On the bed in Anastacio’s house, in the middle of a muggy Florida night, Alex blinked awake on the morning of June tenth. The door to the room was open. Paul Guarneri was sitting on the edge of her bed, gently shaking her.
“Come on, Alex,” he said. “The pilot’s here. LaReina made coffee. We can take it with us with some rolls. Got to move.”
She sat up and blinked. The new day was unwelcome. Beyond the window the sky was still dark. It was the middle of the night. Then part of her indignation from the previous night started to simmer. “Okay,” she grumbled. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Let’s just get this done, Paul,” she said. “For both our sakes.”
“I agree.”
He got up and left the room, leaving the door partly open. A harsh light flooded in from the hallway. She waited a moment, then another, then threw off the sheet and blanket. She was on her feet, stepping into her shoes.
Five minutes later, she was downstairs, her waterproof emergency kit strapped to her thigh where otherwise one might carry a gun or a knife. Her gun was on her ankle, also in waterproof packing. Her duffel was in her hand.
True to his word, Anastacio was awake, as was LaReina, who had packed a bag with breakfast rolls and thermoses of coffee, as promised. She was barefoot and wore a thin T-shirt and a pair of men’s boxers, her legs tan and supple with a cat tattoo on the back of her left calf. She handed each of the voyagers a stash of granola bars wrapped in waterproof foil. Alex jammed two into her pockets. She went to her purse to pack a pen also. She looked for her silver Tiffany pen, the one her boss had once given her, and couldn’t find it. Nor, in her tiredness, could she recall when she had last seen it.
Anastacio glanced at his watch. He held the back door open and led Guarneri and Alex toward the pier. The plane’s engine was not yet running.
A huge black man, Pierre, sat in the pilot’s seat of the Cessna. He gave his two passengers a big toothy grin, then opened the passenger door. He extended a hand to help Alex aboard, then pulled Guarneri up.
“?Bienandanza!” Anastacio said. “Godspeed, both of you!”
“?Vayan con dios!” LaReina added.
In the dark, they held up their hands and waved. Pierre pulled the door closed. The only light was from the house and, an instant later, the airplane’s interior. Anastacio gave the fuselage a push with his two hands, and the plane eased back from the pier. Pierre settled into the pilot’s chair and cranked the engine. The plane came to life. The engine revved louder, and the aircraft turned quickly on the water to face southward over the straits. Alex and Guarneri settled into their seats next to each other, immediately behind the pilot, and buckled in.
“?Listos, mis amigos?” Pierre yelled.
“Ready!” Alex called back.
Paul gave a thumbs-up.
“?Vamos!” Pierre yelled.
A second later, Pierre slammed the throttle forward and they were hurtling across the choppy water. They skimmed the surface for a moment and lifted off; they went upward in a low flat ascent, and then they were on their way. Pierre was flying by the stars and by radar. He had illuminated no exterior lights.
Alex peered over his shoulder. The altimeter leveled out at four hundred feet and stayed there. Alex heaved a nervous sigh and said a short prayer. There were some air pockets and down-drafts, and the plane shook, dipped, and bounced back up for more. She loved this kind of excitement – and hated it at the same time. She felt like a gambler who kept going to a casino with the rent money; deep down, the gambler knows she’s eventually going to lose, but the excitement is worth the risk. She wondered why she did it. She couldn’t answer her question.
She had another thought. All the crazy flights I’ve taken, and all the disreputable men I’ve flown with, and all the places I’ve gone- why hasn’t common sense stopped me?
Then the flight smoothed. Hardly a bump.
Pierre reached for a makeshift ashtray by his controls, which was nothing more than a crushed Pabst Beer can. He opened his side window in deference to a lady being present and relit a cigar that had been sitting there half-smoked. He worked it hard in his white teeth and soon had a good cloud of smoke going, most of which he blew out the window. To Alex the cigar stench was awful, and to make matters worse, Pierre seemed to be chewing it as much as smoking it.
