Unless, of course, the commies figured out where he was and shot up the boat and dropped his butt into the briny deep for all the little fishes to eat. Back in Washington, they'd probably wonder for a while what happened to good old Charlie Kraeger who nobody liked anyhow because he was a dinosaur. His superiors had broadly hinted that he was a little too old for field work and now he agreed with them. False pride had played a real part in his being in this deadly situation.
He managed to pull himself up to a sitting position. It took almost all his remaining strength. Water, water everywhere and not a damn drop to drink was what he saw — that and a small boat coming toward him. Even through his blurred eyesight, he recognized it as a Cuban patrol boat. It began to fire at him. Bullets splashed around his little boat.
Shit.
The worst part was that he'd failed and that made him want to cry, except that forty-year old CIA agents weren't supposed to cry. He knew a secret, a secret, a secret. But the sun was so bright and so hot and he was so thirsty, he couldn't remember it. But he had a secret, a secret.
But what the hell was it?
Oh yeah.
War.
The Coast Guard Cutter Willow was old, which was normal for the Coast Guard, because the Guard was generally last on the military's budget. The glamorous Air Force was first with all its shiny bombers, sleek, sexy fighters, and neat missiles. It was followed by the Navy with its massive carriers and growing fleet of nuclear submarines, and then came the Army and the Marine Corps and, bringing up the rear, the Coast Guard. Some Guardsmen wondered why they bothered, but not all of them. Most were dedicated and did what they could with what they had.
The Willow's skipper, Lieutenant Commander Paul Watkins was one of the dedicated ones, and he loved his old ship. He was forty-four and the Willow was only a few years younger, having been built in the mid-nineteen thirties. He was never going to be promoted and neither he nor the Willow would ever get a better assignment than this. Nobody on the Willow complained. Cruising the Caribbean in the winter wasn't bad duty at all. It beat the hell out of Lake Superior in December. His friends laughed that Watkins was married to the guard and he admitted it wasn't far from the truth. He'd risen from the ranks, a rarity in itself, and never married. His friends also joked that when he retired he'd take the cutter home with him. That was going a little too far and he told his friends to screw themselves which, depending on how much they'd drunk, generally resulted in laughter. Truth be told, he would love to take the Willow home, but where the hell would he park it?
Ironically, the Willow's hull had recently been strengthened so she could serve on the Great Lakes where there was so much ice. Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis and now she was well away from the Great Lakes and any sign of ice, except in the soft drinks and ice teas served by the mess crew. Neither her captain nor her crew complained about having to spend the onset of winter, 1962, in the warm sun rather than the frigid northern waters. There was even a rumor that the ship had been forgotten by the brains in Washington and would be spending a long time cruising the Caribbean. No such luck. Watkins was in daily contact with his superiors.
Watkins loved his ship. He only wished the Coast Guard had come up with something more dramatic or elegant for her name. Willow was just too gentle for a ship of war. But then, he recalled that the Royal Navy had a whole class of ships named after flowers. Willow, he decided, was better than being captain of something named the Petunia. Or, he shuddered, the Pansy.
Watkins understood why he was never going to get promoted. There were simply too many qualified candidates for too few open slots and, hell, he was getting old. Command and rank would go to the young, eager, and better educated hotshots. The fact that he was short, overweight, and a little slovenly in appearance didn't help either. He was not recruiting poster material.
"Skipper?"
"I'm still here," Watkins said to Lieutenant Harkins, his young and just a little bit up tight executive officer. One good thing about the Coast Guard was that they weren't crazy about the perks of rank, which meant that shipboard life was a lot more casual than on a regular navy ship, and Harkins was finally beginning to understand it. The young man was actually a very nice guy when he loosened up. Watkins thought it might help if he could get him drunk and laid.
"Radar's picking up something. They think it might be a Cuban patrol boat."
Watkins yawned. The Willow was going nowhere slowly, cruising in large circles and making less than ten knots while looking for anything suspicious, which generally meant finding small boats filled to overflowing with refugees from Castro's communist paradise. Why, he wondered, if Cuba was such a worker's paradise, were so many people so damned anxious to flee it that they'd risk their lives sailing the Caribbean in dinky little boat?. They'd already rescued a number of grateful Cubans and, sadly, picked up the bloated corpses of some who'd died in the attempt.
"The Cuban Commie bastards have an inalienable right to be out in the Gulf in international waters just like we do," Watkins said. "How far away is she and what is she doing?"
"Maybe ten miles away, skipper, and she's cruising in a straight line. It almost looks like she's aiming for some specific point in the ocean."
Intrigued, Watkins arose stiffly from his chair on the bridge and walked over to look at the radar screen. As always, the technology meant little to him, except he'd just been told that the blip that kept jumping up and down was likely a Cuban patrol boat. He nodded solemnly, pretending he understood what he was looking at.
"Can you see what he's aiming towards, if anything?"
Petty Officer Wade, the radar operator shook his head. "There may be something a few miles ahead of him, but it's really small. Like flotsam and jetsam, skipper."
"Flotsam and jetsam, Wade? Who the hell are you trying to impress with your knowledge of nautical talk? Flotsam and jetsam are a comedy act, like Martin and Lewis."
Wade laughed and Watkins leaned over the screen, even Harkins grinned. Now he could see the little squiggle that was what Wade was talking about. Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.
"Whatever it is, it's dead in the water," Wade said helpfully.
"Could it really be a small boat?" Watkins asked and Wade nodded. It could.
"Well let's see," Watkins said thoughtfully as he pulled out the stub of his last cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it. "We got a Cuban patrol boat making like a bat out of hell for a place in the ocean where what might be a small boat is dead in the water, and add to that the fact that we're all bored to tears. Oh what the hell, boys and girls, let's have some fun."
He grinned and turned to his executive officer. "Make all speed and let's cut this Cuban son of a bitch off. If he wants that flotsam and jetsam so badly, then we want it worse. Oh yeah, sound general quarters, too."
The Willow was old, but not slow. She could do maybe twenty knots if pushed and it looked like the Cuban boat was only making twelve. Nor was the Willow in any way helpless. At more than two thousand tons, she was a larger cutter than the more recent ones, and a veteran of World War II where she had done some sub-chasing and convoy duties. This meant she carried a pair of three-inch guns, which along with her anti-aircraft batteries, would more than outgun any Cuban patrol craft. The Willow's crew had joked that maybe they outgunned the entire pissant Cuban navy.