The Hemingway Maid Ch. 02

Anyway. We fucked ourselves silly for hours. Nothing takes your mind off paranoid fantasies faster than watching your girlfriend's cheeks distend around your cock as she tries not to gag when a half-liter of cum blows down her throat.

+

I guess after that night I figured to just drop the matter- let it ride. Life on Sabrina maintained the same comfortable level of domestic bliss that had characterized Elise's early days with me. Weeks went by, while Ron and the Amigos went about there daily chores of working on rigging or changing oil or injectors on an errant engine. Pete made money working his ass off, and I'm pretty sure he was proceeding nicely on his plans to marry Rosalita's daughter by the time he turned fifteen. I just hoped he wouldn't get her knocked up.

As summer approached all thought turned to the looming tropical storm season. While nobody took tropical storms for granted, hurricane was a dirty word no one wanted to hear. But it was that time of year, and if you live in the Caribbean or the Gulf you pay attention to those buggers. People began sorting through their storm gear, making sure equipment was up to snuff and storm sails ready to set. The Cubans living on board the various cruising boats seemed to disappear; they'd either left to go from whence they'd come or gone seriously to ground.

Like I said, nobody in Cuba took tropical storms for granted. A big one was rumored to be forming out past the Windward Islands, still many days away if it headed this way at all.

So, on this very hot and humid June afternoon, Ron came over to Sabrina.

"Hey, Puddknocker," he started in that particularly endearing way of his, "ready to go for a sail?"

All of my internal warning lights started going off. My gut spasmed, began to burn.

"Ron, you got to be kidding me. It's hot and there's hardly any wind. You wanna just head out and get fried in this Sun?"

"Sounds good, Sport. Leave in five, O.K.?" He walked off with that stupid grin of his flying in defiance of all good sense.

I went down to warn Elise, but she was gone, and everything on the boat had been stowed. Sabrina was ready for sea.

I called out her name. Nothing. I felt feet landing on Sabrina's deck.

"You ready to go, Sport?"

"Where's Elise?" I called up to Ron.

"With Pete and Lupe and Rosalita. Making dinner."

More feet hit the deck. I looked out and saw the other two Amigos; they had large duffel bags with them. My stomach did a double flip.

"Hey, Jim!" one of them said. "Flip the radar on to standby, would ya?"

'Yeah-no-problem,' I thought. You ever notice how you go on automatic pilot when unavoidable shit starts to head your way?

We backed out of the slip, then motored out toward the breakwater. Ron had the helm, of course, and the Amigos were hunkered down over their chart.

The same chart they used the last time we went out.

One of them pulled a very small hand held radio out of his duffel and plugged an earphone in. He fiddled with switches, slipped on the earphones, and listened intently.

We cleared the breakwater and immediately turned to the left, to the west, parallel to the coast. We ran along under power about 50 yards off the beach.

"Hey, Jimbo, take the to radar active and go to max range, O.K., buddy? Set the gain real high, too."

Say, there goes Jim the robot! See Jim comply! Watch Jim shit his pants!

"Ron, did they ever finalize the CAP setup?" That was not my question, by the way.

"Yeah, couple of 14s on CAP, screening the E2. The two queers are coming out of Key West. A couple of 16s outta Homestead will cover the Queers if we need 'em to."

"Queers? Out of Key West?" I asked. I knew that town had a pretty dicey reputation, but what would a couple of gays be doing coming over here?

"EA-6Bs, Jim. Electronic Countermeasures aircraft. Radar jammers. Called Queers."

"That's just fucking great, Ron! Wanna tell me what the fuck's going on?"

"Later. When we get back. I'll brief you in then, buddy. Just right now we're going to watch a little airshow. There's an AWACs up that's going to watch how the Gomers react."

"Great, Ron. Glad to be of service. You planning on invading this place, or just trying to get me killed?"

"Radar still looking nominal," one of the Amigos said. "Nope! There it goes!"

I looked at the radar screen: it was full of electronic noise all around the northern horizon. The screen showed normal activity to the south, along the shore, inside Cuba.

