The Passage (47 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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Miguel and Gustavo were bailing, back in the waist. They had no bailer, so they were simply throwing water out with their hands. As they worked, they yelled to each other. She wasn't really listening, but now and then the wind brought her a snatch.
“You think they're out there? Or could they have gone down?”
“I don't know.”
“I miss them.”
“Me, too,
muchacho
. But maybe we'll see them again in Miami.”
“You think so?”
“
Si Dios quiere.
”
“You think we'll make it, Tio Gustavo?”
“If God wills,” said the old man again. “Do you think this water's going down at all?”
“I don't think so. Should we keep on bailing?”
“It can do no harm.”
“Have you ever been to America?”
“I saw Tampa once—fishing, back before the revolution.”
“What did it look like?”
“Like any land. Like Cuba.”
“No skyscrapers?”
“I didn't see any,” said Gustavo. “Of course, they might have built some since then.”
Miguel was silent for a while. Then he said, “Do you think they'll send us back?”
“Send us back?” the old man sounded surprised. “Why? They're friendly people, the Americans. And there are other Cubans there. They'll help us. No, I don't think they'll send us back.”
“I won't go back,” said Miguel. “Never.”
The old man didn't say anything to that. He shielded his eyes, and rain ran off his fingers as he peered into the squall. “I thought I heard something—a motor or engine.”
“Another airplane?”
“Maybe not. Over there?”
“I don't see anything,” said the boy. He turned slowly, running his eyes along the ragged waves.
“
Coño,
it's getting dark,” he said.
And Graciela put out her hand, groping, to seize someone or something. Her mouth came open without her direction and an agonized low moan vibrated in her throat.
It can't be, she thought with that corner of her mind that no matter what she felt, no matter how afraid she was, still looked on with bemused detachment at the strangeness of this life on earth. Not yet. This was too early, weeks too early. She waited through the minutes, praying for the pain not to return.
When it came again, it was like a wave, only not outside, but within her body. It started as a tightening, then grew into a pressure, squeezing, twisting tighter and tighter. She panted for air as it reached its peak. Then the wave passed and the knot loosened slowly and she could breathe again and open her eyes, to see the boy and the old man peering in at her warily.
“Are you all right, Tia?”
She felt her salt-dried lips crack as she smiled at them. They were afraid, even though all they had to do was watch, and maybe help a little. But this was something men never knew. A passage through which they could never step. It was strange, but even here she felt as she had when it first began, the other times—as if the baby brought with it some mysterious glory. Or maybe just that soon it would be over, one way or another. Ahead lay pain and fear and maybe at the end nothing but sorrow if the child didn't live. But that euphoric glow, like a long swallow of
aguardiente,
warmed her icy hands and seeped like slow fire along her legs. If only the old woman were still here to help.
“It's starting,” she gasped. “It's coming.”
“What is coming, Tia?”
“The baby, Miguelito. The baby.”
The wind rose again as a wave drove the lonely boat upward with dizzying speed, lifting them all, boy and old man and woman, once more toward the steadily darkening sky.
August 3
T
HEY caught sight of the first one late in the morning.
Dahlgren
and
Barrett
had run northeast for the entire day and night, making this their second day out of Guantánamo. Dan and Leighty and Quintanilla were standing on the wing, holding their hats against the blustering wind, when the lookout leaned over the rail of the flying bridge. “Sir,” he said, and all three officers' heads jerked up. “Look out there around zero-three-zero relative. I think you'll see a boat.”
Dan lifted his binoculars, and the ring of sight caught it right away: a white triangle amid the heaving gray of a running sea. A sail … a wave lifted it and for an instant his eye froze and plucked from motion an elongated shape. Then it disappeared, sinking again.
“Any more of them?” the captain shouted up.
The lookout didn't answer, hunching his shoulders into his binoculars. Then, without a word, he extended his arm and swept it from port to starboard, taking in an immense arc of sea.
Leighty hung his cap on the speaker tube and pulled himself up the ladder.
Barrett
took a roll as he got halfway up, and he crouched and gripped the handrail, then recovered and kept climbing. When he reached the Big Eyes, he uncapped them and swung the huge pedestal-mounted binoculars slowly around the horizon, tracing the same arc drawn by the lookout's arm.
“XO, to the bridge,” he shouted down.
“Aye aye, Captain. Boatswain! Call the exec. If he's not in his stateroom or ship's office, pass the word.”
Vysotsky pounded up a few minutes later. Dan told him the captain was topside, and he disappeared up the ladder. Simultaneously, the tactical radio remote spoke inside the pilothouse. Dan stayed on the wing in case Leighty gave another order, but he could hear
the message coming over. It was from
Dahlgren.
“Speed ten,” Van Cleef yelled out.
“Give them a roger and drop to two-thirds.”
