The Mark of Cain

by William J. Coughlin

  The port protection forces were strained far beyond the breaking point and offered only token deterrence to smugglers, their facilities woefully inadequate to the job they had been assigned. The warm waters were filled, day and night, with endless processions of pleasure craft. There was no way to check even a fraction of them, and the boaters themselves were in no mood to have their holiday interrupted by nosy officials. Cooperation was practically nil. It was an ideal setup for bringing in “Mexican Brown.”

  The giant criminal syndicates abandoned their European routes and turned their attention to the Caribbean. A forty-foot cruiser had more than enough storage room to transport several million dollars’ worth of powdered dreams without even displacing a crew member. And the boat would look like any other pleasure boat coming in from a day of frolic on the water.

  However, the overlords of the narcotic trade realized that the use of the same boat over and over again might draw the wrong kind of attention. Thus the policy of piracy was born.

  The man on the deck knew the history and workings of the pirate ring, and without knowing it, revealed the extent of his own guilt and participation. He outlined the details of the ring’s working arrangements.

  When a shipment was ready at any of the supply ports, a pleasure boat was captured, its passengers killed, and then the craft was used for only one trip: to pick up the narcotics and transport them up the string of tropical islands. Depending on the arrangements, the boat might cross the Gulf of Mexico and make delivery at Galveston, Texas, or even New Orleans. But the usual target was Florida and carefully laid plans were followed with precision to bring the illegal cargo in at the right time and place. As soon as the craft was unloaded, it was sailed to a point near San Bonaparte where it would meet the decoy boat. The bottom of the captured craft would be blown out and its heavy motors would cause it to sink to the bottom to join the ancient wrecks of other ships that had encountered an earlier brand of pirate.

  The prisoner told them that at first the boats had been captured by sheer force, but that method had been abandoned as too dangerous. They had worked out a foolproof procedure. When a boat was needed, watchers were assigned to convenient ports. They selected a craft thought suitable for their operation. It mattered not whether the boat housed a man or a family; judgment depended on its speed and suitability for cargo. It was usually an easy matter to determine the probable route of the victim, but if that was not possible, the boat would be followed out of sight and tracked on radar. Once they knew the way the target boat was heading, a message was sent. The decoy boat with its can of smoking oil rags would be waiting.

  The prisoner denied that any of their victims had been fed to the sharks while alive. They all had been dead, he told them emphatically. But his eyes had remained steady as he spoke, and Cain knew that the statement was a lie. Cain shuddered imperceptibly, forcing his imagination away from considering what had actually happened.

  After the prisoner again described in detail the island where they kept the boats, Cain ordered the man’s hands untied, and the prisoner drew them a crude map of the island—called Ring Key. It had been named Ring Key because its small harbor was enclosed almost entirely by an encircling ring of coral and sand. He marked with an “X” the places where the guards had been posted. His pencil traced a box at the base of the small hill, his representation of the structure they had built and concealed at the base and used as a dry dock to alter the appearance of their captured boats. The building, he said, served as a supply depot as well as a working area.

  Cain studied the map in silence. He was satisfied they had obtained all the useful information that the prisoner possessed. Cain looked at the man as Soldier once again tied his hands together. Those dark eyes continued to dart about. The prisoner was a survivor, and Cain could almost read his mind. The man would pick the winning side. He knew that Cain, Slick, and Soldier were professionals, but it was obvious that Johnson was not and the retarded crewman would be of little use in a fight. The island was the home of at least fifteen armed men. The prisoner would remain on the side of his pirate companions, as they were the most powerful force. Thus his continued existence could constitute danger to them all. Besides the man would be of no further use.

  Soldier and Slick watched Cain. “You’ve been most helpful,” Cain said quietly to the prisoner as he nodded to Soldier.

