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He keyed the radio twice more, and after another moment the light flashed twice more.

“Good enough?” Alfonso said.

Treto grunted.

“Not really,” he said, putting down the binoculars. “Anything is possible.”

“So then what do you—?”

“Here,” Treto said, interrupting him.

He reached under the helm and came out with a dull stainless steel Remington twelve-gauge pump shotgun. Instead of a long wooden stock, it had a compact black polymer pistol grip. And its barrel had been cut short.

“Prepare to take them aboard, Raúl,” Treto ordered, racking the foregrip back then forward to chamber a round of double-aught buckshot. He handed the shotgun to Alfonso. “Be quick. But take no chances. If it goes to shit, we open fire, then scuttle the boats with the bodies.”

“And if it’s just Castro’s TGF goons trying to lure us into a trap?”

“Same as always. We say we thought that any small boats way out here had to be in distress—‘We know nothing about anyone seeking exile in the States!’—and were following the United Nations Convention that rendering aid is the ship master’s legal and moral obligation. And I’ll let them hear me call Miami on the satellite phone and repeat that. If that fails . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“If that fails—what?”

“Then we pray, mi amigo. We pray.”

He patted his back. “Now go, Alfonso.”

“Aye-aye.”

—

/> Ten minutes later, Captain Treto had the Nuevo Día sitting dead in the water, her diesels idling. He stood just inside the open door of the pilothouse, using the steel wall to conceal himself as he covered Alfonso and the crew working almost immediately below. The butt of a stainless steel Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic carbine with a thirty-round magazine of .223 caliber hollow points and ten-power scope rested on his right hip, muzzle pointed skyward.

The crew tied up the two battered gray Pangas alongside the ship almost at her stern, where the deck dropped closest to the water. Alfonso had the shotgun and a flashlight trained on the boats, the barrel following the beam as it bounced from stem to stern and illuminated those aboard. He and one of the men in the first Panga exchanged greetings in Spanish.

Those boats are packed! Treto thought. But why am I surprised?

Alfonso turned, looked up to the pilothouse, and gave Treto a thumbs-up.

The only damn sure thing we’ve learned to expect is the unexpected.

One guy was all they said to pick up. And now there’s got to be more than a dozen people in those boats. Must’ve paid off the TGF—or took ’em out.

What the hell. The more the merrier.

Sínguense un caballo, Castros!

The long, narrow Pangas bobbed and rocked as the men and women aboard moved anxiously, making it difficult for them to transition to the twenty-foot-long ladder hanging over the side of the more stable ship.

But slowly, one by one, they managed.

At the gunwale, two crewmen stood on either side of the top of the ladder. They shone flashlights on the ladder rungs, helping the passengers aboard as they reached the top. Two other crewmen then led them to a bunkroom below deck.

—

Fifteen minutes later, Captain Treto heard the starter on the engine of the first Panga grinding, and after a moment the outboard finally fired up loudly. Two of the ship’s crew then untied the Panga’s fore and aft lines and tossed them over the side. They went to the lines of the second Panga and prepared to repeat the process as the first boat quickly pulled away and disappeared into the inky dark.

A moment later, its engine running and lines retrieved, the second Panga followed.