by Noel Hynd
Guarneri went first. He stepped down onto the pontoon of the plane. It was unsteady as waves rippled all around. She remained in the plane and watched. The boat pulled tightly alongside. A man with a carbine stood at the bow. He was burley and dark skinned and wore a University of Miami baseball cap and smoked. A second man approached, brandishing a pistol. Then a third man appeared, a jittery figure at the tiller, dark skinned also, bareheaded, with a black T-shirt and cut-off jeans. He watched everyone’s movements like a terrier.
Guarneri jumped onto the deck of the boat as the first man steadied him. Guarneri seemed to know him since they embraced briefly. Then the gunman stepped back, and Alex slid down, balanced on the pontoon, and in the same motion took a big step forward onto the boat. The deck was wet. She nearly slipped, but both men grabbed her, the gunman’s hand firmly on her arm, and Guarneri holding her with a two-handed embrace.
The smaller gunman pushed the boat away from the plane as the plane’s door closed from inside. Pierre cranked his engine and turned the seaplane for takeoff. The drop had taken less than three minutes.
“We’re cool; we’re doing good,” Guarneri said. He glanced at his watch. “Five after five. Perfect.” He motioned to the first gunman. “This is Pedro our bodyguard, and Felix, our other bodyguard. Back there is Leo, our captain,” he said in English. “We’ll be ashore in twenty minutes. Settle onto the rear deck; it’ll be best.”
Pedro, Felix, and Leo barely acknowledged Alex. Pedro took up a crouch position at the bow of the boat. Leo kept one hand on the tiller and the other on the quiet electric outboard engine. Felix, with a rifle, sat to the side and looked as jittery as a dozen spooked cats.
Now that she was aboard, Alex assessed the sailboat. It was about twenty-five feet in length, old, maybe thirty years, but neat and nimble. She assumed Leo’s livelihood was in an underground economy that was comprised of more things than she cared to consider.
“Like our bodyguards?” Guarneri asked her in a low voice. “Not as professional as your FBI and CIA people, but they have more charisma.”
“Charming,” she said. “What do they do besides smuggle?”
“Sometimes kill people,” Guarneri said.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No.”
“Nice,” she said. She sat down in the stern and tried to organize her thoughts. So far, things had gone smoothly. Guarneri seemed in control. The sound of the boat’s engine dropped down a notch, and she knew Leo had cut the speed yet again, trying to come to shore as quietly as possible.
Alex’s mind shifted to Spanish. The rifleman and the captain were engaged in a dirty story about the wife of a mutual friend. Felix sat by quietly, fidgeting, his rifle across his chest. Alex suspected that they knew she was American and therefore didn’t understand Spanish. She resented the assumption, if there was one, but played it to her advantage. Her nerves were on tenterhooks, and if they didn’t think she understood, she didn’t have to talk.
Paul came back, sat, and patted down his jacket until he found a pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and lit it.
“Nervous?” she asked. “Now that we’re almost there?”
The question took him by surprise. “Nah,” he said. Then he realized that she was looking at his cigarette. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “If I’m lighting one of these, I must be nervous, right?”
“Pretty much.”
He lit it and inhaled, then blew out a long thin cone of smoke.
“Well, yeah, a little,” he admitted.
He turned and looked toward shore, which was a thin line of lights in the distance, then looked back to her. “Well, whatever. It’s Cuba, you know. We’re about to arrive in Cuba. You know what that means to me. You’d be nervous if you were me — “
“I’m not — and I’m nervous anyway,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah, well. We’re mortal, right?” he asked.
“Too much so,” Alex answered. “And too easily mortal.”
“You got a good head on you, don’t you, Alex?” he asked. “You’re a smart lady. Just smart enough to be scared because you understand what you’re doing.”
“Not for the first time,” she said. She settled back and watched the coastline draw closer as the early morning hours slid by. Her prevailing sentiment was that she wished this operation were over, and it had barely started.
FORTY
Alex sipped from the water bottle she had attached to her belt.
