The Mark of Cain

by William J. Coughlin

  Finally, he turned slowly and stepped back into the cabin. Johnson’s eyes darted about madly.

  Soldier moved slightly, easing himself along the cabin wall so that he could come up behind Johnson. The big man looked over at Cain for a signal, but Johnson moved too fast for either of them. He threw himself upon the bound prisoner. In almost the same motion he drew the knife from the sheath on his belt and drove the steel blade deeply into the man’s chest. He straddled the prisoner and kept driving the knife into the man’s body in a fury of blows, screaming “You bastard!” over and over as he stabbed. The prisoner was very dead long before exhaustion forced Johnson to stop. He staggered to his feet, turned, and faced them. His hands and arms were covered with blood. Tears streamed down his twitching face. “The sharks,” he rasped, his voice just above a whisper. “The sharks. They fed them to … oh my God!” He fell to his knees, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Eddy moved hesitatingly toward the form of his friend, looking at the others as if silently begging for instructions. Then he put a tentative hand on Johnson’s back as a token of consolation.

  “Remember, keep an eye for prisoners. I doubt they kept any, but you never know,” Cain said, gesturing toward the outside door.

  Slick again slipped the strap of the canvas bag over his head and took up his gun. Soldier picked up his equipment and followed the other two into the howling storm. The noise of the screaming wind made all conversation impossible as they hurried down the wooden dock between the boats. Bent against the wind, they fought its tremendous force as they moved toward the entrance to the structure built into the side of the hill.

  Squinting against the rain, Cain could see that a narrow canal had been dug so that it ran into the middle of the structure from the small harbor. A mammoth sliding door straddled the canal to allow passage of boats into the building. The door and structure had been covered with camouflaged paint and netting so that from the air or sea it looked like the hill itself. Only on close inspection would its secret be discovered. It protruded out from the hill at an angle, to suggest the slant of the hillside. And it was big. The building was perhaps fifty feet wide and forty feet deep, not enough to conceal some of the boats seized, so Cain presumed they had tunneled out part of the base of the hill to give them more work room. The height at the end of the slant was only fifteen feet, but the height where the structure joined the hill was more like forty feet.

  Cain tested the knob on the side entrance door. It was open. He turned to Slick and Soldier. They were ready, holding their weapons down, so that rain water would not cascade into the barrels. Cain brought his own weapon up clear of the folds of the poncho. He felt comforted by the sure feel of the weapon, its weight and balance a reminder of its power and accuracy.

  Cain opened the door and stepped inside. He was half blinded for a moment by the bright lights within the place. The distant hum he heard he recognized as the noise of an electrical generator.

  A large cruiser occupied the narrow canal built into the base of the structure. Several men were working on its superstructure, others were busy around the base of the boat. Above them all, built into the side of the hill, was a walkway. It served as access to several caves. A man with a machine gun in his lap sat on that railing.

  Soldier and Slick had moved in behind Cain. Some of the men had spotted them and were staring, puzzlement written on their faces. The prisoner had lied about the number of men in the place. Cain could see at least twenty, and he thought there might be even more in the caves above. But he could see no one who looked like a prisoner held by these men. They all seemed to belong. He wondered about the caves.

  The man with the machine gun saw them and stood up, his weapon swinging into position. Cain brought up the long-barreled pistol, aimed, and fired. He was conscious of the shock as the pistol recoiled against his hand. The machine gunner half leaped into the air and then fell backward. The gun fell from the walkway and tumbled down in front of a large bald-headed man who looked at it and then stared at the invaders. He looked again at the gun and then made a quick movement to snatch it up. Soldier’s gun roared in a short burst. The bald-headed man fell backward, spinning onto the earth. He lay crumpled on the dirt floor, his feet stuck out at the awkward angle sometimes seen on the dead.

