Under Siege (26 page)

Oh God, he was sick. Every now and then he could hear the Cubans on the bridge laughing. He didn’t care. He didn’t care if he died here and now. Nothing was worth this.

Once he heard a plane. A jet. Oh, to be up there, sitting in a comfortable, stable seat, one that didn’t bob and roll and go endlessly up and down, up and down….

Since there was absolutely nothing in his stomach at this stage, he merely curled into the fetal position and retched until he gagged, then retched some more.

He resolved never again to travel by water, anywhere. To never again set foot on boat, ship, ferry, scow, schooner, sloop, anything that floated. If he couldn’t go by air or rail, he wouldn’t go. When Jack Yocke finally felt better it was after twelve o’clock on his watch. He sat and stared at the sea. The visibility had improved-maybe three or four miles-and the clouds were broken, with sunlight shining through in places, making the sea a brilliant blue. The sunlight on the sera hurt his eyes. He got up and staggered along the deck edge, holding on like grim death, to the bridge area. How had he managed to get to the forward deck when he was so sick?

“DT-INK this. It’s water,” Santana said, and he obeyed.

His stomach was still queasy, but nowhere near as bad as it had been.

Fbr the first time he seriously examined his companions, of whom five were visible above decks. Santana, the two from yesterday-Jesfis Ruiz and Tom Garcfa-and two more whose-names he never learned. Ruiz was the helmsman while Garcfa spent his time listening to a shortwave radio. Yocke got a chance to observe Garcia closely for several minutes, and he seemed to be monitoring the VHF band. Santana saw him looking over Garcia’s shoulder. “That jet two hours ago was U.s. Coast Guard. They saw us with their radar but never got a visual identification. They reported our position, course, and speed to their headquarters in Miami, which presumably passed it to the two cutters that are somewhere out here.”

“Where?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Did we change course after the jet passed?”

“Yes. We are now headed northeast, toward Andros Island.”

“What are we worried about? We’re just out here fishing.”

“Fishing,” Santana agreed. Automatically he checked the rods and the angle of the lines. “No luck, huh?” Yocke said, also looking.

“We had a tuna strike this morning, while you were sick. I had them take the baits off. We are just trolling bare hooks.”

“Maybe we should try to catch something.”

“We don’t have the fuel to waste on a fight. And the fish would be killed for no reason. That,” Hector Santana added with a glance at the reporter, “would be a sin.” Jack Yocke listened to the news, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English from a U.s. station, and watched the men. He avoided drawing them inffconversation, and none of them except Santana approached him to talk.

All afternoon the Cubans huddled near the radio and chafed, each man in his own way. The revolution was in full

ng, people they knew and cared deeply for were risking ng, including their lives, yet here they sat on a boat on a vast, empty sea, going nowhere at three knots.

Yocke was as impatient as the rest. He reminded himself that his interest was strictly professional. Well, sporting too, in that he was rooting hard for the underdogs, yet somehow this thought tweaked from him a pang of guilt, which annoyed him. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t a Cuban or that Cuba had become a poor, starving bucolic workers’paradise under the magnificent benevolence of the “maximum leader.” For thirty-one years Fidel Castro had been the Cuban saint, a sugarcane version of George Washington, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and St. Paul, togged out in army fatipes and spouting revolutionary bullshit that the vast majority of Cubans believed or at least tolerated. It wasn’t until the Soviets had cut them off the dole and starvation threatened that the Cuban people had finally held up a yardstick to see how tall Fidel really was.

Yocke vomited again in late afternoon, but afterward the queasiness seemed to leave him. Weak and dehydrated, he still felt better.

As evening came the visibility lifted significantly. Just before dark Yocke could see land off to the northeast and east, a dark line on the horizon perhaps ten miles away. It was difficult to judge and he didn’t ask. As the light faded the two men on the fantail reeled in the fishing lines and stowed the rods.

When the night enclosed them completely and the only lights in the universewere the red glow from the binnacle and chart table, Santana spoke to the helmsman. He spun the wheel and pushed the twin throttles forward. The fantail descended and the how rose as the screws bit into the sea. With Santana bending over the chart and Ruiz at the helm, the boat glided through the night. Garcfa played with the Loran and the other two acted as lookouts.