"O.K. boys, here come the Queers."

I wonder to this day if Ron had any idea of how fucking weird he sounded when he said that?

They sounded close, but I couldn't see them. The Amigos were checking watches, writing on the chart furiously. Ron watched me searching for the aircraft.

"Jim, down there," he said pointing off the right side of the boat.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Two of the weirdest looking jets were screaming along over the water, and I mean just barely over the water. I guessed their altitude was less than ten feet above the water! And they were scooting right along, too.

Air raid sirens start wailing. A rocket screamed right over our head. It had launched from land somewhere off to our left.

"Echo 2, Echo 2, SA-7 coming at you. Go active now!" That little bit of information came from the Amigo with the little radio.

The Queers went wild. They started changing altitude and heading every couple of seconds, huge flares belched from their bellies and shiny clouds of metallic stuff blew out behind them. The missile flew out over the sea, toward empty sky. The Queers disappeared into the gray haze and were gone just as quickly as they had come.

Ron swung Sabrina around and gunned the engine, headed right back toward the marina. That was it! What a great day for a sail. Whooppeeeee!

Soon the Amigos had Sabrina tied up at the dock, rum flamethrowers in hand, dinner, music, dancing on the dock. Everything cool here, dudes.

We'd been gone a little less than an hour.

When Elise came down below looking for me, she found me in the head. I hadn't quite finished vomiting yet, and asked her to please leave me alone for a while.

+

But she didn't. She sat behind me on the floor, held a cool rag on the back of my neck. I was consumed by cold sweats and racking shakes. I'd never felt so physically sick in my life. But I finally had to ask the question.

"Elise, are you in on this?"

She looked down, then nodded her head yes, and my world caved in.

+

I slept in the next morning. There were no exotic aromas coming from the galley, no places set in the cockpit. There was no Pedro - and no Elise - on Sabrina, only me and my headache. I put some old shorts and a t-shirt on, and headed - barefoot - up on deck. My mouth had that old familiar West Texas bullshit taste lingering on my breath, and it felt like I had suitcases hanging in boggy sacks under my eyes. I saw Ron sitting over in Blade Runner's cockpit.

"Hey, Sport, how are . . ."

"Fuck You, Fuller!" I walked away from his little chuckles that hung in the air like an insinuation. I think they tried to follow me to the shower.

One of the other dock boys fetched water, started the little propane boiler that heated it to body temperature. I told him to keep the water coming and gave him a twenty dollar bill. His eyes went saucer-shaped wide and he ran off with empty buckets. I got under the warm water and stood there forever, letting the stream hit the back of my neck for what felt like hours.

At any rate, I think the waters running down my face hid the tears that seemed to come every time I thought of Elise. Which was only about every time I took a breath.

+

I was sitting in the cockpit later that morning; I had charts spread out on my little portable chart table and I was making some notes on the margins of my chart for the Florida Straits. My stomach was empty, and growling like a pissed off tiger. I had arranged to get the water and fuel tanks topped off later that morning, get some supplies from the market, maybe a bit of food if I could stand it, and pull out of the marina late this afternoon. I would anchor off Key West tomorrow morning, get some barnacles scraped off my shoulders by a dermatologist I'd heard of over there, and get some major provisions loaded on Sabrina. I thought I might head off toward the Bahamas, and on down to the British Virgin Islands. When I thought about Elise I wanted to get as far away as possible as fast as I could.

"Jim?"

Well, speak of the devil!

"Jim, please?"

"Sorry, he's not in. Why don't you try back next year." Did anyone say childish temper tantrum? She stepped on Sabrina, came and sat across from me in the cockpit. I watched her as she moved; lithe, sure steps, total self-assurance. I could see Ron in his cockpit, his back to Sabrina. My, what a tangled web those two had been at work on. This could be interesting, I thought.

"Have you had anything to eat?"

That's right, go for the stomach. Worked before, didn't it? "No," I said. She got up, but I quickly told her "Don't bother." She sat back down.

