The Opening Chase

by Cap Daniels

  My heart raced with excitement and anxiety. The first two phases of the four-phase plan were complete. I had safely been smuggled into Cuba without being detected, and I had positively identified the target. All that remained was to kill him and run like hell. I didn’t know which one would be more challenging, but I knew the order in which they had to occur.

  Environmental and situational awareness was pounded into my head with such consistency and force at The Ranch that I knew my reconnaissance was far from complete. It was clear that Suslik wasn’t going anywhere. He was completely enthralled by the mostly naked stripper at his fingertips, so I continued scanning the deck of the yacht. When my gaze fell upon the other man, I felt my heart stop. I recognized him immediately as Dmitri Barkov, the owner of the most recent Triple Crown winner, Silent Storm.

  What sort of coincidence could this possibly be?

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop picturing him in the owner’s box at Belmont Park in New York. For a moment, I almost let my mind stray from the task at hand. I never expected to see Barkov again, but there he was, in the flesh, and in the company of the assassin, Suslik.

  I immediately hatched a plan.

  17

  Best Laid Plans

  My plan to get close enough to Suslik to take his life was beautiful, even if it was daring and replete with potential to fail. I remembered the sound of the halyard slapping against the mast of the sailboat at anchor in the mouth of the river, and I knew that only a rookie sailor would leave his halyard untethered to slap and keep neighboring cruisers awake night after night. I knew that the owner of the slapping halyard was most likely ashore drinking and having a great time in Havana.

  I scanned the water for drunken boat owners motoring their dinghies from shore to their rattling sailboats. I didn’t have to wait long. One particularly intoxicated sailor in an overpowered dinghy bounced off the hulls of several anchored yachts in a clumsy, drunken display of a nautical identity crisis, and finally arrived alongside a forty-foot Beneteau. It appeared that the drunkard had finally found his boat after several attempts to board the wrong boat. He stumbled up the ladder before loosely tying the dinghy to a cleat at the stern of the Beneteau.

  I cut pieces of the 550 cord into lengths of approximately twenty feet each, and tied a lasso in two of them. I wound the remaining cord into a tight ball, then I stuffed my suppressed Makarov pistol and the cord into my dry bag. I crept down the companionway into the belly of Grey’s rotten boat and found a set of scuba gear, just as I had expected. My feet were at least two inches longer than his, so the fins were a poor fit, but I had to make do. I connected a set of regulators to the tank that was already affixed to the buoyancy compensator, and I turned on the air. I was pleasantly surprised to find just over three thousand pounds of air in the tank when the gauge came to life. I stuck the regulator in my mouth and drew in a breath just to make sure everything worked correctly. I realized that my dry bag was too bulky, so I placed my gun inside a bread wrapper I found on the floor of the cabin, then tied the wrapper in a tight knot after sucking out all the air. I slid the bread wrapper into one of the pockets in the buoyancy compensator, and loosely tucked the lengths of the 550 cord through a d-ring on my vest, and the ball of cord into a pocket. With my dive mask snug against my face, the regulator in my mouth, and fins cutting into my feet, I slipped over the stern of the boat and into the water.

  I quietly swam around the boat and took a compass bearing on the yacht before descending to the bottom of the river. The incoming tide was much too strong to swim against on the surface. The only way I could reach the yacht was to swim or crawl as close to the bottom as possible. When I felt my knees strike the sandy bottom only a few seconds after leaving the surface, I was pleased to feel the strength of the tidal current subside. With my dive light pressed tightly against the face of my compass and shielded by my body so no one on the surface could see, I counted out sixty seconds to let the light charge the luminescence of the compass face. Then I doused my light and tucked it back into a pocket. Following the compass bearing, I counted kicks as I swam for the yacht.

