Nelson DeMille - The Cuban Affair

Sara screamed, then dropped into the stairwell, but she didn’t appear to be hit. I caught a brief glimpse of Felipe and he was still firing. Sara was sitting on the steps now, slamming a fresh magazine into the Glock. She stood and emptied her second magazine at the looming ship.

The next burst of machine-gun tracers went high, not because the Zhuk’s bow rose, but because that’s where the gunner was aiming, so he must have caught sight of Jack in the tuna tower.

We were on a collision course, and the collision was going to happen within the next ten seconds, and I knew I wasn’t going to change course because The Maine and everyone on her were as good as dead anyway. So he was going to change course, and all I had to do was wait to see if he was going to break to port or starboard.

We were within fifty yards of each other now and I could actually see the windows on the high bridge where the captain was either at the helm or giving orders to the helmsman. Easy shot if I had a rifle. But I didn’t, and I didn’t hear Jack’s AR-15. I did, however, hear the twin machine guns open up, but The Maine was so close to the Zhuk and his forward deck was so high that the gunner had to depress his barrels to the max to get a burst off, and the tracers streaked over the cabin and impacted on the rear deck. And that was his last shot at me because the Zhuk suddenly veered hard to port to avoid a collision, and I caught a glimpse of his twin machine guns as the gunner swung them to starboard to try to get a burst off, but I was moving fast along the starboard side of the 80-foot Zhuk, so close that I could see men on deck.

Just as I reached the stern of the ship, I cut hard to starboard, directly into his wake, which sent The Maine airborne, and when we came down it felt like we’d hit a brick wall and The Maine bounced wildly. The rear gunner was either not at his station, or if he was he didn’t know what was happening or it was happening too fast for him to react, and his stern swung to starboard, away from me, as the Zhuk continued its swing to port.

The Maine was more maneuverable than the bigger ship, and I cut hard to port so that my stern was lined up amidship to the Zhuk, and moving away from him. His forward- and aft-mounted guns could swing only one hundred and eighty degrees, so there was a blind spot about forty feet wide at his midship point, and I kept glancing over my shoulder, trying to stay perpendicular to him as he continued into his port turn. The Zhuk’s crew, however, armed with AK-47s, had no blind spot and I could see muzzle flashes from the forward and aft decks, but the tracers were going wild as the oncoming waves started to slam against the starboard side of the Zhuk. The captain changed course to get his stern lined up so that his rear gunner had a shot at me, but I changed course to keep that from happening, and it was a little like a dog chasing its tail except that the tail — me — was getting some distance from the dog’s teeth.

He finally gave up on trying to outmaneuver me, and came around hard so that he was now following me as I took a direct northerly heading toward international waters, which were about eight miles ahead — maybe twenty minutes if I could maintain twenty-five knots.

I couldn’t visually see the Zhuk in the darkness now, but he’d lost some time and distance with his maneuvers and my radar showed he was about five hundred yards behind me. And that’s where he’d stay if we both maintained our max speed. But with this weather, the Zhuk, which was big, could more easily cut through the waves and might be able to maintain a speed that The Maine couldn’t match. If I saw him gaining on me, I could run a zigzag course — like trying to outrun a big, fast alligator — and because the Zhuk wasn’t as responsive as my smaller boat, that might slow her up more than it slowed me up if he tried to mirror my moves. Works with an alligator.

Meanwhile, he was apparently pissed off and he’d decided to open up, but from five hundred yards in the dark rolling sea, his tracer rounds were all over the place, and mostly falling into the sea behind me.

I looked at the fuel gauge and saw we’d burned some diesel, but we could still make it to Key West — or if I had to, I’d head for one of the closer Florida Keys, maybe Key Largo, or even Andros Island in the Bahamas. I didn’t have to make that decision yet, and maybe not at all. Key West was where I started, and that’s where I wanted to finish. We weren’t out of the woods yet, but I could see daylight ahead.

But then I saw something else. I’d adjusted my radar to get a tight picture of the Zhuk coming at me, but now I readjusted the picture to twelve miles out to see where the Stenka was, and I saw a blip to the east — the only blip on the stormy sea — and it was on a course to intercept The Maine , so it had to be the Stenka, and it was about eight nautical miles away. Shit.

If I maintained a due north heading, I’d be out of Cuban territorial waters in less than twenty minutes, but the Stenka might get within cannon range before I crossed that boundary. If I changed course to head northwest toward the Keys, I’d be in Cuban waters longer than I wanted to be, but I’d also be running away from the Stenka and also ahead of the storm. I kept looking at the radar blip, trying to do the math and the geometry, like thousands of sea captains before me. You only get one shot at this, Mac.

Sara was sitting in the chair beside me, and she may have been there awhile, but typical male, I was so wrapped up in my own problems, I didn’t notice.

I said to her, “How you doing?”

She nodded.

“Can you do me a favor? Go see if Jack... Go see how he is...”

“He’s alive,” said Jack as he came into the cabin, drenched from the rain. Then he turned around, went out to the deck, and threw up over the side. That happened to me once when I came down from the tuna tower in rough seas. Not the worst thing.

I noticed that Felipe had disappeared from the hatch, and he appeared from below with a bottle of Ron Santiago, which I’m sure he had already sampled. He passed the bottle to Sara, who handed it to me. I said, “I’m driving.”

Sara took a gulp.

Jack came into the cabin, and Sara offered him the bottle, but Jack looked a little green and went below. I heard the head door open, then close.

Felipe was starting to notice that the cabin windows had holes in them and that some of the wood and plastic was chewed up. He said something in Spanish that I guessed was “Holy shit.”

Felipe moved behind the chairs, between Sara and me, looked at the radar, and pointed. “Is that the Stenka?”

“It is.”

“Shit!”

“And behind us is the Zhuk.” I let him know, “You did an excellent job, amigo.”

He didn’t reply immediately, but then said, “I think I got the gunner.”

Jack was halfway up the stairs now and said, “I nailed that bastard right between his fucking eyes.”

Which was more likely, but for all anyone knew, Sara had one of those impossibly lucky shots that no one would believe, including the guy who caught the bullet.

Felipe asked, “What are we going to do?”

I reminded him, “We are going to let the captain make that decision.”

He didn’t reply, but kept looking at the radar screen. He said, “The Zhuk... he seems to be too far behind...”

“He’s gaining on us, but not fast enough to get into firing range unless he keeps following us into international waters.” Which he’d do, because the Zhuk captain was very pissed off and he had a score to settle, and he had superiors to answer to who I was sure were reaming his ass in Spanish over the radio. I’ve been on both ends of radio transmissions like that.