Copyright ©2003

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 0-9702677-3-8

Printed in the United States of America

“Does anyone know, where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

Gordon Lightfoot,

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” 1976.

CHAPTER ONE

            The ship had arrived just after midnight, and with hopes of a quick turnaround the crew had started unloading cargo immediately after clearing customs. The Swedish captain remembered the sadistic look on the face of the Cuban security officer, Major Suarez, as he broke the seal on the shrouded manifest and removed its contents. Not knowing exactly what they had just transported halfway across the planet from Massawa, Ethiopia, made even the seasoned captain quite uncomfortable.

            It was only 6:50 a.m., and already the mostly Philippine crew of the Panamanian flagged tanker Addis was drenched in sweat. With the exception of some shabby fishing vessels heading out to sea, Havana Harbor was quite serene.

            The evil-looking major made him feel exceedingly more uneasy. He had an appearance he had witnessed in Eastern Europe many years earlier, the look of a fascist in search of total control, with no concern for the cost.

            Below the ship, a caravan of tanker trucks formed a neat single-file. With clamorous air pumps running full bore, the white powdery payload was being efficiently pumped into the awaiting tankers. The trucks bore no markings normally required of hazardous material. What were we really carrying? wondered the captain.

            As soon as a truck was loaded, a packet containing a bill of materials labeled “Fluoride” was handed to a driver. The delivery address was to one of the many water treatment facilities throughout the island.

            By 10:30 a.m. the ship’s hold, now empty, was sanitized and being loaded with raw cane sugar for the voyage home.

CHAPTER TWO

            It was another beautiful day in paradise. Jim Riley was sitting on his deck overlooking Florida Bay. Jim finished his third cup of coffee and put down his morning paper. Like most, he had his daily ritual, and Jim’s morning routine started with the sports section and ended with the front page.

            Almost hidden from view, in the lower right hand corner of the front page was a tiny excerpt from a White House correspondent. It explained how Congress had once and for all abandoned its search for unaccounted prisoners of war in Vietnam.

            It was not much of an article, but Jim’s mind could not help racing back to a moment nearly three decades earlier. The years had been a friend, putting distance between those insane days of covert combat missions and his now relatively normal existence.

            Laws of physics, such as time and distance, reduced the occasions spent dwelling on the past, but the baggage Jim carried took on a life of its own, always popping up at inopportune instances, unannounced.

            He remembered strolling down Duval Street in Key West one sweltering June day last year. A toothless street person selling handmade hats made of coconut palm leaves eagerly shoved a hat in Jim’s direction. Uncontrollably, Jim’s mind raced back to a muddy riverbank, where a gaunt sniper, wearing a rice patty straw hat and tattered clothes, was also missing most of his teeth. Burnt into Jim’s memory was the horrid look of fear on the man’s face. With Jim’s K-bar knife imbedded deep in the man’s sternum, the Viet Cong guerilla knew death awaited him as Jim twisted the lethal blade.

            The hardest memories were of comrades, inescapably trapped or shot and dying, and ordered to be left behind. Seeing a young man in the prime of his life, losing a leg to a land mine as blood and life drained from his body. The young man’s eyes not as much filled with pain but more of fear and disbelief. Leaving a man from your unit, even when they have only a handful of breaths left, was the toughest part.

            The sound of a truck coming down the winding drive that led to his house snapped Jim’s mind out of his sudden funk. The morning was still and quiet. With little or no breeze, the dense air was pungent with a smell of the tropics. The gumbo-limbo trees and the jasmine created a combination fragrance that no perfume could ever hope to re-create.

            As an old rusty truck pulled into view, the tires made a crunching noise as they traveled down the crushed coral drive. When the Chevy pickup was almost in front of the house, Jim’s 12-year-old black lab, Skipper, let out a long wailing cry. In his younger days, Skipper would have picked out Larry’s truck when it turned off US 1, the Overseas Highway as locals call it. It was hard for Jim to accept that even Skipper was getting on in years. As Jim put on his Florida State University cap and looked in the mirror, he realized just how quickly life flies by.