Yocke stood on the left rear corner of the bridge, out of whispered earshot and out of the way, and watched. He was the first to see the weak flashes of light off in the darkness a

HWO to the left of their course, and pointed them out to Santana.

Ruiz cut the throttle. The boat rose and fell gently on the swell, enveloped by darkness. Santana pointed a flashlight with a cone of paper taped around the head in the direction of the first light and keyed it several times. At the answering light, Ruiz advanced the throttles.

After five minutes or so and another hurried conference over the chart, the Cubans killed the engine. One man went forward to lower the anchor. Rocking in the night, they waited. Jack Yocke could just faintly hear breakers crashing on a beach. Or perhaps

against rocks.

Santana came over for a moment beside him. “Be very quiet. Stay here on the bridge,” he whispered. “If there is any trouble, lie down and do not move.” To reinforce his message, he tapped the reporter’s arm gently with a revolver.

Yocke looked. Garcia came up from below decks with a rifle of some kind. He moved forward of the bridge. The man on the fantail also had a rifle or perhaps a submachine It was very difficult for Yocke to see clearly in the gun. haphazard starlight coming through gaps in the cloud cover overhead.

Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. Ruiz muttered something in Spanish to Santana about the time.

Yocke didn’t realize they had company until the other boat bumped against theirs. Other men came aboard. After a quick conference on the fantail, everyone except Ruiz went to the fantail to help.

The job took about fifteen minutes, as close as Yocke could tell. Box after heavy box was handed from the smaller boat to this one, then carefully carried below. Over thirty boxes, perhaps three dozen.

Then the other boat was pushed away into the darkness. Ruiz started his engines, waited just a moment to ensure that the other boat would drift clear, then engaged the screws and advanced the throttles. He brought them up slowly and steadily as the speed built until the two throttles

were against the forward stops and the how was leaping swells and whacking into others. Yocke found a handho After a while Santana and the others came up from be and stood joking and laughing on the bridge. They were in a jovial mood. They passed a bottle around, then Santana brought it over to where Yocke sat and offered him a swig.

Yocke declined. “My stomach.”

“I understand. Perhaps when we reach Cuba.”

“What do you guys have in those boxes?”

“You don’t really want to know. You’re just an uninvited hitchhiker, remember?”

“Amazing how your accent goes and comes.”

“Accents are useful. They are like clothes. One dresses the part. Always.”

“Watching you load those boxes, I finally realized how big a fool I’ve been.”

Santana tilted the bottle. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Well, perhaps. If so, that is progress. Most fools live their entire lives without ever knowing wisdom.” He belched. “I think there’s one swallow left. You never know it might be your very last.” Yocke took the bottle and drained it. The rum burned all the way down. He wound up and threw the bottle as far out into the wake as he could. He didn’t see it splash.

“None of us ever know, do we?”

“That is right,” Santana agreed cheerfully enough and left him to examine the chart and fiddle with the Loran and confer in a low voice with Ruiz and Garcia.

In a few minutes Garcia made himself comfortable across from Yocke. He still had the rifle. He rested it across his knees. The hours passed. Sometimes the ride would grow rougher or smoother for a time, but the throttles stayed against the stops. Ruiz worked the helm only to hold his course. He did have to work at it. After a few hours Santana relieved him and he went below. Garcia smoked cigarettes and never moved.

When Ruiz came back on deck at midnight, Yocke asked

if he could go below and get his gear. Santana got it him. Yocke donned a sweatshirt and pulled a sweater over it.

the vinyl bag for a pillow, he stretched out on the deck.

When he awoke he was aware that the boat was not rolling as before. She was now moving directly across the swells and pitching heavily, the engine still at full cry.

All the men were on deck, looking away to port. Yocke joined them and peered into the darkness. Beside him Garcia pointed.

A white masthead light was just visible, another light under it. “Cuban patrol boat.”

“Has he seen us?”

“Si. I think so.”

Yocke moved over to where Santana stood, beside the helmsman. He was looking at the chart.

