by Eddie Jones
“Are you telling me a salesman single-handily launched a covert operation with the help of the U.S. intelligence community?”
The National Security Advisor chimed in. “Wouldn’t be the first time, sir. Remember Operation Just ‘Cause I Said So? Panama, 1989?”
“Boy, do I. Those were some heady days. Did you know Ollie North and I dated the same lawyer for a while? She was way out of his league. And mine, for that matter.”
“Weren’t you married at the time, sir?” asked the National Security Advisor.
“Funny. My wife said the same thing when I told her that story.”
The CIA Director continued. “Anyway, in Panama we got a tip from a fine paper salesman in Bogotá that Noriega was looking to purchase bond paper with one hundred percent cotton content. He was going to flood our economy with counterfeit twenties. Then there was Operation Swift Boat.”
“Don’t tell me a paper salesman was involved in that fiasco,” said the President.
“Turns out back in the late sixties a carbonless paper rep with a forms contract at the Pentagon let it slip that some of our soldiers were being held in Cambodia. How he knew that, we never found out. But his intel was dead on. We sent a team into Viet-Cong territory. Nasty business.”
“Chuck, none of those stories had a happy ending,” said the President.
“I’m just making the point that this wouldn’t be the first time we relied on confidential information from a paper salesman.”
“So let me get this straight. We’re on the brink of World War III because a toilet tissue salesman recommended that a data analyst shadow a presidential candidate polling in the low teens so he could attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a former stripper who died of a drug overdose while vacationing in the Bahamas? Did I miss anything?”
“And there’s a hurricane, Mr. President.”
“Timmy my man, what possible reason could this guy have for wanting to send this gal into harm’s way?”
Tommy leaned forward. “Love, Mr. President. They were high school sweethearts.”
“Tim, I want to see everything you have on this Fortune girl. We’ll need a good cover story if this thing goes south.”
“By south you mean bad, sir?”
“As in that ship pulling into Havana with a dead American intelligence agent onboard, a crooked congressman, and boat-load of traumatized American voters. Lance Corporal Kelly, is there anything you need from me?”
“Just your orders, sir.”
“Get me Congressman Boggs’s cell phone, those launch codes and agent Fortune.”
“What about the Congressman, Mr. President?”
“Bring him back alive if you can.”
“Roger that, sir.”
The President turned to Tommy. “Tim, you up for a little field work?”
“Excuse me?”
“I want you down there to oversee the operation. She’s one of yours, this Fortune gal. Might be a nice show of support if you went “in country” to get her.”
“But sir, I—”
“Thanks, Tim. I knew I could count on you.”
31
The skipper of the tender sat at the back of the inflatable, the yellow hood of his slicker pulled over his face, hand on the throttle.
Sonny, she thought, a shot of adrenaline racing to her heart. She pushed back the hatch and stepped out.
The skipper lifted his head and her heart sank.
Boggs.
“You sure are a hard woman to track down,” he said, tossing her the rubber boat’s tow line. “Been all around this blasted island hunting ya. Liked to never figured out where that beeping was coming from.”
“Beeping?” asked Anna, pulling the dinghy close to the back of the sailboat.
Boggs reached under a forward storage compartment and held up what appeared to be a large walkie-talkie. “GPS tracker. Got a fix on your sat phone a few minutes ago. Ya must’ve tried to call me. I’d have answered ‘cept I still can’t find my cell. Anyhow, we need to get you off this boat. Storm’s coming. A bigg’n.”
Anna eyed him standing in the tiny boat, and backed away.
“Can’t rightly blame ya for being skittish. I haven’t been myself, lately. It’s this medication I’m on,” Boggs said, as if sensing her concern.
“Medication?”
“I—ah—got a mild case of what you might call male menopause. Andropause is what they call it.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You will. We’re starting a big push next month. It’s included in the next health care bill. Medical profession calls it ‘male climacteric,’ but that’s a stupid name. Makes us sound like we’re part of the global warming problem.”
“What are the symptoms for this…what’d you call it?”