            Only a few years ago his tan face was tight and his hair light brown. Everyone always thought Jim was at least 10 years younger than he really was. Now as he brushed his teeth, he could clearly see the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes. The gray in his hair and mustache gave him a salt and pepper look.

            Was it hours of exposure to tropical sun or just working around the punishing salt water? he wondered, as he looked down into the palms of his scabrous hands. Jim would simply have to shake someone’s hand to know that they, too, made their livelihood from the sea. Jim’s hands and skin appeared almost leathery, not the soft-smooth buckskin kind, more like worn and defaced rawhide.

            His hands may have lacked the calluses of someone swinging a pick ax from 8 to 5, but they were nonetheless intensely tough. After years of being nicked by fish hooks, pricked by marine life, burnt from screaming mono filament fishing line flying between fingers, the surface of his palms and fingers had hundreds, if not thousands, of microscopic imperfections. Almost like tiny fishing barbs, they would snag anything with which they made contact. Jim’s wife Linda had ruined many a pair of panty hose to his well-intended, but destructive, wandering hands.

             The ex-Navy Seal could do nothing to slow down the steady march of time, but he refused to simply give in to the constant tug of gravity. He remembered that after turning 30, everything he ate seemed to head straight for his mid-section. He could almost sense his metabolism winding down with every peanut butter cup. Trying to take the easy route, he tried all kinds of quick fixes. In the end, however, the old dreaded drudgery of diet and exercise were the only ways he achieved success. Through constant work, he remained fit as hell.

            Jim had married Linda 21 years earlier. Linda was the type of person who could eat most anything and still looked great sunning on the bow of the boat. When they would go to the all you-can-eat buffet at Whale Harbor Inn, Jim would swear she could eat her own weight in Alaskan crab claws. She never gained an ounce.

            It was painful for Jim to think back on the early years of their marriage. They had been best friends. They enjoyed doing everything together. As the years drifted by, they were faced with the normal challenges that couples face, but they had always pulled through. Lately, however, they had gotten off track.

            Jim could not put his finger on it, but something was definitely wrong. You could just sense the distance. It took years to reach this point. They were no longer soul mates; they were now barely roommates. Too many days out on the water, old boy, not enough time in port where you belonged, thought Jim, as he gave himself a fake grin and nodded at the mirror.

            Hearing footsteps on the deck outside, Jim headed for the door.

            “Good Morning, Jimbo,” first mate Larry said as the squeaky screen door slammed behind him.

            “Fishing might be tough, but it looks like a great day on the water. Not a whisper of wind,” Jim said as they both stepped onto the wooden deck outside the house.

            At 6:45am it was hard to see exactly how nice it would be, but from their vantage point the bay looked like the glass of a huge tabletop. The early morning colors reflecting off the water filled the setting with panoramic hues of blues, reds and lavenders.

            Larry and Jim had been friends for a long time. Larry Shea was of medium height and stocky, he had shoulder-length brown hair, tied neatly in a braided ponytail. Larry also held a captain’s license, but he would never amount to anything more than an excellent first mate.

            Larry had grown up fast around the shrimp docks of Key West. He never knew his father and was raised by a mother who took to the bottle. Even so, he still had a good outlook on life and for the most part stayed out of trouble. Jim had tried to teach Larry the little things that made a successful charter boat captain in the Florida Keys, but Larry just never had the patience.

            Putting up with cute girls in bikinis with no fishing skiills was one thing. Having to kiss some client’s ass and tell him what a great job he did pulling in the “Big One” was just too difficult for him. He left the salesmanship of fishing to Jim. No one could ever touch Larry’s skill at rigging baits and actually hooking fish. Back at the fish docks they clearly proved that. The Jim and Larry fishing machine had fast become a legend in the Florida fishing tournament circles.

