Key West Connection

by Randy Wayne White

  No, I had them. They had to come my way. And the Sniper was waiting.

  I finally raised them as they moved out from behind Sand Key, Billy’s white Chris Craft rolling a glassy blue wake abeam. I could see the name, three feet high, on the port side: Ernie’s Honor; named after his two godsons, my two boys.

  I watched them cut inside, toward Rock Key. They were going to hit it. My breath was coming soft and shallow. I steered with them. Hit it, please hit it. Go aground on those shoals!

  But they didn’t. At the last minute, they noticed the change in the water, or the weak roll of water over the rocks, or looked at their chart or something. Nels was wrong. Someone aboard Ernie’s Honor knew water. Someone aboard knew boats.

  I took a deep breath and moved to start my engines, ready to effect my second plan. I would play disabled, the helpless victim. And that’s when I heard the loud thud. The submerged pilings! I’d forgotten about them. They’d missed the shoals and hit the pilings! A weird low chuckle escaped from my lips; a ghastly death laugh I thought I had left behind for good in Vietnam. The piling had knocked the prop off Ernie’s Honor, and with sudden loss water resistance, the old Caterpillar engine screamed like an animal in pain. Finally, someone had the good sense to shut it off. They tried to start it again then shut the scream off again when they realized they weren’t going anywhere without a prop.

  When they noticed me idling up, one of the two men disappeared into the cabin. It was the black one; Billy’s murderer. I would keep that in mind. I moved toward them, smiling broadly, waving every now and then. When I was sure they had drifted free of the pilings, I pulled up along their bow and made my port side fast to the forward bollard with a couple of quick hitches.

  The man who stood above me on the bow of Billy’s boat was the Nordic type. Blond and angular with a broad Celtic face. He was nervous. His head kept sweeping back and forth, as if scanning to see if there were any witnesses around. He wasn’t much past twenty-one. About six feet tall, matted hair down to his shoulders, skinny and emaciated and pallid, as most drug freaks are.

  So that was it. Drugs. They’d stolen Billy’s boat to make a drug run. Once through, they would probably either sink it or abandon it. It happens all too often in the Florida Keys. Especially around Key West. All the lost ones, the empty-headed young suburbanites, all follow that Southern Highway A1A till it dead-ends abruptly 150 miles out to sea; come to Key West where the drugs are cheap and good and dream their lives away. In the last year, Janet had talked more and more frequently about leaving our little shipbuilder’s house of white board and batten on Elizabeth Street, and heading for the rural, unspoiled areas of northern Florida or Georgia. Too many dead-enders in Key West, now. Too many druggies and dead-enders, and empty, empty young people. And she was right. It was no longer Papa’s Key West. Nor was it the Key West I had fallen in love with. It was still a pirate town. But the pirates who roamed there now—like the blond kind with the dead eyes who stood before me—were far more dangerous and far less daring than any of the pirates who had lived there before them.

  They wanted piracy? I would show them real piracy. The United States government had spent more than a hundred thousand bucks training me, readying me, teaching me how to be far more lethal than the little stubnosed .38 I saw tucked in the back pocket of the kid’s dirty jeans. And my piracy wouldn’t be one of cold-blooded expediency, one that would barter innocent lives so that drug-induced dreams might be enjoyed. Mine was a piracy of vengeance.

  “Havin’ a little engine trouble, huh?” I smiled my loosest, friendliest smile.

  “What? Oh, yeah, man. Hit somethin’. Really, you know, bummed me out. Just cruisin’ back to Key West an’ whack.” He studied my boat nervously. “You by yourself?”

  I acted as if I didn’t even notice the abruptness of the question. Still grinning, I reached into my shirt pocket and took out the Copenhagen.

  “Want a little dip of this?”

  His eyes glowed momentarily, then the glaze returned. “Aw, no. What is that, some kinda chewin’ tobacco or somethin’?”

  “Yeah. Or somethin’.” I took a pinch of the moist stuff, feeling it burn pleasantly against my inner lip. It was all there: the roll of the boat, smell of the diesel exhaust, the good taste of Copenhagen—and a mission. I was back in Nam. I was ready to do what a very select group of us did better than any human beings in the history of the earth. Kill. Kill silently and professionally. Only this time I would enjoy it.