Another white pyramid broke the gray to port, and Dan swept his glasses around the horizon again. He counted five sails now, lurching and swaying across the leaden sea. He bared his teeth. According to Fleet Weather, over the past twenty-four hours the storm had curved, angling off northward. Good from their point of view, but there were a lot of people sweating it out in South Florida, Dade and Broward. So the center shouldn't pass directly overhead, and they'd be in the navigable semicircle.
Still, it wasn't good weather. They were registering forty knots on the wind indicator, and
Barrett
was rolling heavily as she came beam to the swells. He didn't even want to think what it must be like in a small boat.
“Let's try reporting in,” Leighty shouted down. His voice was a thin cry above the keen of the wind.
Dan shouted back, “Aye aye, sir,” and went inside. The coordination net was on remote number two, a clear, unscrambled VHF circuit. That would make range essentially line of sight mast to mast, around thirty miles at a guess. He motioned to the boatswain to dog the leeward door. Clearing his throat, he popped the handset and said in a slow, distinct radio voice, “Any station this net, this is USS
Barrett
, DD-nine ninety-eight. Over.”
A decisive tenor answered almost before he was done. “USS
Barrett,
this is USCGS
Munro,
WHEC-seven twenty-four. Over.”
“Uh,
Munro,
this is
Barrett,
reporting in on this net.” He gestured frantically at Chief Morris, who read the ship's current position off the chart as Dan repeated it into the mike.
Munro
came back with her position. Dan told Van Cleef to get that down to CIC, make sure she was properly identified on the surface picture.
Leighty came back in as
Dahlgren
reported in. He reached for the message board as he listened. Dan pulled his own copy of the OTC's message out of his shirt pocket and rescanned it, refreshing his brain.
Since this was a humanitarian operation, the Commander, Seventh Coast Guard District, had designated
Munro's
commanding officer the officer in tactical command of the boat-lift monitor mission. As the other ships reported in, he assigned them to picket positions in a gradually narrowing bottleneck leading from the north coast of Cuba to the Florida Keys. They were to direct and assist the refugees, providing food, water, and navigational advice, and “fulfill a police mission as required.” If they judged a craft too badly found to proceed, they were to advise the crew and passengers to turn back to Cuban waters. They were not to take refugees aboard unless foundering was imminent.
Okay, Dan thought, that was pretty straightforward, except maybe for the part about telling them to go back. He refolded the message as Van Cleef said, “Sir, they're getting thicker up ahead.”
Dan stepped to the window. His binoculars stopped halfway to his eyes.
He didn't need them now.
As he'd checked their orders,
Barrett
had coasted on, not fast, but now she was surrounded. Ragged sails dotted the heaving sea all around them. He stared out, transfixed and appalled. There had to be a hundred boats in view now, and more poked over the horizon each minute. It looked like a regatta, as if everyone in Cuba had set sail in whatever they could find that would float.
“Slow to five,” said Leighty. “Hoist the battle colors. Stand by the motor whaleboat. Away the casualty and assistance team.”
Suddenly, the bridge, previously quiet except for the crackle of the speakers, was filled with voices. “Engines ahead one-third. Indicate pitch for five knots.”
Ping, ping.
“Engine Room answers, ahead one-third.”
“Very well.”
“Away the motor whaleboat, Section I provide. Away the Cat Team, muster on the flight deck—belay my last, away the Cat Team, muster on the fantail.”
“Bridge, Main Control. Request permission to go to split plant ops.”
“Permission granted,” said Leighty. Van Cleef hit the switch on the 21MC to relay that to the engineers. At that moment,
Munro
came back on the air. Dan whipped out his pencil and got the signal down on the margin of the chart. “This is USS
Barrett.
I read back: Take Station Bravo, conduct channelization operations, and render assistance in accordance with your zero-two-zero-seven-three-zero-zulu. Maintain guard on this net and other nets in accordance with paragraph five. Report hourly at time fifteen. Over.”
“This is USCGC
Munro,
roger, out.”
Chief Morris read off, “Station Bravo: East corner, twenty-two degrees, fifty-five minutes north, seventy-eight degrees, thirty-five minutes west. Southwest corner, twenty-two degrees, fifty-two north, seventy-eight forty west. Northeast corner, twenty-three twelve north, seventy-eight forty-seven west. Northwest corner, twenty-three zero-nine north, seventy-eight fifty west.” He had it already penciled in, but Dan stretched over the chart with dividers, making sure. The area was twenty miles long and five wide, oriented along the east side of where the Old Bahama Channel bent north to become the Santarén. Leighty leaned in over his shoulder. Dan felt him pressing against him as the captain's finger moved along the outboard limit of their patrol area.
“Shit. He's got us thumbtacked right up against the reef.”
