Kingston Carnage

by Gar Wilson

  Two cars rolled across the boardwalk, and several well-armed police officers appeared among the crates and storage buildings. From one of the autos stepped Lieutenant Smith and Delia Walkins. The hobos cowered beside the corpse of their mutilated friend. One of them wept; fear, sorrow and relief were expressed as a series of pitiful wails.

  "Cal," Delia said breathlessly as she ran to the Phoenix Force veteran. "Are you all right?"

  "Bristol's dead," James replied. He watched two policemen approach the injured truck driver. James glanced down at the Star pistol in his fist. "They killed him right in front of me. I couldn't stop 'em!"

  "God, Cal," Delia said softly, placing a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry."

  "I think we've got them all," Smith began, walking toward James. "How many were there, Johnson?"

  "Where the hell were you?" James demanded, his eyes bright with anger. "You fuckers should have closed in the second you knew we were in trouble..."

  "The radio receiver didn't work," Smith answered, his tone apologetic. "I think the fog screwed it up somehow. We didn't know you were in trouble until we heard the shots."

  "Hell," James rasped. He nearly hurled the Star PD into the bay, but realized that would be a stupid gesture. He put the safety on and stuck the pistol in his belt. "What kind of shoddy equipment were you using? Bristol and I put our asses on the line and you're listening in with some piece of shit that can't even operate when the fog rolls in! Bristol's dead because of that fuckup..."

  "I know," Smith said in a firm voice. "He was a good man. A fine police officer and a brave man. I wish I'd told him that before. Now it's too late."

  "These guys were workin' for Cercueil, man," James said grimly. "We're gonna get that Haitian son of a bitch, Smith. I don't care what you or Weils think, or if we have to tear this island apart. We're gonna find Cercueil."

  "Damn right we will," Smith agreed.

  "And when we find him," James continued, stabbing a finger in the air, "I want him. Don't count on him standing trial, 'cause I'm gonna take care of his ass myself."

  17

  "The dude we nailed at the waterfront squealed like a stuck pig," Calvin James told the others the next day when he joined them on the beach at Jack Tar Village, a popular Montego Bay resort. "He admitted he was working for Cercueil. The guy was a street soldier for Penn's syndicate. Griswald's now the official leader of the outfit, but Cercueil's really calling the shots."

  "Yeah," Gary Manning remarked, glancing at the morning sun above the beautiful Caribbean. "We know. Griswald was arrested last night. He was running his boat business under a phony name. We seized his records and spent most of the night going over them."

  "Find anything interesting?" James asked, noticing several young women in bikinis lying on blankets. James could not enjoy their beauty. The image of Bristol's corpse was still too vivid in his mind.

  "Very interesting," Yakov Katzenelenbogen replied. The Israeli sat in a folding chair with a hand towel draped over his prosthesis and a glass of iced tea in his left hand. "A sixty-foot motorboat was sold to a 'Morris Coffin' last month. Unless this is one hell of a coincidence, I'd say we've located Maurice Cercueil... or the fellow who has assumed his identity."

  "So where do we find this boat?" James asked eagerly.

  "Don't worry," Encizo assured him. The Cuban raised a glass of iced tea to his face and tapped the rim against his dark sunglasses. "The mysterious Mr. Coffin purchased a vessel called Witchcraft. It's been floating around the bay off the coast for the last three weeks. There aren't very many boats that size around here, and most of them are commercial fishing vessels or passenger boats connected with tour companies. It won't be hard to find Witchcraft."

  "Might be harder than you think, amigo," James told him. "The stool pigeon told us Cercueil is getting ready to haul ass. He wants more winos turned into zombies so he can turn them loose on more or less indiscriminate targets. The dude didn't know too many details about the plan, but he did tell us the zombies were gonna be released in Kingston and the targets would probably be native Jamaicans."

  "That's a switch," David McCarter commented, sipping a frosted glass of Coke as he watched a girl remove the top of her bikini to sunbathe. The sight did not interest him as much as it would have under different circumstances. "We were sent here because Americans were being killed."