             For being in retirement, Jim had never worked so hard. When he first started fishing professionally, it had been just for fun. As serious anglers began to see his talents, he found himself working more and more days. During the summer, he was lucky to get one day off a week. A day off for them usually meant more work, keeping up on maintenance. It was no wonder Linda oftentimes got impatient with the lack of time they spent together.

            But Linda could tell where he was heading in his last career. Propelled by his military training, Jim was far and away the youngest executive at I-Mark. Jim’s competitive nature was causing him to work at a pace that could only lead to burnout.

            Thank goodness for corporate takeovers! With a stock swap from his largest competitor, Jim got out when most were just getting their first promotions. Jim thrived under high pressure and at least out on the water he did not have the fax machines, the beepers and the multiple lines blinking.

            Jim loved his fishing. Even after eight years, fishing never got old to him. Running a computer software company surely had. It must be the control, he thought. Out in the Gulf Stream he depended on no one, no cranky technical support people, no temperamental programmers, just Larry, himself and the ocean.

            Jim and Linda lived in a typical Keys home with just a few modifications. It was built of concrete blocks up on stilts. Linda designed the floor plan herself. They could have saved money here and there, but they decided to spare no expense and build it to withstand a “Category Five” hurricane.

            Category Five was not a code listed in the Monroe County Building Codes, but a special code built to survive a hurricane with sustained winds of 180 mph or more. Instead of having wooden beams in the roof, it was solid concrete. Every section of poured concrete was reinforced with steel Rebar. Windows had built in hurricane shutters, which could be closed at a moment’s notice. Linda called the house “Fort Knox” both because it was built like a fort and because it cost so damn much to construct.

            The best part about their property was the privacy. True privacy was hard to come by in the Keys. They had a wooded acre, hidden from view from all angles but the Florida Bay. On the water there was a dock, and by the dock stood a lone coconut palm tree. Under that solitary palm there were two wooden beach chairs, with white peeling paint, blistered from the unrelenting Florida sun.

            Due to constant breezes from southeast trade winds, the palm had a distinct bow to it. Years of birds, insects and hurricanes had left its bark scarred and pock-marked. The weathered trunk reminded Jim of himself. The sound of palm leaves fluttering in the breeze was as relaxing to Jim as cool summer rain hitting a rusty tin roof.

            This was one of Jim’s favorite places on the planet. From here he could look out on the bay and solve most of the world’s problems usually with just one ice-filled glass of 12-year-old Scotch.

CHAPTER THREE  

        It was just before sunrise when the wail of a newborn baby abruptly awoke a family’s slumber in a tiny apartment located in the center of Cardenas, Cuba. Instinctively, the weary-eyed mother jumped to her feet, put on her robe and scrambled down the darkened hallway to a shabby room, resembling a makeshift nursery.

            It was their first child and both parents were constantly exhausted from such little sleep and the rigorous demands of a newborn. Groggy and still half asleep, the loving mother could still not resist a cheerful smile, as she picked up her red-faced crying baby and held her tight against her chest.

            Opening her nightgown she sat down in an old wooden rocker and offered the baby her breast. As the baby’s lips made contact with the nipple, the infant instinctively began making sucking sounds. With one taste of the mother’s warm milk, however, the baby abruptly backed her tiny head away and once again commenced screaming.

            This was becoming a regular occurrence. Tears of frustration began to well up in the mother’s eyes. Feelings of both rejection and incompetence overwhelmed her, as the baby screamed on. After several tense and unsuccessful attempts, she finally took her baby into the kitchen and gave the child the only nourishment that produced tranquility in the Sanchez home.

            With baby formula unavailable, tap water was free and sugar cane plentiful. She guiltily made up a bottle of guarapo de cana and gave it to her tiny gift from God. Sucking down the bottle aggressively, the little angel smiled with satisfaction as she burped.

            With her eyes glassy and trance-like, the infant began to once again fall asleep. Laying the child down and tucking her tightly into her sheets, the woman wondered, what is in that water?

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Copyright 2008 www.captainconnection.com Capt. David Yglesias

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