Havana Run (24 page)
“The signal’s gone,” the technician at the console said, glancing up at Vines.
Vines pointed at the man’s earphones. “You mean the audio’s out?”
The man stared back at him patiently. “I mean we’ve lost the signal altogether.”
Vines glanced at Russell Straight and Driscoll, who stood nearby in the cramped control room, then turned back to his technician. It could have been a recording studio or command central for a radio station, but they were an unlikely-looking foursome for the entertainment field.
“Maybe they’re out of range,” Vines said.
The technician stared his patient stare. “They’re out of Cuban waters,” he said. “They’re not out of range.”
“Then what’s wrong?” Russell said.
“Maybe nothing,” Driscoll said. His expression suggested otherwise.
“Give me those coordinates,” Vines said.
The technician nodded and punched a series of buttons on his console. In moments a sheet chunked up from a clattering printer. The technician glanced at the sheet, then handed it over to Vines.
Vines studied it briefly, then offered something like a smile as he pushed by Driscoll and Russell Straight.
“Hey,” Russell called as Vines headed off down a narrow hallway. “What about Deal? Where are you going?”
“To start World War Three,” Vines called back. And then he was gone.
“We must turn back,” the captain of the Cuban vessel said. “We are no longer in Cuban waters.”
“We will turn back soon,” Zeneas told him, his expression resolute. He put his finger on the blip that formed at ten o’clock when the cutter’s radar made its sweep. “When we complete our business.”
The captain shook his head, tracing an imaginary line between the cutter and the motor yacht they had pursued. “It is impossible,” the captain said. “The Americans…”
Zeneas pressed his hand down atop the captain’s. The man caught his breath, suddenly unable to speak. There came the faint sound of cracking glass, and a bubble of blood oozed slowly down the broken face of the radar screen.
“The Americans are not here to bother us,” Zeneas said. “Do you see any Americans out there? Do you see a sign that says ‘Turn Back’?”
The captain’s face was ashen, but he managed to shake his head. “Nor do I,” Zeneas said. “Let us complete our mission and then go home.”
He withdrew his hand from atop the captain’s and stood staring. “Call your weapons room, Captain. I won’t waste another instant with you.”
The captain stared down at his bleeding hand, then back at Zeneas. He glanced at the door that led from the command bridge. Zeneas could see the thoughts that paraded behind the man’s eyes as if he were inside his brain. He had heard the stories. They all had.
The captain nodded curtly, then picked up the intercom. “Lock torpedoes on target,” he said.
Something was spoken on the other end, and the captain repeated his command. Zeneas listened for a moment, then gave a final nod.
The captain depressed the key with a finger of his good hand and gave the command. There was a faint shudder and a burst of flame as the first of the deck-mounted torpedoes left the cutter and splashed down into the water, followed closely by a second.
“Take no chances, Captain,” Zeneas said, his eyes fixed on a point in the darkness before them. The motor yacht had ceased to send its homing signal and had doused its running lights, but that had come too late. It would make no difference now.
The captain spoke again into his microphone. A third shudder moved through the steel superstructure beneath Zeneas’ feet, and then a fourth. Zeneas smiled, watching the faintly phosphorescent trails unfurl out into the darkness. It only pained him that he would not be there to see the expression on the old man’s face.
The pilot of the F-16 was screaming just above the wave-tops of the Florida Straits at less than fifty feet, not all that unusual when skirting this close to Cuban waters. Normally, they held their runs thirty miles or so out from shore, but these were not normal circumstances.
In any event, his altitude might not necessarily keep him off the enemy’s radar screens, but it wouldn’t make things any easier for them, either. Less than ten minutes before, he’d been sitting in the ready room of the Noble Eagle Alert Facility on the grounds of Homestead Air Reserve Base at the southern tip of the Florida mainland, whiling away his duty stretch by watching a Clancy film on DVD. It had just gotten to the part where the Nazi who’d blown up the Super Bowl was about to climb into his sedan and turn the key that would splatter his body parts across a goodly portion of Munich when the call came in.
The pilot was airborne inside of four minutes, and less than five minutes after that had picked up the two blips now displayed on the radar screen just above his left knee. He was closing on the first, in fact, when the first explosion tore the sky apart just in front of him.
“Holy shit!” he called, as the fireball blossomed a few hundred yards away. He pulled hard on the stick, banking away as the invisible force field buffeted the plane. A few seconds later and the explosion might have taken him out. At first, in fact, he had taken it for enemy fire and was calculating his response as he spiraled skyward, automatically locked in evasive mode.
