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Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey): My Last Night in Havana II.

March 15, 2022, Middle of the Atlantic is

Longitude 15°31’47.9″N X Latitude 40°21’14.2″W 2

The Ides of March/The Devils You Deal With

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

-Tyler Durden

Isaiah Jones watched as the suns fire dipped below the winking western horizon, casting long shadows over the kind-hearted waves that rocked the SS Exodus as she sailed east toward the rendezvous point to meet the ill named container ship: the Ides of March at the coordinates Dead Eye Polly had given him his last night in Havana. Isaiah stood at the helm, lost in thought as the ocean breeze tugged at his clothes as the time for his rendezvous with the ship approached, it couldn’t be soon enough for him. He would be relieved to finally get the crate off the deck of his ship where it had been strapped down for the last three weeks since it was delivered by the albino’s people in Barbados.

In the darkness in the middle of the Atlantic, he spotted the cargo ship, like him, also running dark. The humongous freighter was barely small enough to pass through the Panama Canal, not the largest vessel made; they were too big to go to the narrow old locks of Panama, so they stayed in Asia and Africa, but still gargantuan next to his 44-foot sloop. The Ides of March loomed ahead, a leviathan illuminated, gently silhouetted against the expanse of nearly full moon sea and dark Atlantic sky. The large, sealed wooden crate, strapped to the Exodus deck under the heavy cerulean tarp, had been there for three weeks since he set sail from Barbados, heading toward Cape Verde, 100 miles off the west coast of Africa.

Isaiah had a lot a time to think since he agreed to deliver Senor Pollys package, he had contemplated simply shoving the damned thing overboard and reporting it lost at sea to the Cuban Mafia lord but that would change nothing, the fate of those on board the ship not in his employee was sealed long before he stumbled into Dead Eye Polly’s sights. Yet he could not help but wonder what the crate actually contained, but he decided it would be wise not to try to sneak a peek at what was inside the crate. It may as well have been Pandora’s Box, as if he didn’t open it the moment he decided to help Naomi. Besides, if it held what he suspected, an estimated 800 pounds of C4 by his calculation, according to the size of the crate, then it was safer not to know.

Polly’s men in Barbados had loaded the crate at the last minute, just before Isaiah left the tiny island nation. The viral video media buzz around his ship and his rather academic in nature voyage puzzled him—why would anyone care about his journey, other than a handful of Pan-African history professors and a few sentimental old revolutionaries, now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, scattered in the black ghettos across the Americas? So few of the old warriors were still alive; some were still in cells: America’s secret political Prisoners since the 1960s and 1970s. Others remained in exile, with bounties on their heads from the US Department of Justice.

The reporters in Puerto Rico had been very good. He didn’t know anything about her other than it was obvious that more than their politics aligned. After his arrival in the island nation a few weeks after leaving Cuba, there were only a half a dozen are so people at the marina when he docked that morning, just an hour after sunrise. By the time he returned to the Exodus, there were a dozen or more strangers gathered at the docks near the ship. The group were polite some using their phones to record the negro captain and his large white dog with the black spot around her left eye.

Three of the group of islanders asked if they could interview him about his voyage if they wanted to know his thoughts on the history of the diaspora and its effects on their African descendants today; he didn’t mind talking over brunch. Bianca, Phillipe, and Emilio all followed him and Starbuck onto the deck of the Exodus. They asked their questions as he prepared their meal, bruschetta covered with bottarga was served with a Caprese salad, and several bottles of Soave. Bianca and Phillipe both thanked him for the interview before they climbed out of his bed, dressed, and left the next morning.

Isaiah glanced at the crate again, secured beneath the tarp. He had paced off its dimensions, length and width; from its size and shape, it could easily hold enough plastique explosives. He had no specialized training, expertise, or professional experience with explosives, but like most engineers and physicists, he had made his fair share of things that go “Boom!” for fun; this was not rocket science after all. Polly’s men would be pros; most likely, prior military is the best place to get this sort of training, and once you only have that skill set, there are not a lot of options in the private sector outside of police department bomb squads.

