The Deadlier Sex Page 4

  “Permission to transfer granted, Captain MacMorgan. Do you have a launch?”

  “Yeah, but I think it would be faster if I brought my cruiser in bow-first.”

  “Negative. That’s a negative. Please transfer by launch. We’ll be waiting to assist.”

  Suspicious. Ever suspicious. But, they had their craft to worry about. They didn’t know if I was an inept helmsman or not. So I didn’t argue.

  I didn’t have to call O’Davis. He had heard everything. He brought the kid up wrapped in a blanket. The girl followed attentively alongside, still changing the cold towels. As always, I had my little thirteen-foot Boston Whaler tethered astern. A great little go-anywhere, take-any-sea boat, the Whaler. I had figured it would be a perfect fishing skiff on our little vacation in the Ten Thousand Islands. There’s a lot of shoal water, and besides, it’s easy to cast from.

  I had never planned to use it as a transport vessel.

  I climbed down on the boarding platform and hauled the Whaler in hand over hand, then snubbed her off short. O’Davis leaned over and handed me the kid. A lot of weight; I had to fight for balance. Somewhere between 170 and 180 pounds.

  “Hurry up and get in the Whaler before I drop him, O’Davis.”

  “Are ya gettin’ so old, brother MacMorgan, that ya canna hold a little bit of a thing like him? Hah!” He stepped over into the skiff nimbly, and I handed him the injured drugrunner, straining to make it look effortless.

  “Someday, O’Davis, I’ll show you just what this old man can do. But now let’s just concentrate on getting this kid to the chopper.”

  “Fine idea, fine idea, Yank.”

  The girl stayed aboard Sniper, watching us anxiously. I punched the combination key and choke, turned the switch, and the Whaler’s fifty-horse outboard fired to life. The big Irishman cast off the lines. As we pulled away from Sniper’s stern, I leaned over and spoke in O’Davis’s ear.

  “Did you get anything out of her?”

  “Ya wouldn’t be doubtin’ me charm now, would ye, Yank?”

  “Can’t you be serious even for a minute, O’Davis?”

  He grew suddenly sober. “Aye, I kin. An’ the little lady has had a tough time of it, she has. Don’t have time ta tell ya the whole story now, Dusky, but just take me word that the lass has good reason for not wantin’ ta get involved with the authorities.”

  “Was she with them—the drugrunners?”

  “Aye—but not by choice, Yank. Stole ’er off the beach yesterday, they did. Used ’er as a play toy. Broke down when she told me. Doesn’t want anyone ta find out.” I felt his dark eyes level on me. “So I promised her, Dusky. Give her me word for both of us.”

  I slapped him on the knee. “If you’re convinced, it’s good enough for me, O’Davis. I’m not about to break one of your promises.”

  The Coast Guard crew had the big door amidships wide open to our approach. I dropped the Whaler down off plane as we neared, and the huge spotlight caught me full in the face momentarily, then swept away. They wanted some visual verification that we were, indeed, bringing an injured man with us. I cut the wheel and brought the little skiff in portside-to, then cut the engine while O’Davis handed them a line. The coxswain, Petty Officer Barton, was there to meet us. He reached down and shook hands while his men transferred the burned drugrunner.

  “We’ve got a Coast Guard patrol vessel in the area, Captain MacMorgan,” he yelled over the turbine whir of the jet copter.

  He leaned out from the doorway, right hand clinging to an overhead brace. He wore the plain Coast Guard duty uniform and a dark-blue baseball cap with the initials CG in white. He was slightly built, medium height, with a full black beard that seemed incongruous with his youth. Although his manner was businesslike, it was edged with a natural friendliness.

  “How soon before they get here?”

  He made a nodding motion with his head. “You can see their running lights now. It’s the cruiser Royal Palm. Chief Spears is in charge. Good man. You can give your report to him—”

  The young officer stopped abruptly. Three men had been kneeling over the burned drugrunner, working on him. One had stood up suddenly and tapped Petty Officer Barton on the shoulder. They exchanged whispers solemnly.