  I winked at the kid when my dip was in place. I knew the black guy was just inside Billy’s cabin listening to everything I said. And he probably had a gun trained on me.

  “Look,” I said, “I think what happened is, you hit those pilings and knocked your prop off. No big thing; I can have ya goin’ again in five minutes—after I get my spare prop out of the hold, that is. You’re welcome to use it; I trust you. But you’ll have to help me. I’m by myself, and someone has to hold the hatch up.”

  The kid glanced nervously behind him as if looking for some signal that it was okay to board my boat. He turned to me. “Hey, that’s great. Yeah, jes’ put on a new propeller. Far out!”

  Clumsily, he stepped over onto the Sniper, and when he rounded the cabin wall I was waiting. My knife was out, and I grabbed him by the throat, a firm deathgrip on the Adam’s apple; the most effective come-along of all. The guy in the other boat couldn’t see us now. I swung him down onto the deck, feeling his Adam’s apple cartilaginous as a racketball within the confines of my big left hand. I placed the point of the Randall knife inside his ear, letting it cut just enough for him to know that it was there.

  “Okay, asshole. Let’s have a talk. And if you play innocent even once, I’ll shove this knife through your ear and scramble your brains. The guys in the cigarette hull. Where’d they go? Where are they hiding out?”

  I relaxed my grip on his throat. Just a little. The blond Blackbeard, the visionary drug runner, trembled beneath me. There were tears in his eyes. This was a real bummer. The biggest bummer of all. The day he would pay for his sins.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll tell ya, man. Only, don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”

  I released my grip even more. I smiled. “Go ahead and talk, son.”

  “Up the Keys a ways. There’s a private island. Offshore. Some big Senator or somethin’ owns it. Day after tomorrow, we got a big pickup to make. Just needed an extra boat. I didn’t want to kill that guy. But up there, up there on Cuda Key, they told us to get a boat an’ don’t leave no witnesses. Had to do it, man. Had to do it.”

  I fought the overwhelming urge to shove the knife through his head. “Where’s the rendezvous, son? Where are you going to make the pickup? When and where?”

  “Right off Middle Sambo Key. Three a.m. Big load of cocaine.”

  “But when? What day?”

  He sat up, rubbing his throat. I still had the knife ready. “Let me think, man. My mind—I been gettin’ these blank spells lately. Let’s see . . . yeah, Friday. Next Friday. Middle Sambo. That’s it. Man, this drug business is some wild-ass trip, I’ll tell ya.”

  He watched me as I put the knife back within the folds of shirt. The nervous smile had returned to the pallid face, and I knew what was on his mind. And I wanted him to do it. I wanted him to reach for that little stubnose. I wanted his hand to be on the cold grip of the pistol when I killed him. But before he made his move, I wanted him to hear something.

  “That guy you killed. His name was Billy Mack. My best friend.”

  “Aw, Christ, I’m really sorry, man.” Slowly, his hand moved toward his back pocket.

  “He was one of the finest, bravest men I have ever known.”

  “Aw, shit. I can see why you were so bummed out.”

  I turned my head away, giving him every opportunity to make his move.

  And he took it, jerking the pistol up awkwardly. But before he had a chance to fire, I chopped downward with the cutting edge of my right hand, breaking his wrist. Th
e .38 spun away as if in slow motion. And almost in the same swoop of lethal hand, I chopped back across his neck, knocking his windpipe so awry, and with such force, that it looked as if he had swallowed half a small hula hoop.

  He floundered on the deck of my boat like a tarpon taken too green, eyes bugging out, clawing at his ruined neck. I held him down against the deck with my foot, watching him die.

  “Charlie! What in the hell’s goin’ on over there, Charlie?”

  Carefully, I peeked through the salon windows. It was the black guy. The one who had killed Billy Mack, the man who had slit the throat of my best friend. And he was loaded for bear. In his hand he carried a big ugly .357 Auto Mag, a singularly merciless handgun. I studied my assault rifle, snug in its clips. It would have been so easy to sever that flat ugly head of his with one burst.

