Bobby, upon reaching the top of the tower and laughing like a madman, turned on the powerful spotlight and aimed it right at the submarine’s conning tower.
“Jesus Christ, Bobby! They’ll see us!”
“See the flag?” Bobby shouted down. “Now turn to page sixty-two and look at the flag. Then tell me it ain’t Cuban!”
Suddenly, the sub’s searchlight flashed on again. This time it didn’t stop short of the Reel Thing.
Red put his hand up to his eyes. The light was blinding. He didn’t know what the hell was going on but he did know one thing. He was getting his brand-new goddamn fifty-footer the hell out of there. Colombians and Cubans didn’t much care for Americans and vice versa. He had a twelve-gauge Remington above his bunk, but the rusty old pump action wouldn’t do much against a goddamn giant submarine.
He ran inside the darkened cabin and cranked up the twin five-hundred-horsepower Cummins diesels. Then he got on the radio to Bobby up on the tower.
“Bobby, now you listen to me. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but something tells me we ought to skedaddle on out of here on the double. You get your ass down on the bow and get that anchor aboard. Right now. You hear me?”
In five minutes, Bobby had hauled the anchor aboard. Red went back on the stern and looked for the sub, but they’d turned the searchlight out and all he could see was blackness. Shit. Were they just waiting for him to come out?
Back at the wheel, he flipped on the flashlight and looked at his chart. He’d keep all his running and navigation lights off, run out of the cove fast as he could, put her hard over to port, and head for open sea. Full throttle. He wanted as much water between him and that damn sub as he could get.
Reel Thing was capable of a top speed of thirty-five knots. Once safely outside the cove, Red leaned hard on the throttles and headed for the wide open spaces.
Man, what an adventure, he thought, popping a Bud. He turned on his radar, fishfinder, and GPS and was comforted by the green dials lighting up and showing his position and speed. He looked for a blip of the sub on the radar screen. Nothing.
He considered calling the Coast Guard on sixteen, then thought better of it. It was, after all, none of his damn business. He just wanted to get back to Lauderdale and sell a few more goddamn Explorers. Now that most folks had forgotten about that goddamn tire fiasco, he was selling cars again.
Reel Thing was up on a plane, throwing masses of white water to either side of her bow. After a few minutes of high speed and cold beer, Red started to calm down. He throttled back a little. The engines were brand-new and he knew he shouldn’t be running them at such high RPMs. Hadn’t seen the sub on the radar anyway. Lost the sucker.
Then he had another thought, not as comforting. Hadn’t seen it on the radar because it had submerged.
“Whoo-ee,” Bobby said, lurching into the cabin, spilling beer on the carpet. “That was something.”
“Why the hell’d you turn that light on, Bobby? Goddamn. All we had to do was sit there and mind our own damn business.”
“I wanted to show you that Cuban flag, amigo. That’s all. What the hell’s wrong with you? Big old sub scare your ass?”
“Hell no.”
“Then what’d you run away for then?”
“Bobby. Do yourself a favor. Shut the fuck up.”
“Uh-oh. He’s mad. Well, guess what. I’m going back up top that tuna tower, put on some Waylon, and have a couple of cold beers. So I won’t be in your goddamn way, oh mighty Captain…Kangaroo.”
Bobby pulled a six-pack out of the fridge and slammed the cabin door shut behind him.
Red settled back in his captain’s chair, eased the throttles until they were at cruising speed, and picked up the sat phone. It was only around midnight. Maybe Kath would still be awake and they could have a little chat. He’d tell her he was all fished out and headed home. Tell her about the amazing encounter with the submarine.
He started to punch in his home number.
“Uh, Red?” he heard Bobby say over the speaker.
“What the hell you want now?” But he didn’t like the sound of Bobby’s voice as he finished dialing up his number on the sat phone.
Kath picked up on the first ring. Her voice was sleepy. He’d woken her up.
“Hey, Red, you might want to—”
“Hold on, Bobby, I’m talking to my damn wife! Hey, babe, sorry to wake you. How you doing?”
“You might want to come on up here, little buddy.” Bobby’s voice on the speaker.
“Sleepy,” Kath said. “It’s almost two in the morning, Red.”
“Red? You coming?”
“Sorry, hon, my watch must have stopped. Hold on. I won’t be a sec,” he said into the phone.
Then, into the mike, he said, “Come up there? Goddammit, Bobby! Why the hell would I do that?”
“Something weird going on out here. I don’t know what it is. Off our port beam. Long white thing in the water. Like a trail. Headed in our direction. Looks like it’s coming right at us.”
Red was just sober enough to understand this instantly.
“Honey, something crazy’s going on,” he said to his wife. “Lemme check it out. Hold on.”
He dropped the phone and ran to the portside window. A trail of white, maybe a hundred yards away. He had time enough to say just one word.
“Shit.”
The Soviet Mark III torpedo was traveling at a depth of thirteen feet. It was running at over sixty miles an hour and leaving a huge white wake. The nose of the torpedo was packed with enough explosive to level a city block.
It took only seconds for the torpedo to reach its target. It hit the Reel Thing dead amidships.
Red, Bobby, and the Reel Thing vanished. They had been atomized.
In Fort Lauderdale, Red’s wife hung up the phone, having heard a fragment of loud noise and then silence. She shook her head, thinking of how much fun Red and Bobby had on these little getaways. Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.
The fire caused by the explosion was climbing into the blackness of the night sky. It was visible for four miles.
Less than a mile away, a man with his eyes glued to the periscope lens of the Jose Marti witnessed the destruction with grim satisfaction.
Commander Nikita Zukov of the Jose Marti removed his eyes from the rubber eyepiece of the periscope and allowed a wry smile to cross his face.
A fishing boat. He’d just sunk a stupid fishing boat.
He shook his head and flipped up the handles on either side of the periscope. There was a hiss of hydraulics as the tube slid into the deck. Then he turned to face his new crew of would-be submarine officers.
“Direct hit,” he said nonchalantly in Spanish. “Target destroyed.”
The Cuban officers standing around him in the dim red glow of the sub’s control room burst into applause. They brought the scope back up and each took a turn at the eyepiece, watching the orange sky lit by fiery debris falling into the black sea. They were laughing, shouting “bravo,” and clapping each other on the back.
Zukov stood back and watched them in disbelief. The former cold warrior could not decide if he was amused or humiliated by this scene and what had just precipitated it.
His first kill. After a brilliant twenty-year career. His first kill was a fifty-foot sport-fishing boat festooned with outriggers and fishing rods, instead of cruise missiles and eight-inch guns. With a crew of perhaps two men aboard.
The communications officer monitoring all radio transmissions announced that only one call had gone out from the boat and it wasn’t a mayday. The Marti’s position had not been revealed before she had sunk them.
Good.
Two American fisherman. Aboard a rich man’s fiberglass toy. Nothing to write home to Moscow about, but it
