Gagliano,Anthony - Straits of Fortune.wps (11 page)

swam north with the current, not that there was much choice. I swam easily, with smooth overhand strokes. I was fairly certain he had night-vision goggles, but even with them he would have to be extremely lucky to spot me. The ocean had kicked up into a light chop, so there were little swells to hide behind. Even so, I stayed under as much as I could and surfaced only when I had to. I was glad now that I'd thought to take the ephedrine; I was going to need it. The next time I came up, I could still see the light. Wil- liams was still out there prospecting, still fairly close to ground zero and about two hundred yards away. Now and then the light would swing unexpectedly in a different direc- tion, as though he knew that I was in the vicinity and hoped to catch me off guard. But it never came anywhere near me, so I swam on. I didn't think I had much of a chance, but there was nothing else to do except swim. We were the only two human beings in the vicinity, and under those conditions who's to say what strange channels open up between predator and prey? There came a time when despite the splash of the waves and the distance between us I was sure I sensed his thoughts and felt his anxiety as he scanned the water for me. I could hear him listening, and it was then that I would hold myself beneath the surface of the water and say a prayer that he wouldn't linger too long above me. I kept swimming. My fear gave me extra strength, length- ened my endurance. The ephedrine had kicked in at last, but I was still very tired. Then, suddenly, I heard the speedboat coming closer from just to the south of me. He was getting more methodical, exactly as I'd known he would, and had begun to make concentric circles around the area. He would start wide, allowing for the possibility that I had survived the kayak and was in good enough shape to be swimming. The circles would grow smaller and smaller until I ended up at the center like a bug caught in a drain. 92

The searchlight nearly got me then, but the white arc faded out just a few yards ahead of me. I went under fast and swam away from the boat for as long as I could. Something brushed my leg in the dark, but I kept going. Everything de- pended on where Williams began his search. If I was outside the perimeter, he would be moving away from me, funneling inward, and I might have time to get away. If not, he would surely see me eventually. My arms parted the darkness in front of me as though I were a blind man moving through a curtain of water that closed and opened around me without beginning or end. The boat went by maybe fifty feet to the east of me, then headed back out. I came up in time to see it curving back toward the beach, which meant he had underestimated me and had just completed the biggest circle. I was outside that circle, but only for the moment. It would not take long for him to funnel inward and eventually reach the conclusion that either I was dead or somehow had gotten past him. Wil- liams would then start over, and this time he would come in even closer to shore. He could afford to be methodical. I was still miles from land, and he had the speedboat and a good two hours until dawn. I got over onto my back and kicked with my legs, trying to conserve the strength in my arms. I'd once competed in a triathlon and thought at the time that I had reached the apex of human fatigue. I'd been wrong. I know that there are resources in the human body that can be tapped only in mo- ments of extreme danger and excitement, and I had no doubt that I'd tapped in to them now. By all accounts I should have been too tired to move, but something kept me going. My body went from feeling waterlogged to feeling supernatu- rally light, as though I were not so much swimming in the water as being the water itself. Then the heaviness would intrude, and I would be slog- 93

ging away again toward the single row of lights on the shore that for the life of me never seemed to get any closer. After a while I stopped thinking altogether, as though the blood flow to my brain had ceased, and my body rallied itself and pulled me forward like a horse carrying a rider either half dead in the saddle or else far too weary to care. When I came to myself again, it was morning. I must have opened my eyes just as my arm had lifted itself for another endless stroke, and I was all at once conscious of the heat of the sun on my back and its fierce silver glare on the surface of the sea. My tongue was swollen with thirst, and there was no strength in me. I could see the shore, now only a quarter of a mile away. But there was nothing left in me, nothing. I managed to get over onto my back, but it was too much like being in bed, and I almost gave in to the fatal luxury of letting go. I saw an orange buoy halfway to the shore and swam for it, knowing that if I could make it that far, I had a chance. It was only three hundred yards to shore, but no matter how much I swam, the beach never came any closer, still flaunting its promise of safety with the derision of a mirage. I could see people near the shore playing in the breakers; I could hear their voices. I tried to call out to them, but my mouth made only a strange, inhuman rasping sound. Just a little farther and the incoming tide would lift me, drag me in. It seemed stupid, almost sinful, to die so close to land, and yet that was what was happening, for all at once I was no longer moving. My arms and legs had given out, and I began to sink almost gratefully. I wanted to rest even if it meant death. Just for the hell of it, I held my breath. No sense making it too easy. I went down maybe three yards when my toes touched the surface of the sandbar. Feeling something solid beneath my feet after being in the water so long gave me a fresh surge of strength, and right 94