"Jim, this is very complicated, so pay attention. When I was in Paris, you know, the Minister's mistress thing, I was recruited by the CIA. Recruited to go back to Cuba, report on things I might learn through him. Eventually, the link was discovered, and the Minister was killed. I was imprisoned, tortured, almost dead when they released me. They had killed my parents, Jim, and Miguel had only just managed to get Pedro out of Havana and into hiding in the countryside. Then Miguel got me after they had released me. It was so obvious, they wanted to release me, then follow me, find out who my contacts were. Miguel had gotten involved with people trying to get to Florida, and was making arrangements to get us, all of us, out of Cuba. He had gone on a boat with others in their group to try to find the best time to try to make the run, but they were discovered and ran. They succeeded, too. He made it . . . "

She looked away for a moment, then continued.

"So, Pedro and I came to the little forest and built our house. And I was being watched. All the time, Jim. So I started to act crazy, helpless, but Pedro knew what was going on, he always managed to keep us fed. He is an amazing, brave young man, Jim, and he loves you like a brother."

I sat listening to this with a dull ache spreading through me. A 13-year-old brother?

"After many months the watchers lost interest, and for a while they would only check on us from time to time. Then not at all. Pedro started working at the marina, and he met Ron. He found out who Ron is, what he used to do."

"Say, Sport. I'll take it from here," Ron "Captain America" Fuller interjected. "So, Jim, there are a lot of people in Cuba who've helped us over the years, and a lot of them are here, in the marina, tonight. They're vulnerable, their covers are shaky. And we're going to try to get them and their families out before they get taken out."

"Ron, you keep saying we. Is this a company operation?"

"So, sport, here's the plan. There's a pretty fair sized tropical depression building up, and it looks like it's coming this way. All the families here are going to off load over the next couple of hours, drift back into the trees, while the storm heads in. We're going to send a couple of boats out, watch the navy board 'em and toss 'em, and we're going to make like we're going to hunker down and sit it out here in the marina. As the weather gets bad, sometime that night we're going to get everyone back in the marina, on an assigned boat, and get the fuck outta Dodge."

"You're fucking crazy, Fuller. You ever been in a depression in the Straits, in a storm moving in against the Gulfstream. Pyramid waves thirty, thirty five feet tall. Shit, Ron, even supertankers don't try to run the Straits in a storm . . . it's one of the meanest stretches of water in the world. Why would y . . ."

"Well, Sport, we're only going to be using the really strong boats. And yours happens to be about the toughest one here, so you're invited to the party."

"Not me, Sport," I tossed the name back at him. "I'm off this afternoon, thought I'd go to Mexico or something."

Ron looked down at the charts I had spread out; of course the Bahamas charts were right there on top.

"Sure thing, Sport. I suggest you keep your tail right here. You don't want that kind of trouble. Hell, it'll be raining IRS agents everywhere you go for the next ten years." He sat there grinning, looking like he had the trump card and the game all sewn up.

"What are the jets and crap all about?" I asked.

"We're going to leave at night, hopefully when the storm has really moved in and the patrol boats have gone in to weather it out in the inner harbor. But they'll still have radar, and sailboats show up real good on radar. And they've got MIGs, as I'm sure you know by now. All-weather MIGs that could really rain on this parade. So, when we head out, the Queers are going to jam them, which they're going to think is pretty fishy anyway, but we're counting on a little indecision on their part. MIG 29s don't grow on trees, and they probably won't want to send 'em up in this kind of storm unless the threat's big. We're banking on them thinking it's just a bunch of gringo yachties bailing out and trying to run home before the storm gets rough."

"Ron, pardon me for asking, but have you considered that they might have someone inside here who knows what's going on, and is reporting all of this to the bad guys."

"It's a possibillity."

"So, jets jam radar. Then what. What if the MIGs come out to play."

"They get splashed . . . shot down," he said with absolutely no emotion. "You know, they run into trouble in the storm and lose control. Real tragedy. And, oh yeah, there'll be some of our guys in boats out there, too. Little ones like the Nimitz, that kinda crap."

"I take it there are some very important spooks in this group?"