  But that’s not how I wanted to do it.

  I knew how I wanted Billy Mack’s murderer to die.

  IV

  Quickly and quietly, I removed my pants and slid off the stern of the Sniper into the clear turquoise sea. Below me, purple sea fans stood out black against the white sand depths. I didn’t need a mask. In the SEALS I had become more fish than man.

  I took a good deep bite of summer air, then noiselessly swam beneath my boat to the stern of Billy Mack’s. As I had guessed, the prop was gone, the driveshaft bent.

  I surfaced by the diver’s deck, mounted at water level. I could still hear the guy yelling for the poor little dead blond pirate. Testing every movement, every motion, for noise, I pulled myself up onto Billy’s boat and slid across the bleached teak deck on my belly.

  I could see him plainly now. He was poised on the foredeck, leaning over the storm railing, trying to peer into the cabin where his friend has disappeared. He held the .357 Auto Mag at ready. His back was to me: a huge guy, taller than I, almost as broad through the shoulders, and much heavier.

  “Charlie! Goddam, Charlie, we gotta get our asses outta here!”

  I wanted him to yell. Every time he opened his mouth, I was three feet closer.

  “Mister man, you better let that boy outta there, hear? I’ll come over there an’ blow your white ass off with this here gun, I will!”

  The tendency is to leap at someone you want to take from behind. That’s the way the amateurs do it; the makers of gaudy western shoot-’em-ups. But I didn’t leap. Too much chance of making a mistake, missing your target. And I had done it too many times before.

  I could have whispered into his ear before I took him. But I didn’t. I grabbed him around the neck with my left arm and, with my right, jabbed my knife a safe half inch into the soft underbelly of his chin.

  “Drop it, asshole!”

  Oh, he was strong. Awesome. But not awesome enough. The pistol exploded harmlessly. Whamwham-wham.

  “Do I not yet have your attention, asshole?”

  I kneed him at the base of the spine and let the knife slide in half an inch farther. I knew that he could now feel the point beneath the base of his tongue.

  “Drop it!”

  He half-threw the .357 into the blue water. I pulled the knife out of his chin and held it beneath his Adam’s apple.

  “You ’bout cut my goddam tongue out, cap’in!” He frothed black fresh blood as he spoke. “You ain’t gonna kill me, are you, cap’in?”

  “This boat we’re standing on—you killed the guy who owned it, didn’t you? Tell me the truth, asshole, or you’re dead where you stand!”

  “Yeah! But I didn’t want ta. Had orders, cap’in. Told us ta go out an’ get a boat, so that’s wha’ we did.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Men up ta Cuda Key, that’s who. Never really met ’em. They just give orders, tells me what ta do, and I do it.”

  “The guy you killed was my best friend. His name was Billy Mack. And it was the biggest mistake of your life, asshole.”

  He half moaned, “Oh Jesus, cap’in. Shoot me if ya have to, but please don’ cut my goddam throat out.”

  “That’s what you did to Billy!”

  “Just tryin’ to make a livin’, cap’in!”

  I shoved the stench of him away from me. Sometimes I think Mark Twain was right. The human race is just too pathetic for words. He whirled back to face me, spitting blood. And I thought, what kind of animal is it who will murder for a few dollars? And then I realized: wasn’t that what I was doing in Vietnam?

  Okay, so I was a murderer, too. But there it was kill or be killed. And here, I would make sure it was the same; an indulgence of my own frail morality.

  “All right, asshole, give it your best shot. Billy never had a chance. You do. Kill me or I’ll cut your throat.”

  He was no longer the shuffling, humble Negro. He was black and fierce; huge nostrils flared; a trapped animal.

  “Big mistake you just made, white boy. Big mistake!” I saw him look past my shoulder, as if there were someone behind me. But I would have none of that.

  “Shoot ’em, Mr. Benjamin! Why’nt ya shoot ’em?” And still he looked behind me, black eyes widening as if in some terrible realization. It was the oldest trick in the world.

