Dead Man's Land by Jack Patterson (digital e reader .txt) 📕

Before Prado could protest any further, a motorboat rumbled in the distance, echoing through the channel. Yunel craned his head out of the shed to look.

“They’re here. We need to go now,” he said. “Make your decision, but I’ve already made up mine.”

Prado looked out of the window again at the man still drifting in the water. He wanted to help him, but he couldn’t.

Not now.

Freedom was calling.

Prado climbed into the boat.

CHAPTER 2

ANGEL TORRES WIPED OFF the saltwater spray from his brow and prayed his mother wasn’t looking down on him from heaven. His thoughts continually dueled with one another, creating a mental state as choppy as the waters his cigarette boat currently battled. How his life had spiraled out of control to the point that he was here, doing this, with them—he had no clue. Yet it surprised no one who knew him from his younger days.

The grandson of Cuban immigrants to Miami, Torres struggled to make good decisions. At five feet nine inches tall and 250 pounds, he never met a gallon of ice cream he didn’t love. His permanent wheeze said the same thing about his passion for smoking. The same could be said of his love for gambling, though the boat he stood at the helm of belied that fact.

While the verdict remained out on whether Torres had indeed made a good decision, his decision to force his opponent’s hand in a game of poker is why he even had the boat. Desperate to either get a bullet to the head or make out with a fat payday, Torres entered a high stakes game and emerged victorious. In a pinch for cash, one of the players was allowed to enter by using his boat as collateral. But for the moment, it seemed fortuitous to Torres.

After a series of wild parties and reckless spending, Torres realized he needed to make some money, perhaps in a way that reduced his chances of jail. He contemplated a tourism boat company but didn’t have the necessary start-up capital. That’s when he overheard one of his friends talking about smuggling people out of Cuba. Simple task, big payday—the kind of occupation Torres sought his whole life.

When he first approached his pal Paco Ortega about the idea, Torres was taken aback by Ortega’s unwillingness to participate.

“Come on, man,” Torres told him. “This is easy money.”

“It’s an easy way to get thrown in a federal prison. Have you heard about what happens in there, man?”

Torres didn’t need to hear secondhand stories. He spent three years at Coleman in central Florida for counterfeiting and had all the firsthand knowledge he cared to have.

“I actually learned about this while I was in prison.”

Ortega threw his arms up. “Oh, great. So, you learned this from a bunch of guys who’d already been caught and were serving time.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then tell me what it’s like, Señor Einstein.”

“I met several guys who said they wished they’d gotten into smuggling out of Cuba because their cousin or their brother was making huge stacks of cash without getting caught.”

“And yet there they were—in the cell next to you.”

“I never said these were the brightest men in the world.”

Ortega shook his head. “No way am I getting into this game. Besides, I hate the water.”

“What if I told you we could make as much as two hundred grand for just one run?”

Ortega eyed him cautiously. “Two hundred grand? Each?”

Torres described the scheme to Ortega, who nodded knowingly as if he understood how the Cuban smuggling business worked. After being friends with Ortega for so long, Torres knew he wasn’t listening to a word he was saying but was instead figuring out how he’d spend all his fast cash.

The reality is smuggling didn’t really pay that well. There’s an initial fee of ten grand or so up front to get the person to safety. But the real money was to be made on the back end—if the person they were smuggling was a baseball player. That could bring in one percent of a player’s contract. It was a modest finder’s fee that Torres heard smugglers were attaching to potential superstars. Yasiel Puig of Los Angeles Dodgers’ stardom had a seven-year contract worth $42 million. Torres did the math and realized that one percent of that was well over four hundred thousand, which is the number he used to snooker Ortega into joining him. He figured they might make fifty grand each plus a split of the passage fee after subtracting costs. And while that would rankle Ortega for a while, he’d come around eventually and be grateful that he signed up.

Torres noticed the channel lights ahead and eased up on the throttle. His boat could outrun just about anything on the water, but he preferred not to test her limits. He wanted to keep it simple—in and out.

He glanced over his shoulder at Ortega, who was guzzling his third Dos Equis of their two-hour trip.

“Be careful, Ortega. I don’t want you puking off the side of the boat tonight. We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”

Ortega belched and waved off Torres. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Torres rarely worried about his friend, who possessed an uncanny knack for escaping difficult situations. Ortega once went to rob a liquor store and was in line when the two men in front of him robbed the store first. The storeowner had a gun and shot both of the men before they could get a shot off. Ortega put his bottle back on the shelf and slipped out before anyone noticed he was carrying a weapon.

In another incident, Ortega also avoided six months of jail time when a clerical error set him free.

But Torres remained somewhat concerned. He didn’t need to botch this job. Torres didn’t have quite enough cash to bankroll the job, so he sought a favor from a bookie friend of his. In hindsight, it was another one of those no-so-great decisions,