  "I'm sure Cercueil has figured that out," Katz remarked, taking a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket. "After all, if Jamaicans are suddenly the victims of zombies and perhaps other voodoo-related causes, it would appear we were barking up the wrong conspiratorial tree. Soon the Jamaican government would insist we go home, and the President would have little choice but to agree to recall us."

  "Which would discredit our theories about Cercueil's plot to eventually take over Jamaica," Manning added. "In fact, if Cercueil gets away and the zombie attacks continue, the authorities may eventually decide he was never involved."

  "Yeah," Encizo said with a cynical snort. "Governments like nice simple explanations that let them off the hook. Everybody would be perfectly happy to blame all the murders and violence that have occurred here on a plain old crime wave. The zombies would be explained away as just crazed junkies on some sort of supercharged PCP. Everything else would be dismissed as gang warfare. The cops will be instructed to assure the public that the threat is over and all the bad guys are either dead or in jail."

  "Then everybody pretends nothing ever happened and Cercueil gets away?" James shook his head. "That ain't good enough."

  "He hasn't gotten away yet," Katz declared, "and he isn't going to. Until now we've been concentrating our activities in the Kingston area and Spanish Town. Now we know Cercueil has actually been in and around Montego Bay. Even if the Haitians flee to another island, they'll be stopped. We've already contacted Colonel Wells, and he's alerted the coastal patrols of the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. Although it's pretty unlikely Cercueil would head for either Haiti or Cuba, those islands have been contacted as well. If he's floating around on the Witchcraft, he'll find nothing but dead ends."

  "You guys did this even before I told you what we learned from the flunky the Kingston cops caught last night?" James asked, surprised. He smiled thinly and shrugged. "Hell, I should have figured you'd cover every possibility."

  "Well, we're not going to let some coast-guard blokes get those bastards," David McCarter stated. "I don't think the patrol boats would try to arrest Cercueil and his crew, but they've been instructed to keep the Witchcraft from attaining sanctuary. They've also been warned that the Haitians are to be regarded as armed and extremely dangerous. If the Witchcraft tries to break through a patrol blockade, they'll blow it out of the water."

  "So Cercueil and friends will be ours unless they force the patrols to blow them away," James said with a nod. "If we can find them before the Witchcraft turns around and heads for the Panama Canal."

  "They'd find patrols waiting there, too," Katz replied. "But Wells suspects — and I agree — Cercueil will probably head for the Cayman Islands. Haiti or Cuba might be closer, but Cercueil obviously doesn't want to return to Haiti, and heading for a Communist country wouldn't appeal to him, either. Cayman Islands seem the most likely choice."

  "What the hell are we waiting for?" James asked. "Let's go find those scumbags."

  "We're waiting for a helicopter to arrive from Kingston," Encizo explained, placing a hand on James's shoulder. "And we're also waiting for some other special equipment that will arrive with the chopper. Don't worry, Cal."

  "I just want Cercueil," James declared.

  "Taking this sort of personal, aren't you?" Manning said with a frown. "This isn't a vendetta, Cal. If you let your anger get the better of your judgment, you could put us all in a bind."

  "May I remind all of you that we need to take Cercueil or at least one of his top people alive?" Katz announced. "The police and the governor-general's office still need evidence to round up and arrest individ
uals still in Jamaica who conspired with Cercueil. Besides, we're not in the revenge business. Phoenix Force gets to bend a lot of laws and occasionally breaks a few, but we don't have a right to carry out impromptu executions,"

  "I'm not so sure that's wrong in the case of Cercueil and his bunch," James muttered.

  "You may be right, Cal," Katz said with a nod. "But the notion that people don't have a right to a trial — isn't that the same mentality police death squads have exhibited in the past? The Nazis in Europe? SAVAK in Iran under the Shah? The NKVD under Stalin?"

  "Or the guys in the white sheets with the pointed hats who lynch blacks?" Encizo added.

  "Ouch." James winced at Encizo's remark. "I see what you mean. The goddamn Ton Ton Macoute was notorious for that sort of shit, as well. Here I'm talkin' about using the same tactics that helped make Cercueil into a monster."

  "You didn't really mean it," Manning told his partner. "Bristol was killed in front of you. You're still upset about that. Cercueil has been responsible for a lot of death and suffering, but Bristol was the first victim any of us really knew. Maybe that shouldn't make a difference, but it does."