  I was crouched and ready when he swung at me, the huge fist whooshing past my ear. And I caught the fist as if it were a fastball and squeezed it, feeling fingers crush beneath my grip, twisted the right arm around behind him, lifting him high off the foredeck of the boat, hearing the shoulder explode within the socket.

  He shrieked with pain, face contorted with horror. And my Randall knife was already traveling on its flat, swift arc. It razored through his neck as if it were composed of cheese, snapping his head back in rhythmic convulsions of blood, spurt-spurt-spurting, mixing with the blood of Billy Mack, now dried black in the hot August sun. In his wide eyes, there was a dreadful expression of serenity. And I watched his lungs deflate and life evaporate, as if he were a lanced toy balloon.

  Okay, Billy Mack. You died a very, very nasty death. But their deaths were nastier. They knew that it was coming. I saw the horror in their eyes.

  And that’s when I felt the cold muzzle of a .45-caliber service automatic being jammed into my back.

  So the big black guy hadn’t been using some simpleminded ploy. There had been someone behind me.

  Three guys. Not two—as Nels had told me.

  And I knew that I was dead.

  He was good. He prodded me in the back with the weapon, then moved away to a safe distance. Such a little thing, but, as with any profession of skill—such as in the profession of war and killing—an expert can tell a lot from very, very little. This guy wouldn’t be the pushover the other two had been.

  “Would you mind very much, Captain MacMorgan, if I asked you to toss that handsome Randall knife of yours into the water? No, in front of you. Right off the bow. That’s right. Seems a shame, doesn’t it—to waste a knife of that quality. But I’m afraid it’s necessary.”

  I tossed the knife ahead of me, watching it flutter, then tumble through the clear water. A big barracuda, seeing the flash of silver, was on it in an instant. But the barracuda stopped short when it realized it wasn’t a fish; drifting backward, stiletto-shaped and menacing.

  I had heard that voice before, but where? There was an odd silkiness to it; kind of voice you might expect to hear pounding away at you over the radio. Buy our toilet tissue, or buy our dish soap, because it’s the very, very best, new and improved, etc. etc. All words enunciated just right; the voice projected and deadly, deadly self-assured.

  Where had I heard it before?

  “If you will be so kind, Captain MacMorgan—no, don’t turn around—let’s move to the aft deck. That’s right, walk backward, slow and easy. You see, I know what you are thinking right now. You’re measuring distances, considering odds, wondering what the possibilities of surviving are if you dive into the water or, perhaps, even try to leap over onto your own boat. You see, Dusky MacMorgan, I’ve always been smarter than you. And better. Much better. Always.”

  And then
I knew.

  He backed me to the fighting deck, then had me lie belly-down, my feet to the stern rail, the forward hull of Ernie’s Honor safely behind him.

  I looked up then and saw the man I knew I would see; the man I had known for so short a time and hated so much, long, long ago in Vietnam.

  Benjamin Ellsworth. Lieutenant Benjamin Ellsworth.

  A college boy who loved weapons. ROTC ace, then lieutenant j.g. And, when the good officers started getting killed off in those first unpublicized years in Nam, he came to be our OIC. Oh, how he swaggered. And primped. And browbeat. Very military. Very superior. And very much a coward.

  It didn’t take us long to find out. All our group ever wanted was a mission—and we had plenty of them. Before he came. Afterward, none. Not one. He always found a way to slide us out of them. When men who are trained to fight have no enemy, they end up fighting themselves. And that’s what happened with us. We got sloppy. We began to bitch and quarrel like spoiled children. Morale had never been worse. And still he swaggered, springing surprise inspections when we should have been carrying out surprise attacks.

  So, one night I went to his hooch. Alone. He sat beneath the light of a Coleman lantern cleaning that ivory-handled .45 of his. He affected irritation at being interrupted by a lowly seaman—SEAL or not.

  “What is it, MacMorgan?”

  “May I speak plainly, sir?”

  “If you can manage, MacMorgan.”

  So I told him. Told him everything. Told him about the bickering, the crumbling morale. And he was outraged.