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

but he felt like the opportunity might slip away if he didn’t act right away. He’d heard that some Cubans get cold feet and never show. And some get in the boat before grabbing their money and diving back into the water. Torres couldn’t allow for any of it—and a drunk shipmate didn’t do him any favors.

“Let’s try to act like we’ve done this before,” Torres said.

“If I knew what it was like to actually smuggle someone out of Cuba, I might be able to. But this is my first time—and yours too. You mind telling me what I’m supposed to act like?”

Torres glared at Ortega. “Just sit down and shut up. The less you say, the better.”

“Some partnership this is,” Ortega muttered.

They puttered along toward the docks. Torres checked his GPS and his coordinates again. They were right on target. “I think it’s the one right there,” he said, pointing. “The one with the shack on the end.”

Ortega sprang to his feet and grabbed the rope in preparation to dock.

Torres shook his head. “You think we’re going to have time to dock? We’re going to grab the player and leave. Just be ready to help them—and their money—into the boat.”

With the engine sputtering as it pushed the boat toward the shore, the faint lights barely illuminated the docks. A strong breeze pushed straggling lines of fog ashore as the air began to clear.

“Keep your eyes open,” Torres said. He pointed toward the longest dock. “I think that’s where we’re supposed to meet them.”

As they neared their agreed meeting spot, a gunshot echoed through the air.

“Did you hear that?” Ortega asked.

Torres nodded. “Stay calm. No need to panic.”

“What if this is a set up?”

“Do you think they care about small fish like us in Cuba?”

Ortega sat down and shook his head. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“There’s nothing bad about this idea. Just shut up and chill out.”

“Chill out? Chill out? We’re about to smuggle out a star baseball player, a guy who’s good at the only thing this nation is passionate about—and I’m supposed to just chill out?”

“You are if you want to live. Now shut up and follow my instructions.”

Torres gave Ortega a few directives as he guided the boat closer and closer.

After another minute of creeping toward the dock, two men came into focus. One of them started to climb down the ladder toward the water.

“Do you see them?” Torres asked. “Get ready to help them into the boat because we’re going to scream out of here.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Ortega said, mocking Torres with a salute.

Once Torres reached the dock, one of his passengers leaped into the boat, unwilling to wait until he maneuvered it closer. The other passenger climbed slowly down the ladder and looked down the docks toward an object floating in the water.

“Is that a person?” Ortega asked.

The passenger nodded. “Don’t ask.”

Torres looked at Ortega. “Get the money.”

Ortega helped the second passenger into the boat and then took the satchel of money from the first passenger. After a few moments of counting the stacks of cash, Ortega declared, “It’s all here. Let’s go.”

Torres spun the boat around and eased back through the channel. He wasn’t sure which guy was the supposed superstar, but he didn’t care—as long as he got paid.

He reached the outer limits of the channel and jammed the throttle forward all the way. Time was money—and he couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

CHAPTER 3

CAL MURPHY STROLLED into The Seattle Times office, a cup of coffee in one hand, his brief case in the other. Since his return to Seattle several months ago, life felt more comfortable. Instead of trying to learn a new city and develop a new rapport with the local professional sports teams’ coaches, players and front office, he could simply write. Nobody left Seattle unless they had to—or unless you were a foolish journalist chasing stardom. Once the latter, Cal had matured and decided that leaving the Emerald City years ago was the biggest mistake he’d ever made.

While he was gone, his old sports editor, Thurston Fink, retired and was replaced by Frank Buckman, a hotshot deputy sports editor from Kansas City who’d finally landed his first gig as the man in charge. He was only a couple of years older than Cal but remained intimidated by his star reporter. Cal laughed when Buckman told him he’d heard that he once killed a bear in the bayou with nothing more than a can of sardines and a cinder block.

“I’ll tell you what I tell every baseball media relations director who wants to sell me on their hot young prospect who’s yet to throw a pitch in the Major Leagues—don’t believe the hype,” Cal advised Buckman. “I’m just a hard-working reporter who wants to get to the bottom of a story. And if you have a story that needs a tenacious reporter like that, I’m your guy.”

Buckman quit his star-struck look with Cal after that, but he still stiffened when Cal suggested a story that needed investigating. He always deferred to his reporter, sometimes to his detriment—and Cal had recently burned him on one particular story.

Cal investigated inequality allegations of facilities between boys and girls on a local high school, but it turned out to be nothing newsworthy. One of the boys on the football team had a father who held a senior management position at Microsoft and donated a large sum to the program, creating the disparity. And though the story never ran, Cal rankled plenty of feathers, creating a few days of headaches for Buckman.

“I’m not perfect,” Cal said. “But you’ll find out that my hunches are more often right than not.”

This late-June morning started with a mundane budget meeting to discuss what was going to get into the sports section and what was going to be relegated to the digital-only space. While being stuck with a website story had lost its second-rate stigma, writing a story that appeared