When it was empty, she picked up a new one, hitched it to her belt, and watched Paul smoke. Parallels with Yuri Federov tumbled into her mind, although Paul only indulged in the occasional cigarette while Yuri, ever the Russian, had smoked like a furnace. Then, too, Paul was old enough to be her father, a quarter century older than she. She wondered how many secrets that extra quarter century held, things she didn’t know about him, things she sensed, things she liked and disliked.
Many times since Federov’s death she had wondered whether she had had an attraction to him — for all the wrong reasons — or a fascination with him — again, for all the wrong reasons. She was feeling a tiny something here, a subtle pull toward Paul Guarneri, and wondered if her passions, her instincts, her longings, were just completely out of whack following the death of Robert, her fiancé.
She had fallen in love with the right man once, the one she could have shared a lifetime with, had a family with, and grown old with, and he had been taken from her. So now what? Was it really getting even with God to have a meaningless fling with the wrong man?
She looked away from Paul and into the water where the boat left its wake. A great blanket of seaweed swung and heaved in the water like a giant brownish yellow blanket. Then a couple of splashes and plops about ten meters off the bow of the boat startled her. She realized they were small creatures leaping from the water.
“Flying fish,” Guarneri said. “Pezes voladores.”
His simple explanation settled her. Not only was he watching her, but he had been reading her thoughts. He was starting to know her too well.
“I remember them from when I was a kid,” he said. “We’d sail out just far enough and they’d leap all around us, day or night. They don’t really fly, you know. They just jump out of the water, usually to avoid predators. They glide, not fly. But no one wants to call them ‘gliding fish.’ Is my cigarette bothering you?”
There was a light breeze from the east. It took most of the smoke in the opposite direction from Alex. “Just finish it,” Alex said. “You’re okay.” Then, circling the conversation back a beat, “Are there predators?” she asked. “Larger fish?”
He laughed. “You could say that,” he glanced around. “They’re around here somewhere. Got to be if the pezes voladores are jumping at this hour.”
“What sort?”
Squinting into the darkness, she saw an extra ripple. Then she saw a small triangular fin coming up out of the water, followed by a second one about ten feet behind the first. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she recognized the dark silhouettes by the sweeping languid movement of the tail just below the surface of the sea and the seaweed.
“Brown sharks,” he said evenly, looking at them swishing through the water. “Four-footers, looks like. They won’t hurt you — more scared of us than we are of them. But don’t drag your arm in the water either.” He watched them for a moment. They both did. Alex couldn’t tell if there were three of them or four, but she could follow the little dance of death that the flying fish did with the hungry sharks.
“Brown sharks rarely come within a hundred yards of the beach,” Guarneri said. “But the fishermen throw extra chum to them. So they investigate boats.” He looked into the swirl off the starboard bow. Then he took a final long drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt at one of the sharks. “Here, buddy, have a smoke,” he said.
Soon the flying fish were gone and so were the sharks. Leo cut the engine and let the boat drift. The small outboard motor died with a wheeze. The dim lights on the bo
at faded to nothing. There was only nighttime and the sound of the surf and the wind rustling across the water. Alex could feel the breeze. It was soft and warm, fluid against her arms and face. Starlight and moonlight poured down. So far, arrival was gentle.
Leo hoisted a small sail, which clanked upward, waffled for a moment, then filled out. The skiff tacked toward shore.
“Good, good,” Guarneri said. “Almost there. We can go in on wind to keep the noise down. Leo’s an expert at this.”
Paul disappeared for a moment and spoke quietly to the captain. Alex couldn’t hear them clearly, but she caught enough to know that Guarneri was indicating a small cove that the boat was to head for, and at the cove would be a green light. The light would flash three times when it spotted the craft; then it would remain on long enough to guide them in.
The sailing was smoother than cruising with the inboard. At the bow, Pedro leaned back, his University of Miami cap tipped back and the carbine across his chest. He looked like the calmest person on board because he had the least to do.
Alex glanced at her watch. It was 5:19 a.m., slightly before dawn. They were exactly within the window of time that would allow them to hit the beach in near darkness, undetected by any Cuban shore patrols or nosy civilians or other traffickers who might be around at that creepy early hour. She looked forward to arrival. Nervous energy was pushing her forward, but fatigue and lack of sleep was starting to set in also. A low mist rolled from shore and sat on top of the water’s surface.