  Without a word all of the men began to raise their hands. Most were dressed in rough work trousers and cotton shirts. Many of them were barefooted. They seemed to be a crosscut of humanity, staring at Cain and his men. The majority seemed to be Mexican, their dark eyes peering above high Indian cheekbones. Several exchanged puzzled glances.

  Cain pointed his large pistol at a man who appeared to be more frightened than the others. “You!” Cain commanded. “Where is your boss?”

  The man trembled. He took a step back defensively. “No hablo English,” he said, his voice shaking. “No speak English.” His eyes were welded on the large menacing muzzle of Cain’s gun.

  Cain looked for another face, a face that also revealed fear. Most of the expressions were stonelike, the faces of hard men. Although fear showed in some eyes, most veiled all emotion. The eyes of the men reminded Cain of a group of rats caught in a flashlight beam; only confusion and cunning shone from their eyes.

  “Somebody speaks English here,” Cain said. “I want …”

  The staccato rattle of an automatic weapon sounded from above them. He heard the whine of the bullets and the sound of impact behind him. The flash of the weapon’s muzzle was blinking from within one of the dark caves. Cain fired once and the firing stopped, punctuated by a short scream.

  “Slick is hit.” Soldier’s voice was calm and without inflection.

  “Watch them.” Cain turned. Slick was sitting on the ground, his hands clutching his thigh just above his blood-soaked pants leg. Cain started to reach down to examine the wound when Slick stopped him. “It’s broken, Cain. The son of a bitch got me right through the bone.”

  A machine-gun burst from the caves was answered immediately by Soldier’s weapon. A rifle joined in the chorus from the caves.

  “Too many of them,” Cain said to Soldier. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Stooping down, Cain slid his hands under Slick’s armpits. It would cause excruciating pain to move him without a protective splint around the broken leg, but under the circumstances there was no other way. He pulled Slick along the ground as Soldier fired up at the cave mouths. Cain jerked Slick through the door and out into the storm. Soldier followed them, his gun rattling at the caves.

  “Take a few of them, Soldier,” Cain yelled. “It will even the odds some.”

  He could not see Soldier’s targets, but the big man lowered the machine gun and was spraying the inside of the structure from his position at the doorway. Then he jumped back, kicking the door closed and throwing himself away from the area. The door shook as slugs opened inch-round holes in it from inside.

  Cain picked up Slick, throwing his body around his shoulders fireman style. There was no protest from the black man. He had fainted from the pain. Cain struggled against the wind, trying to hurry. Soldier followed him walking backward, his eyes fixed on the perforated door. His machine gun stayed leveled at it.

  “Cover it, I’ll be back,” Cain shouted, but his words were blown away in the wind. Soldier did not hear, but he gestured that he knew what to do. Cain carried Slick to the boat.

  The three moored boats were straining against the lines that held them to the dock and resembled high-spirited horses trying to pull away from a hitching rail. Johnson and Eddy saw Cain coming and helped him into the boat. They heard Soldier’s gun as he fired a short burst. It sounded very distant, the firing muffled by the increasing noise of the storm.

  Cain laid Slick down on the deck of the cabin. The black man’s face was pasty and his breathing shallow. “Get the medical kit below,” Cain said to Johnson. “There are some morphine syringes in there. Just crack one open. It has its own needle. Slap it into his leg above the wound and squeeze the
morphine in. Do you know how to stop bleeding with a compress?”

  Johnson nodded. “And I know how to set a leg too. I’ll make a splint out of something.”

  Cain stood up. “When will this hurricane pass over?” he asked.

  Johnson looked up at him. “This isn’t the hurricane.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve never been in one of these things before. This is just the beginning. These winds are no more than fifty to sixty miles an hour. The real thing will work up to a lot more than that.”

  Suddenly Cain comprehended the awesome power coming to confront them. He knew the men in the work shed would not be the most dangerous enemies they would have to face.

  “Johnson, you had better arm Eddy and yourself. There are a lot more men than this …” Cain looked around for the body of the prisoner. But both his body and the corpse of the sentry were gone.

