DIRE STRAITS, Chapter 9B

October 5, 2011
[My apologies. I've been swamped with work and family responsibilities lately. Hope you enjoy today's installment]

He didn’t make it far. He peeled out of the alley, turned onto a narrow street, and skidded to a halt. The street was blocked by two cars. Standing in front of the vehicles was none other than Juan Osorio. On his left stood the auburn-haired woman he had noticed while barhopping with Coro, the one that gave off the Russian vibe. On his right were two uniformed men carrying assault rifles.

            Osorio called out, “Senor Hamill, you are under arrest.”

            “The hell I am,” Derek muttered, spinning the bike on its rear wheel and hammering the throttle. The bike roared. He heard gunshots over the bike’s racket.

            He skidded around a corner only to see another vehicle blocking the street. This one didn’t block the entire street and the soldiers or agents or cops, whoever they were, stayed in their vehicle.

            Pull his handgun, Derek held it in his left fist, gripped the throttle with his right, and raced toward the car, firing as he went.

            He was squeezing past on the right when the car slammed into reverse. The car’s trunk struck his rear wheel. The bike skidded, wobbled, then Derek laid it down on the pavement, rolling away from the bike.

            Lying there for a moment, he wondered if he’d broken anything. Bruised for sure. Looking down at his jeans, he saw he’d shredded his right leg and hips. He was sure as hell bleeding. And sure as hell lucky.

            Rolling to his feet, pain shot up through his leg and his side. Behind him, a uniformed cop staggered out of the car, the shoulder of his uniform dark with blood. He raised a handgun.

            Derek shot him.

            Turning, he levered up the motorcycle, whose engine had cut out. He straddled it with some difficulty and tried to kick it into life. Nothing.

            Shit!

            He tried again. Still nothing.

            He turned to see the red-haired woman standing two dozen feet away from him. Their eyes met.

            She had a gun pointed at him. In English with a Russian accent she said, “Derek Stillwater.”

            A jolt of adrenaline blasted through Derek. She knew who he really was!

            “I think it would be better for my country and yours if you just got out of here. Go.” She waved the gun at a doorway. “Through there.”

            He didn’t ask questions. He sprinted for the door. Who was the woman? He had no idea, but she’d done him a hell of a favor. And if she was Russian – and it seemed she was – perhaps she was right. The analysis Derek had read after the breakup of the Soviet Union and their relationship with Cuba was that it was spiraling downward in a big way.

            He didn’t give it much thought. Gift horses, and all that. Darting through the door, he found himself in an apartment building. Racing through the hallway, he headed upward. The buildings in this part of Havana were old and sandwiched together, sometimes only a half dozen feet separating them, sometimes less, sharing walls.

            It was six stories tall. It smelled of herbs, mildew, some sort of cooking meat or beans. This early in the morning it was quiet.

            He climbed the narrow stairs to the top floor. A ladder went up one wall to a hatch. Derek climbed up, pushed it open, and rolled onto the roof of the apartment building, closing the hatch behind him.

            Heart hammering in his chest, lungs burning, he took stock of his situation. Scraped up, but functional. Pretty much out of options.

            As far as he was concerned, he’d just been about as lucky as he was likely to get, running into a Russian agent who would rather get him out of the country than turn him over to the Cubans.

            Glancing around, he saw that the next closest building was about six feet away and maybe four or five feet lower. Pocketing the gun, he took a deep breath, set himself, and leapt the distance between the two buildings. He hit the next building, rolled, and was happy to discover that the next half dozen buildings were built adjacent to each other.

            Within minutes he was several blocks from where Osorio was looking for him. Hopefully the Russian woman had pointed Osorio in a different direction.

            In the east, the sun was starting to rise, the sky ribbed with scarlet as the sun burned through distant clouds. A beautiful sunrise, he supposed, if he weren’t such a pessimist: red sky in morning, sailors taking warning.

            Derek thought a storm was coming. 

DIRE STRAITS, Chapter 7B

September 15, 2011

The woman’s name was Claudetta Tambiama. She ran the fruit and vegetable market. Her husband, Momka, ran the bar and strip club next door. He was sleeping in a room above the market, where they lived. She asked him if he wanted coffee. He did. Desperately.

            While she fussed with an old-fashioned coffee maker, a glass bubble on the top to announce the perk, he spun a tale of fooling around with a local girl, only this local girl’s brother was a cop, and he found out  their tryst and went after Derek – Derek was calling himself Jake Smith in the story. She brought him a mug of coffee and sat down across from him.

            In Krio she said, “You are full of shit. Why are you lying to me?”

            Damn, he thought. That didn’t work. He raised his hands in surrender. “Look, Claudetta, I’m really in trouble. I can’t talk about it. But I saw the sign and I really did grow up in Sierra Leone. I need to lay low for a couple days before I can get out of the country. I thought you might be able to help.”

            “Maybe I can. What kind of help?”

            “A place to sleep for a day, maybe. Maybe a car or a bicycle or something.”

            “We don’t own no car, Jake. Or a motorcycle. Momka, he own a bicycle and a scooter.”

            “The scooter, maybe. So I can get around the city a little faster.”

