Nelson DeMille - The Cuban Affair

Jack ran below to check for fire, then came up and said, “We’re okay.”

Relative to what?

I realized I’d been in my port turn too long, and I could almost see the barrels of the twin cannons tracking me. I cut hard to starboard, knocking Sara and Felipe off their feet, and sending Jack tumbling back into the cabin below. Again, I heard the flock of wild geese, but this time they were off my port side and I knew they’d have caught me broadside if I’d continued into my left turn. I resumed my evasive zigzagging, thinking of that alligator on my ass. Alligators never give up, because they’re hungry, so you can never give up, because you want to live. Eventually somebody makes a mistake and loses. It can’t go on forever.

Sara and Felipe were on the rear deck now, lying face down with their arms and legs spread to keep from rolling as I took The Maine through its wild maneuvers. Jack was in the chair next to me, lighting up. It occurred to me that I’d missed an option, which was to just cut the throttle and drift until a full salvo of 30mm rounds obliterated The Maine and us. I looked at the throttle and Jack saw what I was thinking.

He asked, “You want a cigarette?”

“No.”

“They’re gluten-free.”

“I gotta tell you, Jack, your sense of humor is annoying.”

“You shoulda said something.”

“It just occurred to me.”

“Yeah? And you know what just occurred to me? It occurred to me that I told you this Cuba shit was fucked up.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Yeah. Lotsa shit seems like a good idea at the time.”

“Why don’t you go out on the deck and keep our passengers company?”

“I like it here.” He added, “Pay attention to what you’re doing, Captain.”

“You’re distracting me.”

“And don’t even think about touching that throttle.”

I didn’t reply.

I kept at my escape-and-evasion game, trying to vary my maneuvers, but I realized that by trying to veer away from a salvo of cannon shells, I could just as easily run into them. This was not as skilled a game as I was trying to convince myself that it was; a lot of this was just luck. This was really my lucky day.

Felipe had apparently come to a different conclusion, because he was in the cabin now with the Smith & Wesson in one hand, hanging on to the door frame with the other. “Give me the mic.”

Jack said to me, “Ignore him and he’ll go away.”

I ignored him, but Felipe said, “I’m counting to three. If you don’t give me the mic—”

“Felipe,” I said calmly, “I am not giving you the mic. We are not surrending the ship. We are—”

“One.”

Jack said, “Put the gun down.”

“Two.”

Jack added, “You get one shot, asshole, then the guy you didn’t shoot is going to take you down and shove that gun so far up your ass that the first round’ll blow your tonsils out.”

Felipe processed that and I glanced back to see his gun hand shaking. “It’s okay, amigo. We’re all scared. But we’re doing okay.”

Well, not that good. The Stenka captain had changed to tracer ammo, probably to add a little mind-fucking to the game, and we all saw the streaks of green tracers flying along our starboard side, not twenty feet away. I saw them drop into the dark sea in front of us, and I counted eight explosions. Holy shit...

I turned hard to starboard and the next flight of green streaks sailed about five feet above the cabin. I liked this game better when I couldn’t see how close they were coming.

Another flight of eight green tracers streaked toward us and hit the water about ten feet from the stern.

Jack said to me, “Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’ and pay no attention to the incoming.” He reminded me, “You can’t stop it and you can’t change its trajectory. You just gotta keep runnin’ and swivelin’ your hips.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

I didn’t look back at Felipe, but Jack was keeping an eye on him and I assumed Felipe was having a catatonic moment. I did glance back at the deck and saw Sara still sprawled out, blissfully unaware that the Stenka was now showing us what we couldn’t see before. As I was about to turn my attention back to the wheel, I saw streaks of green coming right at our tail and two cannon shells impacted in the stern and I heard a muffled explosion, followed by the sound of the sea, but not the sound of the engine. We were dead in the water.

Sara seemed almost unaware that we’d been hit, but then she realized something was different and she got slowly to her feet and started coming toward the cabin. Behind her, I saw smoke from the engine — but no fire.

Everything seemed to go silent, and I heard the waves and the wind, and the firing from the Stenka seemed to have stopped. I looked out at the horizon and saw in the far distance the Stenka’s running lights coming toward us. He should reach us in about ten minutes. Which was enough time to go to Plan B. Whatever that was.

I looked at Jack, but he had nothing to say except, “Shit.”

Sara looked at me and I said, “Sorry.” I thought a moment, then said, “The captain will stay with the ship. You will all abandon ship now.” I also said, “Good luck.”

But no one was moving from the cabin.

Jack said, “We all go together, or we all stay onboard together.”

Felipe spoke first and said, “I’m staying onboard.”

Sara said, “I will not be captured. I’m going into the sea.” She looked at me. “And you’re coming with me.”

Jack said, “I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I want a hand to bury those... those remains at sea.”

So we all went out on the deck and Jack and I lifted the steamer trunk by its handles and rested it on the gunnel.

Sara said a prayer for the dead that began with, “Heavenly Father,” and ended with, “we commend the souls of these brave men into your hands.”

Jack and I were about to tip the trunk over the side when we both heard a familiar sound and looked out at the horizon. Coming toward us from the north, a few hundred feet away, and not fifty feet above the water, were two huge helicopters. I recognized their profiles as Black Hawks.

They tipped their rotor blades, then turned east toward the Stenka.

One of them fired a long stream of red tracers across the sky, his way of saying to the Stenka’s captain, “Game over. Go home.”

The other Black Hawk turned and came toward us and I saw a big rescue basket hanging from a line below the open door.

We pulled the trunk back onboard, but no one had anything to say until Sara said, “We’re all going home. Together.”

Apparently this was true.

So this guy walks into a bar and says, “Corona. Hold the lime.”

And the bartender replies, “Lime’s on me.”

The cocktail hour in the Green Parrot begins when the doors open and ends when the lights go out. It was 2 A.M. on Monday morning and the lights were about to go out.

The place was nearly empty, so Amber had time to chat. “How was Cuba?”

“It was okay.”

“How were the people?”

“Most of them were okay.” A few tried to kill me, but why mention it?

“You have pictures?”

“No.” Well, yes, on my cell phone, but my cell phone was in my backpack and my backpack was at the bottom of the ocean.

Amber pushed a bowl of corn chips toward me. “I haven’t seen Jack around.”

“He’s off the island.”

“How’d he do in the tournament?”

“Came in second.”

“Good.” She asked, “Did you see him there?”

“No.”

She said, “You heard that they cancelled the last few days of the Pescando tournament.”