man and woman beneath a tree; head and shoulders of a teenage girl with a chubby face. Said, "Goddamn right. Think I do this shit for free?" as he removed something from an inside compartment beneath the photos-an aluminum condom packet. He seemed pleased by that. "The little basta
rd was already screwing around on his girlfriend. But this I can use. Even rubbers are tough to find in Havana."

  He switched off the light and stood. Used the thermal scope to scan the area again-nothing-before he said, "A guy's got to be thorough, right?" Finally reacting to the tone of my question. "When they found Aledia Malinov-sky, she was picked clean. All she had was her clothes and her shoes. Unless you count the hole in the back of her head."

  I was walking toward the casuarina forest. The bay would be through those trees, over a long stretch of coastal ridge. Less than a mile away. If the Abakua were here, Taino was here.

  Behind me, I heard Geis say, "That's why I enjoy our little talks. I know you can relate."

  I could see No Mas…

  An old white-hulled Morgan sailboat floating at anchor, port side to me, a couple of hundred yards off the shallow mangrove hedge, right where it would have been anchored in Dinkin's Bay.

  No doubt about it… Tomlinson had sailed her here. Only he would return to such a precise water place; his homing instincts as accurate as a satellite-positioning system.

  Unlike on Sanibel, the interior sand ridge of Cayo de Soto extended to the bay and was elevated above it. Geis and I lay on our bellies in the thick cover of Brazilian pepper bushes and oak. I had a pretty good view of the brackish lake and the clearing below. Other than the shape of the bay, and No Mas suspended on dark water, there was nothing else familiar about it. Where the marina should have been was the burned-out scaffolding of what had once been a large building. The foundation was of rock; had faded paint showing through the char.

  It had burned years ago.

  Behind it and to our right were three stone huts, the roofs of all but one torn away. The clearing, overgrown with weeds, expanded toward the water, where there were the remains of a deep-water dock. Two large vessels were tied there, both cruisers. A much larger yacht was moored off what had once been a loading platform.

  Not that my brain recorded all this immediately. No. When Geis and I had topped the ridgeline, the first thing I saw-and watched for several minutes before noticing anything else-was the people below. All the activity. What they were doing.

  Taino needed light. He had had his people build a massive fire at the center of the clearing. There was a second fire blazing off to the left in what I at first thought was the toppled debris of another stone building… but then realized was a cemetery. A lot of plaster crypts showing above the weeds. Easier to see when one of Taino's men-there were four or five working in the cemetery-called for more light and the cruisers swung spotlights on them.

  What the men were doing was going from crypt to crypt, using a sledgehammer to break the plaster away. Then they'd use a crowbar or stout limbs to pry open coffin lids.

  It was a slow process. They had to feel around inside the coffins, holding up pieces of this and that. They would throw the pieces aside, then fish their hands into the coffins again. The men were not happy in their work. They had rags tied around their faces-to keep out the odor; keep out the germs or the imagined spirits.

  Why, on a remote island, would there be a cemetery with airtight crypts?

  The abandoned leper colony…

  Geis had watched them for a time, then whispered, "They haven't found him yet." He meant Columbus; the medallions.

  I whispered, "No, and they won't."

  Of course they wouldn't. They'd been led here for no other reason than that Tomlinson had found a place on a map that had called him home. When they completed their search, when they realized that Tomlinson was useless, they would get rid of him. He had witnessed too much. And Dewey, too-if they hadn't killed her already.

  "I don't see your friends. Don't see Rita or Adolfo, either." Geis was looking through a small pair of binoculars; had been looking for quite a while. "That's bad for you, but maybe worse for me."

  What did he mean by that?

  He passed the binoculars across-apparently, he wanted me to find out for myself.

  I removed my glasses and refocused the binoculars. First checked the men working in the cemetery. Cool December night, but they had their shirts off, sweating. They'd been at it for a while. Maybe most of the day, judging from the piles of plaster that covered the field. I tried to gauge how many more crypts they had to open before they were done. A dozen, perhaps. An hour's work; not much more.

  If Tomlinson and Dewey were still alive, I had to find them and get them out soon.

  I looked at the six men standing in the center of the clearing, the light of the fire illuminating their bodies in vertical halves. Taino was there. He was wearing a white robe over slacks and a white cap. A big man surrounded by other men; two dressed similarly, and I guessed they were Babalaos, like Taino. I recognized two of his assistants-Orlando and Molinas-everyone dressed in white, wearing their beads. Watched Taino throw something onto the ground. Wooden discs, they looked like, dark on one side, white on the other. He threw them near what appeared to be the statuette of some Catholic saint… also a black statuette shaped like a child's doll. I could see that Taino was talking while he studied the discs.

