The cats must be starving.
It was always so damn dark in that house on the beach, I like it with his arms around me at night.
He had held her in his arms here in the wardroom, how long ago had it been? They had stood very close to each other, the curtain drawn, the wardroom dark and silent.
“I want to come with you,” she said.
“No. You stay here. If this goes wrong—”
“If it goes wrong—”
“—I don’t want you to be...”
“—there’s nothing left.”
She could not see his face in the darkness. She could only feel his arms around her and his body tight against her, the way she had felt his arms around her and his body against her in bed with the darkness around them in the house on the beach. This could have been the house on the beach, her darkened bedroom with the jalousied windows overlooking the slate patio outside; this could have been a night like all those others that began in the back of the marina office when she’d been half drunk and he’d told her he loved her. This could have been a night just like all the others, but it was not.
There was something strange in his voice.
“I don’t know if we’re going to come out of this tonight,” he said.
The room was silent and black. His mouth was close to her ear, he was speaking in a whisper.
“The whole idea of going out there scares me. I don’t even know if it’ll work. The whole thing...”
He shook his head. She said nothing.
“I wish someone else could do this. I want to stay here in the dark and hold you in my arms and never move, never. I don’t want to go out there to ambush somebody and maybe kill him.”
She still said nothing. He was trembling now — she could feel his body shaking against her — but she said nothing and did nothing.
“I don’t want to go out there,” he said.
“I know.”
The room was silent.
“Sam?”
“Yes?”
He sighed. “I wish it didn’t have to be me.” He sighed again. “I’ll come back for you,” he said. “As soon as we get the message off, I’ll come back.”
There was another silence.
“Sam, I don’t know what there is for us.”
“I don’t either.”
“But maybe something. I love you.”
“I love you, Luke.”
“Wait for me,” he said, and was gone.
She could not see her watch in the dark. She worried about the cats and she worried about Luke and then thought perhaps she was only worrying about herself. She told herself she loved him and that he was doing a very courageous thing, going out there against a shipful of fanatics; he was a brave and responsible man. Then she told herself she hated him for leaving her alone here in the dark while he went out on a hopeless mission. They would kill him and then find her and kill her, too. He was a fool.
She wondered what time it was.
She heard something clanging someplace.
Footsteps?
She caught her breath. Someone was coming down a ladder; it sounded as if it was on her left someplace. She counted the steps down, six, seven, eight; there were footfalls on the deck now. She waited. Silence. She heard a door opening. Someone was entering the ship’s office. A light snapped on. “Anything?” a man asked. “No.” More silence. Footsteps. She knew she would faint. She struggled for breath and knew that she would faint if they pulled open the curtain. “Got to be down here someplace,” the first man said. They were right outside the curtain now. She pulled herself into a corner of the seat, small and huddled and frightened and gasping for breath, and remembered what Luke had said about wishing it could be someone else, about not wanting to ambush and maybe kill a man, about not wanting to go out there.
But he had gone.
With her breath rattling in her throat, she moved off the seat, and as she was groping in the dark along the top of the cabinet for a knife, a utensil, a glass she could break, anything she could use for a weapon, the curtain rasped back on its rod.
Light from the ship’s office flooded the wardroom.
A tall pale man with black hair looked in, smiled, and said, “Vamanos, señorita. We have something of yours on the bridge.”
They had unburdened the mules, and now the large wooden crates stood at the water’s edge, waiting to be loaded. It was still raining, and so the tarpaulins had not yet been removed from the boxes. El Feliz and his men squatted inside their ponchos around the open fire on the beach, drinking coffee and chewing cold pork. The boat was tied alongside a ramshackle dock that jutted out lopsidedly into the water. Angel looked at the boat every few seconds.
“Está tranquilo,” El Feliz advised.
“When will we load it?”
“Soon. When our meal is finished.”
“I want to get there.”
“We have two days,” El Feliz said. He grinned and spat into the sand. “If we go too rapidly, amigo, we will overtake the lady. Is that what you wish?”
“What lady?” Angel asked.
“Flora. La dama ventosa.” El Feliz laughed. “We have had enough of her, no? Let her march.” He made a shooing motion with his hands, and then wiped the rain from his face, picked up his coffee mug and held it out to one of the men. The man filled it. El Feliz drank from the mug and then glanced again at Angel, who was still looking out toward the boat. “Calm,” he said again. “Slow. Moderate yourself.”
Angel grunted sourly, and El Feliz burst out laughing. “Amigo,” he said gently and reasonably, “we cannot follow a hurricane too closely.”
“We do not have to follow it at all,” Angel said testily. “We can come south around the cape and then through the basin.”
“Past Guantanamo?”
“Not if we land on the peninsula.”
“But we will not land on the peninsula,” El Feliz said. “We will land on the northern coast.”
“The first plan was for the peninsula.”
“That was before Flora.”
“We still do not know the extent of the damage there.”
“And we do not wish to test fortune. The center of Flora crossed the peninsula. It is reasonable to assume there was at least some damage to the docks and beaches. Besides” — El Feliz shrugged — “they have already been told the landing will be in the north. The plan cannot change itself again.”
“Why did Flora have to come?” Angel asked angrily, and slapped his fist into the open palm of his other hand.
“Because she came,” El Feliz said philosophically, and again laughed. “My friend, you have all the energy, all the devotion to a cause, all the resolve of a true fanatic, but—”
“A fanatic?” Angel said, annoyed.
“Cómo no! A fanatic, yes, what did you think? But you also have the impatience of a fanatic and the stubbornness of one. More coffee,” he said, and extended his mug again. “You refuse to believe that Flora forced us to change our plans. You refuse to believe that she is still angry up there” — he pointed with his finger — “and that it could be extremely dangerous if we followed her too closely. You refuse to accept the fact that chance, and coincidence, and unforeseen accidents can force a man to alter his plans — and can sometimes change the course of history. Gracias,” El Feliz said to the man who filled his cup. He drank again. “Be patient. The boat will be loaded by nine o’clock. We are not expected until sundown Tuesday.”
“We should have loaded it at the other end of the island. We should have—”
“Again, there is Guantánamo at the other end of the island. That is a fact. Flora is a fact, Guantanamo is a fact. Accept them,” he said, and drained the remainder of the coffee from the mug. “We will leave La Fé at nine tonight. We will proceed to the northern side of the island and follow the coastline some thirty or forty miles offshore, past Havana and Matanzas, Caibarién and Cayo Romano, Puerto Manatí and Moa, all the way down past Baracoa. At our top speed, we will have need of two days to travel where we are going. But we will be moving well behind Flora and well away from the eyes of Guantánamo. Those are the facts, Angel. That is our plan.”