But the odd thing was, I wasn’t scared. Death? How can you fear death when life suddenly becomes one absurd succession of breaths and heartbeats which link you to some ghostly otherworld, a world where you used to laugh and love and function with reason? What had I to fear? A few minutes of darkness? The frantic, inevitable attempt to inhale a little life from the nocturnal sea, and then strangulation? If I was going to die, I wanted it that way. I wanted it to be under the water, away from prying eyes and the cold deathwatch of nurses and physicians in the sterile confines of a hospital.
No, I did not fear this death. But I wanted life—life not to live, but life to use as a vehicle. A vehicle for revenge. I lay there listening to the damp roar of racing engines, feeling the moist sea wind move across me, and I planned my escape.
“Sammy! Wire him up, Sammy! We’re almost there.”
Almost there. I did some calculating. We could have come no more than five miles from the Bahia Honda Bridge. That would mean what? Hawks Channel? Yes, Hawks Channel. A deepwater cut between the mainland and the reef. It began narrowly at Key West, then funneled open, wide like a river, skirting the outside archipelago of Florida Keys. I knew how deep the channel was around Key West: from thirty to thirty-five feet. And I knew that it was deeper off Bahia Honda. But how much deeper? Certainly no more than forty-five or fifty feet deep. That wasn’t bad. If I could loose myself from my bonds. If I could make it back to the surface. If they didn’t hang around to make sure I was down forever. And if I could make the long swim back to shore.
They used wire. Wire and concrete blocks. I could hear the dull impact of cement on cement when Sammy dropped one.
“Jesus Christ, Sammy—are you trying to ruin the Senator’s boat?”
“Sorry, Mr. Benjamin, but I got this bad back.”
The two flunkies huffed and puffed, rigging me for my last dive.
I was glad it was wire. Some kind of wire cable. It wouldn’t bight like good rope. The knots would slip if forced. And I was going to force them. I expanded my chest, my arms, and my legs as much as I could. An old escape artist’s trick. A ten-in-one show veteran had showed me how to do it. Julian Ignazio. Let them tighten the rope or wire on the flexed muscles, the inflated chest. And then, when you relaxed, the bonds were already loose enough to work.
“Put most of the weight on his legs. Some on his stomach. That’s right—nice and tight. Don’t worry about his arms. Mr. MacMorgan will be going nowhere after this.”
I almost blessed Ellsworth for those orders. And I hoped they would come back to haunt him.
When they had the weights secured, they dragged me across the carpeted deck to the stern. Low freeboard there: I could feel the transom digging into my back. The engines were off now. We were drifting. The sleek glass hull of the powerboat lifted and fell in the slow roll of night sea. Light penetrated my eyelids. Probably a spotlight. Ellsworth wanted to watch me sink away.
“Jones! Hold this a second.”
“What’re ya gonna do, Mr. Benjamin?”
“I going to make sure this bastard is dead. I know him. He dies hard.”
“If you cut him there, Mr. Ben, he’s goin’ to bleed all over the Senator’s—”
“I know what I’m doing, Sammy. Hold him over the transom. Just his head. That’s right.”
I let my eyes slit open. I could see the dark silhouette of Ellsworth coming toward me and the icy glimmer of the knife. I tested the weights on my legs. I could hardly move them. They had wired me well. A couple hundred pounds or more. Ellsworth came closer and closer. Sammy leaned over me, holding me. A lanky black man with steel in his grip. The other one, Jones, stood back at a distance, as if he didn’t care to watch.
So, Ellsworth was going to add a little flourish to my death—his own bloody signature on my throat.
I had to make a move. But I wanted him closer. He had to be closer if I was to have any chance at all. With the weights on my legs, my mobility was nearly zero. I felt his left hand take a tight turn on my hair. I could feel him leaning over me; I could smell his harsh breath. Sammy held me, right hand supporting my head, left hand on my collar.
“Sammy—his eyes. Are his eyes open?”
“Naw. Mr. Ben. Dead people that way sometimes. Eyes slide open. I seen them plenty o’ times.”
Deep sadistic chuckle.
“Go ’head, Mr. Ben. He all ready for the knife.”