  When I thought I’d swum far enough to be beneath the yacht, I lay on the bottom, holding my breath, listening for the sound of the music and perhaps a generator aboard the luxurious vessel overhead. I thought I could faintly hear the thumping of the stereo, but I wasn’t certain. I decided the best plan would be to swim to a point that I knew would be in front of the yacht, and then surface silently to get my bearings without being seen. The lights of the houses and shops in the mouth of the river would be behind the yacht, painting it in silhouette if I were on the ocean side of the vessel, so I continued to swim on my original course until I was confident that I was well beyond the yacht’s position. I cupped my hand over my compass, reflecting some of its light on the depth gauge. The gauge said I was in seven feet of water. That didn’t make any sense. I had to be deeper than seven feet. The yacht had to draft at least five or six feet, so if I was only seven feet deep, I would have run into the bottom of the yacht. Then I realized that the gauge was graduated in meters, not feet.

  When will I stop making these rookie mistakes?

  I pulled the deflator on the left side of my buoyancy compensator, sure to release any air that was still trapped inside. Any air that may have been trapped inside the BC would almost double in volume as I rose the seven meters to the surface. That would turn the BC into a cork and leave me floating like a balloon. I couldn’t have that. With all of the air out of the BC, I gently pressed my fins into the soft, sandy bottom of the river and began to cautiously rise toward the surface. I exhaled steadily as I rose, making sure not to keep any excess air in my lungs. I couldn’t afford to suffer a lung overexpansion injury at that point.

  My timing was perfect. As soon as I felt the top of my head break the surface of the water, I exhaled my last drop of air. I pulled the regulator from my mouth, making sure it didn’t free flow and give away my position. With only the top half of my head above the water, I looked back up the river as my eyes adjusted to what little light there was on the surface. I was pleased to see the silhouette of the bow of the yacht bobbing in the water about fifty feet away.

  Since there didn’t appear to be a lookout on the bow of the yacht, I relaxed and let the incoming tide carry me back to the vessel rather than descending and using more of the air in the scuba tank. When I drifted into the anchor chain of the yacht, I descended down the chain until I reached the anchor that was nicely seated into the sandy bottom. I pulled the ball of 550 cord from my pocket and tied one end to the anchor chain just above the shackle with a bowline. Rigging lines and tying knots underwater with plenty of light is challenging, but in the dark, it’s nearly impossible. I prayed that I had tied the bowline correctly by feel alone. Then I loosened the bolt on the shackle and connected the chain to the anchor until it was barely holding in place. I swam back to the belly of the yacht and wrapped the 550 cord around the propeller shaft several times before descending again to the anchor to loop the cord back through the anchor chain. I repeated the process until I used all of the cord, making several loops between the prop shaft and the anchor. I hoped the cord was strong enough to help accomplish my desired result.

  With that done, I swam as hard as I could back to the bow of the yacht, then several more yards toward the open ocean. When I was confident that I was far enough away, I surfaced again and took a compass bearing to the Beneteau that held the drunken sailor. With the bearing set on the compass, I descended back to the bottom and let the mild tide carry me toward my destination.

  When I reached the Beneteau, I surfaced and pulled myself aboard the dinghy that was left loosely tied to the stern. The inflatable dinghy was trailing behind the sailboat by seven or eight feet in the tide, but it felt as if the tide was beginning to weaken. I lay as close to the floor of the inflatable dinghy as I could while removing my scuba gear. I pulled my Makarov out of the bread wrapper and stuck it under the edge of the
plastic fuel tank. I pulled one of the lassos from the d-ring on the BC and tied the free end to a cleat on the bow of the dinghy. I then tucked the remaining lengths of cord through a belt loop on my pants for easy access.

  I sat on the floor of the dinghy and caught my breath while I played the plan over in my mind. I couldn’t afford to screw up. I had one chance to get it right. If everything didn’t go perfectly, I would end up dead and adrift in the mouth of the Rio Almendares, less than ninety miles from America.

  To my surprise, I felt the painter, the line connecting the dinghy to the sailboat, fall slack. The incoming tide had reached its high mark and would soon start back out, but until it did, the mouth of the river was at slack tide with almost no current. That was the perfect time to make my move. I tugged on the painter, pulling the dinghy toward the sailboat, then I slipped the line off the cleat and tossed it into the floor of the dinghy as I pushed off the hull of the Beneteau.

