Dire Straits (6 page)

Derek found a corner
of the apartment building’s roof with his back to the rising sun and gave the city some time to quiet down. Too keyed up and paranoid to sleep, his senses became hyper-attuned to the sounds and vibrations of the building beneath him—doors slamming, water running through pipes, people walking around, the smell of coffee and food wafting out windows. Below, the city woke up, traffic picked up, people called out to each other, chattered in rapid-fire Spanish. Sirens wailed, music played.

Finally he felt that the apartment had quieted down. He rolled to his feet and slipped into the building. Listening at the nearest door, he thought he heard voices inside.

He moved on to the next door. Hearing nothing, he knocked at the door. Nobody answered.

Checking the doorknob, Derek noted it was locked. Pulling out his utility tool, he went to work on the lock. It was a cheap lock and he had the door open in seconds.

It was a small apartment, a tiny kitchen and living area, a bathroom and two small bedrooms. Based on the number of beds, probably three kids used the bedroom. He used the bathroom then went into the refrigerator. Derek opened the refrigerator, found several bottles of TuCola, a Coke-like product, opened it and drank. Caffeine flooded his body. Several mangos and bananas rested in a glass bowl. He had one of each.

He spent some time washing and cleaning the road rash on his leg where he’d skidded across the pavement. There wasn’t any antibiotic cream but there was rubbing alcohol and he dabbed at the scrapes, biting his lips from the sting. It would have to do.

He sat for a while and considered his options. This, he realized, was getting him nowhere. For the last several hours he had been sitting around considering his options. They were few and far between. “Somewhere,” he muttered, “between shit out of luck and hell-and-gone.”

Derek also felt his luck was getting used up.

Looking around the apartment, he threw some money on the counter in an anonymous thank-you, and slipped out the door.

He walked down the stairs. The apartment was mostly quiet. He could hear the occasional TV behind a closed door, or a baby crying, but otherwise all was silent. Out on the street he took a meandering course around the city. He had no intention of returning to where he had left the Vespa. For the time being, he wanted to stay clear of the safe house.

He blended in moderately well. Havana had plenty of tourists from Europe and South and Central America. He visited a clothing store and bought a pair of jeans that he put on in the restroom of a bar, tossing his torn black jeans in a trash can. Derek bought up a T-shirt from a street vendor, and bought a baseball hat for the Marianao’s with a golden tiger on the front from another. From yet another vendor he bought a pair of dark sunglasses.

With the shirt untucked and acquiring the kind of rolling gate so many Cuban males seemed to use, he hoped he would blend in for the rest of the day. He wandered. Sat on benches. Stopped in a bar where he could linger over a beer for several hours.

Leaving there, he drifted, listened to street musicians playing guitar and trumpet. He threw a few coins in their open cases and thought that under other circumstances he might like Cuba. He liked the weather, although today it was cloudy and cooler. He liked the food. He liked the girls with their dark hair, olive skin, big black eyes and their flirtatious ways. He liked the music.

Finally, he walked toward the safe house. It had been a long day. Dusk was coming on quickly. He waited a block away, leaning against the trunk of a eucalyptus, watching the house. Finally, fairly confident that nothing was going on, he walked to the house and let himself into the garage. The first thing he did was turn on the computer.

No new message had been left for him.

He roamed the house, restless. Peeking out the front window through the closed drapes, his heart thrashed in his chest. From the building across the street Juan Osorio stepped out of the front door. He raised a finger and spun it in the air.

From around the corners of the building and the door behind him burst a dozen uniformed men with AK-47s. They sprinted toward the safe house.

Spinning on his heel, Derek raced toward the rear of the house, slamming the glass door open and leaping over the deck rail to the sandy beach below. Which way to go?

And then he spied the neighbor’s kayaks.

Lunging in that direction, he was just reaching the kayak when the troops appeared around the sides of the house. Gunfire cracked the air.

Snatching a paddle, he shoved the kayak into the water, leapt in the cockpit and pushed off. Bending low, he dug in, paddling as hard as he could.

The ocean waves nearly slammed him back into shore. He reached deep and began paddling up the shoreline, angling into the waves. More gunfire breached the air. Something tugged at his shoulder. Glancing over, he saw a streak of blood.

