“That’s pretty risky,” Tarp said. “Tough if the Cubans caught you.”
“The Cubans wouldn’t catch me.” The man smiled foggily. The morphine was starting to work. “I was going to throw them the kid as a diversion.”
Tarp went aboard the other boat and killed her engine, then looked her over. She had been leased in Key West and was simply a decent sportfisherman with adequate radar and some fancy listening gear that the two men had put aboard. Next to the radar was a black box the size of a toaster, and Tarp knew it was the device that identified them with a friendly signal on properly equipped radars. It was on now, a red light gleaming like a bean-sized eye against the blue-black sky. All the friendlies would know that the boat was sitting here with Scipio.
Tarp went back to his own boat and removed the engine starter and threw it overboard. He took the shotgun and the rifle, then slid open the bulkhead compartment at the rear of the lockers and took out the AR-15 and the clips that were hidden there. He put the weapons on the other boat, then went back into Scipio’s cabin and removed his computer-signal scrambler and dropped it overboard; then he went down again and rummaged under his bunk and found a waterproof packet that looked like an electronic tool kit but wasn’t.
Inside the pockets of the packet was money in three currencies and a set of identification — passport, driver’s license, credit card, as well as three “details”: a reader’s card for the Bibliothèque National in Paris; a member’s card for the Paris Jockey Club; and a journalist’s pass issued by Agence-Presse Europa, all in the name of Jean-Louis Selous. The Selous identity was a deeply established one that was expensive for him to keep up; it was supported by a listing in the Paris telephone directory and two professional organizations, and by five articles that had appeared over the Selous byline in European magazines, paid for by Tarp and written by some rather high-priced talent. Tarp folded the packet and put it in a rear pocket and buttoned it down, then he looked over the cabin and decided there was nothing more that had to be taken, and he went up to the deck.
“I need your boat,” he said to the blond one, who was sitting up, massaging his neck and shaking his head as if he had learned how to do it from an old movie. “The Coast Guard will pick you up soon.”
The blond one looked helpless. He looked all of nine years old.
“Berth the boat at number thirty-seven at the Boca Chica marina. I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
The young man tried to speak, but whatever Repin had done to him had turned his voice into a gull’s squawk.
“And take care of your partner. There’s a medical kit just inside the hatch, to the right. There’s a book in it if they didn’t teach you what to do. The refrigerator’s full. Help yourself to the booze — after you take care of your partner. I’ll check it when I get back and submit a bill to the Agency.”
The young man tried to squawk again.
“Your partner’s a good man. Learn from him. Don’t be so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed next time.” Tarp stepped across the dark man, who was unconscious. “He’s a got a twenty-two slug just above the knee; the kneecap’s okay, but you ought to clean the wound and make sure he doesn’t bleed too much. It’s all in the book.” Tarp swung a leg over and sat with a foot in each boat. “Never trust older men. And never trust an old man at all, even when he looks dead.”
He went aboard the other boat and Repin followed and cast off; Tarp hit the starter and nosed the boat out into the Stream.
Thirty seconds later they were racing for Cuba. On the friendly radars, their signal would show as a strange but not yet dangerous movement. By the time people understood what had happened, it would be too late.
Chapter 5
He had taken the boat in by dead reckoning without radar or sonar and with the radio giving a three-second signal every seven minutes on the frequency Repin had specified. They were off the Cuban coast above Viñales, sitting dead in the water now, with Latin music coming and going on the land breeze like a sound from another decade.
“It seems to be okay,” Tarp said once. Everything was very quiet, except for the music. There should have been a patrol boat and a radar sweep, at least.
“Is all fixed. Is very efficient.”
The ocean seemed endless with no lights. It was as if they were sitting in the sky, space above and below and all around. The air was salty and damp and warm; everything was strange and therefore menacing — the leap of a fish in the void, the random slap of a tiny wave on the hull. Because he had nothing better to do, Tarp slid the .22 into a plastic bag and taped it to the underside of the open hatch cover, then he went around the boat checking weapons: shotgun on the bridge, AR-15 in the scuppers, the Weatherby and the Agency man’s rifle in the cabin.
“When the Cubans come, you talk to them. I’m staying out of sight.”
“Da, is embarrassment for them to see you. To them, you are American paid to bring me back, nothing more.”
“Your Spanish okay?”
“Good enough.”
But not very good, Tarp thought. Repin was like the English in the old days; in Asia, he had spoken the local languages in a guttural pidgin that the locals mocked. His Spanish was probably like that, too, serviceable but not tactful.
The radio crackled and a voice broke in clearly in Spanish. The volume had been set too high and they both jumped and then laughed.
“Large Bear, this is Rum Bottle,” the radio said. “Large Bear, this is Rum Bottle.”
“Talk to him,” Tarp said. “Just press the button on the mike.”
Repin put his mouth very close to the microphone. “Rum Bottle, is the Large Bear over this way.” His Spanish was terrible.
“Identify, Large Bear.”
Repin plodded through a string of numbers.
“Breaking radio contact and approaching,” the radio said. “End communication.”
Tarp waited until he heard the Spanish boat’s engines, then he picked up the AR-15 and boosted himself up to the flying bridge with it in his hand. He squatted there, feeling suddenly how flimsy the spray rail was and how easily he and this rented boat could be blown away. They would never get a better chance.
I’ve gotten very pessimistic about this operation already, he thought. It’s tainted, for sure.
“Large Bear, show your lights.”
He reached up and flipped on the running lights. The engine noise was very loud now, a menacing growl, as if the other boat were stalking around them in the night. Then, almost with his lights, a bright beam shot across the water ahead of the boat and swept quickly over them.
They’re good, he thought, and he ducked as the light came over the flying bridge. Repin was standing on the deck below him, and Tarp saw him in the white glare, legs spread, arms folded, seeming to dare the lights’ brilliance. You’ll never get a better shot, Tarp thought, but no shot came.
The patrol boat swung in close. The searchlight went off and a battery of small lights on her starboard rail shone down into the sportfisherman, which was lower in the water, with the flying bridge two feet below the other’s deck. Tarp saw two sailors at the rail, and then they scuttled away and a man in an officer’s cap leaned over toward his own deck.
“Large Bear?”he said.