  I checked the three stone cottages. There was a light showing through the gun port-sized window of one. The others were dark.

  No sign of Dewey or Tomlinson. Didn't see Santiago, either. What had happened to the boy?

  Was it possible they were still aboard No Mas?

  I checked the boat. No one above deck; no lights showing below. Looking at No Mas, seeing it close-up and in such a familiar setting, catalyzed in me an uncharacteristic spike of emotion, and I swept the field glasses away.

  Geis said, "He's not the reason the Abakua are here. It's because whenever there's an important Santeria ceremony, they always carry along a few to stand guard. That's how I knew. So heathens like us won't sneak in and peek. They couldn't go looking for something like Columbus without doing it up right. Making offerings to the gods, throwing the coconut shells to get direction. See those bowls sitting around? They've got blood in them. Gifts, like liquor and tobacco. They'll keep filling them up and dumping them until the gods finally come through."

  I still didn't understand. "Who's not the reason?"

  "You didn't see him?" Geis took the binoculars for a moment. Held them to his eyes, then handed them back.

  "Take a look at the other big guy. The one right there… or wait… Now Taino's blocking him."

  I knew then who he meant.

  I looked beyond Taino and saw the man's back, his shoulders, the graying hair above the white guayabera shirt that probably smelled of cigars. I saw the attitude, the way he enlarged his own space, no one addressing him directly but deferring to him by avoiding eye contact and allowing him room. I saw the beard when he turned away from the fire; read impatience in his movements, an imposing quality; not very happy with events, a displeasure that radiated from him and seemed to diminish the physical size of the five men nearby… all but Taino. Taino continued to throw and study the coconut husks. He, too, created his own space; the two of them, he and Fidel Castro, standing close but in their own orbits.

  "That yacht's Fidel's. He travels with a captain, a mate, and a cook. All three of them are working in the cemetery. Not a single goddamn security man with him."

  Geis had his mouth close to my ear. I continued to watch through the binoculars.

  "It's because of what Taino told him: You've got to go before the gods… no, you've got to stand before the gods with open hands and an open heart. Which means no weapons. Taino says the word, the Abakua, they'd hack him to pieces with their machetes. Jesus, what a setup. It's like the guy's asking to be put out of his misery."

  I watched Castro say something to Taino. Watched Taino say something to his two fellow priests before he assumed a thoughtful pose. He was looking at the coconut husks as if the answer were in them. Castro said something else; used big hand gestures. He probably was not pleased that he had come so far to be coronated with the medallion of Yara Hatuey… but no medallion.
/>   Geis said, "We've got to move. I've got to account for Adolfo. For all I know, he's off in the trees right now trying to figure which end of the rifle to aim. If he gets a shot off,

  Taino'll have them chop up everyone around just to prove he wasn't involved."

  I said, "You've got the thermal scope. Use it." Then looked to see that he already was.

  I checked the perimeter of the clearing. Saw what might have been one of the Abakua standing back in among shadows near the tree line. Saw a third now walking near the stone cottages.

  A guard?

  Then I saw another, smaller shape near the water but away from the docks… someone child sized-maybe Santiago-sitting on what appeared to be a broken plaster grotto. What was a kid doing there? The statue inside the grotto had been torn away, but the soft foundation remained. A place for the lepers to pray or maybe feed the birds.

  Birds…?

  I'd just seen some birds. As I swept the binoculars past the cottages, I'd seen white-crowned pigeons spooking from their roosting place among the trees, scattering high above the firelight.

  I took a last look at Castro-Why had the other men moved away, leaving him to stand alone in front of the fire?

  Separate, isolate, destroy…

  I pushed the binoculars toward Geis. "You're right, we need to move. I think Adolfo's right below us."

  I was pretty sure I knew where Dewey and Tomlinson were, too.

  21

  As we worked our way through the trees down the ridge, I heard what, at first, I thought were gunshots… then realized that they were the tentative beats of a drum.

  A rim-shot sound. Like a mallet striking a hollow log.

  Startled, Geis hissed, "Shit!" and began to run… then nearly stopped: "Oh."

  He was about ten paces ahead of me. He headed downhill again, moving quickly but making very little noise. Kept my eyes on his back as the drumbeat continued… a drumbeat that soon marked the rhythm of a man's deep voice; a voice with a singsong imperiousness: Nangare, Nangare, Nangare, Nangare, Nangare…