Leaning down, he continued to paddle, heaving into the waves, timing the surf, trying to use the tides to his advantage, even if that meant staying close to shore—just as long as he moved away from the Cuban soldiers.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw he was having some success. He was several hundred yards away from the shoreline now, the soldiers jogging up the beach, but the distance growing wider and wider.

He kept at it. And within an hour, the sun had sunk behind the thick clouds, the waves had kicked up, and the coast of Cuba was to his back and Key West was one hundred and six miles ahead of him.

Then it started to rain.

Hours later, the storm
ended. Derek slumped in the kayak. His shoulders, arms, and back all ached. He was very thirsty. Off to his right the ocean glowed scarlet, the sun beginning its reliable leap into the sky.

At least I’m still heading in the right direction, he thought.

Looking behind him, he could no longer see Cuba. All he saw was blue-black water in every direction. That was probably a good thing. It meant he was several miles away from Cuba. Far enough away from the Navy or the Coast Guard?

He hoped so.

Rotating his arms, he stretched his shoulders. For a time he just rode the swells and watched the sunrise, happy he had the opportunity to. Prison, torture and a firing squad would really suck.

A failed mission, though. He didn’t accomplish his main objective.

Pushing that thought aside, he started to paddle, keeping the sun to his right, wondering exactly how far he was from land. Knowing that if he was off by a degree or so, he would be a lot further than a hundred miles from the U.S.

The sun rose. The remaining clouds evaporated. The ocean calmed.

The temperature rose.

The sun glared down hard. He paddled, rested, paddled. Eventually he took the cockpit skirt, cut tiny slits in it for his eyes, and arrayed it over his head to block the sun, which scorched down. It kept the direct sun off him, but created its own kind of greenhouse.

First the sweat poured from his body. Then he stopped sweating. Not good. Not good at all.

He looked longingly at the sea and the water in the cockpit and shook his head. If he was still out here in another ten or twelve hours, then he might find himself drinking saltwater. Drinking saltwater was controversial in survival situations. Drink enough, it would dehydrate you more and damage your kidneys and liver.

Drink a little, it might keep you alive.

Not healthy. It could kill you. But you were dying anyway.

Derek hoped he wasn’t out here that long.

He kept paddling, feeling his strength seep away and the sun rising high in the sky, then falling behind him.

Derek dozed. When was the last time he had slept? Thirty-six hours? Forty-eight?

He jerked awake, scanning the sky. Thought he saw lights. A plane. But so far away he wouldn’t be seen.

He paddled. He was lost in a haze of exhaustion and thirst. All he did was dip the paddle in, pull back, dip in, pull back. Do it again.

The sun slid toward the horizon on his left.

He had been on the water almost twenty-four hours.

With his level of fitness, the kayaking wasn’t the issue. He had run a couple marathons. He had swum three miles once. Hiked hundreds of miles with a hundred-pound pack on his back.

Thirst was a problem now. He could tell it was affecting his strength. It was all he thought about now. Water, water, everywhere …

Derek wished for the tin can, but it was lost. He scooped up water from the cockpit and sipped.

Salty. But maybe not as salty as the ocean, diluted by rainwater.

He didn’t drink much. He wanted to. One handful. Two.

It made him want to vomit, but that would be even worse.

He sent out a little message to God: This would be a good time for a little help.

He dozed.

The sun was setting. The ocean glowed pink all around him. He didn’t notice. He was exhausted. Sunburned and dehydrated.

He heard a voice. Hallucinating, he thought. Not surprising.

“Hey there! Is there someone there?” A female voice.

Sitting up and tearing the skirt off his head, he blinked in the harsh light of the setting sun.

A boat. Pretty good sized, maybe sixty feet. A cabin cruiser. Looming over him. Squinting, shielding his eyes with a swollen, blistered hand, he saw a woman leaning over the rail of the boat’s bow. He closed his eyes, certain he was hallucinating. The woman, who was very attractive—somewhere in her thirties, perhaps, with blonde hair and a heart-shaped face—wore only a white bikini bottom. She displayed a lot of deliciously tanned skin.

He looked up again. “I’m …” His voice sounded like a wood rasp.

“You okay?”

He shook his head.

“Come on board,” she said, pointing to the ladder at the bow. “You look like you’re in trouble.”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Better now.”