As he came out of a roll, already three miles up, he caught sight of the mushroom cloud that rose high above the water below and realized what had happened. He checked the radar display at his knee again and confirmed his suspicions. Where two blips had appeared only moments before, only one now displayed. And that craft appeared to be turning in a wide arc, heading back the way it had come.
The pilot leveled off the F-16 and pressed the button that opened his secure line. It took less than a minute to describe the situation and to receive his orders. Before the Cuban vessel had quite completed its turn, the pilot of the F-16 had activated the other cockpit screen, the four-by-four square that glowed just above his right knee like the readout of a miniature arcade game. The two AGM Mavericks that the F-16 carried were G class, containing chips and circuitry that allowed them to make target entry just at waterline.
And they would be so instructed in this case, the pilot thought. He made the proper entries on his keypad to arm the missiles, and then the F-16 dove.
***
Zeneas was already out of the command cabin and moving along the rail toward the ship’s stern, when he noticed a young seaman bursting through the opposite door of the compartment, shouting something at the cutter’s still-glowering captain, waving a scrap of paper torn from a printer and jabbing frantically toward the sky.
Zeneas turned to glance into the inky darkness and saw nothing at first. The smoky haze that had lingered following the explosion of the
Bellísima
had begun to dissipate, though, and gradually the sight took shape: At first it was a tiny wedge of darkness against the slightly lighter backdrop of sky, but it was growing larger at an alarming rate, doubling and redoubling its size by the instant.
A jet, he realized, the noise of its engines still yet to catch up with its incredibly expanding shadow. Americans, he thought next, and felt a smile of satisfaction cross his features. A bit too late for the cavalry’s charge, wasn’t it?
He might have made some gesture of insult, in fact, if he’d thought the pilot could see it. And that is when he saw the burst of white smoke bloom at one wingtip of the approaching jet, followed in the next moment by another.
Something lurched inside Zeneas’ chest, his body registering the truth of what was to come even before his mind could comprehend. He turned toward the command bridge, as the jet soared on past the cutter, banking up and away even as the thundering roar of its engines washed over him.
“We are in Cuban waters…” he cried, hearing indignation and outrage in his voice. It could not happen, he was thinking. It would not be countenanced by the regime…
His hand had just fallen upon the lever that would open the door to the bridge compartment when he felt the strange sensation: exhilaration at first, a sense of being propelled through an open portal to somewhere at amazing speed. There was heat, too—one searing jolt of it—along with a brilliant flash of light that also brought with it the agony.
Melting
, he thought.
What it means to melt…
And then there was one more pillar of flame leaping up toward the nighttime sky, and finally, there was nothing at all.
The Florida Straits Dawn
Bits of wreckage, little of it recognizable, littered the swells, which were moderate this day—no more than six to eight feet—and still gray in the early light. There were bits of styrofoam and chunks of wood and some of fiberglass, along with an occasional plastic jug or bottle and scrap of cloth mixed in with clots of seaweed and bits of matter too vague to be distinguished.
There was no evidence really that any of it had been part of any boat destroyed. It could all have simply been swept out to sea along with the normal, steady exodus of trash from Havana Harbor.
The last was the idle thought that crossed Deal’s mind as he dug his tiny paddle into the gray water, trying to keep the nose of the raft pointed into the waves. His old man held a paddle, too, but he was making no normal use of it. He held the thing upside down, in fact, and was tracing his finger along the flat surface of its business end as if a message had been printed there.
“You say this fellow you’re talking about”—the old man broke off and glanced up at Deal—“this Barton Deal…”
“That’s you,” Deal said, digging his paddle deep. “
You’re
Barton Deal.”
“Whoever he is,” the old man said with a dismissive wave. “This fellow pretended to kill himself and then ran off to Cuba, never even told his family?”
“He never did,” Deal said. He tried to meet the old man’s gaze, but those eyes were locked somewhere on another place.
The old man snorted. “Why would a man do such a thing?” he said, disbelief evident in his tone.
“I don’t know,” Deal said. “I’ve been hoping you might tell me.”
The old man glanced at him. “How the hell would
I
know?”
Deal stared back. Not a glimmer in those steely eyes. “You could help with the paddling, at least,” he said. “For all we know, we’ll wash right back to Cuba.”
The old man snorted again. “You don’t know anything, do you? This here is the Gulf Stream, boy. All we have to do is stay afloat. We’ll end up in Europe one day.”
“You seem awfully confident.”
“I’ve read what the big fellow says, that’s all.”