            She drank her own coffee, staring at him over the mug with her brown eyes, skin the color of a coconut. “You bring trouble on Claudetta. Chaka-chaka.” Chaka-chaka. Messy. She made the peculiar gesture at her chin, the all-purpose symbol of the bearded one, Fidel and his government. She let the comment dangle there, something inferred.

            “I’ve got money,” Derek said. kɔpɔ. And he did. Some in his wallet. More in his money belt. Canadian. Cuban. American.

            She smiled. “Why you not say so before? Of course we can help you. Got a room above the bar. For business. You know?”

            So it wasn’t just a bar or a strip club. It was a brothel, too. “How much?”

            She reeled off a figure. He pulled out his wallet, then raised an eyebrow. “And how much to make sure you or Momka don’t tell anybody I’m here. At all.”

            She doubled the price. He laid out the Cuban Pesos.

            “I show you room.”

            Upstairs above Pleasure were four squalid little rooms off a short hallway. At the end of the hallway was a bathroom – a toilet and sink, rusty and stained. The walls were whitewashed plywood. Each room contained a soiled mattress and a bare table with a lamp. The Hilton’s reputation was safe.

            “You need anything else?”

            He shook his head and thanked her.

            Once she was gone, he slammed home the door’s slide-bolt and pushed the table against it. It wouldn’t keep anybody out for longer than about ten seconds, but ten seconds could save his life. He’d take what he could get. It’s not like he had many options.

            He decided to leave his shoes and clothes on, sprawled on the mattress and was asleep in minutes.

            It was a restless sleep. At one point, mid-day according to his watch, he heard movement down below and murmured voices. Claudetta talking to a man. Some of it was in Spanish, some of it was in Krio. He heard his name – Jake – and he heard the Krio word for money.

            He drifted back to sleep.

            Several hours later he snapped completely awake. Heavy footsteps were climbing the steep stairs. Two sets. A deep male voice said something in Spanish. A flirty female voice giggled and said something back. Derek, not for the first time, wished he spoke more Spanish.

            He rolled out of the bed and onto his feet. The only weapon he had was the utility tool. He snapped open the blade, stood to the side of the door and waited, body coiled.

            The footsteps passed his room and the door to the room next to his closed. Through the thin wall voices muttered, then the rustle of clothing, followed by encouraging male words.

            Glancing at his watch, he saw it was seven in the evening. The bar was either open or a customer was getting an early start. He slid back the mattress, unlocked the door and hurried down the stairs, peering around the corner into the bar.

            Along one wall was a tin bar with stools. Across the bare wood floor were about ten small round tables, two or three chairs stacked atop each of them. Along the opposite wall was a low stage with two stripper poles, spotlights and a sound system at one end.

            A short, thin black man in jeans and a loose white cotton shirt was sweeping the floor. His Afro was bushy and speckled gray. A wispy mustache decorated his upper lip. In Krio he said, “Cop upstairs. It how we do business, yes? They get a girl, they leave us alone. But he early tonight, otherwise I warn you. Best you get out of here.” He fished in his pocket and tossed a key to Derek. “Vespa out back. Tank is full. Don’t come back until late morning, hear? Or best you not come back at all. Leave bike, though.”

            “One way or the other I’ll get the bike back here or let you know where it is. Thanks.” Derek handed the man a twenty Peso note and headed out the rear of Pleasure into the Havana evening.

DIRE STRAITS - Chapter 5A

September 1, 2011

5

            The kayak slipped and slithered in and around huge waves, Derek struggling to keep the small craft from rolling. He was beyond worrying about the direction, of whether he was being blown into gulf or even back to Cuba. This was about survival, a deeply primitive instinct. Beneath all his military training and preparedness crouched the Neanderthal in the storm hoping not to die.

            Rain spiked down from the heavens, so thick and hard he could barely see, not that there was much to see. Blackness lit up by the occasional flash of lightning showing a roiling mass of waves.

            Derek was not much of a religious man, despite having been raised by missionary physicians. He believed in some sort of God and in some kind of afterlife, but studying disease and being a soldier and being in battle had not convinced him that God was actively involved in the world. A disease like malaria or Yellow fever or African Trypanosomiasis was not evil. It just was, and he was not inclined to think that a human-loving God intended for some innocent child to die from Lassa fever or schistosomiasis.

            And from what he had seen of war and terrorism, there were plenty of evil people in the world. You could blame their behavior on the devil or on environment, but mostly he thought they made choices and those choices had evil outcomes. If there was a God, he sometimes thought he or she placed humans on the same value level as black-eyed Susans, Labrador retrievers, and cockroaches.

            And thinking of what he had seen in Iraq recently, he wasn’t so sure God would value human beings higher than cockroaches. Sometimes they were indistinguishable.

            So it was with some self-awareness that Derek cast a prayer to the heavens to whoever might be listening to save his ass.

            A lightning bolt stabbed across the sky, followed almost immediately by a monstrous roll of thunder. In the brief illumination Derek saw a huge wave, thirty or forty feet tall, looming above him.

            He had just a second to try and turn the kayak’s bow into the wave.

            And the universe exploded in a wet fury around him. The kayak rolled. The paddle was ripped from his fingers.

            Derek was torn from the kayak and crushed under a ton of raging water.