Dusky MacMorgan: Cuban Death-Lift Part 16

So I pulled throttles back and stayed tight astern of the four other boats. They were making about fourteen knots, and when I had my speed adjusted to theirs, I locked the Benmar autopilot in temporarily while I got a cold Hatuey beer from the cooler and added a healthy pinch of Copenhagen between lip and gum. I felt the old antic.i.p.ation come over me; the good feeling of the hunter on the track of the deserving prey. In about fourteen hours, the Castro gun goons were going to get the surprise of their lives. Their job was to stop unauthorized Cubans from getting out of Mariel-and they wouldn't be expecting a blind-sided attack from someone trying to get in. Still, I had to have some luck. The narrow untended tidal creek the chart showed to be west of Mariel Harbor would have to be deep enough for me to get in. And there would have to be cover enough for me to camouflage Sniper. And, also, the Cubans would have to fall for the drug runners' radio-distress ploy that would explain my final disappearance. But I had already had the best kind of luck. Radio Havana had, according to Lobo, reported an attack on Mariel by a band of anti-Castro Cubans. They would have no choice but to explain the second attack in the same way. . . .

The tidal river was deep enough. But not by much.

I had pulled away from my screen of boats an hour before sunrise three miles offsh.o.r.e. It's not true about it being always darkest before the dawn. Not on the open ocean, anyway. There was no sun, but the sea took on a pearly luminescence. The water changed from black to turquoise-a turquoise of such intensity that it seemed as if it would discolor the black hull of my cruiser. The wind freshened, blowing waves across the bow. And the rolling expanse of sea, wind, and waves seemed energized by an incandescence of its own, as if the radiance had been acc.u.mulated over a million days beneath the Gulf Stream sun.

Below Mariel Harbor, it was a wilderness coast: cliffs topped by banyan trees and yellow bamboo. A rivulet toppled down one hillside, ending in a waterfall that sprayed down onto the rocks and sea below. Wind brought the scent of the mainland over the water, and it smelled of dank earth and frangipani and jasmine. The river I was seeking would be somewhere dead ahead, beyond the reef, and it was time for me to make my disappearance official. To the people in the radar room, I would be some unknown vessel hopelessly off course, searching for Mariel. Now the unknown vessel would sink.

I took the mike in my hand and, ridiculously, tried to disguise my voice-as if anyone in Cuba would know my voice: Mayday, mayday, this is the power vessel a.s.sail . . . we've hit some coral . . . boat's going down fast . . . engine's on fire . . . need a.s.sistance immediately. . . .

I repeated the message three times, adding bogus loran coordinates-four miles from my true position-to the name of the imaginary vessel. After the last transmission, my voice straining with a quality of panic, I mimicked a loud woofing explosion, then let the set go dead.

Good luck, Cubans. You rarely answer an American distress call anyway-no matter where it's at. But if you do come in search of the damaged a.s.sail you'll find nothing. And that will make us both happy. . . .

Quickly I hustled up to the flybridge. The reef lay ahead, and I wanted some visual alt.i.tude to run it. The sun was a fiery haze in the east now, and the coral stood out black below transparent waves and green sea. I powered along the seaward edge of it, looking for the current thrust from the river which I knew would create a natural channel through the reef.

And there it was: a snaking path of olive water through the coralheads and staghorn which led to calm water beyond the reef, and then a narrow entranceway of water guarded by mainland b.u.t.tonwood and black mangrove trees-the tidal river.

I considered not marking the channel with the plastic milk bottles weighted with lead I had made-but then decided I had to take the risk of their being noticed. I would be leaving by darkness, probably, and ramming Sniper up onto the reef would leave me stranded in Cuba.

And I couldn't afford to be stranded.

Not after what I had planned.

