Cuban Death-Lift (19 page)

When their footsteps disappeared up the stairs, we shut the storage-room door behind us and stepped out into the corridor.

“This is where you get off, O'Davis. Things are gonna start to get real nasty from here on out.”

He tugged at his red beard, keeping a close eye on the corridors as we walked along. “Like I said, Yank—you look like a man who needs lookin' after. Take the way you're walkin', fer instance. Too fast, mate—way too fast. Gotta walk outta here like we just bought this bloody ship.”

I looked at him, suspicious. “You sound like you've done this sort of thing before.”

He grinned, still casting glances before and behind us. “Ah! I have, I have—an' usually escapin' from an angry husband, I might add. But when I visit you in Key West I'll tell you all about
that.
Now it's the lass we're after—and a fine-lookin' woman, too.”

“So you're the one who understands Spanish. Tell me what they were saying.”

“Your lady wasn't sayin' much. Swearin' some—an' a talented job of it, too. The fat chap—hoggish fella, weren't he?—he mentioned Pier Two. Expect they're headed that way.”

“Anything else?”

He thought for a moment. “Aye. There is. Got the name of the fat fellow. Soldier used it once. Damn general he is—guess you'd have to be a general to be that fat in a country as poor as this. Strange name, like a bird. Called him General Halcón. Means ‘Hawk' in Spanish. . . .”

They left in one of the small twin-engine patrol skiffs. It was about twenty-one feet long, made of wood and painted gray, with enough muscle in the inboard-outboards to blast it across the calm harbor like a shaft of pale light. Top speed probably sixty to sixty-five mph. It was patrol boat number 13—one of only two I had seen loaded with soldiers flying around Mariel. In a craft that fast, there was no way we could keep an eye on them. So I had to take O'Davis's word that they were headed for Pier Two.

The two of us went lumbering back through the bar, and outside, our faces were masks of relaxed confidence. Soldiers rushed past us without hesitating. A couple of second-place finishers in the fight lay on the deck groaning. As O'Davis said, confident people don't draw attention. And he was right about our taxi driver, too—he still sat in the skiff waiting for us, patient as an old horse.

It was sunset. A scarlet dusk with the sun's rays lancing through the acid factory smog. The rays were set apart in shafts of ruddy light, hitting boats and crimson clouds and the castle hulk of the stone Naval Academy like stage lights.

In his guttural Spanish, O'Davis whipped our driver into reluctant action. He steered us through the maze of shrimp boats, cruisers, and ratty commercial trawlers at a stately twenty knots, the displacement wake leaving the waiting boats rolling behind us. There was nothing I could do but think and wait. Westy tugged at his red beard and hummed some Gaelic tune,
tum-de-dum dum dum,
while I tried to formulate a plan. Once we got to Pier Two, there wasn't much I could do. Or needed to do. I had to find out where they were keeping the woman. It would be better if they had stuck her on a bus and taken her into Havana, the Triton Hotel maybe. I knew my way around Havana—it couldn't be changed that much even in twenty years. And once I knew where she was, I could plan my rescue. I had the explosives aboard
Sniper.
A charge here, a charge there. Get the Castro Cubans confused, get them running. And there was always my crossbow. Silent and deadly. I felt the old coldness move through me, felt the assiduous warrior-man that I had once been—and would always be—take control of my mind. All I needed was data. There would be no indecision now. Reanchor at the most secluded spot in the harbor I could find, and then . . .

I felt the Irishman staring at me. There was a studious look of reevaluation on his face; he looked like a kid who just discovered the garter snake in his hands was really a cottonmouth. He said, “I doon't know what's on yer mind, Yank—but whatever it is, I'm glad I'm ta be on your side. Them sea-colored eyes of yours are a wee bit too revealin'. Do me a favor now, an' doon't let the soldiers catch you lookin' like you jest were. They'll throw us both in the cooler without a fare-thee-well.”

I slapped him on the shoulder. “You're right, O'Davis. I was just thinking about the way . . . the way they were treating that woman.”

