By the fourth day out of Saint Thomas, John was getting jumpier. He took to scanning the horizon with the binoculars much of the time. He was Captain Ahab looking for Moby Dick. In the afternoon he called out that he saw a ship. As we got closer, we could see it was a three-hundred-foot rusty freighter cruising across our path, sailing northwest. As we watched, though, it changed course abruptly and began coming toward us.
“I don’t like that shit,” John said. He went below and fetched the Winchester.
When John came back up with the rifle, he levered a round into the chamber. “Who do you think they are?” I asked.
“Don’t know. But I don’t like the way he changed course all of a sudden. Pirates use boats like that.”
Pirates. That got my attention. We stood on deck, hanging on to stays, and stared at the boat coming our way. It was steel, long as a football field. How on earth could you defend yourself against that? One rifle against a steel ship? That’s like pissing on a forest fire. “Should we go overboard if they attack?” Ireland asked.
“Wouldn’t do any good, Ramon,” John said. “They’d either shoot you in the water or just leave you to die.”
I see us firing a few ineffectual shots against their hull to warn them off. Ping. Pong. They open up with a fusillade of rifle and automatic weapons fire. We duck below and lie on the deck as the bullets crash through the cabin. Then it’s quiet and we know they’re alongside, getting a line on us. We feel the Namaste bump against their hull. We hear them jump on deck. Footsteps run fore and aft. A shadow appears at the hatch. John blows one of them away as he comes down the ladder. Pow! The guy screams. We hear a loud shout and some angry muttering. There’s a long silence. Then we hear the forward hatch opening. We have two entrances to cover and one gun. Then a shotgun pokes in through the cabin skylight above us. I feel weak as it explodes.
Ireland and I looked at each other. The ship now bore down on us, closing the distance between us, fast. I felt the butterflies of fear fluttering in my stomach. I’d gotten shot at a lot in my life. I didn’t like it. And out here, no door gunners, no help available, I felt naked. I looked down. I was naked. I went below and put on my jeans so I’d at least not be humiliated as well as killed. I came back up and stared at the ship. It was near enough to see that no one had painted it in years. It was solid rust. A bilge pump worked hard, pouring a constant stream of water out the side, just above the waterline. The ship was close enough to see a name on the bow, but there was no name. John might be right.
“Can’t we call them and make a deal?” I asked.
“These guys don’t make deals, Ali. They don’t have to.”
“This is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“What do you mean?” John said.
“We come down here. We know there’re pirates everywhere. And we have no way to defend ourselves? What kind of plan is that?”
John glared at me and looked back at the freighter. We saw a crewman waving from the bow of the ship. He wasn’t waving for us to stop, he was just waving. The ship continued past us without slowing. When we hit its wake, the Namaste bucked and we started laughing.
“False alarm,” John said.
“I wonder why they did that. Change course all of a sudden.” I said.
“They were pirates,” Ireland said. “But then they got up close enough to see the awesome Ali and the mean Ramon and the beeg fucking Juan! Scared shitless! Waity, say the pirate capitan, too much for us pirate guys. We boogie, find easier pickings up north.”
Since he had the gun loaded, John decided to start shooting at stuff in the water. He tossed empty beer cans ahead of the Namaste and blasted them with the rifle as they came back past us. We all took turns, killing bottles, cans, anything loose. Blam! Blam! What fun. Bring on those fucking pirates! We shot up about thirty rounds before John put the rifle back in its case and stowed it under his mattress.
While I put our evening meal together, I designed a real smuggling sailboat. It had a fifteen-hundred-horsepower turbine engine—like the one in the Huey I used to fly—mounted below deck. My boat had hydrofoils under the hull and a deck-mounted 20mm cannon. When things looked grim, we’d drop sails on my boat, give ’em a few blasts with the cannon for fun, ka-pow! and then we’d kick in the turbine and blast away on the hydrofoils at sixty knots. Fuck you, pirates. Fuck you, Coast Guard.
When we sighted land at sunset on the fifth day, we changed course slightly to keep our distance. Our new concern was the Colombian navy.
We sailed parallel to the west coast of the Guaijira Peninsula, scanning the coast, looking for landmarks with the binoculars. Using landmarks, like a big power plant and a mountain peak we could see on shore and locate on the map, we could triangulate our position.
John began calling our contact. “Ike. Ike. This is Tina. This is Tina. Over,” he said. He repeated the message for five minutes. We heard nothing but static.
Two hours later, we saw lights popping to life on the coast as darkness set in. We usually ate about now, but no one was cooking. We passed the binoculars around, looking for trouble in all directions.
John tried the radio again. “Ike. Ike. This is Tina. This is Tina. Over.”
“Hello, Tina. This is Ike.”
“Son of a bitch!” John said to Ireland and me. “He’s there!”
“Glad to hear you,” John said. “We’re about fifteen miles from rendezvous. Over.”
“Roger, Tina. We’re ready. Let me know when you’re within a mile or so. I’ll put the lights on.”
“Roger, Ike. What about the yacht club?” John radioed. I didn’t know what that meant.
Ike laughed on the radio. “Don’t worry about the yacht club, Tina. The regatta’s over.”
“Roger, Ike. See you in about three. Tina out.” John put the microphone down, smiling.
“What’s the yacht club? Put what lights on?” I said.
“The ‘yacht club’ means the Colombian navy. They’re not around. And Ike’s got a Land Rover on the beach. He’ll park it facing the water. When we’re closer, he’ll turn the lights on.”
“Who’s this guy, Ike?” I asked. Ireland had gone below.
“He’s another Nam vet,” John said. “Seem to be a lot of us in this business. Guess we have the proper training.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I still think most of this mission is based on fucking blind luck.”
“You call this luck? We hit our target on the dot. We’re right on time. Luck? The damn navy is nowhere to be seen. You call that luck?” John shook his head like a guy trying to talk sense to an idiot. “Bob,” John said quietly, “we’ve done this before.”
He was right. I was arguing from ignorance. “You took care of the navy?”
“Ike did. That’s part of his job.”
“How’d he do that? How do you take care of a whole navy?”
“You’ll be meeting him in a few hours. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Ireland came up from below with a pot of coffee. We made peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches and ate while we kept a nervous vigil. Ike said he’d taken care of the navy, but people boast.
CHAPTER 17
“Ike, this is Tina. Over,” John radioed. According to our plots on the map, we should have been close to the pickup point.
“Hear you, Tina. Do you see me?”
We looked along the dark coast and saw car headlights blaze out through the humid air. It looked like we were about a mile away.