Alex took a final inventory. She reached beneath her pant leg to where her gun was encased in heavy plastic and strapped tightly to her ankle. She fingered the case on her thigh that held her money, her maps, her bank cards, and her Mexican passport. Her small duffel was a few feet away, water resistant but not water tight.
Then Leo spotted the green light.
The boat came into a small bay, maybe a hundred yards across, and Leo, as some sort of precaution, turned his boat and sailed parallel. He wasn’t going to land, he said, until he saw the lights flash. Guarneri went to him and spoke, and the two men seemed to be in a small argument. She could just barely make out that Guarneri wanted to press ahead, while Leo, paranoid soul that he was, sensed something was amiss. Not that they had much in the way of options at this point. Sailing back to the Florida Keys was hardly a possibility.
“What’s going on?” Alex asked.
“They should be flashing us,” Guarneri said. “That’s supposed to be the final all-clear signal. They’re supposed to flash us. They’re not doing it.”
Leo dropped his sail and the boat eased to a near stop. Obviously, he didn’t like this. Alex started to sweat. Impetuously, Leo took a signal lantern from the helm and aimed it at the shore. He gave three quick yellow flashes across the water’s misty surface. Several long seconds passed. Then Leo spotted the response that he solicited. The green light extinguished for a moment, then flashed three times, then went back on.
“There!” Guarneri said. “That’s it! We’re home free.”
Leo muttered something profane about Cubans and turned the tiller sharply. The boat rocked and turned toward the shore. The boom came around fast, and Alex had to duck to keep her head from being taken off. Leo set a sharp final course. They were still out about fifty yards when Alex could discern that the light was on a small dock.
Suddenly, the entire landing area was floodlit. Men in dark blue pants and light blue shirts dashed across the beach, as if rising up from prone positions on the sand. More emerged from behind the dunes and foliage, while others came from within a house farther up the beach and others from behind clumps of palm trees. They held rifles across their chest, and their uniforms suggested local police.
Alex straightened up and stared ahead through the haze, as if in disbelief. “What’s this?” she asked.
Guarneri turned sharply and looked also. “Uh-oh,” he said, followed by a violent obscenity. “Local militia!”
The squad of men on the beach spread out and went into crouching positions. In the center of the squad stood a small wiry man in a similar blue uniform but with a red beret. He was obviously the commander. He had no rifle, but he wore a sidearm and carried a megaphone. He let the boat ease closer; then he raised the megaphone and started to bark orders in angry Spanish.
“Paul, what is it?” Alex pressed.
“I don’t know. I’ll handle it!” he said. “Everyone stay calm.”
Guarneri moved to the bow of the boat, arms aloft, waving as if in friendship. Leo, at the tiller, looked petrified, as did Pedro. Felix’s face seethed with rage.
Alex was about to put a hand to Felix to calm him. Instead, impetuously, Felix broke toward the front of the boat, slid into a low crouching position, and pointed his weapon toward the shore.
Meanwhile, the small man in the red beret continued to bark at them through his bullhorn. He announced that he was Major Ivar Mejias of some police brigade, but that was all Alex could hear.
Paul saw clearly what Felix was about to do, but he couldn’t stop it. Neither could Alex.
“¡Felix! ¡Cálmese!” Paul yelled. Stay calm! But it was too late. Felix opened fire on the men on the beach, firing half a dozen shots. “Felix! No! No! No!” Paul screamed.
The commander dropped his bullhorn midsentence and ran for cover. The other men scattered, and Alex saw at least one of them go down, clutching a shoulder, hit by one of Felix’s bullets.
Paul tackled Felix and knocked his gun away. But this was followed instantly by a barrage of gunfire thrown back at Leo’s boat. Then Pedro, almost as impetuous as Felix, raised his pistol and fired wildly at the shore. Meanwhile, Paul and Felix hit the deck, wrestling.