I watched the silver blade swing back in its cold arc. And when Ellsworth swung it back at my throat, I was ready. I jammed my thumb in Sammy’s ear and shoved his head down to my face. I could feel his thick nose against mine. I felt the blade slice my wrist, then I heard the razor edge grate across the back of Sammy’s spine. It had happened too fast for Ellsworth to stop the momentum of his swing.
There was a horrible scream. It was Sammy. He fell sideways onto the deck, holding the back of his neck.
“You kilt me, Mr. Ben! Aw, God! You kilt me!”
Ellsworth watched the frenzied movements of the lanky flunky, shocked. Red blood looked black in the harsh white glare of light. Jones rushed up to his friend’s side: white puffy face, dazed eyes.
“What are we gonna do, Mr. Benjamin? We got to get Sammy to shore—”
“Shut up!”
“We got to get him back! He’s hurt real bad—”
Ellsworth slapped him so quickly with the back of his hand that it surprised even me. And then he leveled his gaze at me. Even in that unsteady light, I saw the hot glow of his hatred for me. The seaman who had defeated the ROTC hotshot, again and again and again. I had never seen such a look of pure hatred. His voice was not even now. It was not well modulated. It cracked with emotion, like the voice of an old drunken woman.
“You’re dead, MacMorgan. Do you hear me? You’ve made one stupid move too many. And now I’m going to open your throat. Enjoy that breath, captain, because it’s your last!”
The blade of the knife caught the light and reflected it in bands, back across the face of Ellsworth. He looked like a madman. And I knew I had but one chance.
It took a supreme effort from my leg and stomach muscles; muscles that creaked and cracked with strain. I kicked the weights on my legs upward while I fell backward. I felt the blocks of cement peak above me and then, with a final surrender to gravity, topple off the stern, dragging me along like a rag doll, through the black water of Hawks Channel.
How many feet?
I couldn’t tell.
It seemed like forever before I finally heard the soft crunch of weight against coral-sand bottom. I was at least forty feet down. Forty feet beneath the night and black sea. The water made a soft familiar roaring in my ears. I heard the low grunt of some nearby fish echoing strangely. There was a total void of light, as if in a dream.
I forced myself to relax. The slightest movement, the most minuscule effort, burns oxygen. And I could afford no nervous indulgence.
I found the knotted cables. They were banded tightly around my ankles and stomach. Bad knots. Silently, I cursed the bad knots. Any sound knot is relatively easy to untie. But these—these were the messy clusters you see tied by the suburbanite boaters from the north who don’t know what in the hell they are doing.
Dangerous knots, because they slip when you don’t want them to, and bind when you try to back them out.
I made myself work slowly. Only my hands were alive; my body floated, tethered to the blocks like seaweed, trying to conserve my air. My left wrist ached, as if there were a ten-penny nail driven through it. It was the wrist Ellsworth had cut.
Finally, my left leg was free. But I was running out of air. The cable on my right leg was wrapped and knotted, wrapped and wrapped and knotted again. The knots wouldn’t come. I felt myself start to panic; my hands started to pull and strain in a frenzied effort. I was growing dizzy. Steadily, I had been releasing the used air; letting it bubble from my lips when I knew that it was useless to me. But now there was no more air, good or bad, to release.
Once
more I ordered myself to work slowly. I had some residual air. You have some residual even when you think there is none left. The first knot was some kind of overhand jumble. I worked it carefully, backing it, loosening it, and finally it came.
One knot left.
How long had I been down? I didn’t bother checking my watch. I didn’t have time to check it. But it seemed like forever. And forever while working underwater is about three minutes. I once had held my breath for just over six minutes. But that was floating face down in a pretty little resort pool, playing liberty games with fellow SEALS. And when you are relaxed, you can stay down a lot longer.
But I wasn’t relaxed now. My air gone, life just one badly tied knot away, I strained to keep my head. I tried slipping the cable down over my foot. No way. Too tight. Once again, I worked at the knot. What if I just tried making it to the top with the blocks on my right leg? Could I haul fifty or more pounds to the top from forty feet of water? Maybe. With plenty of air. And fins. But not now.
My head roared, my chest strained to inhale; motor reflexes taking over. And then my fingers somehow found the way. The knot dissolved beneath them. I reached down with my feet, found the bottom, and pushed off toward the surface. And with the last bit of clear thinking I had left, I let myself float upward and upward, propelling myself gently with easy, even strokes, and finally, just as consciousness was leaving me, I was at the surface, sucking in the good, sweet night air.