  Johnson had been watching the action in the cabin while steering the boat, fascinated by the story the prisoner told. He paled as he realized what was in Cain’s mind. The prisoner’s eyes widened as he too realized his time had come. He crawled backward, stopping against the side of the cabin. “Don’t,” he pleaded. “I can help you. I can get you into that island with no trouble.” His words spilled out in panic. “They know me, they won’t suspect anything if they see me.… Please!”

  Soldier moved quickly and grasped the restraining ropes that bound the hands of the prisoner. He lifted him easily over his shoulder and started for the cockpit.

  “Oh God, don’t!” the man shrieked.

  “He will kill you first,” Cain said softly, almost kindly. “You won’t have to worry about the sharks. That’s a better deal than you gave the others.”

  Johnson slammed the engine gears into neutral, slowing the big boat and causing it to roll in its own wake. “Listen to me, Cain!” The words were forced out between clenched teeth. “I told you when I got into this thing, I was not going to stand for murder.” His voice shook with emotion. “And this is murder, damn you, just plain murder. If you go ahead and kill that man, you can just run this damn boat all by yourself. We are out here in the middle of nowhere. You wouldn’t be able to find this Ring Key in a hundred years without my help.” His tanned face darkened as his skin blotched from the effect of his anger.

  Soldier stopped, but he did not put down the prisoner.

  Cain spoke very slowly. “Johnson, this man has cruelly killed hundreds of people: men, women, children, whole families. If there was any justice, we should skin him alive. But we are going to execute him. Believe me, no one has ever deserved it more.”

  “I can help you,” the prisoner said, his voice trembling with fear.

  Cain shook his head, his gray eyes still fixed on Johnson’s flushed and angry face. “Things sometimes get very basic, Johnson.” His tone was that of a teacher speaking to a slow-learning pupil. “We can’t be legal out here. This weasel is thinking only of escape or how he can help his friends knock us over. It’s too dangerous to keep him here with us. In war it is accepted that you must occasionally kill your prisoners if they are a serious detriment to your safety or your mission.”

  “This isn’t war, Cain.” Johnson spit the words out. “As far as I am concerned, you are just a bunch of homicidal psychopaths. No matter what the situation you’d be able to find some excuse to kill. You love it.” His eyes narrowed. “But this time, if you do, then you’ll have to run this thing yourself and navigate. There is one hell of a big storm blowing up, and I’d advise you to reconsider your position.”

  Cain’s eyes never left Johnson’s face. “We could kill you too,” he said softly.

  “Go ahead, you son of bitch.” Johnson’s face was livid. “There’s a big hurricane coming, and if you kill me, you’ll all die out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  Cain’s eyes sought a silent consultation with Slick and Soldier. They knew that if Johnson did not cooperate, they stood no chance of finding Ring Key. He read the unspoken assent in the other men’s eyes.

  Soldier lowered the prisoner to the deck. A heavy odor of urine filled the cabin. The man had voided during the height of his fear.

  “As a matter of fact, Cain,” Johnson said, his voice taking on a bit more authority now that he had won his point. “This is one hell of a tropical storm building up near here. A storm will be bad enough, but if it turns into a hurricane and we are caught out in open water, we will be doomed. I think we should run to a safe port. San Bonaparte is the closest, but we can’t go there
. We could make it to St. Dominic. It has a well-protected harbor and is only two hours away.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Johnson.” Cain’s words were soft, but his eyes were hard. “If we need a harbor, we’ll find it at Ring Key. Now let’s get under way. If there is a storm building up, we’ll have to hurry.”

  “Look over there,” Johnson said, pointing toward the horizon.

  Above them the clear blue sky contained only the hot sun. The Caribbean sea was a brilliant green, its waters calm and glittering. A perfect day. But on the far horizon where Johnson had indicated there seemed to be a solid purple line lying just above the line of the horizon, as if some giant had taken a dark crayon and made a long low slash just above the faraway water.

  “Is that your storm?”

  Johnson nodded.

  “Then we had better snap into it, hadn’t we?” Cain nodded to Soldier, who grabbed their prisoner and pulled him down into the living section of the cruiser to find a secure place to lock him away.