“Andropause. Low libido, impotency, nervousness, depression, memory loss, inability to concentrate, fatigue, insomnia, and heavy sweating.”
“Sounds like just about every man I’ve ever known.”
“So you can see why we think we’ll have broad-based support for it. These drugs, though, they make you sort of loopy. I’m off ‘em, now. Took the last one Friday night. After yesterday’s event, I swore I’d never touch the stuff again. Some of my staff, they showed me a video of myself. Shameful the way I acted.”
“I’m glad you’re on the mend, but why are you telling me all this?”
“So when I tell ya I’m sorry, you’ll know I mean it. Hope I wasn’t too much of a jerk.”
“No. You were just the normal amount.”
“Good, ‘cause we need to hurry on and get back to the ship. I’d feel bad if something happened to you.”
“What is it with men these days, getting all mushy and sensitive?”
“Blame it on daytime talk shows. Guys forty and over have a lot of down time, out of work and all.”
“Why are you really here, Bill?”
“I’m telling ya. To help. I know I come on a little strong, but that’s just my way of being friendly. Plus, like I said, there’s the medication. I don’t mean nothing by it, honest.”
Anna studied him.
He looked genuinely sorry—and pitiful—standing in the dinghy wet and wind-blown. For the first time she saw him not as a congressman with the discretion of a rutting boar, but as a man who’d risen way beyond his upbringing, something she could relate to.
She didn’t trust him, not one bit. But he was saying the right words. And if he was right about the storm, a teeny-weeny sailboat aground on a flat island was no place to ride out a hurricane.
“Let me get my purse,” she said, ducking into the cabin.
“You do that. I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
She hastily straightened the cabin, kicking Sonny’s gear into the forward berth and out of sight. Grabbing her purse, she lifted the lid to the nav station. When she turned she found Boggs peering inside the cabin, his gaze on the cell phone.
“That mine?”
Her heart stopped. “I—ah—found it when I—er—came aboard this morning.”
He brushed past her and snatched it up. “Lying scumbag. I stopped by here yesterday and asked the fella who was renting this boat if he’d found a phone. Gave him twenty bucks to help me look for it. Some folks are just crooked, I guess.”
“Maybe he forgot.”
“Boat rental boy said the fella wasn’t very bright, so I guess it’s possible.” He offered her a hand up. “We best be going ‘for that next squall comes through.”
Anna closed up the boat, took a long look back towards the trees, searching for Sonny. Then she stepped into the inflatable and tucked her knees together to keep warm.
****
The sailboat was hard aground. With each gust of wind, the hull crabbed a little further up the slope. Sonny banged on the hull, yelling for Anna to lower the swim ladder. No answer. He pounded harder. Nothing. Grabbing the side of the boat, he chinned up and flopped over the toe rail, landing clumsily on the cockpit seat. He pushed
back the hatch. “Lucy, I’m home!”
Silence, except for the bawling of the wind. He hurried below and slammed the hatch.
Water sloshed over the floorboards from where rain had blown in. Sonny flipped a toggle switch. A dim cabin light glowed then winked out. Checking the forward cabin, he found his dirty shirt on the floor and his bag just as he’d left it on the bunk. Rain dripped from the forward hatch, soaking the mattress beneath it. Despite the damp smell and cramped feel of the tiny cabin, he felt the familiar stirrings of an old memory.
Anna’s presence lingered, her scent filling the space. He mentally clicked off his options. Boat beached. Girl gone. One heck-of-a big storm out there. Outboard out of gas. Had he missed anything? Oh, yeah. He had no idea how to sail the boat back to Cockroach Cay even if he could get it off the beach and find wind.
He unzipped his bag to grab dry shorts and shirt. His eyes fell upon a single Hershey’s Kiss. Beneath the candy lay Anna’s letter.
“Dear Sonny,
You wanted a reason, an explanation of why it won’t work between us. Here’s one reason.
I love you too much.
