Dusky MacMorgan: Cuban Death-Lift Part 7

"You had your chance to make it. Besides, I like it terrible. It keeps me awake."

She tasted the coffee again, adjusting to the strength of it. "I guess you did have a long night. Was there any trouble?"

"Staying awake was the toughest thing, like I said. A lot of distress calls on VHF-mostly in Spanish. So I played a little game to keep my mind on what I was doing. You know how a kid counts telephone poles on a long car trip? Well, I counted boats. One way or another, we pa.s.sed two hundred and fiftyseven. Busy night."

"And how far are we now from Mariel Harbor?"

"Mile and a half, two miles. It won't be long."

She strolled around the aft deck, stretching, combing through her long black hair with her fingers. "Dusky," she said, "what kind of boat is that back there, right behind us?"

I didn't even turn around. "Him? Oh, he's been tailing us ever since we got into Cuban waters. It's a gunboat. A Cuban gunboat."

The bitterness in her voice was like a living thing. "You're wrong about that, Mr. MacMorgan. It's not a Cuban gunboat. It's a Castro gunboat. Believe me, there's a difference. . . ."

8.

The gunboat trailed us on toward the mouth of Mariel Harbor, keeping a discreet distance. In the fresh daylight, we moved over the black water past wooden swordfishing boats, their orange bouys marking miles of line-and their spritsail masts probably doubling as radio transmitters.

Abruptly, the water changed; the bottom came up from six hundred fathoms to fifteen fathoms, the hue of the sea was a soft blue jell, and you could see big fish moving among the safety of coral heads below, and the white sand, flourlike, on the bottom. From the flybridge, the water was like tinted gla.s.s and it seemed as if we were aviators at a dreamy low alt.i.tude, and the shadow of Sniper pressed on before us, cloudlike on the white sand.

The first view of Mariel Harbor is the picture of industry: a dozen smokestacks, a power plant, and a cement factory beneath scarred hillsides on the eastern edge of the entrance. Khaki-colored dumptrucks rumbled along dirt roads barely slowing for muledrawn carts. And from my vantage point a half mile out to sea they looked like toys, and the exhaust from the factory stacks curved away with the wind and blended with the low mountain clouds.

"Have you ever been here before-to Mariel?"

The woman stood beside me, her eyes taking in everything as we approached. I had dropped Sniper down to twelve hundred RPM, lining her up with the middle channel marker, taking her in slow.

Behind us, the gunboat slowed also.

"When I was a child, yes," she said. "My father brought me here. The power plant was not built then. And the cliffs were covered with trees."

"It must have been pretty."

She nodded. "But not as pretty as other parts of Cuba."

"I've never been here, but when I was a boy I had a friend who was a very fine writer, and he told me about Mariel. He said they used to smuggle Chinese out of this harbor. One his friends lost an arm here. He didn't say how."

Her thin laughter was edged with bitterness. "So now Mariel is for smuggling Cubans. Let's hope we both keep our arms."

The entranceway to the harbor was narrow, less than a quarter mile wide, and a half-dozen American boats-cruisers, shrimp boats, and a couple of small skiffs-were anch.o.r.ed off the entrance in the clear water. The crews and the Cuban-Americans who had come to claim relatives were all topside in the sun, lounging and smoking nervously. It was a running tide, outgoing, and empty c.o.ke cans and garbage bags and wine bottles flowed out to sea. A narrow paw of beach curved around on the west side of the entrance furred with tall casuarinas, which blocked our view of the harbor proper. But even above the pines I could see the masts and rigging of a thousand boats-with untold more blending into the distance.

They were all there from America.

All waiting to load with refugees and relatives.

No wonder Castro was making a half million or more a day.

I pulled downtide of one of the shrimp boats, the Debra Jane, and stuck both engines in idle when we were close enough to carry on a conversation.

I scanned the shrimp boat's decks for someone who looked as if he might speak English. There were six or seven people topside, all Cuban-Americans.

I turned to the woman. "Ask them why they're laying off. Ask them if we shouldn't go on into the harbor."

Androsa cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled at them in a firm Spanish alto. Immediately, everyone on deck of the Debra Jane was answering her one question in a barrage of rolling dialogue, everyone talking at once.

When they had finished, she said, "We're supposed to wait here for the authorities."

"Ah."

