PROLOGUE
Sunday: Dawn The small trawler was heading north an hour before dawn on the eighth day out of
Cumana, Venezuela, when the captain of the four-man crew first spotted the red trouble light blinking
on the mast of the sailboat. He made it a mile or so away when he saw it the first time. The trawler
was ten miles at sea and thirty-five miles northeast of Fernandina, Honda, at the time. The captain
watched the light for half an hour as his rusty scow drew closer.
In the gray light just before the sun broke, they were close enough to see the sailboat, a rich man?s
toy, dead in the water. It was a forty-footer, with a man on deck. The man had removed his shirt and
was waving it overhead.
The captain, a deeply tanned man in his early forties wearing four days? growth of beard, stroked his
jaw with a greasy hand. Two of the crew members watched the sailboat draw closer with mild
interest. The mate, a black man with a scar from the corner of his mouth to his ear, squinted through
the dim light and then urged the captain to pass up the stricken boat.
“Fuck „em, man. We ain?t got tune to mess with no honky sailors,” he said quietly.
But the captain had been a seaman too long to pass up any vessel in distress. Besides, the shirtless
man was obviously rich; a soft, Sunday sailor, becalmed far beyond his limit and probably scared to
death.
“No guns,” the captain said softly in Spanish. “rust stand easy and see what they want. If gas is their
problem, we can help the gringos out.”
He turned on a powerful light and swept its beam along the sailboat from bow to stem. He steered the
trawler close beside the sailboat and tossed the man a line.
“Habla espanol?” the captain asked.
“No,” the sailor answered.
“What ees your problem?” the captain asked in broken English.
“Not enough wind.” The sailor, who was wearing white jeans and designer sneakers, pointed at the
limp sail. “And no gas. Can you sell me some gas?”
