“Welcome aboard,” Isaac said graciously, shaking the officer’s hand.
The officer was dark skinned — not black like Isaac — but very dark nonetheless. The officer spoke in English with a thick Spanish accent.
“What is your name?” the officer asked in a brusque tone.
“My name is Isaac, and that is my wife, Essie,” he said, pointing toward his wife. She appeared to be sleeping in her lounge chair about fifty feet away.
“What is the nature of your visit to these waters?” the officer asked, writing something on his clipboard.
Isaac held out his arms and looked up to the sky.
“Look how beautiful it is today,” he said. “We are here on vacation.”
The officer appeared hot in his uniform. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. He looked over at Isaac’s wife, who still hadn’t moved from her chair.
“Who is the owner of this vessel?” the man asked.
“We lease it once every year to come float around in the Caribbean to have a little fun,” replied Isaac.
“From where did you depart?”
“Lagos, Nigeria,” Isaac told him truthfully.
The officer raised an eyebrow and looked closely at Isaac. He shook his head once, as if he didn’t like that answer.
“And what is your ultimate destination?” the officer asked, making notes on his clipboard.
“Here,” Isaac said, holding out his arms again. “However, we may go over to Aruba and spend some time on the beach there or head into Caracas to do a little dancing and shopping. But, for the most part, we have arrived.”
“How many passengers are on board?”
“Just my wife, myself and our first mate up there in the wheelhouse.”
The officer looked up, and Afua gave him a friendly wave through the glass.
“And, when will you be leaving these waters?” asked the officer.
Isaac pretended to think about this question for a moment before responding, “Well, we have leased the boat for three months, and we are just at the end of our first month, so—” He let the officer fill in the blank.
The officer jotted down more notes on his clipboard.
“Do you have any weapons or contraband of any type?”
Isaac appeared to be surprised by the question, but quickly responded, “Yes, we have a cache of weapons below for self-protection. And other than some fine Russian caviar, we do not have anything I believe would be considered contraband.”
Up to this point, the officer had not smiled, and that nuance was beginning to worry Isaac. He knew these men could search his ship and find nothing incriminating, yet he was still apprehensive about his ship being searched. The darker side of his thoughts ran down the lines of these men planting some sort of drugs on his boat. Then they could seize the vessel and throw himself, his wife and Afua in jail.
The officer looked up at the wheelhouse again and instructed Isaac, “Have your man come down here.”
Isaac turned and waved his arm for Afua to come down. It didn’t take more than a minute for him to make his way down to the men on deck.
“What is your name?”
Afua pretended that he didn’t understand.
Isaac spoke up, “I’m sorry, but he does not speak English.”
“Does he speak Spanish?” the officer asked.
“No, all he speaks is his native tongue of the area he came from. I don’t suppose you know Ibibio?”
The officer smiled for the first time, but it was more a smile of contempt.
“Do you really think I would know Ibibio? It sounds like a made-up language,” he said skeptically.
Isaac said something to Afua in Ibibio, and Afua shook his head. He said something back to Isaac, and Isaac repeated it in English, “He says that Ibibio is a very popular language in Nigeria.” Afua had told Isaac he wanted to put a bullet into the officer’s head.
The officer studied Afua suspiciously for a moment. Droplets of sweat fell from the officer’s face and onto his clipboard.
“Search the ship,” he told his men. “And have this man show you where their weapons are stored,” he added, pointing at Afua with his clipboard.
Isaac repeated the officer’s instructions to Afua in Ibibio.
Two of the uniformed men fell into line behind Afua. Only one was carrying an assault rifle. The group began walking towards the yacht’s main stairwell. Isaac did nothing but watch, as the other men fanned out around the yacht to begin their search.
It took less than a minute for Afua, and the men following him, to reach the lowest level of the Nigerian Princess.
Afua walked the two soldiers over to the trunk full of weapons and motioned at it with his left hand.
The man that was not carrying the rifle said, “Open it.”
Afua pretended he didn’t understand, and instead of repeating the instruction, the soldier slid the metal latch to one side and lifted the lid. Considering how much weaponry was within the trunk, Afua was surprised that the men seemed to be interested in only the Barrett sniper rifle.
The man who had opened the trunk removed the heavy Barrett, held it in front of Afua.
“What do you use this for?” he asked the Nigerian.
Again, Afua feigned ignorance. Instead of answering, Afua held his hands wide apart, the gesture denoting a great distance. Then Afua pantomimed that he was behind the gun, pointing it and firing it.
The soldier didn’t say anything. Instead, he shook his head disapprovingly and placed the gun back in the trunk. Closing the lid, not bothering to latch it, the two Venezuelans began searching the room in earnest. The man with the assault rifle poked things with it, including hard coils of rope and soft tarps. The man without the rifle liked to open cabinets and glance in. They spent the better part of five minutes searching the lower deck and engine room before moving to the deck above.
Afua was not worried about them finding anything. He was more worried about them planting something on the ship and then seizing the vessel under some
made-up pretense. Trust in authority figures had not been instilled in Afua, going all the way back to his childhood. He was born in a country where just about every official he had ever known had been on the take; therefore, he assumed that the officers and soldiers from Venezuela were probably not much different.
Reaching behind his back, Afua touched the gun in his waistband to make sure it was still in place. He watched the men leave deck number two and climb back up the stairs leading to the top deck. If these men found items that they considered contraband, and the consequence was impounding the ship, Afua would have no choice but to kill them. He understood that his chances of pulling this off were not very good. He would not only have to kill the men who were searching the yacht, but he would be forced to kill every man on the Coast Guard Cutter as well. Afua realized that he would probably die in the process, but that would be better than being jailed on trumped-up charges. He wasn’t wired that way. He had never spent a day in jail, and today would not be any different.
Everyone had returned to the top deck. Two men were searching the little boat that hung from the launch cables on the stern of the Nigerian Princess. They flipped over cushions and checked for false compartments. While Afua had been down on the lower decks, a dog had been brought aboard. The shepherd was sniffing around the ship, its handler allowing the animal to go where its nose led it.
Essie Obano was now sitting up in her chair and watching the men search the yacht. She had wrapped a white towel around her chest and had pinned it in place using her underarms. She didn’t look upset. Rather, she looked grateful for the intrusion, as if the men were doing them a great favor, checking up on them to make sure they were safe.