then I knew for a fact that I wasn't finished, not by a long shot. I sprang to the surface and looked for the shore. It was nothing. A hundred yards at most. Piece of cake. I could do it. I willed my empty arms and legs to move as though they were a team of recalcitrant mules in the foothills of the Andes. My limbs didn't really belong to me anymore. I had just borrowed them, and they didn't like the way I'd treated them, but they, too, must have sensed the nearing shore, because they began to obey me. That's right, boys, I told them. Don't fail me now. I heard the speedboat coming as if from out of a dream you think you've already awakened from. It was coming in fast from my left. I stroked harder for the shore. I was sure it was Williams. I turned my head to one side and saw him standing at the helm, bearing down on me fast and hard, his bald head shining in the brittle sunlight like the helmet of a conquistador. I recalled the ears he had used for money back in Vietnam. I should not have been surprised that he'd spent the night looking for me. It was fear that saved me then, fear that squeezed the last ounce of juice out of my adrenals. Suddenly the unbearable fatigue was gone and I was fresh again. It would not last long. But it might last long enough. I heard the first shot but felt nothing. I took as deep a breath as I could manage and dove for the bottom and swam underwater. The boat passed over me, blocking the sun, its propellers churning madly. I had passed the sandbar, but the sea was still only about fifteen feet deep. A little farther and Williams would have to take her out again lest he beach her. But I wasn't Aquaman. He knew where I was. All he would have to do was wait for me to come up. My lungs were bursting, begging for relief. My only chance was if Williams was looking in the wrong direction when my head broke the surface of the water. There was no other 95

choice. I broke for the surface, knowing that I was heading for either another breath of life or a bullet in the head. I was in the same bad spot I'd been in the night before, only this time there was more light for Williams to see me with. I decided to come up near the bow of the boat where the curvature of the hull might give me a little cover, but as I began to rise toward the darkened underbelly of the speed- boat, it turned abruptly and sped away at top speed. My head broke the surface of the water just in time to see it careening away, heading north, a spray of white foam spewing outward from its wake. There was a roar of engines behind me. I turned and saw a coast guard cutter splitting the waves and coming in from the east, from the open ocean. It was starting to swing away after Williams when it spotted me and came about. I could see the sailors watching me through their binoculars. I waved at them, and a moment later they sent one of those small, two-man inflatable pontoons out to get me. I reached up, and the two fresh-faced sailors pulled me into the craft. I asked for water and drank like a bedouin at an oasis. One of the sailors--a young woman--helped me to lie back and put a life jacket under my head. I struggled to sit up, but all at once my body, so long abused, failed me. I tried to speak, but not even my lips would work, so I lay back and breathed hard, and the far sun fell from the sky and crashed into my face like a meteor. After that there was only the darkness, into which I gladly allowed myself to drown.

I woke up in the infirmary at the Krome Detention Center. The sign on the wall told me that much. I was in a large room with lime green walls, barred windows, and a dozen beds, most of which were occupied. Beyond the windows the sun was still high enough to throw shadows across the 96