Always have. But love isn’t enough, not for someone like me who’s flown too close to the flames and been burned too often. I need security, someone who can protect me. Not a fool, even a lovable fool, who’d risk my life and my career for a romantic weekend in the tropics. What you did, coming down here, the dinner invitation, candy and fake flowers, was exactly what I’d expect from a boy in high school. But we’re not kids anymore. And I’m too old to take a chance on love.
You asked if we could have a ‘do-over.’ Lord knows, I’d love to. But we’re beyond that. I have to think about my future and burying my heart in a casket isn’t something I’m prepared to do. Maybe, if we’d had more time together, I could have steeled myself to losing you, again. But you said yourself you have months, maybe weeks. If I can’t have all of you forever then I don’t want any. If that seems selfish, I’m sorry.
When I get home, when I’ve blown out the candles on my retirement cake and bundled up my box of belongings, then I’ll send a large portion of my pension to help a small group of orphans in Haiti. I may not be able to save them all or even very many. But I can help some, so I will. That’s what we do, people like you and me. We help. You helped me after my dad left, though you never knew it. I never told you how lonely I felt, how scared I was that night I walked up to you at the football game. But I was terrified. I’d seen how my dad hurt my mom when he left and I never wanted to feel that way. To have someone hurt me like that. I felt safe with you. You were the laughable, loveable old Sonny Cay with the mischievous grin and laughing eyes, the part of me that made me whole.
Then you were gone. No explanation of why. Just a hole in the space you’d occupied in my thoughts. And when you left, all the fear, that sense of abandonment, swept over me.
Maybe we weren’t meant to be together. Maybe God had bigger plans for us. And maybe we both share the blame for walking away from the challenge He had placed before us. All I know is you broke my heart. I can forgive you. Have forgiven you. So please forgive me for not fighting for us.
I pray you’ll treasure the good times we had. That you’ll love the sunrises and sunsets we shared together then…and now. And I hope you’ll never forget that somewhere on this vast ocean there is a lonely girl who loves you very much and wishes all those years ago she had said ‘yes’ to your dream of sailing away together.
Instead of a signature she’d drawn a smiley face with tears dripping from the eyes—and now his were, too.
Carefully refolding the letter, he sealed it in a plastic bag and laid it on his slacks, covering it with his last clean shirt. Moving numbly through the cabin he pushed open the hatch and turned his face towards the silver, leaden sky. Rain pellets stung his cheeks; wind sandblasted his ankles and calves.
Does God weep when we cry? Does He rain down His tears on the lost, lonely and dying?
A tremor shook him. He felt the icy breath of death blow across his neck. For the first time since that day in the VA hospital, the fear of dying—alone—terrified him.
He remembered a time years ago when God, chance, luck—something—had provided a sense of peace during a time of doubt, and now he wondered, again.
Are you willing God? Will You come to me? Everything good and sweet, all the golden moments and gaiety of life were gone—flushed away by a disease that slowly consumed him and created hollowness in his soul.
“I’m lost,” he whispered, tears mixing with rain. His confession was not the momentary repentance of a man confused by career choices or financial loss, but in the stark realization that all he’d ever been and done was an illusion.
He sucked salt-laden air and tried to control the panic sweeping over him. Looking up, he eyed the clouds. The blackness moved swiftly over the treetops as if the planet was accelerating and trying to throw him off. A sudden piercing blue-white flash shattered the veil. Immediately a great crack of thunder shook the sand beneath his feet.
He’d seen that as a small boy during one of his family’s vacations at the beach. It had been late September, the peak of hurricane season. Their rental sat in the dunes boxed between two fishing piers. While his dad loaded the station wagon, Sonny sat on the porch watching corduroy lines march in from the horizon, the wave tops kissing the bottom of the pier. He’d marveled at the way the sunlight pierced the black clouds, turning the horizon golden even as giant swells crashed onto the beach, spilling the surfers onto the sand like baby turtles.
A few days later, his mother had shown him a newspaper article with an aerial view of the beach where he and his sister had played. All that remained of the cottage were toothpick stilts, a smudge of wooden debris and a row of downed utility poles where their road had been.