  “I threw them overboard,” Johnson said, still looking up at him.

  “Arm yourselves. There are plenty of guns and ammunition below. Don’t touch the explosives though—they can backfire on you if you don’t know how to handle them.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Cain ducked down the companionway and hurried through the short passageway. It was dark, but he knew the boat well enough so that he did not need a light. He quickly found what he was looking for and returned to the cabin.

  Johnson had cut away Slick’s trouser leg and was examining the wound. “Eddy, go below and get those fishing rods. We can use the tips for a splint.”

  The youth moved silently past Cain and disappeared below.

  Cain was glad the boy was out of earshot. “This is a tough crowd, Johnson. If anything happens to Soldier or myself, don’t let them take you, Eddy, or Slick alive. You understand?”

  Johnson just blinked, his tired face slack.

  “These people will be as angry as hornets, and they enjoy feeding live people to sharks. Torture would just be a beginning for them. Remember what I am saying, and for once in your life believe me.”

  Johnson’s tired eyes regarded him. There was no resentment in them. Cain wondered if those eyes would ever view the world with their previous naive enthusiasm or whether Johnson had joined that group of men who would remain haunted by memories, their days stalked by remembered scenes from the past. Cain hoped not, although he knew the odds were against any future at all for any of them.

  Slick’s eyelids fluttered briefly. His long hand patted the pistol still worn at his side; then the hand relaxed. Slick was once again deathly still.

  “Don’t take the gun away from him.” Cain left Johnson and stepped once more out into the storm. His poncho acted as a sail, pulling him toward the stormy water of the small harbor. He fought against being blown over the side. If this roaring wind was not the hurricane’s full power, Cain shuddered to think of what might be coming. Once again he heard the windblown echo of Soldier’s machine gun. No one would be able to come through that door alive.

  He fought his way back through the hard driving rain. Soldier had taken a position back of some packing crates, his eyes glued on the door of the dry-dock structure. The machine gun rested on top of the crates, its muzzle waiting for the next attempt at the door.

  Soldier did not take his eyes away from the door even when he felt Cain come up beside him.

  Cain put his lips close by Soldier’s ear. “What happened?”

  Soldier pointed toward the door. The lights were still on inside and Cain could make out several bodies bunched up at the door, one piled on another, half in and half out.

  “How many do you think you’ve hit?”

  Soldier shouted: “I shot at least ten of them inside, plus the three over there at the door.”

  Cain nodded and sat down beside him. The rain pelted off the weapon in his hands as he assembled it. He laid down the heavy sack of ammunition he had carried from the boat and placed it between Soldier and himself. He had some difficulty, his fingers slipping in the wetness, but finally he had the long tubular rifle ready to fire.

  Cain wiped the rain from his eyes, even though he knew it was a useless gesture. He tried to force himself to ignore the increasing wind and keep his mind on the situation. They had to have a plan. The men inside the structure had food, water, and weapons. The hurricane was a danger only to those on the outside. All the men in the structure had to do was wait. If the storm did not kill the invaders, they still had sufficient numbers of men and guns to do the job, despite the losses forced on them by Soldier.

  Cain glanced up at the hilltop. Boiling black clouds skimmed over it, almost touching the earth. The sky was a frightening sight: it seemed alive, rolling and boiling as it sped above them, its darkness and turbulence like an angel’s warning of judgment day.

  He patted the recoilless rifle as if the “cannon” could provide him with assurance of survival. The cannon, he knew, would easily penetrate the structure, and the shells were antipersonnel explosives—they would burst inside and kill anyone standing around in the open. But it would be useless against those caves.

  He peered through the rain and studied the structure again. In order to stay hidden during the usual bright Caribbean day, they would be forced to keep their large door closed. Sunny days in the Caribbean meant heat. They would have to have air, especially air for the recesses of the caves. The doors at the side of the structure would not be large enough to provide their need. Cain reasoned that they would have to have another source of ventilation, probably a long ventilation tube running up through the hill with its intake disguised. He wondered if it might be wide enough to admit a grenade, and he wondered if he could find it. Cain decided it was worth the effort; it would provide an angle of attack not expected by those waiting for them in the caves.