The first barrage of return fire hit the boat with a series of powerful, heavy whacks. Pedro was the first to go down. He was hit badly, and more than once. He made a horrible guttural sound, and his pistol flew from his hands. Then he got hit again. He staggered as another volley found him, and suddenly he was picked up and hurled overboard, as if by an invisible hand. At the same time, Felix broke free of Paul’s grip, grabbed his rifle, and tried to stand, but a bullet found him as well. He hurtled backward, the rifle flying from his hands. It rattled onto the rail and tumbled overboard.
Alex had hit the deck as soon as she could. The boat veered wildly in the water, its tiller not guided by any hand and the boom now swinging freely. As the floodlights illuminated their boat, Alex knew that somewhere along the line — either in the intelligence community, in the underworld, or in some cabal she did not yet know or understand — something had gone horribly wrong.
“Paul!” she screamed. “Paul!”
She could see Guarneri, lying flat on the deck but moving, apparently untouched by the gunfire. The same could not be said for Felix. He was lying across the foredeck, blood pouring from the wounds in his neck and upper chest. Alex had no idea if the man was dead. Not far away, Leo was also on the deck, bleeding badly.
Paul wriggled forward toward Pedro’s pistol. Shots continued to hit the small skiff. They hit the hull of the boat, ripped through the sail, and ripped into the wood of the mast. Guarneri put the nose of Pedro’s pistol over the bow and began to spray bullets toward the beach. Alex watched for a second, which seemed to last a lifetime. The men had all successfully scattered except for one who was trying to crawl to shelter. No one was helping him. Then Guarneri turned toward her, while keeping his head low.
“It’s me they want! They’re going to kill me! You! Get out of here!”
She made a helpless gesture. Get out? How? She was frozen in place. But to delay obviously meant death.
“Get out!” Guarneri demanded. “Jump and swim!”
“No!” she said. She reached toward her own weapon. Her instinct told her to stay and fight. But her hands were soaking, and she couldn’t quickly access her pistol.
“Alex!” Guarneri demanded again. She looked up. Bullets continued to hit the boat. “Get out or I’ll shoot you myself!” he screamed
. And to break her out of her trance, he turned his revolver to her and fired a shot near her. It ripped away a chunk of wood on the hull. It was all the impetus she needed.
She crawled madly a few feet toward the stern and with a quick motion pulled herself over the side. She hit the water with a dull splash, sinking instantly. She never touched the bottom but knew immediately that she was well over her head. A moment later she reached the surface again. The water was warmer than she expected, which was good. That meant hypothermia wouldn’t be a problem. Still, if she got hit with a bullet, hypothermia would be the least of her problems.
She stayed behind the boat, with her head above water only at nose level. Even through the mist, the scene was surreal. The boat was still only about fifty yards offshore, but she could hear the angry shouts and curses from the reception party. She moved several feet behind the boat. Stray bullets hit the waters around her with sharp zipping little splashes. Paul threw the occasional pistol shot toward shore to slow the pursuers. He was the only one returning fire, and he was trying to work the tiller, throw the sail back up, and turn the boat at the same time.
She assessed where the floodlights were and whether they would follow her. There seemed to be three of them, two high ones on the top of the building and a smaller one that seemed to be mounted on a truck. At the same time, she counted the men on the beach. There were eight, maybe ten, not counting the little runt in the red beret.
She treaded water for a moment, then knew it was best to get away from the boat as quickly as possible. Yet part of her heart and conscience was in the boat. Guarneri kept firing at the shore party, and they were returning his fire.
Despite her terror and her tears, her instinct for self-preservation took over. She moved a dozen yards from the boat. Then two dozen.
She could feel a strong current, and wisely, she allowed herself to go with it. To fight it would be to spend all her energy and end up where she began. To ride it would allow her to get farther away than swimming alone could take her.
The gunfire continued but was more sporadic. She kept her head low, exposed just enough to breath. She was sure someone, somewhere, was scanning the area with binoculars, maybe even a sharpshooter looking for anyone who had escaped. She kept her arms under water and moved rhythmically with the current, gaining greater distance. The floodlights still blinded her, and she could still hear the crackle of gunfire, and now and then the sound of the bullhorn, as the opposing force presumably closed in on Paul.