The powerboat was still there. Someone scanned the empty sea with the powerful searchlight. They had drifted down and off to my right, back toward Bahia Honda. The light turned toward me. With one more good bite of air, I submerged to about ten feet and swam toward the boat. I saw the light glimmer above me, then pass over. Twenty yards, twenty-five yards, and I found the bottom of the boat above me. I held myself beneath them momentarily, holding myself down, one hand on the glassy hull. Not a barnacle on it. A well-cared-for death craft.
I slid along the bottom toward the bow, careful to cause no noticeable movement beneath the water. Quietly, I surfaced at the sharp thrust of bow and held onto an anchorage eyebolt. I could hear them talking. Sammy moaned softly in the night.
“Jesus Christ, he’s gotta be dead by now, Mr. Benjamin! Let’s get out of here!”
“We’ll go when I say, Jones.”
It was the old Ellsworth. Voice controlled, now. He had killed me. He was sure.
“We’ll give it a few more minutes.”
“But what about Sammy?”
“Sammy’s going to be fine. Just fine. I’m going to give you men a little bonus for this. Yes sir, a little bonus.”
“Mr. Benjamin, Sammy’s my bes’ friend, an’ I couldn’t—”
“You can take the bonus and you will, Jones. I know you men. I know what you’re like. You’ll take the money whether poor old Sammy dies or not. Isn’t that right, Jones?”
Jones muttered something unintelligible. But Ellsworth wasn’t listening. He chuckled gaily. “If you only knew how much I wanted that bastard dead. If you only knew. When we get back, I’m going to have a little celebration. Yes sir. . . . ”
When the engines rumbled to life, I inhaled deeply and dove toward the bottom. I could stay down now for two or three minutes without difficulty. From beneath the dark water, I heard the vibrant roar of the boat as it jumped up onto plane and headed away, back toward Cuda Key.
When I was sure that it was safe, I surfaced. In the waning moon, drifting westward on the far Key West horizon, I saw the faint glimmer of the disappearing boat. High frost of stars and distant lights off toward Big Pine Key. I checked the back of my left wrist. A deep slice, but no artery had been damaged. I floated for a few minutes, relaxing on the bleak night sea, then started my swim back to shore, back toward Ellsworth and Cuda Key, soft roll of ocean behind me.
XIII
Stormin’ Norman Fizer came to pay my bill and check me out of the Key West Naval Hospital. He came at midnight on a Sunday night—less chance of us being seen. I heard the echo of his long heavy steps well before he got to my private room. He was all wry smiles and congratulations: the consummate CIA man in his obligatory three-piece suit.
“You look strangely exotic in that white turban, Dusky.”
“Much thanks, sahib. And what the hell took you so long?”
He sat on the corner of the high hospital bed while I pulled on pants and socks and my Top-Siders.
“I just wanted to make sure you are all right. Had a little talk with the doctors.”
“And they told you exactly what I told you over the phone. CAT scan negative. Spinal tap negative. A mild concussion and, aside from a slight indentation in my skull, I’m A-okay. Right?”
He laughed. “Right. So I didn’t believe you. Sue me. I just knew how anxious you were to get out of this place, and I wanted to be sure. You did a good job for us—we want to make sure you get the best of care. I saw you that day, remember? And I admit that I find it a little hard to believe you’re being released so soon. You were a mess, captain. Some kind of mess.”
I was a mess, all right. Never had a three-mile swim seemed like such an eternity. The tide kept slipping me westward. My left wrist ached, and my damaged brain kept playing tricks on me. It seemed as if I was getting farther and farther away from land, and then I imagined bottle-nosed dolphins rising to talk with me. Maybe they did talk, I don’t know. They told me to relax; to let myself relax and sink and join them. Far Orion, slipping down on the western horizon, became Key West, and the lights of Big Pine Key became a distant constellation. Everything was a gauzy haze of unreality, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Go to sleep and join the sleek hunters—my friends, the dolphins.