“You can’t tell me the Cuban navy doesn’t have radar or border security,” Alex said to Guarneri. “Don’t they ever spot planes coming in?”
“Not usually,” Guarneri said. “Not if you fly low enough.” There was a long pause, and the sound of the Cessna’s engine droned smoothly in the darkness. Outside the port wing of the aircraft, the lights of the distant sleeping islands twinkled peaceably on the horizon. “There’s always exceptions, but not usually. It’s like anything else. Set the plane down, get back in the air quickly, move fast, and beat anyone who’s after you.” He paused. “Let’s face it. This whole area of the Caribbean is notoriously corrupt. Money changes hands; authorities look the other way. Works that way in Florida, works that way in Cuba, and it’s the only way it works in the Bahamas. The U.S. Coast Guard intercepts a couple of thousand homemade rafts every year. Know how many planes they pick off? Less than a hundred. I looked into it. What does that tell you?”
“There are more rafts than planes,” said Alex. “What if they do intercept us?”
“They won’t,” Guarneri said. “First, we’re not doing anything illegal. The flight manifest shows us leaving from Key West to go to the Bahamas. That’s where Pierre continues to. The plane itself doesn’t do anything illegal. It just sets us down, and we do what we have to. You told me yourself that your employers know where you are and where you’re going. So I have a hunch this plan has a bit of a look-the-other-way from the U.S. Coast Guard anyway. No one’s going to examine whether the flying time was two hours from the Keys or one.”
“Or whether two passengers get off or none.”
Guarneri laughed. “What passengers?” he asked. “We’re invisible, you and me, aren’t we? We don’t exist.” He grabbed the manifest from under Pierre’s Dominican passport. He showed it to Alex. There was a big fat zero where the list of passengers was stated.
“How’d you fix that?” Alex asked.
“Pierre filled it out. No one checked,” said Guarneri.
“And no one chose to look either,” she said.
“Describe it that way if you want. Look, everything’s copacetic. We’ll be back home in six days, and you’ll have wonderful stories to tell.”
“Right,” she said. “Meanwhile I’m keeping my gun strapped tight to my ankle.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
The sound of the engine adjusted, and the plane made a dip. Up ahead, distant and emerging through the haze straight in front of the pilot, Alex could see the shoreline of Cuba and the lights of Havana, knotted together on the horizon like little stars. To the left, eastward, she could see a smaller clump of lights that she assumed was Manzanas, which was nearer their destination than Havana. She looked out the window and could see the surface of the water, reflecting the sky and the lights from shore and the occasional fishing boat – or what she hoped were fishing boats – anchored, their dim red and green lights winking on the surface of the water.
Pierre beckoned Guarneri forward and indicated something.
The pilot flew with night goggles and kept consulting a homing device. Alex assumed that he had spotted their rendezvous craft. Alex knew this was one of the trickier parts of the operation, dropping human cargo, particularly nonexistent cargo, with a rendezvous at sea.
Guarneri ended the conversation with a nod and settled beside her. “He’s got our contact vessel lined up,” Guarneri said. “We should be on the water in five minutes.”
They were. Pierre brought the plane in with a hard bump, three bounces, and a long easy skid. The aircraft glided through the water like a dark swan. The propeller decelerated and spun to a stop. Pierre cut the engines to a low idle. Off the port side, in the darkness, a small sailboat turned toward them. Its sails were not hoisted. It had nets for fish. The plane bobbed up and down with the waves. Alex guessed they were about a mile and a half offshore.
As the boat approached, Pierre watched it carefully. His hand went to his sidearm. So did Guarneri’s. There was a tense moment as the boat pulled alongside. Alex could hear the hum of the boat’s small electric motor.
Pierre slid open the port-side window of the cockpit. Alex overheard a curt conversation in Spanish, presumably containing word codes. Whatever it was, it passed without a problem because Pierre turned and gave a nod to Guarneri.
Guarneri opened the rear door and signaled to Alex. “We’re good,” he said. “Be sure you have everything. Let’s move.”