So I dropped three markers: one at the seaward exit, one at the narrowest bight, and the last at the river entrance to the reef. And then I nosed Sniper up the river at dead slow, sticking to the concave banks where the current would have dug out the deepest channel. It was one of those mangrove rivers with a vegetable bottom of muck and leaves. Heat came off the water, and limbs from mangroves slid across the hull of Sniper as we made our way. There was a dank and eerie silence about the narrow river interrupted only by the whine of mosquitoes and the occasional chatter of a kingfisher, and when my props kicked up mud, a visceral odor of sludge erupted behind.

The river deepened, narrowed even more, then branched into a crooked Y. I nosed up one branch, touched engines into reverse, then backed two boat lengths down the narrowest creek and switched off the engines.

I had a lot of work to do. I cut mangroves and covered those parts of Sniper which might be seen from the air, then went below and got the fake battery from the forward bilge.

"Until then, she's resting in a pleasant cottage at the Naval Academy," Lobo had told me.

The Naval Academy-the stone castle on the cliff above Mariel Harbor. Big mistake, Lobo. You should have never mentioned it.

I uncapped the battery and, once again, inventoried its deadly contents.

Plenty enough to do the job.

I was sweating from my work with the machete cutting tree limbs, so I grabbed a towel and wiped at my face while I went through my drawers beneath the master berth, looking for pencil and paper. I knew what I wanted to do: jerk everything I could remember about the terrain around the Naval Academy to the mental surface, then make a detailed map. Circles would represent guard outposts. X's would mark where I would put the explosives. I wanted to work out every possible means of escape, including the possible use of another tidal creek that branched off a finger of Mariel Harbor and, according to the chart, dead-ended only a mile or two from the mangrove river where I now waited. Repet.i.tion and concentration-I wanted to sear every alternative into my mind so completely that I wouldn't have to take time to think. Because, in the circ.u.mstances of war, makeshift planning can leave you very dead indeed.

So it was while rummaging through the drawers looking for paper and pen that I found it.

The book I had given Androsa Santarun to read: H. M. Tomlinson's The Sea and the Jungle. It was placed on top of a pile of miscellaneous gear, face down, spine crinkled, opened to her place. The instant irritation I felt at seeing so rare a book treated so badly was replaced by the immediate realization that I had returned the book once to the ammo-box library.

But was it before Androsa left Sniper or after?

I couldn't remember.

I picked it up carefully, closed it. But there was something wrong. The book closed-but not properly; just the slightest spring of foreign matter between pages. I leafed through the fine old volume and found it: a letter to me from Androsa. I remembered her that day atop the flybridge writing and reading, using my stomach as a pillow. So she had been writing to me-and had used the strange code message I was to send from Key West to tell me where to look.

I took out the letter, unfolded it, and read it quickly. Then I dropped the note on the bunk, went to the icebox, and got a beer, because I needed it. And then I read the letter again, still in shocked disbelief.

My Dearest Dusky- I write this now because I know they will be calling for me soon and that I will leave you and never see you again. In a way, leaving you will be the hardest thing, but it is something I must do. The last two years of my life have been very dark years, Dusky. And for a short time you brought some light to them. I can't allow myself to think how it might be if we could be together longer, because it is impossible, and there is nothing sadder than hoping for the impossible. You think you know about me, Dusky, but you don't. But I know about you. This morning while you made breakfast I found a piece of torn paper. It was just a corner you had overlooked, but it was enough to tell me it was a CIA bio sheet, and I know now what I had suspected-that you are more than a charterboat captain. For some reason, I was disappointed to find it. But I know that you were sent to help in some way, but you cannot help. I mentioned that I had a half brother who was killed by Castro's men. That is true, Dusky, but I did not know until we found that sinking boat, Storm Nest. The man who had been murdered so horribly was my own dear, dear Alvino. His father, who is a good man, married my mother and adopted me. I loved my brother very much, so you can imagine what a horrible decision it was for me when, two years ago, a General Halcn approached me upon Castro's arrival in New York and, in secrecy, told me that if I did not help him pose as a double agent my brother would be killed. So for these last twenty-four months I have been, in truth, a double agent working against America, the country I love. I do not know how Alvino got the boat and tried to make his escape, but I do know it was the Cubans who trailed him and murdered him. The agent who died in my arms told me. Before his escape, Alvino had warned them of Halcn, and the agent had found out about my arrival and was coming to warn me when they killed him. That is when I realized just what a foul creature I have become, Dusky, because it was I who told the Cubans of the plot to kill Castro. I sentenced those three men to death, and now that my dear brother is gone I can atone for it. Or at least try to. You must not worry about me, Dusky. It is almost funny-the thing I hate so much will not allow them to kill me. . . ."