  "Funny," James mused, gazing at the crystal-blue water of the Caribbean without really seeing it. "I didn't like Bristol when we first met. Turned out to be a pretty good guy after all, even if he was a jerk at times."

  "Isn't everyone?" Katz asked with a kindly smile. "We got to know Bristol's good points and some of his negative personality traits. You don't find perfection among human beings, although no one is entirely evil, either. Maybe that's why Bristol's death affected you so much, Cal. You realized he was indeed a human being."

  "Sometimes it bothers me that we find ourselves thinking of people as either sharply on our side or sharply on the other side," Gary Manning remarked. "We tend to regard our enemies as simply targets in a firefight. Half the time we don't really get to know the people on 'our side.' Yet everyone on both sides is still human. Sometimes I think we forget that."

  "Oh, God," McCarter snorted. "You think blokes like Cercueil worry about this sort of thing? They're the ones who victimize innocent people. As far as I'm concerned, that's the big difference between them and us. That's why I don't fret about what we do. None of us ever killed a bloke without a damn good reason. That's enough morality for me."

  "This is scary," Manning said with mock concern. "David said something that seemed to make sense. Has the world turned upside down?"

  "You're about as funny as a rubber crutch," McCarter growled in reply.

  "Gentlemen," Katz cut them off before the argument could escalate. "We still have to discuss strategy for handling the Witchcraft when we locate it. Cercueil and his lot aren't the type to just toss their weapons into the water and surrender."

  * * *

  Pierre Mazarin Cercueil sat at his desk in his office-cabin aboard the Witchcraft. His black silk top hat hung on a wall peg, and his black suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair. Cercueil had loosened the necktie and unbuttoned the white shirt at his throat. The Baron Samedi costume was not the most comfortable choice of apparel.

  The Ton Ton Macoute veteran was sorting through file folders. Cercueil did not intend to keep any records that were not essential for continuing his operations. The files on Montgomery Penn and other dead Jamaican hoodlums were no longer useful and might even be used as evidence against Cercueil if the authorities searched the boat. He dumped them into a wastebasket to be destroyed before they reached the Cayman Islands.

  Cercueil might still need some contacts in Jamaica. He had spared Griswald for that reason. Griswald would take over Penn's syndicate, although Cercueil doubted the crime network would last long under Griswald's leadership. No matter. There would always be more criminals who could be enlisted to further Cercueil's cause. Greedy, selfish men who could be lured into conspiracy by bribes and promises of wealth and power.

  The Haitian did not allow himself to dwell on the setback to his plan in Jamaica. Cercueil had suffered lesser setbacks before, and he had never given up. Too much time and money had been invested in his plan to eventually control all the islands of the Caribbean — with the probable exception of Cuba — with the aid of his sinister Ton Ton Macoute. He could not stop even if he wanted to, and Cercueil still believed in what he was doing. The island nations, he believed, would never be more than tourist playgrounds or dependencies of European countries unless the Ton Ton Macoute seized power and united the Caribbean under a strong central government.

  Cercueil would continue his schemes when he reached the Cayman Islands. Assisting him would be Louis de Broglie, who was still his right-hand man, and several other passengers aboard the Witchcraft, including about a dozen strong-arms, two chemists and a former Port-au-Prince physician who helped Cercueil administer poisons, drugs and brainwashing techniques necessary to the formation of zombies. The experiment with Montgomery Penn proved the process could be successful applied to individuals other than skid-row winos. Perhaps they could eventually perfect the techniques to control a subject without destroying the person's mind. The prospect offered limitless possibilities.

  "Pierre!" De Broglie's voice at the door was accompanied by his pounding for entry. "We're in trouble, mon ami. Serious trouble."

  The door opened, the big Haitian entered. Cercueil stared into de Broglie's face. Louis was frightened, and not many things could evoke fear in the burly Ton Ton Macoute lieutenant. Cercueil felt a blood-chill crawl across his upper body. At that moment, he feared all his twisted dreams were about to come crashing down forever.

  "Armed patrol boats, cruising along the brink of international waters!" de Broglie explained excitedly. "They contacted us by radio, warned us that they have orders to destroy the Witchcraft if we advance into Cayman waters."