Guarneri went first. He stepped down onto the pontoon of the plane. It was unsteady as waves rippled all around. She remained in the plane and watched. The boat pulled tightly alongside. A man with a carbine stood at the bow. He was burley and dark skinned and wore a University of Miami baseball cap and smoked. A second man approached, brandishing a pistol. Then a third man appeared, a jittery figure at the tiller, dark skinned also, bareheaded, with a black T-shirt and cut-off jeans. He watched everyone’s movements like a terrier.
Guarneri jumped onto the deck of the boat as the first man steadied him. Guarneri seemed to know him since they embraced briefly. Then the gunman stepped back, and Alex slid down, balanced on the pontoon, and in the same motion took a big step forward onto the boat. The deck was wet. She nearly slipped, but both men grabbed her, the gunman’s hand firmly on her arm, and Guarneri holding her with a two-handed embrace.
The smaller gunman pushed the boat away from the plane as the plane’s door closed from inside. Pierre cranked his engine and turned the seaplane for takeoff. The drop had taken less than three minutes.
“We’re cool; we’re doing good,” Guarneri said. He glanced at his watch. “Five after five. Perfect.” He motioned to the first gunman. “This is Pedro our bodyguard, and Felix, our other bodyguard. Back there is Leo, our captain,” he said in English. “We’ll be ashore in twenty minutes. Settle onto the rear deck; it’ll be best.”
Pedro, Felix, and Leo barely acknowledged Alex. Pedro took up a crouch position at the bow of the boat. Leo kept one hand on the tiller and the other on the quiet electric outboard engine. Felix, with a rifle, sat to the side and looked as jittery as a dozen spooked cats.
Now that she was aboard, Alex assessed the sailboat. It was about twenty-five feet in length, old, maybe thirty years, but neat and nimble. She assumed Leo’s livelihood was in an underground economy that was comprised of more things than she cared to consider.
“Like our bodyguards?” Guarneri asked her in a low voice. “Not as professional as your FBI and CIA people, but they have more charisma.”
“Charming,” she said. “What do they do besides smuggle?”
“Sometimes kill people,” Guarneri said.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No.”
“Nice,” she said. She sat down in the stern and tried to organize her thoughts. So far, things had gone smoothly. Guarneri seemed in control. The sound of the boat’s engine dropped down a notch, and she knew Leo had cut the speed yet again, trying to come to shore as quietly as possible.
Alex’s mind shifted to Spanish. The rifleman and the captain were engaged in a dirty story about the wife of a mutual friend. Felix sat by quietly, fidgeting, his rifle across his chest. Alex suspected that they knew she was American and therefore didn’t understand Spanish. She resented the assumption, if there was one, but played it to her advantage. Her nerves were on tenterhooks, and if they didn’t think she understood, she didn’t have to talk.
Paul came back, sat, and patted down his jacket until he found a pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and lit it.
“Nervous?” she asked. “Now that we’re almost there?”
The question took him by surprise. “Nah,” he said. Then he realized that she was looking at his cigarette. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “If I’m lighting one of these, I must be nervous, right?”
“Pretty much.”
He lit it and inhaled, then blew out a long thin cone of smoke.
“Well, yeah, a little,” he admitted.
He turned and looked toward shore, which was a thin line of lights in the distance, then looked back to her. “Well, whatever. It’s Cuba, you know. We’re about to arrive in Cuba. You know what that means to me. You’d be nervous if you were me – “
“I’m not – and I’m nervous anyway,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah, well. We’re mortal, right?” he asked.
“Too much so,” Alex answered. “And too easily mortal.”
“You got a good head on you, don’t you, Alex?” he asked. “You’re a smart lady. Just smart enough to be scared because you understand what you’re doing.”
“Not for the first time,” she said. She settled back and watched the coastline draw closer as the early morning hours slid by. Her prevailing sentiment was that she wished this operation were over, and it had barely started.