  Johnson engaged the gears and pushed the throttle lever forward. The big boat rumbled as it picked up speed, its rising prow headed toward the horizon with the ominous purple line above it.

  *

  In the short hour they had spent running at full speed, the purple line on the horizon had grown to a towering menace, with great rolling thunderheads reaching up thousands of feet into the sky. The dirty gray boiling clouds were inky black at their distant base.

  The kindly sea that had been so calm and friendly since morning was turning into a frightening monster: large swells were building, and the white tops of the waves were being whipped away by an ever increasing wind.

  The large cruiser rose up to the crest of each mountainous swell of water and then slid dizzily into the valley of turbulence below, repeating the process again and again. The boat rocked as it pitched over the waves. Johnson was proceeding at a much slower speed now to keep control of the tossing boat. A light rain, combined with the spray from the waves, washed a continuous glaze of water over the forward windows of the cabin. The snapping windshield wipers were of little help. Visibility was distorted by the twisted images left in the wake of the ineffective wipers.

  “How far now?” Cain asked above the noise of the storm and the roar of the engines.

  Johnson grimaced, fatigue showing in his strained face. “A few miles. If we can make it.” He nodded toward the squawking static-filled radio. “They say this thing is turning into a full-blown hurricane.”

  “Are we in it now?”

  The boatman snorted. “If we were, Cain, you would be fish food by now. This is nothing. I hope to God we can make it to that island before it hits. It seems to be moving very fast.”

  Cain held onto a brass fixture to keep from falling every time the boat pitched down the far side of the building waves. “How big are these hurricanes?”

  Johnson’s arms tensed as he fought for control of the wheel and managed to keep their boat headed into the wind. “Depends. A hurricane can be anywhere from a hundred miles wide to more than a thousand miles across. It is a huge storm covering hundreds of miles. Think of a doughnut,” he said as he again wrestled with the steering wheel. “The flour part of the doughnut is the circling winds. The hole would be the center of the hurricane. The winds whirl around that hole. If you were to lay a doughnut down on the map of the Caribbean, and it was the right size, it would be a pretty accurate representation of a hurricane. If you shoved the doughnut across the map, that is exactly how the storm moves. How bad it is depends on the winds inside it. Sometimes they build up to well over a hundred miles an hour, and many times the storm builds up a giant wave and then pushes it along in front of it.”

  “A giant wave?”

  “Sometimes. The storm builds up this huge wall of water. Out here it’s called a ‘storm tide.’ The big hurricanes, the ones you read about in the history books, usually produce a storm tide, and that’s the thing that does most of the damage, although the winds are bad enough.”

  Cain looked over at Eddy. Eddy’s dull eyes had no fear in them. The young man watched the sky as if it were a pleasing spectacle with no real danger to the viewer. Perhaps Eddy was blessed in a peculiar way; perhaps he was happier than any of them, Cain thought. The lack of an imagination might be a very useful thing at times. Fear had its birthplace in the imagination. Loneliness was also spawned there. At the moment Cain envied him.

  Soldier was below looking after Slick who had become acutely seasick. Their prisoner was being kept in a forward storage area. Cain wondered what thoughts the man might be having as he lay there in the dark and listened to the waves smash against the hull. He hoped he was petrified with terror.

  The storm, although it might bring their adventure to a fatal end, did have one large advantage in Cain’s mind. The howling wind and driving rain might provide just the right concealment to slip through Ring Key’s defenses.

  Three armed professionals against fifteen armed professionals constituted bad odds now matter how you calculated them. They would stand little chance to survive in a head-to-head encounter. Somehow he knew he must find a way to bring the odds into a more equal balance. Cain watched the black boiling clouds rising above them, and he wondered if this might finally be his last day on earth.

  Johnson swung the wheel with a grunt. The boat seemed to almost slide up a huge wave and then it hung at the top for a moment, finally slipping forward and diving into the sluice below. Johnson twirled the wheel like a race-track driver speeding through “S” curves. Sweat poured down his strained face.

