CUBA: Attack in the Caribbean

Shortly after noon last Wednesday, the radio in the Miami office of the Bahamas Line shipping company crackled with an emergency message. It came from the captain of the Johnny Express, a slow (12-knot), 1.500-ton freighter returning to Miami after delivering general cargo to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Captain José Villa, a Cuban exile who is now a U.S. citizen, reported that as his ship was passing between the West Caicos Islands and the Inaguas in the Bahamas, a Cuban patrol boat demanded that he submit to a search. When he refused to stop,...