  He put his mouth close to Soldier’s ear and shouted, “Take this thing.” He jammed the long weapon between Soldier and a packing case. “I’m going up to the top of that hill. There may be an air shaft. If I find it, I may be able to drop some grenades on them.”

  Soldier said something, but his words were blown away. Cain put his ear next to Soldier’s mouth.

  “What about the prisoners?” he yelled.

  Cain raised his head and shouted into Soldier’s ear. “We don’t know if there are any prisoners. Anyway, if there are any, they will just have to suffer the fortunes of war. We can’t afford to be gentle. There are just too many men in that place.”

  Soldier nodded. His eyes were still leveled over the top of his weapon, still fixed on the half-opened door.

  THIRTEEN

  The island’s hill was no more than a shallow incline, but the wind and driving rain caused Cain to feel as if he were trying to scale a cliff. The rain burned his face with its force, and he had to use scrub bushes as handholds to force his way up against the forbidding hand of nature. Although they were in the tropics, the wind felt icy. He had to stop several times to catch his breath.

  At last he gained the crest of the hill. The scene around him looked like an artist’s idea of hell. Visibility was limited to only a few hundred feet beyond the island; rain and darkness blotted out the rest of the world. The sea seemed to be climbing up the windward side of the island, the water smashing and cascading in dark waves against it. On all sides the sea and the sky seemed to be blended together, united in a seething, boiling mass. He felt hypnotized by the sight. The gray-black clouds above him screamed by, as if they had been speeded up by some kind of trick photography. He felt dizzy. Cain closed his eyes and lay clutched against the hilltop for a moment to clear his mind and gather strength.

  The wind seemed determined to blow him off. He wondered whether he would merely be rolled down the hill or if he might actually become airborne and soar out to sea and to death. He clutched a small bush and began to move.

  Cain moved slowly, his stomach pressed against the sandy earth as he searched for the ventilation shaft. His vision was obscured, and he was almost into the gun pit before he saw it. It looked like a rou
nd hole in the earth, as if some giant snake lived below. He peered into it and found it empty.

  Cain scrambled into the pit, his feet sloshing in the water collected at the bottom. A .30-caliber machine gun had been inverted on its tripod so that the barrel was pointed down. The gun pit was located so it could direct fire at any point around the small island. Broken wooden shafts sticking out of the ground were evidence of some sort of covering used to shade and conceal the gunner. But the covering had been blown away forever by the storm.

  For a moment Cain just relaxed and enjoyed the luxury of being out of the wind, and then he forced himself to move. His fingers searched a ridge that had been built in the gun pit as a shelf. He found an old-style army field telephone, the kind that had a hand crank built into the side of the assembly. He knew the wires would lead him to the ventilation shaft.

  Following the wires, he climbed out of the protection of the hole and crawled along the ground. He saw nothing ahead except two small tree stumps. The wire disappeared down the side of one of the stumps. He fingered the stumps—they were made of metal and one was hot. Cain knew that the cool one concealed the intake of the ventilation shaft. He guessed that the other, the hot one, covered the top of some sort of chimney pipe leading to a furnace below. There was no use for a furnace in the Caribbean except for heating and bending metal. Presumably the pirates used it for such a purpose.

  He felt the sides of the cool “stump” and found air vents. Cain tried to pry the “stump” disguise away. It wiggled a bit but would not give. He shifted his position, being careful that the wind did not lift his body, and kicked at it. Nothing happened. He found some long grass and used it as a handhold, then kicked again and again at the metal stump. Just as his leg was becoming exhausted, it gave, and the metal covering was picked up by the screaming wind and streaked out of sight like a bullet.