  There could be no going back. The only safe anchorage they could reach before the hurricane rolled over them was Ring Key. Soldier and Slick, both highly experienced, knew the likely outcome of any combat. But there was no protest about Cain’s plan.

  Cain wondered if Soldier and Slick, like himself, realized they had no real life to look forward to. In a way they were kin to rare hunted animals, and like them, they were an endangered species. Other men slept in their safe beds, loved their wives, played with their children, went to work, and dreamed of a golden old age.

  Cain, and men like Cain, knew there would never be a retirement for them. Old age was the next year, the next month, and sometimes the next ten minutes. He suspected that his old age was right now. He felt no fear or resentment. He wondered if his normal emotions had become blunted until he could only call up feelings useful in his profession. He was a killing machine … a human hawk. The pursuit and death of his prey now seemed to be his only goal.

  An endangered species—that thought stayed with him.

  “There it is,” Johnson yelled over the crashing noise of the storm. Cain looked but could see nothing except the storm’s blackness. Then he made it out; a small black thing in a boiling sea outlined by shooting geysers of white water where the angry waves smashed upon it.

  Cain moved to the head of the companionway below. “Soldier,” he shouted, “get your dress on, the ball is about to start.” His feeble attempt at a joke was sour even to his own ears.

  When Soldier appeared, he was dressed in black cotton trousers and shirt. A large canvas bag was suspended from his neck, and he held a Thompson submachine gun in his large hands.

  In a minute Slick followed him up. The man’s face was a pasty gray, his skin wet and clammy from beads of sweat. He too carried a full canvas bag and a machine gun.

  “How are you feeling?” Cain asked.

  A smile forced its way across the black man’s face. “I’ve been better, and as soon as we can get off this damn rollycoaster, I’ll be completely well.”

  Soldier found a place to brace himself against the rolling and pitching motion of the boat. “How are we going to do this, Cain?” he asked.

  “We will try to come in like we were the pirates returning with the captured boat.”

  Soldier frowned. “Don’t you suppose the man in the decoy boat heard the shots when we took those guys? We were still pretty close and sound carries
very well on water.”

  “Maybe,” Cain responded. “But he did have his engines wide open, and they were making a hell of a noise. But even if he did hear the shots, he would probably think it was his own people who were doing the shooting. Remember, these guys have never missed before with their decoy-boat dodge. They would expect success.”

  “Perhaps. But they could still be waiting for us, Cain,” Soldier said.

  “They could,” he agreed. “Do you have any other suggestions?” The words were spoken as one professional to another. There was no resentment in them.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Soldier said. “If we could put a man off on the other side of the island, we would have a better chance going into that harbor. That machine gun up on the hill bothers me. If we could get a man ashore and he could silence that gun, then the operation wouldn’t be so risky.”

  Johnson, still using all his strength to control the boat, turned his head and spoke: “No way. First of all there’s a large underwater reef on the other side of that island, and a man would have to swim ashore. No swimmer would stand a chance in this water; he’d drown in a minute.” He cursed softly as he struggled with the wheel. “Anyway they probably have a large radar unit on that island and have been tracking us all the way up here. If we went around the other side of the island to drop someone off, they would know something was up.”

  “He’s learning,” Soldier said, grinning. “Well, that takes care of that idea. We’ll have to try it your way, Cain.”

  *

  They were nearing the island now, approaching its eastern side. The prisoner’s map indicated that the entrance to the concealed harbor lay at the midpoint of the eastern side of Ring Key.

  The rain had increased, hammering against the boat in never-ending sheets, creating the illusion that they were already under water. The wipers snapped back and forth across the glass at full speed but were of no use. Johnson kept wiping away condensation on his side of the glass, but even then the heavy rain obscured his vision for all except a few feet in front of the boat’s spray-battered prow. They had no way of telling whether the wind had whipped away the red rag they had tied to the antenna as a recognition signal.