The captain worked the wheel with an eye on the compass. The faint glow from the binnacle and the engine RPM indicator were the only lights — they cast a faint glow on the captain’s face and that of Diego Coca, who was wedged in beside him, the gun still in his hand. Both men were facing forward, looking through the window at the sheets of spray being flung up when the bow smacked into a swell with an audible thud. The shock of those collisions could be felt through the deck and walls of the wheelhouse.
“You are suicidal,” the captain shouted at Diego. “The sea will get worse when we reach the Gulf Stream. We are only a mile or two from it!”
Diego backed up, braced himself against the aft wall of the tiny compartment, pointed the pistol in the center of the captain’s back. He held up his hand to hold off Ocho.
“You took the money,” Diego said accusingly to the captain.
“Don’t be a fool, man.”
“America! Or I shoot you, as God is my witness.”
“You want to drown out here, in this watery hell?”
“You took the money!” Diego shouted.
Ocho stepped forward and Diego pointed the pistol at him. “Back,” he said. “Get back. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”
Ocho Sedano leaned forward. “I think they are right, what they say. You are crazy. You will kill every man and woman on this boat. Even the babies.”
“The boat is overloaded,” the captain said without looking at Ocho. “We have to get some weight off. Throw the fishing gear over, the baggage, everything.”
Ocho pulled the door open and stepped out onto the pitching deck. He took Dora from the fisherman, pushed her into the wheelhouse, and pulled the door until it latched.
“We must get rid of some weight. Everything goes overboard but the people.”
The fisherman nodded, took the bags near his feet and threw them into the white foam being thrown out by the bow. Then he grabbed Ocho’s bag and tossed it before the young man could stop him.
Madre mia!
Walking on that bucking deck was difficult. Ocho made his way forward, picking up every sack and box in reach and throwing it into the sea. Some people protested, grabbed their belongings and tried to prevent their loss, but he was too strong. He tore the bags from the women’s grasp and heaved heavy boxes as if they were empty.
Up the deck he went toward the bow, drenched every time the bow went in, throwing everything he could get his hands on into the foam created by the bow’s passage.
Other people were throwing things too. Soon the deck contained only the people, who huddled in small groups, their backs to the spray. The nets hanging on the mast were lowered to the deck, then put into the sea and cut loose.
Near the bow the motion was vicious. The salt sea spray slamming back almost took him off his feet. He caught himself on a line that stabilized the mast, then worked his way aft holding on to the rail.
He thought the boat was riding easier, but maybe it was only his imagination.
Then they got into the Gulf Stream. The swells grew progressively larger, the motion of the boat even more vicious.
How much of this could the boat take?
People cried out, praying aloud, lifted their hands to heaven. He could hear the women wailing over the rumbling of the engine, the pounding of the sea.
He tried the door to the wheelhouse.
Locked!
He rattled the knob, twisted it fiercely, pulled with all his strength.
“Open up, Diego.”
He pounded futilely on the door.
Six people were huddled in the lee of the tiny wheelhouse, blocking the door. One of them was Dora. He leaned over her, pounded futilely on the door with his fist.
He looked down at Dora, who had her head down.
Frustrated, drained, sick of himself and Diego and Dora, he found a spot against the aft wall of the wheelhouse and buried his head in his arms to keep the spray from his face.
He was drifting, thinking of his mother, reviewing scenes from his childhood when Mercedes shook him awake. Still under the influence of the painkilling drugs, Fidel Castro opened his eyes to slits and blinked mightily against the dim light.
“Maximo is here, Fidel, as you asked.”
He tried to chase away the past, to come back to the present. His mouth was dry, his tongue like cotton. “Time?”
“Almost midnight.”
He nodded, looked around the room at the walls, the ceiling, the dark shapes of people and furniture. He couldn’t see faces.
“A light.”
She reached for the switch.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw Maximo standing in the shadows. He motioned with a finger. Yes, it was Maximo: now he could see his features.
“Mi amigo.”
“Señor Presidente,” Maximo said.
“Closer, in the light.”
Maximo Sedano knelt near the bed.
“I don’t have much time left to me,” Castro explained. His mouth was so numb that he was having trouble enunciating his words.
“I want the money brought back.”
“To Cuba?”
“Yes. All of it.”
“You will have to sign and put your thumbprints on the transfer cards.”
“The money was never mine, you understand.”
“I had faith in you, Señor Presidente. We all had faith.”
“Faith …”
“I will go to my office now, then return.”
“Mercedes will admit you.”
Ocho Sedano was soaked to the skin, covered with vomit from the woman beside him, when he heard the cry. Holding onto the wheelhouse wall with one hand and the net boom mast with the other, he levered himself erect, braced himself against the motion of the boat.
Waves were washing over the bow, which seemed to be lower in the water. The bow wasn’t rising to the sea the way it did when he sat down an hour ago, or maybe the waves were just higher.
Someone was against the rail, pointing aft.
“Man overboard!”
“Madre mia, have mercy!”
Another swell came aboard and two people braced against the lee rail were swept into the sea as the boat rolled.
Ocho turned to the wheelhouse, pulled people from against the door and savagely twisted the latch handle. He pounded on the door with his left fist.
“Let me in, Diego! So help me, I will kill you if you don’t turn the boat around.”
The bow began turning to put the wind and swells more astern..
A muffled report came from inside the wheelhouse.
Ocho braced himself, then rammed his left fist against the upper panel of the door. The wood splintered, his fist went through almost to his elbow. He reached down, unlatched the door, jerked it open.
The captain lay on the floor. Diego Coca stood braced against the back wall, his hands covering his face. The pistol was nowhere in sight. The wheel snapped back and forth as the seas slammed at the rudder.
Ocho bent down to check the captain.
He had a wet place in the middle of his back, right between his shoulder blades. No pulse.
At least the boat seemed more stable with the swells behind it.
For how long? How long would the engine keep running?
The fisherman opened the door, saw Ocho at the wheel, the dark shape lying on the floor.
“Is he dead?” the man shouted.
“Yes.”
“We must put out a sea anchor in case the engine stops. If the boat turns broadside to the sea, it will be swamped.”
“Can you do it?”
“I will get men to help,” the fisherman said, and closed what was left of the door.
A great lassitude swept over Ocho Sedano. His sin with the girl had brought all of these people here to die, had brought them to this foundering boat in a rough, windswept night sea with a million cold stars looking down without pity.