the admiral?” Gator stormed. “This is the last time. Bird Dog. I’m
never flying with you again.”
The two fishing boats were steaming together silently, all lights
extinguished. Their wooden structures were poor radar reflectors, and
absent the presence of a high-powered beam, neither one was probably
evident on any surface radar.
Finding Leyta on board had been the first surprise and not the last,
she suspected. Aguillar had turned her over to him on the docks in
Venezuela and told her he’d retrieve her at the same location.
“We’re safe?” Pamela Drake asked softly.
Leyta nodded. “As safe as we can be anywhere. I’ve done this
thousands of times you are not to worry. Miss Drake.” His nonchalance
gave her more reassurance than his words.
She nodded and gazed off toward the bow of the boat. If the chart was
correct, the coast of Cuba was only five miles ahead. Within twenty
minutes, she’d be setting foot on Cuban soil. Americans were still
barred from visiting Cuba, but the American government had
conspicuously overlooked the occasional presence of an American
journalist there. She decided not to think about the possible legal
consequences and concentrated on outlining the story she’d soon present
to the world.
The story how much of it could she tell? More important, how much
would her producers believe?
The more members of both Aguillar’s and Leyta’s political groups she
met, the more disturbed she was by the degree to which they were
interconnected. While most of her viewers would have given little
thought to the differences in the two groups’ political agendas, to
astute observers on the international scene it had always appeared that
Leyta was a violently dangerous reactionary while Aguillar was willing
to advance Cuba’s cause within the established political system.
Pamela was no longer sure either statement was true, and she’d made
that clear to Keith Loggins during their last conversation.
Regardless of the political realities, she was finally on the last leg
of her journey, itself an experience in the degree to which the two
groups cooperated. Aguillar’s people had handled the seaplane flight
from Venezuela to the Caribbean, while Leyta’s people manned the
fishing boat now ferrying her into shore. As she understood it, her
contacts within Cuba were almost exclusively Leyta’s people, a fact
that caused her some degree of concern.
Well, no matter. A story was a story.
She heard it before she saw it, a brief whine on the edge of her
consciousness, like a bothersome mosquito. In seconds it crescendoed
to a shrieking scream, and then the boat in front of them exploded into
flames. The captain of her vessel had barely enough time to slew the
small craft violently to the right to avoid the wreckage and
fireball.
A cacophony of swearing and exclamations, coupled with screams,
exploded on her own craft. She stared in horror at the flaming
wreckage, which was flung up into the air, paused at mid-trajectory,
then made its comparatively slow descent back to the surface of the
warm sea.
Her journalistic instincts kicked in, and she raised the minicam in her
hand and pointed it in the general direction of debris, then passed
back down to the burning spot on the ocean. Flames everywhere, hurting
her eyes as they seared the night-adapted pupils, throwing oddly
flickering shadows of goblins over the bulkheads of her craft. She
watched it, caught it all on tape, and felt an absurdly inappropriate
thrill that she was present to do so.
“Get below.” Leyta’s hand clamped down on her bicep.
He jerked her away from the railing and shoved her toward the cabin.
“I don’t know what’s happened who did you tell you were coming?”
“No one!” she said, with one eye still glued to the camera.
“Shut up and leave me alone.”
“No. Ten of my friends are dead, and you will not be the one to record
it.” He shoved her toward the cockpit hatch.
She swung the camera around to film him. “What happened? Why did it
explode?”
He stared at her as if staring at an alien being. “A missile,” he said
finally. “The noise. I think it was. And where that one came from,