And then followed the number of a post office box which I was to give to my superior; the box contained, Androsa wrote, a list of secret information she had given the Cubans.

Sweat rolled down my nose and plopped onto the paper. I got another beer and sat down at the little galley booth. Mosquitoes had found my hiding place in the mangroves, and I swatted at them absently while rereading the letter, letting the woman I had loved and lost shed light on the past mysteries of Mariel.

But I hadn't truly lost her. Not yet. I finished puzzling over the strange wording of the letter's last sentence, then hid it away and turned my attention to drawing a good map of the terrain around the Naval Academy. I had already lost one of the rare people to "the stout wind." I wasn't about to lose another one.

17.

So don the armor, MacMorgan. In days of yore it would be breastplate and plumed helmet and a two-handed sword forged from Spanish steel. Those were the days for you and the dead Irishman, MacMorgan; times when a man could set out on a good horse to right wrongs, slay the dragon, and do honorable battle with windmills and adversaries alike.

But now the armor is nothing more than the wellloved black Navy watch sweater, the lucky British commando knickers, and the face shadow from the olive-drab Special Forces tube. The sword is the waterproof knapsack on your back with its deadly cargo of RDX explosives and plenty of extra shafts for the Cobra crossbow slung over your shoulder. And the white steed is nothing more than your own good legs or, in a pinch, the Dacor TX-1000 compet.i.tion fins you carry just in case. . . .

Strange thoughts as I moved through the black marsh below the cane fields and the small village at the southern point of Mariel Harbor. Flashbacks and the haunting rush of dej vu: You have been here before, MacMorgan, for now and all time because this is what you do best and, deep in your brain, love most-the stalking of an enemy, like all warriors before and those to come. . . .

I forced my mind clear. I was getting sloppy, letting my thoughts rove. I had been lucky so far. Everything had gone smoothly. Almost frighteningly smoothly.

I had worked my way cross-country from the tidal creek where Sniper was hidden to the backside of the peninsula with the little military outpost and amphibious landing strip and air tower. From a clump of bushes I had watched the soldiers walk the beach, ducking back into my cover with every sweep of the big searchlight. The beach was well fortified with bunkers and machine guns-but they didn't expect an attack from the mainland.

And so it was easy for me.

I had moved undetected through the rear of the encampment. Was close enough to one barracks to watch the off-duty soldiers laughing and smoking within the lighted window, planted quarter blocks of the RDX well behind the barracks, then added a half block at the foundation of the squat blue air tower. No ma.s.s slaughter, this-just enough explosives to bring the control tower toppling and to turn the night sky to bright day, but not close enough to do more than throw the soldiers unhurt from their bunks.

I had no desire-or reason-to kill hundreds. Just wanted to get their attention so I could steal the lady back. But if someone got in my way . . .

So I had moved south through the night, down the west coast of the harbor. The American boats of the Freedom Flotilla rested at calm anchor, throwing white starpaths across the water with their cabin lights. Two thousand boats filled with desperate waiting people, ironically serene in the harbor-none of them knowing what was about to happen.

The marshland broke into firmer slough, and I made my way through the chest-high gra.s.s to the embankment where the dirt road began its twisting run up the cliff to the Naval Academy. I saw the flickering light of an approaching motorcycle and dove back into the gra.s.s until the rider was well out of sight.