  The outboard motor sprang to life on the first pull, and I immediately slid the motor into gear and opened the throttle, hoping, for the first time, to get the attention of everyone on Barkov’s yacht. When I glanced toward the yacht, no one was looking my way, so I decided to create a little more action. I flew between Grey’s fishing boat and Barkov’s yacht, and threw a rooster tail of water into the air behind the dinghy. At the last second, I turned the dinghy sharply toward Grey’s boat and plowed into the side of the lumbering trawler with incredible force. I hit much harder than I had planned, and the sudden stop threw me forward onto the bow of the dinghy. Fortunately, I didn’t hit my head. That would have been a disaster. I then remembered my old friend, the voice man in Miami, and I hatched a new addition to my plan. Trying my best to sound like a pissed off, sleepy fisherman, I yelled in Spanish, “What the hell is wrong with you?” I then answered myself, trying to sound as drunk as possible. I slurred, “I’m sorry, señor. I can’t find my boat and my wife’s gonna kill me.”

  I stumbled back to the stern of the dinghy and found the tiller and throttle with one hand. I peeked over my shoulder at the huge yacht only a few hundred feet away. My act had done the trick. Everyone aboard the yacht was staring straight at me. Not only were they staring, but they were laughing uproariously at the drunken, wayward husband playing bumper cars in the dinghy. I knew I had their full attention, so I turned the dingy out to sea and headed out of the mouth of the river as fast as the outboard would push me. I roared past the yacht and disappeared under its bow. When I believed that Barkov and Suslik had time to return to their seats and have their glasses refilled, I roared around the bow of the yacht and down the starboard side, appearing to be completely out of control. I let my head slump down as if I were unconscious, but in reality, I was as rigid as I had ever been. Every muscle in my body was tense, and I shoved my feet beneath the seat in front of me, preparing for what was about to happen.

  When I was thirty yards behind the yacht, I thrust my body forward, pretending to have passed out over the controls, and shoved the tiller handle hard over until the dinghy was headed straight for the swim platform of the yacht. When the men onboard the yacht realized that I was going to collide with their boat, they rose from their seats, shoved the women out of the way, and ran to the stern. Each man began yelling at me in Russian, but I couldn’t hear them over the scream of the outboard motor.

  Just before the bow of the dinghy struck the swim platform of the yacht, I shoved the motor in reverse, raised my pistol, aimed at Barkov, and yanked the trigger.

  I had fired over a million rounds of ammunition in the past two years of my life by properly squeezing the trigger. I had never yanked a trigger, but I’d never fired at a Russian mobster from a rubber dinghy in the middle of the night in Havana either.

  I watched Barkov’s left shoulder explode as the round penetrated the flesh just outside of his collarbone. I knew I hadn’t killed him, but he was certainly incapable of putting up a fight with his shoulder blown apart. With one fluid motion, I retrained my pistol on the outboard motor of the yacht’s dinghy hanging from davits above my head, and I fired two rounds through the motor, completely disabling it.

  I scanned the rail of the yacht for more men, and I was surprised to find no one else on deck other than the two terrified, half-naked girls, and Suslik. I saw him react as he realized that the whole charade was a rouse. He lunged backward away from the rail, but I had the element of surprise on my side. I launched the lasso of the 550 cord high into the air just as the dinghy made contact with the yacht. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The lasso flew through the air and fell over Suslik’s head as he powered backward. Suslik yelled, “Ti che, blyad?” the Russian equivalent of “What the fuck?”

  The instant I knew the lasso had found its mark around his neck, I opened the throttle again with the motor firmly in reverse. The slack in the line disappeared as the makeshift noose drew tight against the flesh of Suslik’s neck. I expected his head to leave his body, but that didn’t happen. He was faster and much more resourceful than I’d anticipated. In one explosive moment, he wound his arm around the cord and grasped the line tightly in his bony grip. The flesh of his arm absorbed most of the force of the cord as the dinghy and I powered backward away from the yacht. I watched as Suslik soared over the rail of the yacht and flew through the air toward me.

