Pierre reached for a makeshift ashtray by his controls, which was nothing more than a crushed Pabst Beer can. He opened his side window in deference to a lady being present and relit a cigar that had been sitting there half-smoked. He worked it hard in his white teeth and soon had a good cloud of smoke going, most of which he blew out the window. To Alex the cigar stench was awful, and to make matters worse, Pierre seemed to be chewing it as much as smoking it.
“You can’t tell me the Cuban navy doesn’t have radar or border security,” Alex said to Guarneri. “Don’t they ever spot planes coming in?”
“Not usually,” Guarneri said. “Not if you fly low enough.” There was a long pause, and the sound of the Cessna’s engine droned smoothly in the darkness. Outside the port wing of the aircraft, the lights of the distant sleeping islands twinkled peaceably on the horizon. “There’s always exceptions, but not usually. It’s like anything else. Set the plane down, get back in the air quickly, move fast, and beat anyone who’s after you.” He paused. “Let’s face it. This whole area of the Caribbean is notoriously corrupt. Money changes hands; authorities look the other way. Works that way in Florida, works that way in Cuba, and it’s the
“There are more rafts than planes,” said Alex. “What if they
“They won’t,” Guarneri said. “First, we’re not doing anything illegal. The flight manifest shows us leaving from Key West to go to the Bahamas. That’s where Pierre continues to. The plane itself doesn’t do anything illegal. It just sets us down, and we do what we have to. You told me yourself that your employers know where you are and where you’re going. So I have a hunch this plan has a bit of a look-the-other-way from the U.S. Coast Guard anyway. No one’s going to examine whether the flying time was two hours from the Keys or one.”
“Or whether two passengers get off or none.”
Guarneri laughed. “What passengers?” he asked. “We’re invisible, you and me, aren’t we? We don’t exist.” He grabbed the manifest from under Pierre’s Dominican passport. He showed it to Alex. There was a big fat zero where the list of passengers was stated.
“How’d you fix that?” Alex asked.
“Pierre filled it out. No one checked,” said Guarneri.
“And no one chose to look either,” she said.
“Describe it that way if you want. Look, everything’s copacetic. We’ll be back home in six days, and you’ll have wonderful stories to tell.”
“Right,” she said. “Meanwhile I’m keeping my gun strapped tight to my ankle.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
The sound of the engine adjusted, and the plane made a dip. Up ahead, distant and emerging through the haze straight in front of the pilot, Alex could see the shoreline of Cuba and the lights of Havana, knotted together on the horizon like little stars. To the left, eastward, she could see a smaller clump of lights that she assumed was Manzanas, which was nearer their destination than Havana. She looked out the window and could see the surface of the water, reflecting the sky and the lights from shore and the occasional fishing boat – or what she hoped were fishing boats – anchored, their dim red and green lights winking on the surface of the water.
Pierre beckoned Guarneri forward and indicated something.
The pilot flew with night goggles and kept consulting a homing device. Alex assumed that he had spotted their rendezvous craft. Alex knew this was one of the trickier parts of the operation, dropping human cargo, particularly nonexistent cargo, with a rendezvous at sea.
Guarneri ended the conversation with a nod and settled beside her. “He’s got our contact vessel lined up,” Guarneri said. “We should be on the water in five minutes.”
They were. Pierre brought the plane in with a hard bump, three bounces, and a long easy skid. The aircraft glided through the water like a dark swan. The propeller decelerated and spun to a stop. Pierre cut the engines to a low idle. Off the port side, in the darkness, a small sailboat turned toward them. Its sails were not hoisted. It had nets for fish. The plane bobbed up and down with the waves. Alex guessed they were about a mile and a half offshore.
As the boat approached, Pierre watched it carefully. His hand went to his sidearm. So did Guarneri’s. There was a tense moment as the boat pulled alongside. Alex could hear the hum of the boat’s small electric motor.
Pierre slid open the port-side window of the cockpit. Alex overheard a curt conversation in Spanish, presumably containing word codes. Whatever it was, it passed without a problem because Pierre turned and gave a nod to Guarneri.
Guarneri opened the rear door and signaled to Alex. “We’re good,” he said. “Be sure you have everything. Let’s move.”
Guarneri went first. He stepped down onto the pontoon of the plane. It was unsteady as waves rippled all around. She remained in the plane and watched. The boat pulled tightly alongside. A man with a carbine stood at the bow. He was burley and dark skinned and wore a University of Miami baseball cap and smoked. A second man approached, brandishing a pistol. Then a third man appeared, a jittery figure at the tiller, dark skinned also, bareheaded, with a black T-shirt and cut-off jeans. He watched everyone’s movements like a terrier.
Guarneri jumped onto the deck of the boat as the first man steadied him. Guarneri seemed to know him since they embraced briefly. Then the gunman stepped back, and Alex slid down, balanced on the pontoon, and in the same motion took a big step forward onto the boat. The deck was wet. She nearly slipped, but both men grabbed her, the gunman’s hand firmly on her arm, and Guarneri holding her with a two-handed embrace.
The smaller gunman pushed the boat away from the plane as the plane’s door closed from inside. Pierre cranked his engine and turned the seaplane for takeoff. The drop had taken less than three minutes.
“We’re cool; we’re doing good,” Guarneri said. He glanced at his watch. “Five after five. Perfect.” He motioned to the first gunman. “This is Pedro our bodyguard, and Felix, our other bodyguard. Back there is Leo, our captain,” he said in English. “We’ll be ashore in twenty minutes. Settle onto the rear deck; it’ll be best.”
Pedro, Felix, and Leo barely acknowledged Alex. Pedro took up a crouch position at the bow of the boat. Leo kept one hand on the tiller and the other on the quiet electric outboard engine. Felix, with a rifle, sat to the side and looked as jittery as a dozen spooked cats.
Now that she was aboard, Alex assessed the sailboat. It was about twenty-five feet in length, old, maybe thirty years, but neat and nimble. She assumed Leo’s livelihood was in an underground economy that was comprised of more things than she cared to consider.
“Like our bodyguards?” Guarneri asked her in a low voice. “Not as professional as your FBI and CIA people, but they have more charisma.”
“Charming,” she said. “What do they do besides smuggle?”
“Sometimes kill people,” Guarneri said.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No.”
“Nice,” she said. She sat down in the stern and tried to organize her thoughts. So far, things had gone smoothly. Guarneri seemed in control. The sound of the boat’s engine dropped down a notch, and she knew Leo had cut the speed yet again, trying to come to shore as quietly as possible.
Alex’s mind shifted to Spanish. The rifleman and the captain were engaged in a dirty story about the wife of a mutual friend. Felix sat by quietly, fidgeting, his rifle across his chest. Alex suspected that they knew she was American and therefore didn’t understand Spanish. She resented the assumption, if there was one, but played it to her advantage. Her nerves were on tenterhooks, and if they didn’t think she understood, she didn’t have to talk.
Paul came back, sat, and patted down his jacket until he found a pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and lit it.
“Nervous?” she asked. “Now that we’re almost there?”
The question took him by surprise. “Nah,” he said. Then he realized that she was looking at his cigarette. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “If I’m lighting one of these, I must be nervous, right?”
“Pretty much.”
He lit it and inhaled, then blew out a long thin cone of smoke.
“Well, yeah, a little,” he admitted.
He turned and looked toward shore, which was a thin line of lights in the distance, then looked back to her.