The road would be the quickest route, but probably the most dangerous. So I hustled across the road and . . . and stopped dead in my tracks. I hadn't seen the soldier in the shadows by the tree. He was doing something. And then I realized: urinating. So I was right-the road was guarded. I dropped down onto my belly, feeling warm ditchwater seep through the wool watch sweater. He zipped up his pants, turned toward me. And just as I was about to rush him, cold steel of Randall attack-survival knife a good weight in right hand, the guard suddenly yelled and jumped back. I ducked at the first explosion of his automatic rifle, knowing that I had been seen and that I was a dead man. But the fire stopped abruptly. I watched the guard switch on a flashlight, reach down, and pick up a water moccasin as thick as my arm. Down the road, other guards were yelling, asking just what in the h.e.l.l was going on. The soldier with the snake went lumbering down the road to show them.

I had no choice now. The dark thrust of wilderness before me was the only safe way to the stone castle atop the cliff. So climb it, MacMorgan. Hear the tranquil irony of owls calling and c.o.o.ns foraging through the brush while you pull yourself from tree to tree on a quarter-mile forty-degree grade and hope the woman is up there as she is supposed to be, and hope the dragon is somewhere nearby. . . .

Captain Lobo hadn't lied about the cottage. It was made of wood and roofed with tile, and it was very pleasant indeed. It was located in a clearing with other cottages-all billets, probably, for the Naval Academy students. But strangely, all the other cottages were empty, dark. It didn't make any sense. I rested in a clump of bamboo thinking. Too little sign of students, and a d.a.m.n sight too many guards around the four-story stone block hulk of Academy. Maybe they had evacuated the students because of the influx of Americans to Mariel. But why?

Why . . .

Things had gone too smoothly. Emerson wrote about the one perfect law: compensation. Now the scale would swing back, because this part of my little journey would be deadly as h.e.l.l. Twice I had almost been detected by guards on my approach to the string of cottages. One soldier had stood close enough for me to smell the sweat on his shirt. I could have killed either of them, but that would have ruined everything. I wasn't ready. Not yet.

I stayed in the shadows pulling myself along on my belly. Below, the searchlight from Pier Three scanned back and forth, painting the boats and the harbor in a stark white light. I took a final look through the window of the cottage and saw what I had hoped to see: Androsa Santarun, looking oddly more beautiful for her weariness, sitting in a straight-back chair leafing through a magazine. Captain Zapata sat across from her, AK-47 on his thin legs, watching her with a leer of unmistakable intent in his eyes. The ma.s.sive bulk of General Halcn paced back and forth across the bare wooden floor, chain-smoking.

Hang on, good lady. It'll take me about twenty minutes to get everything set. And when I get back, Zapata and Halcn are going to get the Cobra crossbow cure for insomnia.

I worked my way to the drive which led down to the road. I RDX'ed the poles holding power terminals, located the three droplines which ran to telephones within the academy, and carefully cut one side of each line. If there was an incoming call, people inside could hear-but not be heard. And they could call out-but not be heard. Nothing suspicious about that. Phone trouble is the common complaint of the world. The main radio tower for the academy was down the road and up a bluff. I went unbothered cross country and taped the final half block of the explosive to that.

Okay, Halcn, it's show time, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Your people killed one very fine Irishman, and now you've stolen one of the bravest and most beautiful women I have known. It's show time, Halcn, and you're the main attraction.

I waited a long time before crawling across the clearing to the cottage again. One hundred yards away, I could see the dim shapes of the guards moving about the perimeter of the stone academy. Small orange eyes of their cigarettes glowed occasionally in the darkness. A broad third-floor window was lighted. Music filtered from it: the intricate intersectings of a J.S. Bach fugue, the harpsicord music seeming incongruous with the setting. A brown shade was pulled the length of the window, and against that scrim two men stood in silhouette.