  “Is there some problem, Mr. Barton?”

  The young officer nodded shortly. The friendliness was gone now, replaced by a professional frankness.

  “Afraid so, Captain MacMorgan. It looks as if we’ll be able to stay and assist the Royal Palm after all.”

  “But what about the kid?”

  “He’s dead, Captain MacMorgan. Already was when you brought him aboard. . . .”

  4

  At first, I thought they were joking when Chief Spears of the Coast Guard vessel Royal Palm arrested us and rattled off our rights.

  I even nudged O’Davis and smiled.

  He didn’t smile back, though.

  And that’s when I knew that if it was a joke, no one else was laughing.

  So the kid was dead. He and how many others? No way of knowing—not until dawn, anyway, when the morning sea started throwing corpses onto the deserted beaches of White Horse Key and Gullivan Key and Panther Key and the rest.

  A lot of people have died in the wilderness of the Ten Thousand Islands. First when the Spaniards came and made unsuccessful war on the Calusa and Tequesta Indians, then when the Seminoles made their last desperate stands, and later in the late 1800s and early 1900s when runaway outlaws made that desolate tract of sea and islands their hideouts. And now it was the drugrunners, who would undoubtedly bring the number into the thousands.

  When Petty Officer Barton suggested we return to Sniper and stand by, I kicked the little Whaler into gear and, in a couple of minutes, had her made fast again at the stern of my sportfisherman. The girl was in the galley, plaid shirt hanging down to her knees, making coffee. I noticed she had moved her ragged lifejacket to a hook above the little alcohol stove to dry. She made a brushing motion at her close-cropped blond hair when we came in and took a quick look out the little port.

  “The helicopter hasn’t left. Why haven’t they taken off?”

  I took three stoneware mugs from the galley locker and began to pour. The coffee was thin; teacolored. Not strong enough for me, but I sipped at it anyway. “They’re standing by to assist the Coast Guard cruiser. I checked the radar. It’s not far off.”

  “But what about the man who was burned? If they don’t get him to a hospital . . .”

  “It’s too late.” I hesitated momentarily, realizing that I didn’t even know this girl’s name. “He’s dead.”

  I watched the slow intake of breath, heavy breasts rising beneath the shirt. She looked honestly distressed. “Oh,” she said simply.

  “You did your best.”

  “What? Hmm . . .” She carried her coffee to the little galley booth and sat down heavily. She traced the lip of her coffee mug with an index finger absently. There was a strange, perplexed look on her face. It had been a tough night for us all. But for her it had been worse—a tough two, maybe three days. And now this final strain; the irony of having to nurse one of her captors, and then having that captor die.

  She sat at the booth, sipped at her coffee, and suddenly shuddered. She wiped her face with a shaky hand. “Goddamn it,” she said. “Goddamn it to hell. . . .” She turned and looked at me. The little overhead galley light left half of her young angular face in shadow. The light, plus her low, whiskey voice, made her seem older. “Where’s your friend; the Irishman?”

  “He’s topside, setting an anchor.”

  “I told him . . . told him what happened. . . .” And then the tears came; a long sweeping veil of anguish. Her hands went automatically to her face, covering her eyes, and her elbow knocked over the mug of coffee, burning her.

  “Shit!”

  And then more tears, more anguish; uncontrollable sobs.

  I grabbed a towel, blotted the coffee off the table. I hesitated, then dabbed at her leg
. She recoiled momentarily, then leaned against me, burying her face in my shoulder.

  “Goddamn it, I tried to save him—but I . . . I wanted him to die. I really did. The son of a bitch . . . the stinking bastard . . .”