  Cercueil nodded grimly. "The Kingston authorities and those damn spies we met at the Palace of Madrid must have forced Griswald to talk or somehow found out the Witchcraft belongs to us."

  "That's not everything we're up against, Pierre," de Broglie continued. "Another boat is closing in from the southeast, coming in fast. LeBou thinks it might be an old PT boat such as the Americans used during the Second World War. He says it's moving at approximately thirty knots."

  "Coming from Jamaica," Cercueil stated. His mind was groping for some brilliant plan of action, but he found none.

  "There's also a helicopter coming from the same direction," de Broglie added, tension straining his words. "I've told the crew to arm themselves and stand by for orders. Do we surrender or fight?"

  "Maybe we can outrun them," Cercueil suggested.

  "This boat won't go more than twenty knots," his lieutenant explained. "I'm in favor of fighting, but the ultimate choice is yours."

  Cercueil opened the bottom drawer of his desk and removed a compact .380 caliber Ingram M-11 machine pistol. He shoved a 32-round magazine into the well and slapped back the charging handle. Cercueil held the M-11 in one fist and grabbed his swagger stick with the other.

  "We fight," he declared.

  18

  The PT boat had formerly belonged to drug smugglers with South American connections. How they had gotten their hands on the vessel was unknown, but the smugglers had certainly taken good care of the fifty-year-old craft. Agents with the governor-general's security council had seized the boat less than a month before Phoenix Force had arrived in Jamaica. Colonel Wells had suggested the commando team might use the World War II battle-boat to pursue Cercueil's Witchcraft. Phoenix Force had eagerly agreed.

  Calvin James, Rafael Encizo and Gary Manning stood on the deck of the sleek gray war vessel clad in black wetsuits, weight belts and rubber-soled shoes. They had Emerson air tanks, diving masks and flippers at the stern in case they needed to swim to the Witchcraft, although that would be done only as a last resort. The water of the Caribbean is too clear to provide concealment for swimmers unless they dive deep enough to use coral formation for cover.

  Several long, gray shapes prow
led the waters. The great predators of the sea also followed the Witchcraft: sharks are scavengers, and had been attracted by edible garbage tossed overboard by Cercueil's crew. Encizo and James, experienced scuba divers, had encountered sharks many times in the past. They knew the big fish had a more wicked reputation than they deserved. Most species do not ordinarily attack human beings. However, some tiger sharks were among the sea hunters cruising the Caribbean that day. That was another reason the Phoenix Force trio did not intend to dive overboard unless it was absolutely necessary.

  The PT boat was equipped with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted at the bow and a 75 mm M-20 recoilless rifle bolted to the deck on the starboard side. Encizo was stationed at the machine gun and Manning stood by the M-20. Calvin James leaned on the rail between them, an M-16 assault rifle strapped to his shoulder and a pair of Bushnell binoculars held to his eyes.

  "They aren't running," James announced, watching the Witchcraft through the telescopic lens. "Guess they realize it wouldn't do them any good."

  "Don't expect them to send up a white flag," Manning remarked dryly, kneeling by the recoilless rifle.

  "And don't trust it if they do," Encizo added.

  James examined the Witchcraft. It was a beautiful boat. The long white vessel resembled a giant ivory carving. Although equipped with an engine, the yacht had two masts with great blue-and-white sails stretched out to catch the wind. James was a Navy veteran, and once a sailor, always a sailor. The idea of making war on such a beautiful boat depressed him.

  "Why couldn't those bastards have an old garbage scow?" James muttered sadly, aware they might be forced to destroy the yacht before the mission was over.

  The helicopter hovered cautiously above the enemy vessel. An American-made Bell UH-1D, the chopper had also been supplied by Colonel Wells. The gunship was armed with two .30-caliber machine guns. David McCarter was at the controls. An experienced combat pilot, the British ace kept the chopper high enough to present a small target for the enemy, beyond the range of most small arms. McCarter handled the whirlybird with steady hands, although the fire in his belly signaled a battle was about to erupt. He could sense it the way animals can feel or hear the first tremors of an earthquake before the ground begins to shake.