“Where are we?”

“Here.” Santana jabbed with his finger. The spot he indicated was ten miles or so north of the Cuban coast. “The patrol boat has us on radar.”

“You could run east away from him.”

“No. We have been picking up radar signals from the east. There is a patrol boat over there too, though farther away. We were trying to go between them.”

“You have a radar detector?”

“Yes. One of your American ones for detecting police radar. We have modified it to receive different frequencies. It works quite well.”

“So what are you going to do?” Yocke looked again at the lights on the horizon. Was the Cuban boat visibly closer or was that his imagination?

“We can try for shallow water. We don’t have many options.”

“You could turn around and go north.” Santana was looking at the chart. “Surely that’s better than getting killed?”

“Go sit down. Stay out of the way.”

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Yocke didn’t have to be told twice.

After a quick conference around the helm, everyone Santana went below. He took the wheel.

Yocke was watching the fights, which were truly closer, when he saw the flash. Santana saw it too and spun the wheel. The nose of the boat slewed to port. Yocke heard the rumble as the shot went over and, after a moment, the splash. Then, finally, he heard the boom of the shot.

Santana spun the wheel again, turning starboard, then steadied up after thirty degrees or so of heading change. The next shot was short, though much closer.

The stars seemed to be brighter. Yocke checked his watch. A few minutes after five a.m. He looked down toward the south. Lights. Towns, perhaps. Or villages. Cuba. God, it would be a long swim! And sharks-these waters were full of sharks.

He was thinking of sharks and wondering about the current war saw the third The gunboat was definitely closer. This time the shot fell just in front of the how.

“The next one’ll be the charm,” Yocke said loudly enough for Santana to hear. “Pray,” was the response.

The other Cubans rushed up from below. Two of them went forward and two settled on the port side of the bridge. They each had a dark pipe on their shoulder, something like a World War II bazooka. “Get over here, Yocke! By me!” Santana ordered. “Ready?” Santana shouted.

“to St. Adelante!”

Santana spun the wheel and the boat heeled to starboard as her nose came port. She had completed fortyfive degrees or so of heading change when the gunboat fired again. Santana held in his turn until he was heading only ten or fifteen degrees south of the gunboat, running toward her at full throttle. “Not yet,” he shouted.

The swells were smaller and farther apart here in the lee of Cuba and the boat rode more steadily on the step. Jack Yocke peered through the bridge glass trying to

estimate the distance. Ahead of him, on the deck, the two men lay prone, on their elbows, each with a tube across his shoulder and pointed toward the charging gunboat.

The gunboat fired again. Santana swerved port, bringing the gunboat dead onto the nose. Just when Yocke concluded the Cuban Navy had again missed, the platform above the bridge exploded, showering the fantail with debris.

Santana chopped the throttle and slammed the transmission into neutral.

“They’re gonna hit us with the next one,” Yocke shouted. dis.everybody down. Take covert”

“They’ll kill us,” Yocke shouted at Santana, infuriated at the man’s composure. “They’re not in range yet.”

“Oh, damn,” Yocke muttered, and got facedown on the floor.

The seconds passed. Miraculously, the next explosion didn’t come. Yocke lay on his belly waiting, sweating profusely, and when it finally seemed that the shooting was over, he got up on his knee for a look. The gunboat was closer, much closer.

Another flash. This time the bridge glass to Yocke’s right exploded. He felt the sting of something hitting his face and instinctively raised his arm.

“Fire!” Santana shouted.

One of the men behind fired first. A whooshing crack and a great flash of light and the rocket shot forward, illuminating tilde the surface of the black sea with the fire from its exhaust. Then the man beside him fired. Another report and flash. The men up forward fired no more than a second apart. Half blinded by the flashes, Jack Yocke tried to look anyway. One of the missiles hit a swell and detonated. Well short Another hit the gunboat with a flash. A second impacted almost in the same place. The fourth must have missed.

Yocke turned. The two men behind him were going down the ladder, heading below. Santana shoved the transmission lever forward and firewalled the throttle. As the stern bit into the sea he cranked the helm over.