  So what do you do when a strange woman cries on your shoulder? You make comforting noises and pat the warm back noncommittally, and you rock her gently and try to relieve some of the hurt by caring. When some of the logjam of hatred and profanity had been purged, I brushed her short hair back from her face, and then pulled a nearfull flagon of peach brandy from the liquor locker. A friend of mine in Athens, Georgia, makes a new batch at the end of every peach harvest. He ages it in old oak casks that his father and his grandfather used before him, and every summer when he comes to Key West to fish for tarpon, he brings me a quart of that rare golden drink. I twisted the cork out and poured a healthy dollop into the mug, added coffee, and handed it to her. She picked it up and sniffed it.

  “Drink it down,” I said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Give it a try. It can’t hurt.”

  She took a sip, then another, and began to say something. But she was interrupted by the sound of a boat coming.

  “Coast Guard coming along starboard side, brother MacMorgan!”

  O’Davis had his big Viking face poked through the main hatchway.

  “Be right up.”

  She was a big steel displacement cruiser, probably sixty feet long. Lights glowed through the lower ports—where the midnight watch was probably drinking coffee, waking up, standing by. The superstructure of the Royal Palm was also lighted. Another watch stood in their bulky lifejackets and hard hats, ready to lower a launch.

  A voice came over the PA system; an older voice, even more businesslike. “This is Chief Petty Officer Spears of the United States Coast Guard speaking. Please prepare to be boarded.”

  It was not a request. The Coast Guard doesn’t have to ask. If they want to board, they board. Simple as that.

  I left the girl with her laced coffee and made my way to Sniper’s aft deck, where Westy stood watching the big Coast Guard vessel reverse engines and drop anchor. He had hands on hips, head down.

  “I fear we’ve forgotten somethin’, Yank.”

  “And what could that be, Westy?”

  He kicked at something with his foot, and I saw what he meant. The bale of marijuana still lay on the deck, black garbage bag pulled back. The bags of cocaine surrounded it.

  “All we have to do is tell them the truth. Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows, his bearded countenance showing a wry dark humor.

  “No offense, brother MacMorgan, but I’m a-thinkin’ the only person aboard this stinkpot o’ yours with an honest face is th’ little lady below. Handsome as I am, folks tend to put their hands on their wallets when I come a-roamin’. And you, me friend—big and blond as ya are, you’ll never pass as a choirboy.”

  “You worry too much, O’Davis.”

  “Hah! Never had much ta worry about till I met you, Yank!” He laughed loudly, his barrel chest heaving. “Come up here for a bit of a holiday, an’ next thing I know we’ve got half the Coast Guard surroundin’ us, a load o’ drugs aboard, one dead man to our credit, and a half-drowned minor below—and you say I worry too much! Hah!”

  He went on laughing to himself, switching from laughter to some strange Irish tune, tapping his foot and muttering. “Tum-de-dum-de-dum . . . worry too much, he says, the big ugly brute!”

  There were six men in the launch. It was a true inboard, built like the old whaling boats with pointed bow and stern, complete with tiller. They brought her alongside professionally, and Chief Spears jumped aboard along with two other men before their skiff was even tied off. They were all armed. His two men carried automatic weapons, M-16s. The chief was a broad-shouldered, broadnecked guy with a stub of cigar in his mouth, and he carried a .45 service automatic on his hip, holster unsnapped. He was a couple of inches under six feet, maybe thirty-five or thirty-six years old, and weighed close to two-hundred pounds—hard to tell with the bulky life vest covering his frame. Like the rest of his men he wore a short-sleeved duty shirt, and his biceps bulged from beneath. But bulky as he was, the big Irishman and I dwarfed him. I saw his eyes harden at the impact of our size. He looked at me first, and then at O’Davis.

  “Which of you is the master of this vessel?”

  Westy motioned with his head. “The ugly one, sar.”

  Spears almost grinned. But then his eyes caught what was lying behind us on the deck. He nodded to his men. They moved backward toward the cache of drugs, faces trained on us, weapons ready.

  “Bale of grass and a shitpot full of coke, Chief,” one of his men said.

