9
Claire and Nita huddled next to Lexi under the plastic tarp while the four men took turns keeping watch. The wind had picked up, and Claire prayed it wouldn’t keep Nando and that old fishing boat from reaching them. But in the windy, drizzling dawn, the Alfredito appeared, and they waded out.
He’d brought them bread, rice and beans and guava juice, but it was pretty rocky to eat. Lexi nibbled at the bread, and Claire forced herself to drink the guava juice and chew on some of the crusty loaf. She felt she was eating for two now but still wondered when to tell Nick. Did they even have good prenatal care on Mackinac Island, if they ever got there?
She could not fathom having a baby here in Cuba, especially not if they were caught or imprisoned. Gina had mentioned to Nick that government critics used to get prison terms of thirty years. Rob Patterson had told him that, even if they were exposed in Michigan, he’d have to deny he knew them, to say that they had run and hidden on their own. So if they were captured here, whatever would become of them?
At least they were traveling with the wind, not against it. Claire saw Gina hung tight with her father. Maybe these were her last hours with him. Like them, she’d brought next to nothing with her, only a backpack full of medical textbooks, probably dated ones and in Spanish. Claire not only trusted Gina now, but admired her too.
Nando kept up a running commentary on towns ashore as well as spots to catch certain types of fish. They passed Havana Harbor midmorning, when he offered everyone food again. Lexi took nothing this time and stayed under the plastic on the deck in a fetal position curled around the wet stuffed whale. Claire tried to comfort her, but at least Lily wasn’t making an appearance now. She vowed silently to work on counseling her to put Lily permanently to rest.
Late afternoon, Nando pointed at the horizon. They looked and saw black smoke rising. Gina said, “Burning the sugarcane fields to harvest it faster. It doesn’t hurt the crop and helps the workers get rid of all the extra trash and just leaves the canes.”
Claire could see Gina was increasingly nervous. It wasn’t just the hovering storm clouds, nor the fact her father had said he’d brought an anchor and would spend the night in a shallow bay before heading home at dawn again. The time was coming for Gina to tell him she wasn’t going back. Would he let the rest of them out safely then?
Nita chatted with Nando while Heck took Gina aft and explained where they were really headed. Nick had also given Heck permission to explain their real story and the need for their false names. Claire saw that Gina nodded, though she frowned through it all and looked distraught. So would she still want to go with them?
Claire’s stomach knotted even tighter. Heck was steadying Gina with his arm around her shaking shoulders. Claire got to her feet on the rocking boat and walked unsteadily toward them.
“Gina,” she said, taking her hands in her own, “I just want you to know we owe you our lives. I’ve had to make some desperate decisions too, take a step into a storm when I wasn’t sure what was coming. I had to decide to cast my lot with the man I loved. Can I or anyone, besides Heck here, who obviously loved you at first sight, do anything to help? Can we help you tell your father? I know you’re worried about Carlita, but I promise you, whether Cuba opens up to America in the future or not, my husband and I will be your friends as well as this man whom you first knew as Berto.”
To Claire’s surprise, Gina hugged her. She sniffed back her tears and squared her shoulders. She nodded and stepped away to speak to her father, gesturing broadly, pointing, giving him the note from her backpack. Heck waited next to Claire, while everyone else watched furtively and silently. Nando shook his head and sounded angry but he turned Alfredito toward a small cove, just as—a good omen?—the sun came out.
With tears streaming down his brown, weathered cheeks, Nando idled the engine in the cove. Too much pain and loss lately, Claire thought. But what bravery, and she had to show that too.
Each of them hugged Nando as Jace and Bronco climbed over the side first to test the depth of the water, then helped the others down, all but Gina. Nick had left two hundred-dollar bills in the plastic carrier with the food. Heck finally climbed down but stayed where he was in the chest-deep water by the prow, holding Gina’s backpack above his head, while the rest of them slogged to shore. Nita lifted Lexi’s whale, and Claire held her purse above her head, to keep her meds dry.
On the narrow strip of white sand, they held their breath to see what Nando and Gina would do.
Still in the boat, she gestured, talked, cried. Nando shook his head and yelled. They thought he might keep her on board, just put out, but Gina hugged him, holding hard. For one moment again, it looked as if Nando would turn the boat away, but they saw him kiss her forehead, cross himself and shout something over the side to Heck as Gina ran to the rail and scrambled down the netting.
Nando was still yelling at Heck, who yelled back as he and Gina waded toward shore. Nick went out to help them, taking the backpack from Heck, trying to steady Gina with a hand on her arm while Heck had his arm around her waist.
“He’s not going to just stay there or report us, is he?” Nick asked. “What did he say?”
“He said he have my head and haunt me forever if I not take good care of her, marry her. And if Cuba and the US make a deal in the future, I swear to him by the Holy Virgin I bring her back to visit.”
Claire broke into tears again as Nando finally gunned his feeble motor and moved slowly away, not looking back. Yet they all stood there waving as if he’d just dropped them off at the safest, sweetest vacation spot in the world.
“Let’s see if we can get there,” Nick said. “According to Gina, Guantanamo can’t be but a few miles beyond this point.”
“You knew?” Jace asked her.
She nodded. “I think my father—he knew too where you are going.” She shoved her wild hair back from her face and asked, “But aren’t we waiting for a boat or a helicopter to come and look for us?”
“We’ve got a little hike ahead,” Nick said, speaking to all of them now.
