They watched the scope in fascinated terror, expecting to see yet another electronic dot appear, and another, and still another, until a huge invasion armada filled the scope. They stared motionless as the two dots approached each other in what seemed to be a calculated maneuver, watched and waited breathlessly, wondering what their next move should be — should they sound an alarm, should they call the patrol boat command, should they alert the airfield?
All at once, a third dot appeared, a huge electronic burst that startled them both, overwhelming the two dots that had been on the screen earlier. They knew immediately that an enormous vessel had joined the formation, either a battleship or an aircraft carrier, hiding the other two from view. The sweep line came around again, a bright thin orange line coming nearer and nearer to where the invasion armada was massing. They watched silently, their terror rising, waiting for confirmation of what they had witnessed only seconds before. The sweep line moved toward the exact spot, closer and closer.
Nothing appeared on the screen.
The Russian and the Cuban turned to stare at each other and then blinked and then turned their attention back to the radar again. The sweep line was advancing toward the same spot once more, a position forty miles northwest of them, moving swiftly, and then passing the point again — and again there was nothing on the screen. There had been an enormous burst of electronic light not more than a minute ago, surely marking the appearance of a third huge vessel, and now there was no sign of anything. The third vessel, if such it had been, seemed to have disappeared, and with it the two other vessels as well. Puzzled, they continued to watch the empty screen.
None of the targets appeared again.
Radio Miami knew the cutter Mercury had been answering a distress call some fifty miles off the coast of Cuba, because she had radioed them at midnight to report her position and her destination. About a half hour after that, they monitored a conversation between the Merc and a Navy destroyer on patrol duty. The destroyer had raised the Merc to ask whether there was anything wrong with her running lights. The Merc replied that there had been an electrical failure.
“Are you in need of emergency equipment?” the destroyer asked.
“Negative, negative,” the Merc said. “We have just about located the difficulty.”
“Ah, roger,” the destroyer said. “We will stand by until you are functioning properly again.”
The Merc apparently located the difficulty and repaired the malfunction, because Radio Miami later monitored a conversation between the destroyer and another ship in its squadron, stating that the Mercury was on its way again with its lights functioning, and the destroyer was resuming patrol. It was possible, of course, that there was a later electrical failure, which once again put out the cutter’s running lights. Considering the storm conditions off the coast of Cuba, however, it was difficult to fathom why the cutter would not have made use of battery-powered lights if there had been such a failure. In the beginning, no one even imagined that the cutter was deliberately running without lights. In the beginning, everyone was too involved with trying to figure out exactly what had happened.
It was supposed at first that the other vessel involved was the very vessel that had sent the SOS to which the Merc was responding. There was some confusion there, too, however, because if this had been the ship in distress, she would have been expecting the Merc and certainly looking for her, even if she was traveling without fights. Moreover, since the vessel came out of the storm just about where the Merc knew she would be, at latitude 23.37 north, longitude 81.54 west, the Merc should have been actively searching for her with radar. The possibility of a second electrical failure that had knocked out the Merc’s single radar scope as well was, of course, discarded once all the facts were in. Nor was there speculation on any other possible malfunction of the radar, a broken cable, a shattered scope face. The only logical assumption was that the storm had raised waves high enough to prevent anything but intermittent radar reception. The second vessel, it was assumed, had simply materialized out of the night, undetected by radar, if indeed anyone aboard the Merc was even monitoring the scope. The cutter, traveling without lights, had not been seen either. The collision was almost inevitable.
The accident was reported to Radio Miami by a second patrolling Navy destroyer. Miami received the message at 0238 from the U.S.S. Bunt. The Bunt reported an enormous explosion south-southwest of her position, and advised that she was proceeding at best possible speed to investigate. At 0316, the Bunt reported that she was at the scene and gave the latitude and longitude for the first time. She advised that there was no sign of any vessel, but that debris floating on the water indicated there had been a collision between two ships or a ship and a boat, it was difficult to tell. At 0324, the Bunt called in again to state that she had recovered debris marked with the name of the Mercury.
At four-thirty in the morning, the first public news broadcast went out over a Miami radio station. It said simply that a 165-foot Coast Guard cutter had accidentally collided with what was assumed to be a small fishing boat, and that both vessels were reported sunk some forty miles northwest of Havana. There were, the announcer said, no survivors.
Harry and the others in Ocho Puertos must have known at once that Jason Trench’s plan had failed.
At ten minutes past five, a little more than an hour before dawn of the morning of October seventh, the Florida State Highway Patrol received a call from a man who identified himself as Amos Carter. He told them that the people of the town of Ocho Puertos had been held as prisoners from early yesterday morning until just a few minutes ago, and that a man named Marvin Tannenbaum had been shot and killed. Within the next ten minutes the police received telephone calls from four other people in the town, all of whom reported having been kept there as prisoners. One of the callers said her name was Lucy Nelson and that someone (they could not understand the name she gave because she was crying into the phone) had been killed early yesterday morning and was out on the porch covered with a blanket.
The police arrived a half hour before dawn.
The people of the town were standing in the road.
They were all very excited, all talking at the same time, to themselves and to the troopers. It was all over now, and now they could afford to rehash it with the same sort of excitement that followed any adventure. It was all over now, and those who had survived could relate the tale with a curious sort of tragic glee. Amos Carter took them to the storage locker, and the troopers shot the lock off the door and released the men there. One of the men said his name was Michael Pierce and that he was executive officer of the Coast Guard cutter Mercury, and then he went on to relate what had happened aboard the ship yesterday. The cops, who had not yet heard any news of the disaster off Cuba, listened very calmly. One of them looked somewhat confused. Pierce excused himself and said he wanted to call the Coast Guard in Miami. The trooper said, Sure, go right ahead. Amos Carter was telling them about a scheme to involve the United States in war. A woman named Rachel Tannenbaum was asking them to call an ambulance for her husband, who had suffered a heart attack. The man, who was lying on a blanket in the back of the marina office, kept telling them as they made their call that his son had been a hero. “My son was a hero,” he said. “My son was a hero.” A tall good-looking gentleman with graying hair said he had only wandered into all this by accident and asked whether or not they would need him any longer. The others verified his story, and the police said they guessed he could go. One of them asked his name and address. He gave his name as David Cummings and his address as Scranton, Pennsylvania.