The only problem with this plan was the two Cuban patrol boats, which I assumed still wanted to blow us out of the water.
I glanced at my radar screen. The Zhuk was still gaining on me, but he’d have to follow me halfway to the Keys before I was in range of his machine guns. And he might do that. I didn’t think I wanted to take him on again. God gives you only one miracle to save your ass. The next one is on you.
The real problem was still the Stenka. He was doing about forty-five knots, and I remembered him anchored outside the marina — a big bastard, bristling with mounted machine guns, and two gun turrets, fore and aft, that housed the twin rapid-fire cannons. I also pictured him now, cutting through the waves, and the captain staring at his radar, watching the distance between him and me beginning to close.
I looked again at the chart plotter. I was already too far west to shoot for Andros Island. I would have had to do that soon after I’d exchanged fire with the Zhuk. Now I was in the middle of nowhere, committed to my heading for the Keys, which was the closest land — if you didn’t count Cuba.
We’d crossed into international waters about fifteen minutes before, and as I suspected, the Guarda Frontera boats also crossed that line without a pause. They were in hot pursuit, and international waters didn’t mean much except that anyone could go there without permission. U.S. territorial waters began twelve nautical miles off the coast of the Keys, and no matter how I did the math, it didn’t look like we were going to get that far before the Stenka caught up to us.
Jack came into the cabin. “How we doing?”
“What’s the radio frequency for Dial-a-Prayer?”
He looked at the radar. “I think you need a higher frequency.”
“Right.”
“You got any more tricks up your sleeve?”
“I’m thinking.” I asked him, “What’s happening below?”
“Sara’s in the port stateroom, maybe catching some Zs. Felipe’s in the galley lightening our load of rum.”
“He earned a drink.”
“You want one?”
“No. But you go ahead.”
Jack remembered one of his T-shirts and said, “I only drink a little, but when I do, I become a different person, and that person drinks a lot.”
I smiled. “I’ll take a smoke.”
He fished his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, and I could see he was in some pain from where the AK round smacked his vest.
I took a cigarette and he lit me up with his Zippo, then lit himself up and said, “These things are gonna kill me.”
“You should live so long.”
He looked at the fuel gauge, checked out the radar again, then the GPS and chart plotter, but didn’t say anything.
The seas were getting calmer as we traveled west, and outside the windshield I could see stars peeking through the racing clouds. We had the wind at our backs, and The Maine was making good time. But not good enough.
My radar was set for six miles, to keep a close eye on our pursuers, whom I’d code-named Asshole A and Asshole B. Asshole A — the Zhuk — actually seemed to have lost ground, and it occurred to me that he may have a fuel situation. If he wasn’t topped off when he left Cayo Guillermo for his nightly patrol, he’d need to calculate how far he could follow me before he ran out of gas in the middle of the ocean.
I glanced at Asshole B — the Stenka — and saw he was chugging along, making maybe forty-five knots, and closing the gap. This asshole wanted to kill me.
I adjusted my radar to take in the whole fifty-mile radius of its range, and Jack and I looked for other ships out there, but I saw only two — one to the west heading west along the shipping lane through the Straits of Florida. The other ship was on a heading that would put it into Havana Harbor. The storm had pretty much cleared out the sea to the east and no one was in our vicinity. Even the drug runners were taking the night off.
I said to Jack, “Broadcast a distress call.”
He took the mic and began broadcasting, giving our position and heading, and who we were, and the nature of our problem, which he described as two fucking Cuban gunboats trying to kill us.
I advised him, “Say we also have a fuel situation and an injured crew member.”
“Who’s injured?”
“You, asshole.”
“Right.” He glanced at the fuel gauge, then continued his transmission.
The rules of the sea — the customs and traditions — say that you need to come to the aid of a ship in distress. But if the distress is a shoot-out on the high seas, there might be a lot of sea captains who’d rather avoid that, on the theory that your distress was not the elements, or an act of God, and not the kind of distress that obligated them to risk their own asses or the asses of their crew or passengers. The fuel situation, however, and the injured crew member might awaken a captain’s sense of brotherly obligation. I suggested, “Tell them we’re running out of booze.”
Jack, whose dark humor is darker than mine, asked me, “Should I say we came in second in a Cuban fishing tournament?”
“Worth a try.”
Jack transmitted again, sticking to the facts, but no one replied. I mean, we could have not mentioned the Cuban gunboats, but that’s not fair. If you ask someone for help, you need to lay out the dangers. If I’d heard this transmission... it would depend on whom I had aboard. Or I might wonder what the ship in trouble did to get chased by Cuban gunboats. Or I might think it was a hoax, or a trap to pirate my boat. Lots of stuff happens on the high seas that wouldn’t or couldn’t happen on land. It was a different planet out here; a watery grave, waiting to receive the dead and the soon-to-be-dead.
I said to Jack, “Okay, we’ll try again later.” Meanwhile, I’d listen for a response. I said to Jack, “I need a damage report.”
He replied, “It is what you see.”
“What do I not see?”
“You don’t see that a few rounds passed through the head, and I think the fresh-water tank sprung a leak.”
“How’s the beer?”
“Good. But I think we have a small leak in the fuel tank.”
I glanced at the fuel gauge and nodded. If we had daylight, I could see if we were leaving a diesel slick behind us. I wasn’t sure if we were leaking diesel or burning it in the rough sea. In either case, Key West was looking less possible. But Key Largo was still within reach if the fuel gauge stopped going south. Fuel, however, was the least of my problems. The Stenka was still the main problem, and he was gaining on us. I tightened the radar image. He was three nautical miles behind us.
Sara came into the cabin, and Jack, who looked like he was about to pass out, said he was going below to make some coffee. “You want some?”
“Sure.” I asked Sara, “How’re you doing?”
“All right.”
“How’s Felipe?”
“He’s in a stateroom.”
I let her know, “He did good back there.”
She nodded, and sat in the chair next to me, noticing that I’d turned on the GPS and chart plotter, which reminded both of us of our sunset cruise when we’d looked at Havana Harbor. If we knew then what we knew now, we’d probably both have said buenas noches and have a good life.
She said, “Talk to me. What’s happening?”
“Well, we’ve come about eighty miles since our encounter with the Zhuk, and we have maybe a hundred twenty to go before we get into U.S. territorial waters.”
She nodded. “Will they follow us?”
“They will break off five or ten miles before they reach that line.” I explained, “Closer than that is a provocation, which will likely lead to a radio warning, and may cause the Coast Guard to send a cutter out.”