"Don't think I don't recognize that look on your face, Mr. MacMorgan. You think it funny that 'Cubans' love to talk. And you think it's stupid that the people on that boat should take so long to give me a simple answer to a simple question."

"Something like that."

"Oh, so you admit it!" She really was surprised, and the anger left her face momentarily.

"I try to make it a point not to lie to myself. That means I only lie to myself about half the time. But as you said: you asked them a simple question. I just don't understand why Spanish people all feel obliged to talk at the same time."

"It offends you?"

"It confuses me-and I guess that's the same thing."

"It's called 'different cultures,' Mr. MacMorgan. Our society is built upon the family, and our families are built upon warmth and loyalty-and interaction. Everyone feels free to talk because we are all members of the same family." She snorted lightly, her perfect nose flaring. "Truthfully, I don't even know why I feel obligated to explain it to you. I've seen the look in your eyes from a thousand different gringos. When you grow up as an outsider in America, you come to know the look of a racist."

"So now I'm a racist?"

"Aren't you?"

"If not liking a bunch of people to talk all at the same time is being a racist, then I'm a-"

I didn't get a chance to finish, and the woman didn't get a chance to get any madder. The gunboat that had been trailing us came up close on Sniper's stern, and an authoritative voice said something over a loudspeaker.

"What did he say?"

She looked smug. "Something that will appeal to the verbal economy your race seems to cherish."

"Christ, Androsa, you know how to run a thing into the ground. I understood what he said about anchoring. But I didn't get the rest of it."

The gunboat was a storm-gray cruiser, made of wood-smaller than the old PT boats. What appeared to be the captain stood beside the bow-mounted high-caliber machine gun. He wore a baggy light-blue uniform that looked like a chef's suit. His hat was light-blue, peaked and narrow, similar to the hats j.a.panese soldiers used to wear. He looked at me menacingly.

Androsa said, "He told you to back off and anchor immediately."

"That's all?"

"He also said we should prepare to be boarded. . . ."

We were boarded not by one captain, but two.

There was the naval officer, master of the gunboat. His name was Zapata. Captain Zapata was in his early thirties, all five feet eight inches and 145 pounds of him. He had bad teeth and a fixed expression of contempt, and he chain-smoked Partagas cigarettes. His flunkies stayed behind on the gunboat, their uniforms looking even baggier. But in their arms they cradled a weapon that I knew well: the scythe-clipped Russian AK-47 a.s.sault rifle.

And they looked as if they knew how to use them.

With Zapata was an army officer. His uniform seemed well-tailored in comparison. It was more green than khaki, and the jacket was belted with leather, shoulder and waist. He wore a sidearm and medals. I wondered if they had been one of Castro's token offerings after the revolution-or maybe he had won them in Africa.

A lot of Cuban soldiers were in Africa.

The Russians use them like German shepherds.

So they both came aboard, Zapata first, the army officer-with the unlikely name of Captain Lobo-second. Lobo was a stocky guy, something under six feet, 240 pounds maybe. Some muscle. A lot of fat. Black shadow of beard, and black eyes that betrayed the malevolence behind the cordial smile.

Some pair, Zapata and Lobo. Zapata swaggered his air of contempt up onto the aft deck of Sniper, and Lobo grinned his way up behind.

First impressions can fool you. I stood there loose-limbed, taking them all in, trying to smile and look harmless myself. It seemed certain that Zapata would be the one in charge.

But no, it was the grinning one.

It was Lobo. Zapata looked me up and down, his bad teeth slightly bared, and started to say something-but Lobo cut him off.

There was no doubt then who was running the show.

Lobo widened his smile, took a step closer to me, gave me the standard Spanish greeting, then asked, "De donde es usted, Capitn?"

He wanted to know where I was from. I looked at him blankly, shrugged my shoulders, and gestured with palm upward and turned to the woman.

"I never could understand that stuff," I said stupidly.

Her eyes showed that she wasn't fooled. "What a shame, Mr. MacMorgan. It must be dreary down there in your little crevice of existence." And without waiting for a reply-as if I had one for that-she took control of our end, talking with the two Cubans.

They wanted to see my papers. And her papers. And wouldn't we be more comfortable in the cabin with something cool to drink?

So we filed through the salon and took a seat at the little booth made of the old hatch cover, sanded silk-smooth and covered with epoxy.

My old friend Billy Mack had made it for me. But now that seemed like a long time ago.

