spoke at length to Nando, who nodded as he opened the box next to the seated women and took out a plastic pail of bait that now smelled even more horrible. Nita, looking green in the gills again, almost gagged, and Lexi buried her nose against Claire’s shoulder.
Nick asked Heck, “He’s not going to fish for these sharks, is he?”
“No, boss. He says he’s going to poison them.”
* * *
On the way toward the northern coastline of Cuba, Nando shared the bread and black beans with anyone who wanted some, which, Nick saw, only Heck and Bronco did. His own stomach was twisted so tight he would have heaved them up, and they were rocking again on the way in. Bronco was still tending to the seasick Nita. The big bruiser had fallen hard for her, and—when she wasn’t hacking over the side—she seemed to return the feeling. Heck had been upset at first, wanting to protect the young widow who was his cousin. But since he’d lost his laptop and cell phone in the plane crash, he seemed to be mourning the loss of all that. They all had bigger things to protect now, Nick thought, namely their lives.
With Heck translating, Nick had convinced Nando to let them off the boat at a more private location than his village fishing dock. They had directions of where to find the Hermez home, which sounded like it was a little ways out of the village. Unlike in Havana and other Cuban cities, Nando claimed, government men and informants were scarce in the area of fishing villages and farms with vast tobacco and sugarcane fields that used to be owned by rich Cubans before la revolucion.
Heck had whispered to Nick, “Everything was different before the revolution. Maybe if we go to Havana I can see my grandfather’s hotel and hacienda. I always dreamed I could see it someday, even if I never get any of it back.”
Nick had only nodded. Jace had overheard that and told Nick, “We’d better make it clear this is not some damned sightseeing vacation. One wrong move, and we’re staring at bare walls and bars. Same for you with your vendetta against Ames. If he’s here, no way you—or we—can go after him or let him know we’re here. Most we could do is tip off our contact where their number one most wanted is—when and if we get back to the US.”
“I know. First things first. We’re off the plane, off the rafts. Now, all we’ve got to do is get all of us out of Cuba and to an island in Northern Michigan, damn it.”
“Look—shoreline. I’ve flown over this big island more than once but never wanted to put down like some of my pilot buddies have. I know a guy claimed engine trouble so he could make an emergency landing in Havana just to say he’d seen the place.”
“Yeah, well, you had real engine trouble, and we still need to find out why.”
“It could have been mechanical. Then too, I’ve known pilots who have crashed their own planes for their own reasons. Don’t look at me like that.”
“I wasn’t looking at you like that. I just want you to swear you can live with the idea of Claire being married to me and you passing as my brother and Lexi’s uncle.”
“I have to live with it, don’t I? One wrong move here or even in WITSEC protection, if we get that far, and I—we—won’t be living at all, not if Ames and who knows who else has his way.”
Nick nodded, and they shook hands. He could only trust and pray that Jace would continue to be helpful and protective, because, on top of everything else, he feared Jace wanted Claire and Lexi back.
* * *
The shoreline, Jace noted, as he looked through Nando’s beat-up pair of binoculars, was hardly how he’d pictured Cuba. On the one narrow, rutted road he could see two horse-drawn wagons instead of the 1950s vintage American cars he’d seen in photos. No palms but pines clinging to the hills and shadowing the short cliff hovering over pristine, deserted beaches. And red soil with rows and rows of tobacco plants waving in the breeze as far as the eye could see.
“Bonita, no?” Nando asked him with a proud grin, as if he owned every acre of the scenery. “Costa Blanca!” he said, pointing at the shoreline with a distant dock and cluster of small, tile-roofed houses on a gentle slope of hill. He pointed higher up, more to the west. “Mi casa,” he said and Jace nodded.
“Berto!” Jace called out, using Heck’s WITSEC name. “Be sure he’s going to let us out away from the dock and village.”
“Oh, yeah, he knows,” Heck said and rattled off more Spanish to Nando, who kept nodding. “He says, with us, his house will be crowded, some must sleep on the floor. His daughter, Gina, she comes home this weekend from university in Havana where she studies to be a doctor, very smart.”
“Then they will be a wealthy family someday,” Jace said.
Heck translated, then answered. “No, that’s why he wants to sell the rafts, even though he have to hide them for now. Doctors in Cuba, they only make as much money as someone lays bricks or sells T-shirts on the street.”
Claire’s voice came from behind him where she had stood up to stretch and flex the cramps in her legs. Lexi was sleeping on the deck with her head on Claire’s purse for a pillow, covered with a coat. His ex-wife, whom he’d discovered too damn late he still loved and wanted—much of the divorce was his stupid fault—was frowning at the nearing shoreline.
“Communist country, Jace,” she said. “We’re about to see what that really means.”
“If Ames is here, it doesn’t mean he makes as much as a bricklayer or street vendor. He may be helping to fund the Castro kingdom and somehow making big bucks here, I know it.”
Heck spit over the side of the boat and said, “The Castros ruined everything. Took my grandfather’s lands, his house, his money—my family, my heritage. Took a lot of lives, firing squads their favorite way. But we’re not gonna get caught. He’s not gonna take nothing else from us—maybe the other way ’round.”
Jace turned to him. “Just don’t do anything to screw this up—this secret mission we didn’t ask for but have to handle. Getting in and getting out of here, together, everyone in one piece.”
“’Course not. I’m gonna want out of here, fast as you. ’Specially ’cause I hear this place is locked up tight for social media, email, online research, all that I need to do my work. And what’s out there is monitored and controlled. Coupla dry-foot escapees told me that not long ago.”
“Great, just great,” Nick groused as he came to stand beside them. “With the internet off-limits or monitored, we’re going to have to use something like passenger pigeons to contact the FBI so they don’t think we’re dead, so they can help us get out of here.”
“We’re as good as back in the Dark Ages here,” Jace said. “Outnumbered and outranked, but we won’t be outthought or outfought. We got this far and we’ll make it in and out.”
“Just remember what Lincoln said during our own country’s terrible war,” Nick said, bouncing a fist off both Jace’s and Heck’s shoulders. “We have to hang together, or we’ll hang separately.”
As if they’d made a vow, both men nodded solemnly. Claire did too as she moved to stand between Jace and Nick. Suddenly, Nando spewed out behind them what sounded like an order.
“He says,” Heck told them, “he sees the place where he can drop us off