  I had the advantage for the moment, so I took an instant to scan the deck of the yacht one last time. I saw Barkov stumbling through the door and into the interior of the yacht. Almost nothing was going as I had planned. Suslik’s head hadn’t come off, Barkov was still alive, and the gopher was flying through the air toward my dinghy.

  I watched Barkov’s body disappear beneath the bow of my dinghy with a massive splash. It occurred to me that if he’d grasped the cord well enough, he might still be conscious and capable of pulling himself aboard the dinghy. I didn’t need him in my little rubber boat, so I devised a new plan to quicken his soul’s departure from his bucktoothed body. Without reducing the throttle, I yanked the motor out of reverse and forced it into forward with all of my might. Fortunately, it worked, and the dingy lunged forward with impressive agility. I felt the lasso cord come tight under the bow, and I wondered if Suslik’s body would create enough drag to pull the bow underwater and swamp the dinghy. I quickly did the math. The cord was about twenty feet long. A little less than two feet made up the noose. He’d probably wrapped at least a foot of the cord around his arm, and I’d tied at least a foot of the free end to the bow cleat. That left around sixteen feet of cord between Suslik and the bow of the dinghy. I estimated that the rubber boat was twelve feet long and the bow was almost two feet above the waterline. I smiled as I realized that I’d accidently cut exactly the correct length of cord to accomplish my kill. As my smile reached its zenith and the cord reached its limit, I felt the propeller of the outboard motor strike something human. Despite his valiant effort to survive my attack, the propeller tore through Suslik’s spine and left the pulverized remains of the legendary Russian assassin spewing into the mouth of the Rio Almendares.

  Phase three was complete. Suslik was dead. I hoped I hadn’t chipped the propeller on his buckteeth. All that was left was to run like hell. I lunged forward with my dive knife firmly in my right hand and cut the cord from the bow cleat so the 550 cord wouldn’t get wound around my propeller and kill the outboard. That little boat was my only hope for escape.

  I heard the engines of the yacht roar to life, and I watched the anchor chain start its rise from the murky water. When Barkov’s hired captain shoved the transmission into gear to chase me, I knew my plan was going to work.

  The multiple loops of 550 cord that I had rigged between the anchor chain and the propeller shaft of the yacht began to wrap around the shaft at remarkable speed. As soon as the cord came taut, the shackle I’d sabotaged surrendered and set the chain free from its connection to the anchor. Without the additional weight of the buried anchor, the wrapping cord pulled the chain directly into the exposed shaft.
When the cord had wound as tightly as it could, the bulky, whipping anchor chain began to wrap itself around the shaft and slap the hull of the yacht. It took no more than two seconds for the chain to shake the propeller shaft from its through-hull, water-tight bearings and tear several massive gashes into the hull. The yacht immediately took on water, flooding first the engine room, and then everything else below the waterline.

  18

  Run Like Hell

  With Suslik’s corpse strewn about the mouth of the river, the time had come to accomplish phase four of my plan: run like hell. I lay in the belly of the inflatable, as close to the deck as possible, and opened the throttle. The power of the outboard motor accelerated the dingy across the smooth surface of the brackish water.

  I felt the surface take on a light chop as I left the mouth of the river and entered the ocean. I hadn’t actually given a great deal of thought to this phase of my plan. I realized I had no idea where I was running. There was no way I had enough fuel to make the ninety-mile passage to Key West, but I knew there were a lot of boats near Havana that could easily make the passage. As I bounced across the water, my adrenaline-charged mind began to develop a plan.

  I’d expected my first actual kill to be far more psychologically challenging. I remembered how I’d accidentally killed the trainer back at The Ranch, but I was reacting in what I believed was self-defense. This kill was malicious and intentional. I thought I should’ve been experiencing some degree of guilt, but I wasn’t. All I could feel was the desire to escape the waters of communist Cuba.