And when I saw the silhouettes, I stopped. Electrified.

Jesus Christ, MacMorgan, you may have bought it this time. Some great timing, buddy. Some perfect night to try to bust up Mariel Harbor. . . .

My breath coming harsh and shallow, I watched the two men against the backlighted window. Even at that distance their silhouettes were unmistakable. One was the Hitchc.o.c.k-like ma.s.s of General Halcn. He had obviously left the cottage and gone into the academy while I made my rounds. His head was bowed slightly, jowls hanging. He said nothing, only shrugged occasionally. The other man was doing all the talking. He had a long ragged beard like some dark prophet. Surprisingly, he did not wear the familiar field cap. But the long Cohiva cigar was there, and he used it to gesture as he spoke with great animation.

It was Fidel Castro.

As if in a trance, I felt my hands remove the sling of the Cobra crossbow. I mounted one of the aluminum shafts with the triangular killing point, then used the self-c.o.c.king slide to arm it. With deadly calm hands, I lined up the custom-built sights on the expanse of window, zeroing in on the dot between head and beard. If I pulled the trigger, the arrow would cover the hundred-yard distance in just under one second. It would burst through the gla.s.s like a .357 slug through tissue paper, and probably exit on the other side of Castro's temple.

But I didn't pull the trigger.

I couldn't. It was just the childish termination of the hunter sighting the forbidden game; the culmination of some macabre force within me that demanded all but the final step. And I thought: If I were any one of two million Cuban-Americans-or any one of seventy percent of your own people-you would be dead right now. And if it weren't for ten thousand Americans sitting down there in that harbor you might be dead anyway.

A sound nearby made me lower the crossbow-a heavy rustle of bushes between me, and the window where the dictator still lectured Halcn. I watched the bushes tremble slightly, then stop. I waited, wondering if a guard and a machine gun might be positioned within the clump of foliage.

But then I could wait no more.

I had to move and move fast. I knew my plan was sound. There would be no trouble killing the woman's guard-or guards-quickly and noiselessly. And with the RDX planted at broad intervals around the southern mainland perimeter of the harbor, the ma.s.sive series of explosions would draw most-if not all-soldiers and armaments outward, leaving us a clear escape route across the harbor. And once the blast went off, the Naval Academy would be without lights or radio communication. And you could bet, with Castro there, the whole d.a.m.n Cuban army would be moving in to defend it like hornets heading for a trampled nest.

So I crawled on hands and belly, crossbow ready, along the hedge of the cottage. Carefully, I edged one eye over the ledge of window-and saw nothing. Staying in the shadows, I moved around to the door, cracked it, then swung it open.

The woman was gone, all right.

But her guard wasn't.

Poor Captain Zapata had suffered the final indignity. He lay bleeding on the floor, horribly cut. Androsa's blouse rested in shreds upon the bed. A chair was overturned. The scenario became grimly clear: a beautiful woman alone with the scorned soldier, so he had tried to take her. And she had been lucky enough to find a way to fight back-his own knife, probably. So she had ruined him; killed him as he deserved to be killed, took his rifle and escaped. . . .

Took his rifle.

And suddenly the realization of what she would do next moved through me like a drug. The rustling in the bushes . . . and her promise to atone for the death of her brother, the murder of the three CIA agents, and her two years as a double agent. I didn't wait to move cautiously now. I threw myself away from the corpse of Zapata and the cottage, running fast, running low, headed for the clump of bushes which I knew sheltered Androsa Santarun.

But I was too late.

Just as I was about to dive for her, the AK-47 rattled orange flame, and beyond the window, the ma.s.sive head of General Halcn disappeared like a bad dream while the silhouette of the dictator hesitated, then dove to safety.

I heard the screams of the guards and the sound of heavy footsteps running. I pulled her roughly out of the bushes. She was crying, sobbing hysterically.

