“How does she head?” he asked the helmsman.
“Zero-seven-zero, sir,”
“Our speed?”
“All ahead standard, sir.”
“Come right to zero-nine-zero,” Cates said. He paused only an instant, and then said, “All engines ahead full.”
It was almost 1145 by the time they reached the boat. They spotted the circling plane first and Cates ordered his radiomen to try to raise it, and then they saw the boat out on the horizon, bobbing on the waves soundlessly, moving in an eccentric drifting pattern. Cates’s hospital corpsman was a second-class petty officer named Emil Bunder, whom everyone aboard — including Cates — called Doc. Bunder had prepared his emergency kit, not knowing what to expect once he got to the boat, and now he stood by, waiting to leave the ship, holding the kit in one hand and — in the other — a portable FM radio in its canvas carrying bag. The ship was equipped with two boats, a twenty-foot pulling dinghy on its port quarter, and a twenty-foot motor launch on its starboard quarter. For the trip to the disabled cruiser, the motor launch would be used. The seas were not rough, and the three men who would accompany Bunder in the launch were all skilled boat handlers. Bunder himself detested boats and was prone to seasickness, a failing which had led him to choose medicine (offering proximity to all sorts of pills) as his line of work in the Coast Guard.
The ship slowed to a stop some five hundred yards from the drifting cabin cruiser, and the crew lowered the launch into the water, hand over hand. A Stokes litter was passed down into the launch. The seaman serving as line handler cast off from the mother ship. The chief bosun turned the bow out, and the launch began moving across the water. Bunder, sitting alongside the engineman in the stern sheets, hoped he would not get sick. He also hoped the person needing medical assistance hadn’t been cut or shot or anything like that because he hated the sight of blood, which was one reason he’d almost decided against a life of medical adventure, in spite of his tendency toward seasickness. He also hoped the passengers wouldn’t turn out to be bare-assed, dirt-poor Cuban refugees half dead of malnutrition. Bunder had been aboard the Merc long enough to have answered a hundred and twenty-nine calls for assistance. More often than not, these small refugee boats were authentic distress cases even before they left Cuba. Equipped with makeshift sails or propelled by oars, they put out into the Gulf Stream overcrowded and undersupplied, hoping somehow to reach the United States. The last distress call the Merc had answered was only two weeks ago. They had overtaken and come aboard a fifteen-foot sailboat thronged with twenty-two sick and starving refugees. The stench of vomit had almost caused Bunder to jump overboard. The search party had gone through the boat looking for weapons, and then the Merc had taken all twenty-two passengers aboard, abandoning the rotting sailboat to the sea.
“Nice-looking boat,” the bosun’s mate said. “Custom job.”
“The Golden Fleece,” the engineman said, reading from the transom.
“Yeah,” Bunder said. “Chief, are you coming aboard to make a search?”
“You know it,” the bosun’s mate said.
They could see a man standing in the cockpit now, wearing an orange life jacket, and waving his arms at them as they approached.
“He doesn’t look sick to me,” Bunder said.
“Must be somebody else aboard,” the engineman said.
They were approaching the drifting boat rapidly now. They could make out the face of the man in the boat. He was a good-looking man; they were close enough to see the color of his skin now; he was not a Cuban, his eyes were blue. The bosun cut the engine and allowed the launch to drift alongside. The line handler hauled himself into the cockpit of the other boat, tied them together and then dropped a rope ladder over the side. Roxy, the bosun’s mate, came aboard and Bunder followed him up the rope ladder.
“Thank God,” the man in the cockpit said.
“What’s the trouble, sir?” Roxy asked.
“We’ve got a pregnant woman down below,” the man said. “Did you bring a doctor with you?”
“We don’t carry a doctor,” Roxy said. “Bunder, you want to go down there?”
Bunder nodded and went below. Roxy looked at the man standing before him, obviously recognizing him as an American, and wondering whether he should go through a routine search anyway.
“Are you an American, sir?” he asked.
“What?” The man seemed surprised. “I’m sorry, what did you—?”
“I asked if you were an American, sir.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” the man said.
“What’s your destination, sir?”
“Ocho Puertos. But you see—”
“How many people are aboard, sir?”
“Just the three of us.”
“Who’s that, sir? The three of you.” Roxy had taken a small green book out of his jacket pocket, and he opened it now and poised his pencil over a clean page.
“I’m Alex Witten.”
“Yes, sir. Is that W-i-t-t-e-n?”
“That’s right. And Randolph Gambol, G-a-m-b-o-1.”
“Yes, sir,” Roxy said, writing. “And you said there was a pregnant woman aboard. Is she your wife, sir?”
“No. No, she’s not.”
“Is she Mrs. Gambol then?”
“No. Her name is Annabelle Trench. Mrs. Jason Trench.” Roxy looked up, puzzled. “Mr. Trench is an associate of ours,” Witten explained. “He’s in Ocho Puertos at the moment. In fact, that’s why we were going down there from Miami. To join him. We figured—”
“I see,” Roxy said, and paused. “Sir, I wonder if I could see some identification.”
“What for?” Witten asked. Again, he seemed surprised.
“Regulations, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sir, we get a lot of Cubans up this way.”
“Do I look like a Cuban?”
“Sir, we get lots of Cubans who look just like you and me, and who were educated at Harvard.”
Witten sighed and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He rummaged through it for a moment and then handed Roxy his driver’s license. “Is this all right?” he asked.
Roxy studied it for a moment, and then looked up. “Where do you live, sir?” he asked.
“In New York City.”
“Where?”
“1130 East Sixty-fifth Street.”
Roxy looked at the license again. He looked up at Witten’s hair. He looked at the license again. He looked up at Witten’s eyes. He handed the license back. “This your boat, sir?”
“No.”
“Mr. Gambol’s?”
“No.”
“Whose?”
“It belongs to Mr. Trench.”
“What’s its registry?”
“New Orleans.”
“Whose name?”
“Jason Trench. Or maybe Annabelle’s, I’m not sure. We can ask her later. Look, maybe you don’t understand. That woman below is—”
“Sir, the doc’s with her and doing his best, I’m sure. Can you tell me—”
Roxy heard footsteps on the ladder behind him, and turned. The man coming up the ladder was wearing white duck trousers and a life jacket over a pale blue windbreaker. He was suntanned and good-looking, but there was a harried, frantic look about his eyes and his mouth.
“Are you in command here?” he asked immediately.
“Yes, sir,” Roxy said.
“We’ve got a woman below who needs help desperately,” he said, and then turned to Witten and said, “I knew we shouldn’t have put out, Alex. I knew it.” He swung again to the bosun’s mate and rested his hand on Roxy’s arm, as though confiding something terribly personal to a good and trusted friend. “She’s expecting the baby any minute. When the engine went out—”