It was a tittering, bronze dawn when my feet finally touched bottom off Sugarloaf Key. The early tourist fishermen roared along Highway A1A, hauling gaudy weekender boats behind their cars. I wondered what I looked like to them. Neptune climbing from the sea? Or just one more Florida Keys wino trying to recover from a Homeric hangover with an early-morning swim?
The wino, of course. Just one more down-and-out wino.
They didn’t stop. No one stopped for the sagging, damaged man, and that was good. I didn’t want them to stop. In Ellsworth’s mind, I was dead. And I wanted no one to know otherwise. So I struggled down the edge of the road to an all-night 7-Eleven store, called Stormin’ Norman from a pay phone, bullied an operator into connecting us, dime or no dime, and then settled back to sleep in the fresh morning heat when I knew that he was on his way.
I was a mess, all right.
I dreamed gibberish and, when Fizer arrived, my tongue wasn’t in any mood to take commands.
“Dusky. Dusky! Jesus Christ, buddy, what did those guys do to you?”
“Arrrg . . . numbf . . . ”
“Hang on, buddy. I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“No!”
Bad as I was, I wanted no part of an ambulance. The fewer people who knew, the better. I wanted to enjoy the anonymity only death allows. I wanted to enjoy it up until the time I had my hands around Ellsworth’s throat.
So, reluctantly, Stormin’ Norman had driven me to the naval hospital. He made all the arrangements: private room, military doctors and nurses; people with high security clearance. They worked to make me live while perpetrating news of my death.
And after a few days, and after a huge bank of tests, the doctors, shaking their heads in curious disbelief, agreed that I was fit to go.
“So where are you going to stay?” Fizer asked as he watched me dress.
“I’ve got some friends on Cow Key. Good people. Man and a wife and a teenage daughter. I think they’ll help me out. And I can trust them.”
Stormin’ Norman cleared his throat and toyed with his wedding band nervously.
“Like I said, Dusky, you did a good job for us. Damn good job. That caretaker’s finding the drugged dogs wasn’t your fault. It was a difficult mission, and you had to play the odds.”
I pulled a clean
black Key West Conchs T-shirt tenderly over my head and tucked it in. “Wait a minute, Norm. You’re not about to say what I think you’re going to say?”
He motioned for me to sit down. “What I’m getting at is this. They found all but one of your bugs. Putting one in the sauna bath was a real stroke of genius, by the way. We’ve got all the information we need. The Senator is going to spread the word among his political buddies that, on Friday night, he’s going on a big fishing trip to the Dry Tortugas. In that big two-hundred-thousand-dollar sportfisherman of his. Only he’s not going to make it. The boat’s going to burn and sink.”
“Right.”
Norm smiled. “You catch on quick. He’s going to rig his own death. Kill some of his own people, dress one to look like him, then take a seaplane to some as yet undisclosed South American country. He knows we’re on to him.”
“So what’s your move?”
“On Thursday we’re going to arrest our own Mr. Lenze. We’ve got him good: falsified reports, et cetera. And we’re going to put him away for a long, long time.”
“And what about the Senator and Ellsworth?”
Fizer cleared his throat. “The Senator needs more rope yet. We’re talking about an extremely powerful man here, Dusky. We’re going to let him go to South America. We’re going to let him hang himself. And then we’ll go after extradition papers. We’ll use all the political clout the American government has.”
“Which isn’t all that much, thanks to a certain wishy-washy Pres—”
“I know that, Dusky! Goddammit, don’t you have any faith in me after Cambodia? I’m not one of their flunkies. I have the job I have because I’m good at it. Damn good at it. I’m telling you we’ll get him. And we will. It may take a year or two.”
“And what about Ellsworth?”
Stormin’ Norman sighed a heavy sigh. One more military man who, I could tell, hated the political bureaucracy as much as I. But he dealt with it; dealt with it because that was the way it had to be done. And if he didn’t do it . . . well, America, land of the free, home of the brave, and harbor of the bureaucratic noblemen; the political upper class that rules us and uses our money as if we were the fools of serfdom. And in many ways, we are fools: fools to let them; to let them ravage our forests and rivers, arm and arm with big business; fools to let them condemn to slavery the poor blacks and Indians and Hispanics through their plush welfare programs which would rob any race, any people, of the most inalienable of all rights—human initiative.
Key West Connection Page 12