Robert Mason - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

During the second week of preparation, we picked up the third member of the sailing team, Bob Ireland, at the Gainesville airport. Bob, who came from Indiana, was my size, with dark hair, and (I found out later) was an accomplished artist. He joked around with John and affected a Spanish accent because John could speak fluent Spanish and loved to hear Ireland massacre the language. Immediately, John decided we had to have nicknames because “two Bobs will make us crazy.”

Ireland said, “Me? I’m definitely a Ramon—” He turned to me in the backseat and said, “You? You look like an Ali to me, Bob. Okay?”

“Call me Ali,” I said.

“Ali! Ali!” Ireland chanted. Muhammad Ali the huge prizefighter; Bob Mason the 135-pound pencil-neck. We all laughed.

We drove to our woods near High Springs.

John got out a rolled-up nautical chart that night while we sat around his dining-room table.

“The plan, man?” Ireland asked. John moved some plates aside and unrolled the chart.

John smiled, swigged some beer. He spread out the chart and put glasses and ashtrays on the corners because it wanted to roll up. “Wanting; having, Ramon.” This was John’s favorite expression: the smuggler’s slogan. “Wanting lots of money; having plan.” John picked up a pencil and tapped on the map at Jacksonville. “The plan. We leave Jacksonville when we get the word,” John said as he began tracing a route with the pencil. “We sail due east for a while, due east, till we get to deep water, here. Deep water, out past the Bahamas. Then we head southeast to the Virgins. All told, the first leg is about thirteen hundred miles. Thirteen hundred miles. Take maybe ten days, two weeks. About ten days, if we get good winds. Then we’ll lay over in Saint Thomas for a few days before we head south. A few days there, then we head south.” I stared at John. Why was he repeating himself so much?

“What’s going on in Saint Thomas?” asked Ireland.

“Take on final supplies. Stock up. Top off the fuel tanks, the water tanks, and stock the food lockers—”

“And la cerveza locker, si, Juan?” Ireland laughed.

“Is a bear Catholic, Ramon? The cerveza locker? The cerveza locker? This ain’t gonna be an easy trip, not easy, no, but we’re going to be living good.” John raised a beer and we touched cans. “Living good! Wanting; having! Okay. We re-provision here; we also install the transducer for the depth finder. Have to have a depth finder. I know a beach we can use to keel-haul the boat. We’ll keel-haul the thing—”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Basically. Well. It’s simple. We get the boat in shallow water at high tide. Then we haul it over on its side; pull it over on its side when the tide goes down so we can get to the bottom of the hull and drill a hole for the transducer—the thing the depth finder uses to send and receive sonar signals.”

“Why not do it in Jacksonville?” I asked.

“We’re running out of time, Ali. No time. Plus we’d have to haul the boat and I think the people at the marina are getting suspicious. They act suspicious. Besides we have to wait in Saint Thomas for the scam master to bring us some money anyway. We’ll have time to kill there.”

I nodded, distracted. John was nervous. And seeing the plan on the table suddenly made what had been just talk reality. Before, I’d been a sweaty laborer working on a boat, forgetting, or denying, why I was.

“Okay,” John said, tapping the pencil on Saint Thomas. “Okay. Saint Thomas is the last we touch land until we get back, okay? And this Caribbean leg is dangerous,” he said, dotting a line between Saint Thomas and Colombia. “We got dangerous shit here. We got pirates out here sniffing for our money and the boat on the way down. We got pirates out here sniffing for our cargo and the boat on the way back.” Pirates? Ireland and I look at each other. “Now. Okay. We sail from Saint Thomas, windward across the Caribbean, six hundred and fifty miles directly to the Guaijira Peninsula, and meet up with Ike—that’s the code name for the contact—on the coast, near Carrizal, here. About here,” he said, making a tiny dot next to the coast. “We load up and beat back across, out through the Annegada Passage through the Virgins. Trade winds are always from the north; have to beat back up; not comfortable; need industrial-grade jockstraps for that part. Now we got fifteen hundred miles of dodging el Coasto Guardo.” John smiled. “But that’s why we’re so far out, off the usual routes. Coast Guard stays closer to land. We curve way out and come back in until we get about here,” John said, tapping on a spot about two hundred miles off the coast of South Carolina. “About here, then we turn southwest.”

“Whot happy, Juan? We meesing the Florida?”

John laughed. “No. No meesing the Florida, Ramon. No meesing the Florida. No. From here we sail to Charleston. Near Charleston; they haven’t decided exactly where, yet.”

“Charleston? Why?” Ireland said, dropping his mangled Spanish routine.

“Because that’s where we make the drop-off, Ramon. Destination-land. Where we go. The shore team is already there, living in a beach house, checking out the area. They live there now; they fish; they shop; just folks; checking it out.” John winked and smiled. “Surprise! We not going where you theenk we go, eh, Ramon?”

Ireland nodded, looking worried.

“Don’t worry, Ramon, Spence is there; Mitford; Wheely and Rangey Jane; about fifteen dingers you know. They know what they’re doing. They’re watching everything: the drop-off point and every approach to it. They’ll give us the final clearance before we come in.” Ireland smiled, but he was still worried about something.

The spot where John said we’d turn southwest was a hundred miles north of Charleston. “Why so far up before we turn back?” I asked.

“People spot us coming in will think we’re cruising down from Cape Fear; think we’re a yacht on the way down from New York, maybe. Just on a cruise from New York. No clue we’re coming up from Colombia, Ali. Not a clue.”

Pretty slick. Except for saying everything twice, I was beginning to think John had his shit together.

“That last leg is over fifteen hundred miles of winter Atlantic. Lotsa nasty weather, amigos. Winter Atlantic weather.” John grinned. “Altogether, we’re talking about more than a four-thousand-mile cruise, here. Four thousand miles, plus.”

“ Madre mio !” Ireland, reacting to the distance, smiled and then, looking serious, said, “But why Charleston? We’ve always had good luck in Florida.”

“Florida’s getting hot. Too hot in Florida. Last place they’d expect to see pot coming in is Charleston, Ramon. Nobody goes to Charleston. Who goes to Charleston?”

“Nobody goes to Charleston,” Ireland said, smiling.

“Right,” John said.

I walked home feeling antsy. Four thousand miles in a thirty-six-foot sailboat? Pirates? Coast Guard? The plan seemed okay, but what did I know? What were the odds? I fought back the nagging of my conscience, which claimed I was just not cut out for this stuff. It was just not me. I considered quitting that night, before I got in any deeper, but I’d said I’d go. Plus the alternative was grim: no money, no job, no hopes for either. Besides, I reminded myself, I had felt the same sickening butterflies in Vietnam, just before the assaults. Once you get into action, the doubts vanish. Just suck it up and do the mission. Thirty thousand dollars could last us three years. Three years to get a book published.

Just do the mission.

CHAPTER 13

November 30, 1980 —Jacksonville is having a cold snap. It’s forty degrees inside the Namaste. I’m lying in my bunk in the main cabin. I put my hand out and touch the bulkhead. The hull is just thick fiberglass, cold as steel, clammy. Ireland is asleep in the bottom bunk, John is on deck talking to the partner, Ray, the guy who owns the boat. I can only catch snatches, but I get the gist. Ray is unhappy with how long it’s taking, how much it’s costing. John is talking, louder, repeating himself. I’m getting depressed.