Havana Storm (Dirk Pitt 23)

JUNE 2016

The squat wooden fishing boat had been painted a dandy combination of periwinkle and lemon. When the colors were fresh, they had lent the vessel an air of happy tranquility. But that was almost two decades ago. The weathering of sun and sea had beaten out all semblance of vibrancy, leaving the boat looking pale and anemic against the ominous sea.

The two Jamaican fishermen working the Javina gave little thought to her dilapidated exterior. Their only concern was whether the smoky engine would propel them back to their island home before the leaks in the hull overran the bilge pump.

“Quick with the bait while the tuna are still biting.” The elder man stood at the stern while manually deploying a long line over the side. Near his feet, a pair of large silver fish flopped angrily about the deck.

“Not you worry, Uncle Desmond.” The younger man picked up some small chunks of mackerel and slapped them onto a string of rusty hand-forged hooks. “The sun is low, so the fish still bite on the bank.”

“It ain’t the sun that’s waiting for the bait.” Desmond grabbed the remains of the baited line and dropped it over the side, tying off the end to a cleat on the gunwale. He stepped toward the wheelhouse to engage the throttle but stopped and cocked his ear. A deep rumble, like rolling thunder, sounded over the boat’s old diesel motor.

“What is it, Uncle?”

Desmond shook his head. He noticed a dark circle of water forming off the port beam.

The Javina creaked and groaned from the invisible hand of a submerged shock wave. A frothy ball of white water erupted a short distance away, spraying a dozen feet into the air. It was followed by a bubbling concentric wave that seemed to rise off the surface. The wave expanded, encompassing the fishing boat and lifting it into the sky. Desmond grabbed the wheel for balance.

His nephew staggered to his side, his eyes agape. “What is it?”

“Something underwater.” Desmond gripped the wheel with white knuckles as the boat heeled far to one side.

The vessel hung on the verge of flipping, then righted itself as the wave subsided. The Javina settled back to a calm surface as the wave dissipated in a circular path of boiling froth.

“That was crazy,” his nephew said, scratching his head. “What’s happening way out here?” The small boat was more than twenty miles from Jamaica, the island’s coastline not quite visible on the horizon.

Desmond shrugged as he turned the boat away from the receding eruption’s epicenter. He motioned off the bow. “Those ships ahead. They must be searching for oil.”

A mile from the Javina, a large exploration ship tailed a high-riding ocean barge down current. An orange crew boat motored slightly ahead of the ship. All three were headed for the Javina—or, more precisely, the point of the underwater explosion.

“Uncle, who says they can come blasting through our waters?”

Desmond smiled. “They got a boat that big, they can go anywhere they want.”

As the small armada drew closer, the waters around the Javina became dotted with white bits of flotsam arising from the deep. They were bits of dead fish and sea creatures, mangled by the explosion.

“The tuna!” the nephew cried. “They kill our tuna.”

“We find more someplace else.” Desmond eyed the exploration ship bearing down on them. “I think it best we leave the bank now.”

“Not before I give them a piece of my mind.”

The nephew reached over and spun the wheel hard to port, driving the Javina toward the big ship. The blue crew boat noted the course change and sped over, pulling alongside a few minutes later. The two brown-skinned men in the crew boat didn’t appear Jamaican, which was confirmed when they spoke in oddly accented English.

“You must leave this area now,” the boat’s pilot ordered.

“This is our fishing grounds,” the nephew said. “Look around. You kill all our fish. You owe us for the fish we lose.”

The crew boat pilot stared at the Jamaicans with no hint of sympathy. Pulling a transmitter to his lips, he placed a brief call to the ship. Without another word to the fishermen, he gunned the motor and drove the crew boat away.

The massive black hulk of the exploration ship arrived a short time later, towering over the Javina. Undaunted, the fishermen yelled their complaints to the crewmen scurrying about the ship’s decks.

None paid any attention to the dilapidated boat bobbing beneath them until two men stepped to the rail. Dressed in light khaki fatigues, they studied the Javina momentarily, then raised compact assault rifles to their shoulders.

Desmond rammed the throttle ahead and spun the wheel hard over as he heard two quick thumps. His nephew stared frozen as a pair of 40mm grenades, fired from launchers affixed to the assault rifles, slammed onto the open deck and bounced about his feet.

The wheelhouse vaporized into a bright red fireball. Smoke and flames climbed into the warm Caribbean sky as the Javina wallowed on her broken keel. The pale-blue-and-yellow fishing boat was charred black as she settled quickly by the bow.

For a moment, she seemed to hesitate, and then the old vessel rolled in a faint farewell and disappeared under the waves.