When I was finished signing the papers, I carried my single canvas backpack, satellite phone therein, along with Tomlinson’s borrowed laptop, to my water-view Room 578.
I am a methodical person with orderly habits. When I settle into a hotel, the ceremony seldom varies. If I’m in an equatorial region, I turn the air on high, open all the windows, hang my shaving kit so it’s ready when I need it, put beer atop the air conditioner if it’s appropriately configured, then change into shorts and go for a swim.
Now, though, I immediately checked my e-mail, then Pilar’s.
Nothing new.
Next, I walked to the balcony, slid the door open, and stepped out to see the view from my fifth-floor room.
I could look over the tops of palms and see the St. Pete skyline: high-rises and stadium lights, and the Jell-O-lucent swimming pool below. And there was the bay, a waterscape nine miles wide, Tampa’s skyscrapers and storage tanks on the other side, barges and tugs and ocean liners moving out there on the Intracoastal Waterway, working their way to and from Florida’s busiest west coast commercial port.
Slightly to the south, the horizon dropped to a rim of blue-green: mangroves and pines mostly, only a few radio towers and smoke stacks showing above.
To celebrate a recent birthday, I’d swum across Tampa Bay; started a few miles north of where I now stood, then finished four miles, and a little less than two hours later, wading ashore at a park above the Howard Frankland Bridge. Even though I’d done the swim on a ragged, windy day, the bay and surrounding city had seemed a safe and cheerful harbor; an extension of my Sanibel homeplace. Now, though, the area seemed shadowed with grim and dangerous potential.
Standing on the Vinoy’s balcony, searching the horizon, taking it all in, I thought of Lourdes, and of my smart, smart son who was being held captive.
They were out there.
The exercise had perverse appeaclass="underline" If I moved my head back and forth, I knew that at some unrealized intersection, my eyes made contact.
Where?
When you’ve spent a lifetime running around in small boats in the worst kinds of conditions, at night, in fog, and in squalls, you come to understand early on the importance of learning your area of operation and, as best as you can, memorizing key range markers and landmarks before you get on the water.
So I changed into jogging shorts and took swim goggles plus my brand-new nautical chart of Tampa Bay down to the hotel pool. Swam a few hundred yards to relax, then sat with a huge glass of ice water with lime, and studied the minute details of the chart as if their importance could mean the difference between life and death.
Fact of the matter was, they might.
Uncharacteristically, though, I had trouble concentrating. It was difficult because early that morning Tomlinson and I had gone for a long walk down the beach toward Sanibel’s lighthouse point. Walked slowly, side by side, past occasional stoop-shouldered shell hunters and joggers, and past shore birds that skittered like pockets of ground fog, moving rhythmically in and out with the wash and fall of waves.
During that walk, he’d finally confessed to me what he should have confessed long ago. He also told me some things that he could not have shared in a more timely fashion. There was a reason for the lapse. I believed his excuse, and what he told me.
Some of the details of my talk with Tomlinson kept banging around in my skull, interrupting the mechanics of the memorization process as I tried to imprint details from the chart onto my brain.
Finally, I said to hell with it. When things aren’t going well in the classroom, it sometimes helps to get out into the field. So I went back up to the fifth floor, where I changed into fishing shorts, tank top, and boating Tevas.
As I was getting ready, my cell phone arrived, battery already charged. I checked out the little headphone set. It seemed comfortable enough. I could drop the phone in my pocket and chatter away.
I called my lab immediately, hoping to get Janet Mueller, but I got my recorder instead. Using the remote function on my home answering machine, I changed the outgoing message so that anyone who called would hear my voice recite my new cellular number. I did it for Dewey, no one else.
Maybe Tomlinson’s right. Maybe it’s inevitable that we will all end up slaves to the microchip.
Next, I tried to call Harris Lilly, an old friend of mine who is in naval intelligence. Tried him first at his home, and then on his cell phone.
I got lucky. He just happened to be deployed on some kind of duty for U.S. Central Command-he didn’t say what, of course-and was working just across the bay from me at MacDill Air Force Base. MacDill is a massive military preserve that takes up much of Tampa’s southern peninsular tip, and it is from there that the United States military ran the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I said to Harris, “I’m in town for a few days, so how’d you like to go boating?”
As if I’d just invited him on a Sunday picnic, he replied, “Ah, a boat ride. As if I don’t spend enough time on the water. And what a pleasant day for it. Gray and windy, and it’s almost certainly going to rain. Sounds lovely. ”
“A perfect afternoon,” I said, playing along. “Maybe I’ll pack a lunch. There’s a lot I need to see. Just you and me banging around Tampa Bay.”
Suddenly serious, he said, “Screw lunch. Neither one of us is the recreational type, so you wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t have something interesting going on. I’m assuming there’s a damn good reason you want me to go.”
“Exactly right, Commander. It’s called local knowledge. You’ve got it. I need it. I trailered my skiff up. Do you have some time this afternoon?”
“I can manage. If it’s that important.”
“It’s that important. So do you want me to pick you up at MacDill? I think I can find my way to the docks at the south-east inlet. I ought to be able to.”
Laughing, Harris Lilly said, “Yeah, blindfolded, I think you could find those docks. But these days, our security teams get very nervous about civilian vessels approaching the base. They’re prone to blow little boats out of the water with great big guns. Even someone like you. So why don’t you pick me up somewhere around Ballast Point, just up from the base? At the Tampa Yacht Club or the fishing pier. I’ll give you the tour from there.”
I said, “How about the Yacht Club. In an hour?”
Harris said, “An hour, yeah. That’ll give me time to change out of my Superman suit into civvies. Which will allow me to pound down several of the excellent beers you’ll be bringing in deepest gratitude for my help.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Harris Lilly is in his early forties, half Anglo, half Vietnamese, but entirely American. He looks more like someone well groomed and well satisfied in one of the solid professions-a physician, a judge-rather than the shit-hot reserve naval intelligence officer that he is. He’s lean, with soccer-player legs, and gives the impression of boyishness, childlike enthusiasm, even naivete-until you get a good look at his eyes.
Look into Harris’s eyes and you will see that his enthusiasm is real, his energy level is unbelievable, but that the boy in him disappeared long, long ago.
Reserve officer does not mean that he is a “weekend warrior.” It means he does special assignments. He will sometimes drop off the radar screen, out of sight for weeks, sometimes months, at a time.
In his words, when he’s not “playing Navy,” he is employed as a pilot for the Tampa Port Authority. When most people hear the word “pilot,” they think of airplanes. Around ports, though, the word “pilot” describes a highly trained, state and federally licensed maritime captain who boards and takes command of all incoming and outgoing freighters, tankers, and cruise ships, and makes sure they make safe passage through the tricky, narrow local channels.
Tampa pilots have been operating out of Egmont Key since the early 1800s, yet few people even know their profession exists. What they also don’t know is that, like all pilots worldwide, these pros play an essential role in maintaining the safety and security of the region.