Her name was Sally
Kendall and she was out of Miami, heading to Galveston to see if she could sell her boat,
The Taste of Honey
. “You’d think Miami would be a good market,” he said when she told him that.

It was a long time before he’d been able to have that conversation, though. He’d barely been able to climb up the ladder. On board, he staggered, dropped to his knees. The world swirled around him.

Then all was black.

He woke up an unknown number of hours later on a soft bed. Next to the bed was a glass of water. He vaguely remembered drinking some water. But he was still thirsty. He gripped the glass and forced himself to drink slowly.

When the water was gone he slowly sat up. His arms were red with sunburn. His hands were blistered.

He felt pretty lousy. And hungry.

Derek found the head, relieved himself, and looked in the mirror. A couple days’ growth of beard, a tangle of wavy hair matted with salt, deep-sunk eyes. The boat rocked a little. He decided to use the shower without asking.

A half hour later, feeling significantly better, he realized he couldn’t find his clothes. Next to the glass of water was his utility tool and a warped and water-soaked wallet. He wrapped a large red towel around his waist and went looking for the mistress of
The Taste of Honey
. She was sprawled out in the sun on the boat’s bow, sipping what Derek thought might be a screwdriver, although maybe it was just orange juice. She wore a filmy top over a black bikini bottom, but had not added anything else. She was, he thought, drop-dead gorgeous.

“So, the merman wakes.”

“Thanks for rescuing me. Um, I don’t really remember how I got to the cabin.”

She patted the lounge chair next to him. He sat next to her.

She held out her hand. “I’m Sally Kendall.”

He shook. “Derek Stillwater. Um, where are my clothes?”

She eyed him. “Washer. They were a mess. So were you. She pointed to one shoulder. “Not really a scratch. Looks like you got shot.”

“Just a graze.”

“You know, Derek. When we find people like you floating around in the Gulf, we tend to think drugs might be involved. But I don’t know what moron of a drug dealer would try to smuggle drugs in a kayak.”

“No, no drugs.”

“But there’s a story, I guess.”

“I’m really hungry,” he said.

“And thirsty, I would guess.”

“Yeah.”

“Help yourself to anything you find in the galley. It’ll give you time to come up with a good story.”

He found orange juice and coffee and bread that he made toast out of. He took an uninvited mini-tour of the boat. He liked the boat a lot. Joining Sally at the bow, he said, “I’m not sure how this would work, actually, but I’d like to use your radio to connect somehow to a telephone.”

“We should be able to do that, find somebody to patch you in. Come up with your story yet?”

He smiled. “I’m working on it.”

“I bet you are.”

“So if I told you I escaped from Cuba?”

“Why?”

“Why would I escape from Cuba? They didn’t like me much over there.”

“They arrest you for stealing kayaks?”

“Something like that.”

“Are you in the military?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why would you say that?”

She pointed. “Your tattoo.”

“Ah.” The CIA had been very concerned about the tattoo on his right shoulder. It was a sword pointing upward and crossed by two arrows. It was one of several insignias of Special Forces. “Yes. I was in the Army for a while.”

She looked him up and down. “Got some scar tissue, but you look fit.”

He grinned. “So do you.”

“I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“I noticed.”

“Well good. Maybe we should make that phone call?”

“Sure.”

It took some time, but he eventually got through to a special phone number. It was answered simply with, “Hello.”

He recited a number. The voice on the phone, a neutral male voice, paused for a moment, then said, “I need to confirm. Give me a callback.”

Derek explained that would be difficult and why. The man paused, said, “Do you have the alternate number?”

“Yes.”

“Call it.”

He did. A different voice answered, a woman this time, with an odd accent, maybe east coast, New Jersey maybe. “Where exactly are you?”

He looked at Sally. “Where are we?”

“Middle of the Gulf of Mexico.”

He relayed that information. The voice wanted more specifics. He told the voice he was heading toward Galveston. The voice wanted to know how long it would take for him to get there.

He looked at Sally, who waggled her eyebrows at him. “Depends on if you want to go fast or go slow. I vote slow.”

Derek studied her for a moment. Into the phone he said, “At least two days.” Sally smiled. It was a smile filled with a fair amount of promise. Derek reflected that there probably wasn’t much point of being a spy if you couldn’t occasionally act like James Bond. Into the phone he said, “Maybe three.”