“Aye, I know what ya mean. It brings out the blackness in us, mate. Strange, in a way. You come ta hate somethin' so much that, in time, you become the thing you hate. A dictatorship is a government of the frightened and the savage. An' from the looks of ya, Yank, you aren't a man to become frightened. Now look over there, will ya?”

He pointed to an expanse of concrete wharf where there were cement-block buildings. Boats crowded around the wharf, and there were big fuel-tank cylinders by a wooden machine shop at the end of a short canal. But mostly there were people: three long lines of weary-looking men, women, and children, heads down, shuffling and somber in the growing darkness. The wharf was heavily guarded. A searchlight and a machine gun were mounted atop the highest building, and soldiers brushed by the line of refugees as if they did not exist.

O'Davis made a sweeping gesture with his big hands. “That's what this is all about, Yank. That's Pier Three—where they herd the refugees onto boats. Now look at them poor folk there, will ya? They're the frightened in the camp of the savages. An' the head savage is round here someplace—that ya kin bet on.”

I was surprised. “Castro?”

He shrugged. “He's a bit of a dark prince, ya know. Imagine this is the sort a thing 'e wouldn't miss seein'. Got no permanent presidential palace or anything like that—not his style. Besides, he's gotta keep movin' or his own people would lay in wait for him, an' assassinate him, I expect. What I'm sayin', Yank, is we gotta be very careful. With the big man around, the soldiers are not goin' to take any chances of lettin' things get outta hand—if ya see what I mean.”

“I see,” I said. “And that's exactly why you're going back to that pretty schooner of yours once you introduce me to Pier Two.”

“Oh, I will, I will. After I've had me a beer or two. I'm not goin' to let a big ugly brute like yerself get me inta trouble. Are ya thinkin' me a fool?”

I sneered at his sly grin. “I suppose you're going to promise me again, huh?”

“Ah do, ah do—on the grave of me very own mother.”

 

Pier Two was a dirt strip sided by canvas booths where bored Cuban vendors sold beer and cigars, T-shirts, fighting cocks, beans and yellow rice, and moldy slabs of bacon shiny with flies. A string of bare two-hundred-watt bulbs threw a carnival glare on the Cuban-Americans who stood on the dirt road drinking beer and shielding themselves from the guards with a careful hilarity. It was north of Pier Three by about a half mile, located between the water and the belching stacks of the power plant, and chain-link fence topped by barbed wire enclosed the area. Our driver nosed up to the makeshift plywood dock, cracked his propeller on the rocks which surrounded the dock, and we left him cursing the skiff with subdued emotion.

“Well, well, well,” O'Davis said, his sarcasm taking grand form. “I wonder what the poor folks back in the U.S.A. are doin' tonight, Yank.”

“Pretty place, no doubt about that,” I said. “Appropriately decorated, too.”

The big Irishman saw what I was pointing at—a swollen rat, oil-covered, lifting and falling in the water wash around the docks.

“Ah, the poor little bugger. Ate some of th' food here, no doubt.”

I followed O'Davis through the crowd of people. He was obviously no stranger to the place. Cuban-American men singled him out, greeting him heartily in enthusiastic Spanish. While he stopped to talk with a couple of them, I worked my way up to the plank bar.

The skinny vendor squinted at me, turned without a word, and took two Hatuey beers from the trough of ice behind him. I handed him a five, and he handed me back a one.

“Hold it there, Yank!” O'Davis came ambling up beside me. “The little snit short-changed ye.”

He wheeled on the Cuban, barked an abrupt command. The vendor glared at him momentarily, then laid two more ones on the counter.

“O'Davis,” I said, “I'm trying to figure out what goodness I've done in my life for God to send me my very own guardian angel.”

“Hah! Hardly an angel, Yank. Hardly that. Ye've been around some, I kin see that, mate. That scar on yer face didna come from disco dancin', I'm thinkin'. An' you've used them knuckles o' yers for more than itchin' yer own nose. But you've never been to a place as nasty as Mariel Harbor, Yank.” He looked at me for a moment, then smiled. “But then again, maybe ya have.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Even so, I was damn lucky to run into someone as foolish as you.”

He raised his eyebrows in mock offense. “Foolish, am I? Well, let me tell you, Mr. Dusky MacMorgan American citizen, I'm the fool what jest got some very important information fer ya.”