"Androsa, Androsa, are you hurt . . . ?"

The guards were coming closer now. Somewhere someone fired wildly into the night.

"Androsa, are you all right?"

"I couldn't do it, Dusky, I couldn't. I had the gun on him but I couldn't-"

"Androsa, dammit, you did do it-Halcn's dead. Now we have to get the h.e.l.l out of here."

Lights flared on all across the clearing. A guard running toward the cottage saw us, stopped, then swiveled to fire. I shoved myself down on top of her and took him cleanly with the Cobra, one gleaming arrow through the chest.

More soldiers were coming now. A siren blared. I took the remote-control detonator from my pocket and thumped back the cover.

It was now or never. I pulled Androsa down behind me into the cover of the wilderness mountainside. My foot hit something in the darkness and we both went tumbling into the safety of a gulley. Her face was hot and wet as I pulled her close against my chest. Still she sobbed, pouring out some strange confession that I couldn't quite comprehend and, finally, couldn't let myself believe.

". . . I . . . I wanted to kill him so badly, but back on the Isla de Pinos, when he was hiding in the mountains there-"

There was more gunfire now; soldiers shooting wildly. The place was getting hot as h.e.l.l.

"Dammit, Androsa," I whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "don't you think I've figured it out by now? The letter you left me was the final tip off; General Halcn was your father. So you killed him. He was one evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and now they're trying to kill us so stop that crying-"

"No!" There was a strange hysteria in her voice now. She took my face between her soft hands, peering at me in the darkness, making me listen to the unbelievable. "No, Dusky. You are so wrong. It is worse, much worse. It was not Halcn. No, I'm glad he is dead. But it is the other I should have killed. But I couldn't! Dusky, Fidel Castro is my father! It is him I should have killed. . . ."

Too preoccupied to be shocked, I punched the b.u.t.ton of the detonator roughly.

And that's when all h.e.l.l broke loose. . . .

18.

The bonefish moved over the flats in shafts of gray light, and the bottom was turtle gra.s.s and white sand and you could see the shadows of the fish as they traveled over the bottom in the clear water.

I stood at the window of my stilthouse watching them as they turned as one, slowed, then vectored to feed, throwing their milky wake. It was a gla.s.sy day in the decline of May; the expanse of shallow water moved away from my stilthouse swollen and metallic, shimmering in the distance with the quality of mirage.

"So who came out in the cruiser with you?"

I turned from the window and looked at Norm Fizer. His briefcase was on the table, papers spread before him. I tried to remember the last time I had seen him wearing something other than a suit-let alone something so casual as the brown tennis shorts and Bjorn Borg slipover shirt he wore now. Saigon, I decided. A rare day, that.

"Norm," I said, "I asked you who you brought out in the cruiser-"

"Dammit, Dusky, I know what you asked me." He smacked his pen down on the table in bad imitation of someone who is supposed to be mad. "I know because it's the third time you've asked me, and for the third time you'll find out when I get this d.a.m.n report of yours straightened out-and I still can't figure out how you knew I brought someone out here with me."

I wagged my finger at him like a tolerant instructor. "Can't fool a fool, Stormin' Norman. Even tied to my stilthouse the way it is, the trim keeps shifting. Not much, but enough to tell me that Navy launch is either haunted or there's someone else with you."

"Okay," he said, frustrated. "I brought you a little surprise. Ever since you got back from Cuba you've been mooning around like some lovesick kid, and I decided to bring you a little something to cheer you up. You refused to let us fly you to the clinic in Washington, so I decided that to preserve your mental health I had to do something."

I crossed the plank floor of the stilthouse, yanked open the door of the gas fridge, got out two cold bottles of beer, and hunted for the opener. "Hey, you've dealt with those military headshrinkers before. They only want to know two things: why you hated your father, and the size of your . . . well, you know what. If that's a.n.a.lysis I can do without it."