They would have to use shaped charges on the diesel fuel tanks and then blow the outer hull; with the right placement on the hull’s support superstructure, it would crack the massive ship open like an egg. Isaiah decided it was best not to dwell on the fate of the ship’s crew. They were dead, whether he made this delivery or someone else did. He knew Polly had people in his organization to do this sort of thing. When he didn’t turn Naomi over to the police, Polly was intrigued. But a man like Dead Eye Polly Ovejero did not get into his position by being trusting.

He wanted to know if Isaiah was willing to get his hands dirty. Isaiah had plans of his own, and unknown to the albino mobster, Dead Eye Polly would be a useful tool to have owe you a favor in the days to come.

As he approached the cargo ship in the darkness, it was easy to spot the ship even running with no lights, with the moon almost full tonight, a signal flashed from its deck. A flashlight beam, using Morse code, strobed the ship’s coordinates in the night. He motored the Exodus parallel to the stationary ship directly beneath the leeward section of the hull where the man on the deck 50 feet above him stood.

He didn’t have to be able to see them to know that they had their guns, AK-47s most likely, trained on him behind the blinding glare of the spotlight. Isaiah secured a line to the crate’s harness as instructed, and the crate was hoisted up by what he assumed was a davit on the freighter’s deck. He never saw the men on board, but he could hear them calling down to him in the darkness. They shined their lights on his sloop, blinding him whenever he tried to look up.

`Bǎ shéngzi bǎng dào xiāngzi shàng!’「把繩子綁到箱子上！」[“Attach the line to the crate!”] A voice with a heavy Cantonese accent shouted down. Isaiah could tell the speaker was a native of Hong Kong. After securing the cables, he shouted back in Cantonese, Hǎo ba, lā qǐlái. Xiànlù yǐ gùdìng. 好吧，拉起來。線路已固定。 “Okay, haul it up. The line is secured.”

The spotlights continued to blaze in his eyes as the crate rose up into the darkness. There was laughter from several voices in the darkness behind the spotlights shining on his ship. 瓊斯船長你的粵語說得很好 Qióngsī chuánzhǎng nǐ de yuèyǔ shuō dé hěn hǎo, your Cantonese is very good, Captain Jones! one of the men shouted down to him. The sound of several others’ laughter drifted out from behind the spotlight. The men must have recognized him from the damned viral video of the Key West Party Mara and Beatrix posted back in January it made no since but he figured the hype would all blow over soon enough.

As soon as the crate was clear of his ship, Isaiah headed east as he motored away from the doomed vessel. He had turned off all his location equipment since leaving Barbados, relying solely on analog tools to navigate. The compass, sextant, and chronometer were all he needed. He intended to put as much distance between himself and the Ides of March as possible.

He guessed-estimated it would take several hours to place the charges. Logically, it would take time for Polly’s men to place and prime the charges before they set the timers—or perhaps they would remote detonate once they were safely aboard their escape vessel. Less than an hour later, he heard the massive explosion. Glancing back for just a moment, he saw the molten tangerine and amber glow of melting metal ablaze on the distant horizon. That bright white over yellow hues meant they are pros. They had used thermite charges, Fe2O3, and aluminum powder to cut through the marine grade titanium hull and crack the mega ship in half like a gargantuan metal egg.

In the darkness less a thought more a feeling he saw deaths beauty shining in the fires light When it was his time he wanted a warriors death the solemn glow of fire on water there was nothing more glorious than a Viking funeral. He was less than a mile away. He pulled the twin levers straight down and opened her up keeping the engines running at full throttle until dawn.

Now, the gangster trusted him. In the days to come, it would be useful to have men like Señor Ovejero in his debt. Isaiah rested his hand on the pup’s head and sailed east into the morning light.

About the author: JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Texas.