“And that is?”

He took me by the arm and pulled me away from the crowded outdoor bar. Down the dirt road, people ate beans and rice from cardboard containers. Guards stood at the one-lane exit gate, and men crowded around a crate while a Cuban vendor washed down a wild-eyed fighting cock with Aguadiente, a cheap fusel rum. We made seats out of beer crates in the shadows.

“The information is this, Yank. Forty-five minutes ago was the last time one of their bloody buses left for Havana. An' the next one isn't due for fifteen minutes. One of me chums told me.”

“So the woman's still around here someplace.”

“Unless they carted her off in a government jeep—or never brought her here in the first place.”

“I hope you didn't ask your friends if they saw the woman, because you never know—”

“I'll not even dignify that question with an answer, if ye don't mind.”

“Sorry.” I thought for a moment. If she was still in the area, where would they be keeping her? There were a couple of wooden, tin-roofed buildings by the exit gate: some kind of guard quarters, probably. There was a light on in the smallest of the two, and an armed soldier stood outside. O'Davis seemed to read my mind.

“Could be, Yank. Might be keepin' her there till the next bus comes along. Or they might jest take her down the road a piece to Pier Three.” He hesitated, then asked, “Ya know, Dusky, I might be able ta help ye more if ya told me why they took her. What is she, some kinda bloody spy or somethin'?”

I kept my face blank. “Guess you're right, Westy. Fact is, I'm not really sure why they took her. Something to do with her American citizenship papers not being in order or something.”

He chuckled softly and said nothing.

“And what's that supposed to mean?” I said.

“Yank, it's a bad liar ye are. Too much Scotch blood in ye an' not enough Irish, I'm thinkin'. No, don't argue with me. I'll not ask ya any more questions.”

“Good. I'm going to hold you to that. And I'm also going to hold you to your promise to get the hell out of here once I know my way around. I know my way around, O'Davis. And it's time for you to leave.”

“So you kin do what?” He said it too loud, and he immediately lowered his voice. He crouched over, sticking his red face in mine. “So you kin stroll up ta that wee bit of shack, knock on the door, an' tell'em to turn your woman loose? They'll shoot ya down, Yank. I've seen two men killed in this blasted harbor already, an' I'll not let me new mate play the fool for the likes o' them!”

“O'Davis, you're big and tough and bullheaded, no doubt about that. But goddammit, believe me when I say that you're going to be in over that Irish head of yours if you don't start listening. You're out of your league, O'Davis. Now, dammit, get the hell out of here before I show you just how tough you really are!”

Offended, he took on an air of burlesque aloofness. “Out of me league, am I? Well, tell me, Yank—jest what
do
you plan to do?”

“I plan to sit right here, wait on the next bus, and see just who gets on it.”

“An' if she's not among 'em, then what?”

I shook my head wearily. “O'Davis, were you born stubborn, or do you have to work at it? If the woman doesn't get on that bus, then I'm going to find out where she is, snake her away from the Cubans, then head my boat for American water just as fast as I can. It's going to be messy, you Irish fool, and some people are going to end up pretty damn dead—and I don't want you to be one of them! There, have I made myself understood?”

“Ah, ye have, ye have.” He stood up as if to leave.

“But I appreciate your help,” I said quickly. “And the invitation to visit me in Key West still stands.” I stuck out my hand as a final sign of friendship.

He looked at me, looked at the outstretched hand, confusion in his face. “Why, ya doon't think . . . I'm not leavin' for
good,
Yank. Jest stood up to stretch me legs and get us a coupla more beers.” He stuck out his palm, as if testing for rain. “Sure, 'twas an interestin' little speech ye give me. But it's a fine soft night and, if you doon't mind, I'll stick around for a while longer and join ye in conversation while ye wait.”

He moved as if to go to the bar, then turned back to me. “I've taken a likin' to ya, brother MacMorgan. After twenty-two days o' sittin' round this hellish harbor, I'm not about ta miss me one chance for a little excitement. Besides, I've luck enough for six men, an' I'm a-thinkin' yer goin' to need all the luck you kin get. . . .”