“What big fellow?”
The old man gave him a disgusted look, then consulted his paddle and began to recite, as if the words were printed in front of him: “…
this Stream has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it
…”
He broke off there to command Deal’s attention with a snap of his fingers. “That’s Cuba we’re talking about, you know.”
Deal nodded. “I guessed as much.”
“Only because I told you.”
“Dad…”
The old man held up an imperious hand. “Just listen,” he said. “…
because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments are all gone
…”
The old man was staring at him with an imploring look on his face now. “That’s how we know we’ll get to Europe, don’t you see.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Deal said. “Not without food and water.”
“Food and water, my eye,” the old man said, sweeping his arm out over the sea. “You’re not paying attention…”
He was off again, then: “…
the palm fronds of our victories, the worn lightbulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing—the stream
.” The old man concluded with a dramatic flourish and sat quietly staring at him, waiting.
“That’s amazing,” Deal said, finally. His shoulders were aching and he longed simply to slide back and drift, though that would surely mean the end.
“It’s better than that,” the old man said. “It’s Hemingway.”
Deal shook his head, savoring the five seconds’ respite as the raft slid down the side of a swell. “I mean, how you remember all that, and you don’t even know your name.”
“Who says I don’t?” the old man demanded, his eyes flashing sudden fury. “Who the hell are you to talk to me like that? I’ve bested many a better man than you, my boy.”
With that, he snatched up the paddle by its handle and swung it without warning, the leading edge narrowly missing Deal’s skull. He was positioning himself for another backhanded swipe when Deal let go of his own paddle and did the only thing he could.
He leaned forward, bracing himself with one hand, driving the heel of his other into the point of the old man’s chin. His old man’s eyes blinked once, then closed as if a switch had been thrown. In the next second, he had slumped over sideways in the raft.
Deal stared for a moment until he saw the rise and fall of his old man’s chest begin. He shook his head, then picked up the paddle the old man had dropped. It was dawn now, the sun a slivered red thumbprint on the eastern horizon. He glanced at the flat face of the paddle, just to be sure, then gave his father another glance before he tossed the thing overboard and began to row again.
He could do this, he told himself, as the waves rose and fell before him. Thousands before him had. He would do it for as long as he possibly could.
“You going to let us know exactly what happened?” Driscoll asked Vines.
He and Russell and the government agent had the flying bridge of the Coast Guard cutter to themselves, now that Vines’ man had descended back to the communications room to monitor the progress of the search. There hadn’t been much time to talk since the moment Vines had come to rush them from the reconnaissance center at the Interests Section. There had been an accident with the
Bellísima
, that’s all he would say. A search was being mounted in the Florida Straits.
While it had still been dark, the three of them had been driven to a small fishing village just east of the city, where they’d boarded what looked like a smaller version of Fuentes’ yacht, piloted by a crew that seemed as Cuban as it was possible to get. Inside an hour, they’d rendezvoused with the Coast Guard cutter and transferred on board.
Now, it was well past dawn and half a dozen ships were out in the Straits, or so they’d just been informed, and a pair of reconnaissance planes had been diverted from their normal drug-intercept surveillance to join the search. Still, there were hundreds of square miles of featureless water to cover. Every day drug runners in boats the size of freight cars found their way to Florida undetected. What were the chances of finding two men adrift and bobbing in these waves? For that matter, what were the chances that they had survived the sinking of the
Bellísima
to begin with?
“It’s a pretty simple story,” Vines said without taking his binoculars from his eyes. “There were two ships out here—the one we had our eye on and a Cuban naval vessel following it.” He turned and dropped the binoculars, staring at the two of them bleakly. “First, the
Bellísima
disappeared.” He raised an eyebrow. “Now the Cuban vessel’s gone as well.”
“You can do better than that,” Driscoll said.
“Not officially I can’t,” Vines said.
“I don’t give a crap about official,” Russell Straight said, staring past Driscoll.
“Hold on,” Driscoll said, holding Russell off. He turned back to Vines.
“Are you saying the Cubans sank the boat that Deal was on?”
Vines stared back at him, his expression glum.
“And then something happened to this Cuban boat, too?”
Vines lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “I can’t tell you how it all played out. All I can say is that the
Bellísima
is missing.”
“Fucking-A,” Russell muttered, still struggling in Driscoll’s grip.
“That’s not going to do much good,” Driscoll said.
Vines nodded, then undraped the binoculars from his neck. “He’s right,” the agent said, thrusting the glasses toward Russell. “Why not try doing something worthwhile.”