Androsa and I sat on one side; Zapata sat scrunched between the cabin wall and the bulk of Lobo. Lobo seemed pleased to be dealing with the woman. And no wonder why. The essence of her filled the cabin. Even Zapata felt obligated to take off his little j.a.p hat in her presence. While Lobo talked, his black eyes leering, Zapata sat and smoked and looked at Androsa.

She didn't seem to notice.

Typically, it was a long conversation-was I her husband (a stern "no" to that), and how was our trip over, and how many relatives did she seek. At one point, Androsa turned to me, the old aloofness in her eyes.

"Our guests would like something to drink," she said.

"I don't think the wine has properly chilled yet."

She glared at me. "This is neither the time nor the place for your perverse sense of humor, MacMorgan."

Angry, her E's and A's became Spanish once more.

"It's just that you're so pretty when you're mad."

She turned away as if I had said nothing. Only the slightest blush gave her away.

In the galley, I got two Hatuey beers from the icebox, cracked them, and poured them heady into three gla.s.ses. And then I took a bottle for myself back to the booth. While Lobo gulped his beer down and Zapata sipped suspiciously at his, I took out my tin of snuff, opened it, sniffed it, and took a pinch with some ceremony. All the while, thinking: That's right, MacMorgan. Play the jerk. Go ahead and make these guys mad so they'll send you back to home sweet Key West. Screw up this woman's chances of doing whatever it is she's supposed to do because . . . because why?

I didn't know. After all, it was her life. And if she wanted to stake herself out like a lamb on a lion hunt, it was no concern of mine. She wasn't exactly what you would call a sympathetic character; not the kind of woman I wanted to share my boat with, or my meals with-or my bed with.

Who are you trying to kid, MacMorgan? You're supposed to like the strong ones, the independent ones. And who in the h.e.l.l have you met lately stronger or more self-reliant than her?

Zapata jerked me out of my little daydream.

He was making a face, acting as if the beer were laced with Tabasco.

"What's his problem?"

Androsa answered without looking away. "He says this American beer is terrible. He says it's swill that isn't fit for the pigs."

Silently, I got up and returned to the table with the empty bottle of Hatuey and placed it in front of him. His eyes widened, his face turned red. The beer he had said that wasn't fit for pigs was brewed only twentyseven miles away in Havana. If I had slapped him across the face I couldn't have gotten a better reaction.

"MacMorgan, do you realize-"

I b.u.mped her beneath the table with my knee. "Tell him that it's my fault. Tell him I was a fool and left it out in the sun. And tell him that everyone knows that Hatuey is one of the world's great beers."

When she got out that bit of dialogue, Zapata almost smiled, bobbing his head up and down-as if he had known all along.

"He says he'd like to try some American cigarettes-just to get the taste of bad beer out of his mouth."

The skinny little Cuban officer in the baggy blue uniform looked at me expectantly.

"I don't smoke. Do you?"

She shook her head. I still had the tin of Copenhagen in my hand. In awkward sign language, I offered him a dip of the snuff instead. He looked at Lobo, and when Lobo nodded his head, Zapata stuck a glob between his lip and bad teeth. He clicked his tongue experimentally, then eyed the ceiling, tasting the snuff.

For the new snuff dipper, there's a little matter of needing to expectorate.

A lot.

But Zapata didn't ask for a spit cup and I didn't offer. After all, they were running the show.

It was all of five minutes before the Copenhagen finally got to him. Lobo had asked Androsa for a list (in triplicate) of the relatives she wanted to take back to America. The list had to include their Cuban address and proof that they were related to Androsa.

I slid out of the booth so that she could get her papers from her bunk. And when I did, I got a good look at poor Captain Zapata. His face was red, and there was sweat on his forehead. He had sagged down into his seat, and he kept closing and opening his eyes. His Adam's apple was undulating strangely. To verify my own high regard for snuff-but more to demonstrate my innocence in the upcoming upheaval-I took out the tin of Copenhagen again and, with more ceremony, took an even larger pinch, smacking my lips.

"Next thing to mother's milk," I said loudly, offering the can to Captain Lobo. He shook his head absently. He was watching his companion closely. Zapata's head lolled back, and he closed his eyes tight as if the boat was spinning. And then, abruptly, he jumped to his feet and, knocking the considerable bulk of Lobo to one side, ran up the steps to the fighting deck as if he had important business.