The sky had that look again.
And yet, he knew that ten thousand feet up, the sky was blue, the heavens clean and crisp. Far above the shroud of darkness, the white-hot sun remained brilliant. The storm was an illusion—like his life. Real for a moment and then swept away.
He decided against the change of clothes. Wearing just his swim trunks and a damp T-shirt he buttoned up the boat and jumped onto the sand, looking for any sign of where she’d gone. When one had nothing left to lose, dying for love is easy. Squaring himself, he marched toward the ragged cliff overlooking the sea. If she was out there, he’d find her. He had before. He could again.
32
One look at the ocean and Anna knew things were going to get rough. Not because of the waves. They were rough, too. But as the itty-bitty inflatable zoomed out of the lagoon and into the cut, she spied a fleet of Cuban gunboats waiting just beyond the sandbar.
Her heart sinking, she spun and glowered at Boggs. “This? This is why you came for me?”
Boggs looking embarrassed. “Sorry. Castro’s boys wanted to help and I just plain couldn’t turn them down.”
“You’re not seriously expecting an American intelligence officer to accept a ride from America’s enemy, are you?”
“You could swim back to the ship, I suppose, but I wouldn’t. Saw a bull shark cruising the reef on my way in to pick you up. Big fellow. Nearly as long as this boat.” Boggs keyed the mic on a handheld VHF. “Whiskey Charlie, Whiskey Charlie, Whiskey Charlie. This is Jack Daniels, do you read me, over?”
“¿Tiene la niña?” a voice cracked.
“Si, Tengo a la chica,” said Boggs, holding his hand over Anna’s head and pointing down.
Above the howling wind, driving rain and pelting spray, a gunboat pivoted and the deep-throated roar of dual inboard engines rumbled overhead. Ahead, an armor-plated vessel plowed through the breakers. Anna slumped, feeling defeated. All those years of playing it safe, refusing field assignments, investing strategically so she could retire with all her fingers and a body unmarred by cigarette burns. And now here she was, about to be handed over to one of America’s last sworn enemies. Boggs might trust the Cubans,
but she didn’t.
A soldier in camouflaged fatigues tossed Boggs a rope. While he reeled them toward the gunboat Anna studied the crew. One in particular caught her attention.
The elderly man standing behind the steering console had whiskered cheeks, dark circles under his eyes and long grease strands of gray hair. When the inflatable was snugly tied to the side of the larger vessel, the older man stepped from around the console and offered his hand. “Bienvenido, señora. ¿Estás bien?”
Anna recognized his face, secretly praying he hadn’t recognized hers. No need for a translator. I understand your greeting perfectly. And no, Mr. Martinez. I’m not OK. Not OK, at all.
****
The sky had the deep gray of dusk. The wind lifted coarse granules of sand and hurled them into his eyes, forcing him to squint as he walked. Ahead, at the end of the narrow beach marking the entrance to the lagoon, the rugged face of a cliff rose above palms and pines. A tangled line of black seaweed marked the edge of the high tide line. Dipping his shoulder, Sonny turned from the stinging rain and marched over the rocks.
Wedging his feet in the crags, he worked his way up, pulling until he reached the summit. At first, because of the thick curtain of rain, he thought the armada of boats was Bahamian. Then he saw the blurred Cuban flag gyrating in the wind.
Anna sat between two heavily armored men. Hands in her lap, legs together, head down. Another man wearing a yellow rain coat sat near the back of the boat, chatting with the crew. The boats plowed through the swells as they raced westward, sending geysers of spray into the air; until, at last, they disappeared around a headland.
Sonny looked down the coral-encrusted coast and out to sea. Swimming was out of the question. Even if he could break through the surf, he’d never be able to swim that far. He eased sideways on the ledge, crawling over a jumble of boulders, watching until she was gone.
When he turned away, he found the space between the boulders provided good shelter from the wind and stinging rain. Slipping between the ragged fissures, he felt the exhalation of cool air. Pressing himself flat, he eased from the edge and into the throat of a passageway.