The captain was right, Dan saw. Along the inner edge of their area, the sea shoaled precipitously from 180 fathoms to 3.5. Along the vast light blue shallow-water sprawl of the Great Bahama Bank, rocks and shoals were marked with tiny crosses: Larks Nest, Copper Rock, Wolf Rocks, Hurricane Flats. Not a nice position, he thought. Reefs and flats to the north, Cuban territorial waters to the south. Obviously thinking along the same lines, Leighty asked Morris, “How far is it to Cuba, Chief?”
“From the southwest corner, twelve miles, sir.”
“Shit,” Leighty muttered. “And as the storm goes by, the wind'll swing around to put us right on those rocks … . Okay, we'll just have to keep a close watch on the fathometer. Ask Mr. Paul to give me a call about the anchor. Give us a course, Chief; let's get headed over there.”
They wheeled slowly north and cranked on speed. Leighty limited them to fifteen knots, saying he didn't want to run over anyone—if a boat didn't have a sail up, they might not see them till they came out of the swell line. Dan asked if he should double the lookouts. Leighty said that was a good idea.
The captain started for the ladder, then hesitated, brow furrowed. “I meant to ask them something when they came up on the circuit—the political end.”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, what exactly we intend to do with these people. Do we turn them back? Or are they political refugees?”
“I don't know, sir. Sorry, I didn't think to ask that.”
“It'd help to know. I'm going to call them back on a scrambled net, see if the OTC has any dope on that. Be down in Combat.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Leighty had the door open when the lookout phone talker said, “Aircraft to port, bearing two-seven-zero, position angle two.” Van Cleef went out on the wing and reported back, “Multi-engine. Looks like a P-three.”
Dan looked at Leighty, who was still lingering. The captain blinked, apparently thinking. Dan hit the intercom. “Combat, Bridge: We have a P-three in sight up here.”
“Bridge, Combat: We're talking to him. He's from VP-ninety-three out of Key West. He's reporting surface contacts to the OTC.”
“Roger.”
“Captain's off the bridge,” the boatswain bellowed. Dan rubbed his face, looking at his watch: still forty-five minutes before his turnover.
“Somebody waving to us, to starboard,” the phone talker said.
“What's that?” He turned quickly.
“Wait one … Sir, somebody waving at us. Bearing zero-four-zero.”
“I've got him,” Van Cleef said. Dan lined his glasses on his and saw them, caught for an instant on the crest of a wave.
“Head on over there, sir?”
“Yeah. I'll call the captain.” He reached for the intercom.
 
 
BARRETT
pitched slowly, heavily, as the little boat danced crazily in her lee. Dan, leaning out, signaled to the fantail. A crack, and the orange thread of a shot line bellied in the wind and fell across the boat. When a tow line was across and they were trailing astern, he said, “Pass to the linehandlers: Haul them in and stand off about fifty feet.”
“Petty Officer Bacallao, lay to the fantail,” said the 1MC.
Dan had taken the conn back from Van Cleef, anticipating tricky maneuvering. With props turning at zero pitch,
Barrett
was essentially a huge sailboat, and she tended to turn downwind, which would be uncomfortable, to say the least, for the refugees. He had to juggle the engines and rudder to keep her bow into the seas, which swept down in impressive-looking ranks from the north. Closer to the reefs, the short fetch should shelter them, but out here they were building to a size that made the little craft astern pitch and heave sickeningly.
“Ready to relieve you, sir.”
He returned Cannon's salute but told him to stand by, get the rhythm of the sea before he took over. A few minutes later, Dan handed over the binoculars, calling out to mark the passage of responsibility—hastily, because the helmsman was already wrestling the bow around again. Cannon stepped to the centerline, shouting orders, and Dan backpedaled out of the way.
He jogged aft and emerged on the helo deck. Aft of him, the weather decks stepped downward. He ran across the flight deck, feeling it slant under him so that his progress was an arc, not a straight line, and clattered down two more ladders to join a clotted knot of khaki and denim on the fantail.
A strange-looking craft rode the swells a hundred feet off, undulating as the waves passed under it. Two men were stretched out atop it. “Let me see those,” Dan muttered to a chief with binoculars.
With seven magnifications, he could see the stitching in the canvas stretched over what were obviously old inner tubes. Some had gone soft, wobbling at every blow of the sea. The two clung grimly to sewn-on handholds. “Jesus Christ,” he heard the chief mutter. There was no engine and only the snapped-off stump of a board that must have been their mast.
He looked around. The captain and the Spanish-speaking petty
officer, Signalman Third Bacallao, stood by the rail, looking down. Bacallao held a loud-hailer. Behind them were several boatswain's mates and Ensign Paul.
And behind them was Harper, a short-barreled riot gun at port arms. With him were the rest of his security team, all armed. Catching his look, Harper gave him a wry little smile.
“Ready for anything, right, Chief Warrant?”

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