His arms crossed over his chest, Bronco frowned at the area where they stood as if the Cuban police or Ames’s men would appear again. Nita reached for his hand, and Lexi finally spoke. “Lily is really hungry and tired, and she still wants to go home.”
“So let’s do that. Listen up, everyone,” Nick said, jamming onto his face the sunglasses Gina had bargained for on the bus, which now seemed to Claire like an eternity ago. “We are going to the US but we have to get to the American base at Guantanamo Bay first. As far as Jace and I can tell, we have maybe an hour or so walk to freedom. And we need to do it before the sun sets.”
“Sounds good to me,” Bronco said with a shrug and the first smile Claire had seen from him here. “I lost one of my shoes in the water, but I don’t care. Let’s go ’fore it gets dark or rains again or someone spots us. We get close to the town, we can blend in til we reach the base.”
“A man after my own heart,” Jace put in. “Let’s just hope there’s a path swimmers have cut up to the road, because the brush looks pretty thick right here. Onward and upward, right, bro?” he added, addressing his supposed brother, Jack Randal.
Claire gave Gina a quick hug, but the young woman was trembling and clung to her, getting her wetter than she was. Nita patted Gina’s back and said in English, “And we be like sisters to you.”
Single file, their ragtag group, now increased by one, headed for the upward path.
* * *
They could see the low-level sprawl of Guantanamo City in the distance, but the road they took toward it was lined on its landward side with a massive sugarcane field. Claire marveled that some of the cane was ten feet tall, green and waving in the breeze, ripe to harvest. More than once, they saw workers with machetes along the way and horse-drawn wagons loaded with newly cut stalks. The storm had cleared, but they smelled smoke from the cane fires, all in the distance, but nearly blocking out the sinking sun.
They were hopeful as they trekked westward toward Guantanamo City, which surrounded the navy base, on one side of the beautiful bay. Claire sensed Jace got really excited when a big-bellied US naval plane flew over. But their high hopes came to a screaming stop when they saw a problem about a half mile up ahead.
“Is that what I think it is?” Claire asked. “Wish we had binoculars. And isn’t there a second roadblock beyond that? That farthest one looks like it might be near the base—I mean, isn’t that one of those tall watchtowers? If that first blockade’s for us, we’re doomed. Despite drifting smoke, I can make out blue license plates on those cars.”
“What does doomed mean, Mommy?”
Everyone ignored her. Gina said, “Looks like police officers’ cars to me.”
They edged over farther toward the sugarcane field. Shading his eyes and squinting, Jace said, “It looks like police—and isn’t one of those guys up there in a suit?”
They heard a shrill whistle and some of the men in the cluster started toward them.
“We’re going to have to duck and run,” Nick said. “We can cut into the field, around that first roadblock to the one near the base. Once in, turn right. And don’t get lost in there. Stay close together, but go way back in!”
Jace grabbed Lexi and ran with her clasped in front of him. Claire came next, holding the whale. She could feel and hear things in her purse bouncing. Nick followed her. The others were several rows to the west, running abreast through the rows of cane. Claire had once gone through a north Florida corn maze with friends, but this was different, a dark, tall, endless tunnel. And the soil was spongy from recent rain, slowing them down. The shifting, dry stalks and sharp-bladed leaves snatched at them, and their tops of waving tassels whipped back and forth in the wind. At least these rows were wider set than in a cornfield, so they could run without bouncing into stalks to give away their position.
But she could hear their pursuers behind them, running, calling to each other, shouting for them in accented English to “Stop! Stop or else!” More bad news. They must know they were chasing Americans. When Lexi’s feet dragged into the canes, the clacking sound made Claire think of distant machine gun fire.
Then it seemed that the voices were muting. “Maybe they’re dropping back,” Nick said, out of breath. “We’re far enough in to cut toward the base. Keep close, everybody. Go!”
He took Lexi from Jace, and they started off again. “Miles, acres of this stuff!” Claire muttered. Like all of them, she was sweating and out of breath. Only Lexi seemed calm, but she was grateful for that. All they needed was for Lily to be yelling out something to give away their position.
But the running was harder now, and not only from wet soil. The cane grew thicker in this direction, making it almost impossible as they tried to cut through the cane sideways, not down the rows. “It hurts!” she heard Lexi say. “Can’t we shoot the bad guys or just hide?”
“Let’s go deeper in,” Nick said. “Bronco and Heck, you hear me?” he got out.
“Lily doesn’t like to run!” Lexi put in.
Claire told her, “Hush. If those men find us they will take away Shark-Killer, so you have to be quiet.”
“But others are talking!”
They went deeper into the massive field again. It was like being lost in a forest, plunging through the cavernous rows of trees. They heard a shout behind them. Someone close? Had someone spotted them?
“Over here, officers!” a very American voice shouted. “We got them now! The man will have our heads if we don’t get them! They have to be stopped this time!”
For sure that meant Ames’s men were here. Claire saw Nick looked livid.
Lexi said, “They are bad men. And, Mommy, what’s that smell, like those icky cigars?”
Claire gasped, and she heard Bronco swear under his breath in the next row of cane. The breeze had not been in their faces, but they heard a crackling like popcorn. The sun wasn’t out, but the heat got more intense as the wind changed direction.
Gina whispered, “They are burning this field ahead of us, from near the base. Madre de Dios, we’re trapped between those men and the flames!”