Felipe nodded, but said, “I don’t want you two to interact with them.”
He sounded like he knew what he was doing. If he could stop thinking about me screwing his girlfriend, he should be able to concentrate on the great escape. “And we meet you in the mangrove swamp?”
He nodded. “This place was scouted a few months ago, and I checked it out and drew a map for you.”
Apparently every Cuban thought he was Magellan.
He continued, “There’s a dirt road that goes down to a floating dock in the mangrove swamp. Locals and tourists use the dock, usually during the day, and the road will support a heavy vehicle.” He asked, “What are you driving?”
Sara replied, “A Buick station wagon.”
He looked at her. “What’s in the two trunks?”
I replied, “If your uncle didn’t tell you, you don’t need to know.”
“I think I know.”
“Then don’t ask.”
He started to say something, then thought better of it and finished his daiquiri, then signaled the waitress for another. I didn’t want him drunk, so I said, “That’s the last one.” I asked, “Is there a problem for you and Jack getting the boat out of the marina at that hour?”
“I just need to have the Guarda Frontera sign a despacho for some night fishing, which I’ll do when I get back to the marina. If it’s just Jack and me, and if I don’t have our three fishermen aboard, the Guarda won’t think we’re all trying to escape from Cuba for some paranoid reason.”
“Will your fishermen be okay after we disappear?”
“They’ll be as surprised as the border guards tomorrow morning. They should be okay under questioning.” He added, “They have tickets to fly to Mexico City on the last day of the tournament.”
Unless they were in jail. Well, every mission has collateral damage. “All right. And you’re sure you can navigate through the mangrove swamp.”
“No, I’m not sure, and neither is Jack. But my tide table says I have seven feet of water at that dock at high tide, and Jack says The Maine draws about five feet, depending on her weight, and we’re light on fuel.”
I wasn’t sure he should put so much faith in the tide table. “Side clearance?”
“There’s a path cut through the mangroves that the sightseeing boats use, from the dock to the Bahía de Perros—the Bay of Dogs.”
I liked that he translated.
“I’ll back it in, then we load up from the dock and off we go.”
I was going to miss the Buick Roadmaster. But not as much as I was going to miss my red Porsche 911.
I didn’t want to sit here too long, and the question of who was going to use the room and when was still not resolved. Would I let Felipe and Sara go to the room together? Would Sara go, and take one for the team and the mission? Stay tuned.
Well, when you’re looking for something to talk about, the weather is a good subject. I asked Felipe, “What’s the weather looking like?”
He sipped his daiquiri. “Not good.” He glanced out the window. “There’s a late tropical storm developing, and it’s about sixty K east of here, moving west-northwest at ten or fifteen K. So it should hit”—he looked at his watch—“maybe midnight. Maybe earlier or later.” He complained, “It’s hard to get an accurate forecast here.”
“What are the winds?”
“About thirty to forty knots. Waves are between five and ten.”
I hoped he meant feet, not meters.
“We should be able to keep ahead of the storm,” said Felipe with the phony nonchalance of all seafarers. “Depending on its speed and how it tracks.”
Thanks for your insight into the obvious. Sara was looking a little concerned, so I said, “The Maine can handle much worse weather.” With me at the helm. “In fact, a little weather will be good if the patrol boats are out and about.”
Felipe agreed, and had some good news. “I’m told they don’t usually go out in bad weather.” He explained, “They’re mostly out there to look for rafters, so they might not be out on a night when there’ll be no one trying to escape this paradise.” He smiled.
Sara returned the smile.
“Also,” said Felipe, “they try to conserve fuel.” He added, “The regime is broke.”
This was sounding like an escape from the Swiss Navy. Unless the Cuban Ministry of the Interior was specifically looking for us. I asked Felipe, “What kind of patrol boats do they have?”
“They’ve got, like I said, two boats here. They used to have seven here, gifts from the Russians, but after the economic collapse they’re running only two out of Cayo Guillermo. One is a Zhuk-class eighty-footer, which can make about twenty-five knots—same as The Maine.” He glanced at Sara, hesitated, then said, “She mounts two sets of twin 12.7-millimeter machine guns, manually aimed, and she has a crew of eleven.”
I didn’t think he got all that from the Cuban crew or from a public information tour of the boat. So I concluded that Felipe had been briefed back in Miami by Eduardo’s amigos.
Felipe sipped his daiquiri and continued, “That’s the boat that goes out at dusk and returns about three or four in the morning. It runs west along the coast, looking for rafters, which it can’t see on its radar. But its radar can see a small boat that may have been stolen for an escape.” He added, “If we’re spotted visually or by radar, the Zhuk can’t overtake us at his max speed, but he can stay with us, and if he’s close enough, he can hail us and order us to stop, or . . .” He glanced at Sara again. “. . . Or fire warning shots.”
Right. It’s hard to ignore machine-gun fire.
Felipe looked at me. “I think, with our speed, we can avoid this guy.”
I agreed. “And we have radar.”
Felipe nodded. “Also, half the Russian electronics on these tubs don’t work, and the crews aren’t well-trained in electronics.”
They must have gone to the same school as Jack. Well, this was sounding easier. I wondered what we could do to make it a fair fight.
Felipe finished his daiquiri and looked for the waitress.
I said, “Make it coffee.”
He didn’t like that but he didn’t argue, and got back to business. “Okay, then there’s the second boat, which is a Stenka-class patrol boat. The one that goes out about midnight. She’s big, about a hundred and twenty feet, and can make thirty-eight to forty knots.”
That was the patrol boat I saw anchored at the marina. I wouldn’t want to see her on the high seas.
Felipe continued, “At that speed, she’s a threat, and at that size she can go out in any weather.” He drank the dregs of his daiquiri and continued, “She has a crew of thirty-four, but usually sails with half that. Her radar is sophisticated, but again, not always operational or well-manned.”
“Armaments?”
“A few manually aimed machine guns, and two radar-controlled thirty-millimeter twin rapid-fire cannons—one in the bow, the other in the stern.”