Free Cuban Death-Lift by Randy Striker Page B

give my call letters. Just tell them there’s a vessel in trouble. The Loran is beside the radio. Just tell them the numbers you see flashing. They’ll understand. Got it?”
    She shook her head stoically. “And then what?”
    â€œAnd then I’m taking you back to Key West—”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œWe have to have someone look at your cheek.”
    She touched her face, then studied the blood on her hand, as if she had forgotten the wound. “He didn’t shoot me—I hit my head when I dove to the floor, dammit! No, don’t say another word. We’re going on to the Mariel Harbor—that’s the agreement!”
    There was something almost pathetic about her fierceness. She looked like a Spanish version of one of television’s Angels, determined as hell to solve the obligatory “mystery,” fake blood and all.
    But there was nothing fake about this woman—blood or mission or anything else.
    â€œOkay,” I said. “Fine. But when we get back, you do the explaining to the authorities.”
    Her firmness was edged with contempt. “Don’t worry, Mr. MacMorgan. I’ll see that you don’t lose your precious boat.”
    She turned then, back toward Sniper. But before she did, she cast one more look into the wheelhouse of the trawler, at the dead man, at the kid—and at something else, too. The life ring. It had been knocked out of the box during the fight, and now floated right-side up in the shallow blood and water on the cabin floor. It explained the new determination in her. I knew the name from my conversation with Norm Fizer.
    In black block letters, the life ring boasted the name of the trawler which now sank beneath us:
    Storm Nest.

7
    The first thing you raise approaching Cuba from open sea is a low bank of cumulus clouds appearing, on the curve of horizon, like a sudden Dakota windscape. The sea is a mile deep, purple-black in shafts of clear light, and flying fish lift in coveys before you, skimming cresting waves and luminous sargassum weed like locusts.
    It was dawn.
    Clouds were fire-laced to the southeast, and, later, the bleak facades of factories and pre-Castro highrise hotels below Havana caught the light in a blaze of geometrics. Mariel Harbor, already demarcation point for more than sixty thousand refugees, was just twenty miles to the west, a surge of dark cliffs.
    The Coast Guard had held us up.
    The Coasties and Norm Fizer.
    Androsa had insisted on notifying her “lawyer” on VHF. I thought it a stupid move on her part—even though she played her role perfectly on the radio, telling Norm she might need “legal counsel” upon her return to Key West. She made no mention of the trawler’s name. But still, there was no way of knowing if the Cubans were monitoring the Key West marine operator. And if there was a security leak in some high federal office, it wouldn’t take long to realize who Fizer really was.
    But I couldn’t stop her without tipping my hand, so I said nothing.
    We stood by aboard Sniper, waiting.
    Fizer was on the first Coast Guard chopper out. A small cutter came later, and they sent a watch with pumps to try to save Storm Nest. While the Coasties worked, Norm came aboard Sniper. He was as businesslike as ever, but the good humor which I’d always known to dominate his personality was nowhere in sight.
    He was damn concerned.
    And I didn’t blame him.
    When he got into the salon, sat down with coffee and his briefcase, the woman looked at me irritably.
    â€œWould you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes, Mr. MacMorgan.”
    From the corner of my eye, I saw Norm nod ever so slightly.
    â€œNo problem,” I said. I went above to the flybridge and watched the Coast Guard work. Private boaters in the Keys tend to regard the Coasties as one big pain in the ass. And those that do have reasons—although not very good reasons. When the island isn’t