Twenty-Two
“So what do you know about boats?” Sonya asked, walking along the dock flanked by small military watercraft.
“With any luck I know how to steal one?” Rox said.
“Piracy, then?”
“Sort of. My dad had a habit of losing his keys. And his car was a POS, anyway, so he’d just rub the wires together and… meant I learned to drive at a very young age.”
“And stole his car frequently?”
Rox shrugged. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I know just enough to know that these boats, here, are all short range. Probably GPSed, too, for that matter. They aren’t going to get us to either continent. Probably not even to any of the other islands.”
“You know boats?”
“My dad had a dream of owning a boat. Never happened, but he was enthusiastic about the idea. Some of it rubbed off on me.”
“I guess the important thing is that we make it to Cuban soil. This base gets treated like U.S. soil even though it’s in Cuba, but once we’re officially in Cuba, they U.S. can’t act officially without it being an act of international aggression. And especially insofar as most of these aren’t U.S. citizens, they really can’t claim that recapturing them makes any kind of sense. They aren’t a threat; in fact, they probably would have been hard-pressed to justify imprisoning them in Gitmo in the first-place, but try explaining to the world why you invaded a country to arrest refugees. And the citizens are an even bigger black eye; they were arrested without charge- without even a hint of a crime.”
“Well, these boats should get people to Cuba,” Sonya said. “But what’s the plan here?”
“I’ll walk you through hot-wiring a boat…”
“And then? We bringing the mountain to Mohammed, one handful at a time or- nevermind. Looks like Mohammed’s leading the flock here.” Anita was leading a parade of refugees towards them.
Rox was already beneath the ignition on the boat, slicing open wires. “Should give me just about enough time to make sure I still know how to do…” the boat “there we go.”
“This is about half,” Anita said, arriving with a rowdy throng.
“Half? Jesus,” Rox said.
“The rest are with Cris. He’s healing them as fast as he can; the rest volunteered to stay behind, help the wounded run if it came down to that.”
“Okay, let’s get these boats launched and in the water. As soon as that’s done we can go back up Cris. Do we think we have capacity enough on our boat to haul out the rest?”
“If this was half?” Sonya asked. “Not in open waters, but if we’re setting down on a different beach to figure out next moves, they should get us there.”
“Good,” Anita said. “Then I’m going to scuttle whatever boats we don’t take, make it harder for the Army to pursue.”
“That’s good thinking.”
“No,” Anita shook her head. “I’ve just seen what happens if I don’t. Bright side? You make a really pretty corpse. I’m a little jealous, actually.”
“You’re a really weird fucking lady.”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. That’s kind of fucked up.”
“Ladies,” Rox said, “we got a government to thwart. We can finish the tea party when we’re not trespassing on a military base.”
“I don’t know. Military bases do have the best tea.” “Then grab a handful of bags. We’ll drink it someplace we don’t have to worry about getting shot while we sip.”