white sheets that covered me from the waist down. I had an IV in my left arm, which throbbed where they had stuck in the needle, but aside from a dry mouth and a headache, I didn't feel all that bad, not considering the night I'd just lived through. I was trying to sit up when the door opened and a nurse flanked by two men in uniform came striding purposefully toward me. The men were with the Border Patrol, and I could tell from the expressions on their faces that they hadn't come to bring me flowers. One of them was close to sixty, with the overstuffed and slightly deformed body of a bus driver. He had small blue eyes that had spent a long time trying to look hard. The other man was too tall for his weight, as though he'd been stretched artificially by machine. He was around thirty, with a mouth full of gum and hair the color of wet hay. His right eye was off center, which made him appear as if he were trying to look behind him. His expression was an imitation of his partner's, but on him it wasn't as convincing. He looked as much scared as he did mean. Both of them had waists encircled by belts heavily laden with the standard tools of law enforcement: the guns, the cuffs, the pepper spray, and the billy clubs. They were ready for anything except a footrace, but it didn't matter, because all four of my limbs were manacled to the stainless-steel bedposts. The older agent wore a name tag that said cooper. He gave me a calculated glare of menace that was supposed to strike fear into the heart of any illegal alien it chanced to fall upon. He shifted his belt on his hips and spread his legs like a man bracing for a bar fight. His partner did the same. I had no doubt who led when they danced the tango together. "Ask him his name, will you?" the older cop directed the nurse. His partner stood silently behind him with his hand on the butt of his gun, chewing his cud as though it were part of his job. 97

"I don't speak Spanish," the nurse said. She swabbed my arm with alcohol and slipped the needle out. "Who are you kidding? I heard you speak it before. Your last name is Rodriguez, for crying out loud." "C�se llama, spic?" the younger cop said. I decided to be Hispanic until I got the lay of the land, so I told him my name was Juan. The nurse glanced at me and smiled ever so slightly, then looked away again. Then she stuck a thermometer in my mouth, for which I was grateful, because it gave me an excuse not to talk. The younger offi- cer, whose name tag said ellis, sat down on the edge of the bed and smacked the side of my leg. "You get well," he said. "You go bye-bye." They undid my ankle and wrist bracelets and gave me an orange jumpsuit that had been washed so many times that the cloth had faded into a weary paleness. Then they cuffed my hands behind my back and led me down a narrow hallway flanked every few yards by wooden benches spaced out like dashes along the lime-colored walls. We went up a flight of steps that took all my strength to climb and came out into an- other hallway lined with rows of offices. We made a few turns and stopped in front of a door that had inspector ruben cortez stenciled onto the glass in gold letters with black trim. Cooper opened the door and gave me a short, hard shove in the middle of my back that propelled me into the room. It was a small office with a desk and a man sitting behind it. He was forty or forty-five, with dark brown hair with a gray fringe along the temples and a mustache that was all gray and needed trimming. His eyes were shiny and black, with a glint of humor in them, as though he had just recalled something vaguely amusing. He leaned back in his swivel chair as I came in. "Who's this son of a bitch?" he asked. "This is the guy the coast guard picked up this morning," Cooper said. 98

Ellis shoved me down into a chair across from Cortez. He looked me over for a long moment, then asked me in Spanish if I were Cuban. "S� I said. He laughed. "S� he repeated. "Really? Just what part of Cuba are you from?" "Omaha, Nebraska." He nodded and smiled. "Just as I suspected. Gentlemen," he said, pointing his finger at me, "this man is an American. I find that kind of amazing, don't you?" Ellis spoke up. "The coast guard said there was some guy shooting at him from a speedboat." "Is that right?" Cortez said, nonplussed. "That's very fucking exciting. Just like Miami Vice." "You're a fucking American," Cooper said indignantly. He had a whiny, cartoon-character voice that had no busi- ness being in law enforcement. "You talk English." "This is America," I said. "English is pretty popular around here." Cortez grinned and turned his attention back to me. "What's your name?" "Jack Vaughn." The inspector's eyes narrowed, and his cigarette stalled in the airspace between his lips and the butt-filled ashtray on his paper-laden desk. "Jack Vaughn?" he said. "You're not a personal trainer by any chance, are you?" "Sure I am." "For Christ's sake," Cortez said. He spent a few more sec- onds reading my face, then stood up. "Take the cuffs off and leave us alone," he said. He stubbed out his cigarette and sat down on his chair again. Ellis and Cooper hadn't moved. They seemed to be in shock, but after a moment they removed the cuffs and left, looking dejected. When we were alone, Cortez swiveled around in his chair 99