"You've no idea, Sport."

All I could see in my mind's eye was a leathery-skinned young boy floating on the surface of Gulfstream tossed waters. A dead boy, and the helplessness I'd felt as I lifted his little lifeless form onto Sabrina's deck.

"O.K., Ron, if I'm in, I'm in 100%. No bullshit now, Ron. If you even think you've got the tiniest bit of information I might need, you get it to me. Deal?" I stood and held out my right hand to him.

"Deal." We shook on it.

Of course, Elise was in the galley. After Ron left I went down and sat at the salon table, and she produced yet another feast. I managed to choke a little down. Tough life.

+

Ron and the Amigos came around just before sunset, and asked (gasp, that was a first!) to come aboard. The amigos had a weather fax with them, and forecasts out of Norfolk for the Atlantic and the Caribbean. It looked like, they said, two nights from now will be optimal. They had some other things to pass on, as well.

"Jim, you're going to be the lead boat. We're going to pack all of the important assets in Sabrina; like I said, your boat is tougher than anyone else's here for dealing with this kind of blow, and may be a little faster, even in rough water. Also, I'm going to put a couple of Navy Seals on board."

I looked surprised. "Oh?"

"They'll get here tomorrow night. A sub will drop them off if all goes as planned. Someone is going to create a little diversion east of here tomorrow about midnight. Keep your swim ladder down after dark-thirty tomorrow night. And have some towels and coffee ready."

"Right."

"I'll come over after I see 'em come aboard. They know how to navigate, Jim."

"O.K."

On of the Amigos spread out a chart on the table, and pointed to some positions marked on the chart. "This is where we're going to head. There will be a full carrier battle group eastbound outta the Gulf, and for some odd reason they'll be transiting the Straits about the time we make our run. Cubans have been advised to keep their distance. We're only going to have to make it about 15 miles offshore to get under their protective umbrella . . .make it two hours from the breakwater to the group . . . if any of the boats start to crap out, they'll have to make it at least this far. The Navy guys won't leave international waters, not for no one, no how."

"Where's Elise going to be?" I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"With you, Sport. Pete will hang out with Lupe on Blade Runner."

Elise was sitting next to me, and she took my arm and leaned her head into my shoulder.

The Two Amigos stood, they in turn shook my hand, wished me luck, and said they'd see me in Key West. I wished them luck as well, and turned to Ron.

"Your cargo will get here about dark thirty night after tomorrow. A couple, late sixties. Rig up a couple of storm berths and strap 'em in. The Seal will give 'em something to help them sleep. Maybe another young girl, if we can get her out of Havana."

"We?"

"You bet, Sport. We're going to go drinking tomorrow night with the Seals, maybe bring some girls out to the boat with us, ya know, have some fun."

"You really are too fucking much, Fuller."

"Yeah, ain't it great?" He bounced up the companionway steps and was gone. You can bet he was grinning like a fool, too.

+

"So, assuming we get you across, then what?" I asked Elise.

"I guess we'll go to Washington. The rest of us, I mean. I don't really know."

"I hate to sound so self-interested, but what about me . . . about us?"

"I don't really know, Jim. A few hours ago you hated me, remember?"

"I've never hated you, Elise. I was kinda disappointed, ya know? Nobody likes to be made a fool, especially by someone they love."

"Do you love me, Jim?" She was blushing. No shit!

"Yes."

"That's good." She sat quietly for a minute. "I would hate to love you as much as I do and watch you sail away, hating me."

I got up and walked to the galley, got a couple of glasses and put some ice in them. I went to me secret hiding place and got out my last bottle of Grand Marnier, and poured a couple of drinks. I handed her the drink, then sat across from her, increased my distance from her.

"So, I guess I get to sail away by myself. Is that a pretty good read on things?"

"Jim, I don't know how this story ends. It hasn't been written yet . . . we haven't written it yet . . . but the story doesn't have to end that way." She held her glass up to mine. "Here's to happy endings."

"To happy endings . . ."

Part III should conclude the story. Stay tuned.