  Spears looked at me. He had tough dark eyes. I could almost see his mind working. A drug boat explodes and we just happen to be in the area. What were we? A pickup boat? Or maybe just some muscle hired by the Miami mob to knock off one more group of amateurs.

  Whatever he thought, Chief Spears wasn’t taking any chances.

  “MacMorgan, is it?”

  “That’s right, Chief.”

  “I suppose you can explain that pile of drugs there?”

  I nodded. “Right again.”

  He touched my elbow, right hand on the grip of his automatic. “Well, Captain MacMorgan, before you get into detailed explaining, do you mind if I accompany you below and have a look at your papers?”

  It sounded like a request. But it wasn’t.

  I keep my ship’s papers in a waterproof ammo box I rescued from Nam. I pulled it from the locker beneath the forward vee-berth and opened it.

  One by one, I handed him what he needed. “Here’s my registration. Title’s right here. And here’s a Xerox copy of my hundred-ton passenger license.”

  He took the captain’s license and studied it closely. I knew what he was going to ask, and he did: “Why a Xerox? Why not the real thing?”

  “It was accidentally destroyed,” I said. I was lying. It had been hanging on the wall of our little house on Elizabeth Street in Key West. And then the drug pirates set a little ignition bomb in the trunk of our old Chevy, planning to kill me. Only I hadn’t started the car that night. My wife, Janet, had. The bomb had killed her and my two little twin boys, Ernest and Honor. After that, I couldn’t bear to go back into that little shipbuilder’s house where we had been so happy together.

  So I never did.

  Not even to pick up my captain’s license.

  “As you can see by the date there, chief, I have to renew my license in the next month or so, so I just decided to wait rather than apply for a duplicate.”

  “Hmm,” he said, studying the papers, chewing at the stub of a cigar. I started to say something, but he cut me off. “Captain MacMorgan, before you say another word, let me tell you something. I don’t know if you and your buddy and that girl there are innocent parties in this or not. My cop instinct tells me you are—why didn’t you just dump the dope overboard when you saw our chopper coming? But I don’t take chances. We lose most of our arrests to sharpie lawyers as it is, so I’m telling you right now not to say another word until I formally arrest you and read you your rights.”

  “Arrest? Now wait a minute, dammit! We were just trying to help out!”

  “Not another word, MacMorgan!”

  The girl had been sitting silently at the little galley booth, watching and listening. When Chief Spears said the word “arrest” I saw her grimace. She rolled her eyes and shot me an “I told you not to call the Coast Guard!” look of disgust.

  Spears marched the two of us topside, while O’Davis, in his best Irish brogue, stood trading sea stories with the other Coasties. They were already under his spell, caught up in the masculine comfort of rough talk and the Irishman’s jokes. So they looked a little uneasy—reluctant, even—when Chief Spears gave them their orders. It was Coast Guard policy. They made the three of us lie spread-eagled on
the aft deck.

  “You are under arrest for violating federal laws,” Chief Spears began. And then he recited our rights, the words “You have the right to remain silent . . .” spoken in a business monotone.

  I felt a little ridiculous. No, more than ridiculous. I felt just a tad pissed off face down there on the deck of my own boat listening to a group of strangers tell me what I could and could not do. While Spears read us our rights, one of the other Coasties frisked us, taking the fine Gerber Magnum from the case on my belt. Another searched Sniper. When his search was completed, he came aft, a little excited. I couldn’t see what he had found—but it was easy to guess.

  “Damn, Chief, look what this guy was carrying on board!”

  I heard the metallic click of the thirty-round clip being ejected. It was my Russian AK-47 assault rifle. When cruising, I keep it above the wheel in spring clips for ready access. There are plenty of pirates roaming the Florida Strait who’d like to see me disappear, and you never know when you might need some instant firepower. But of course, an automatic weapon is something less than legal. Especially a Russian automatic. No way to register and get a permit for it—so I had never even tried.

  “Is this your weapon, Captain MacMorgan?” It was Spears. I heard the sound of a match being struck, and smelled the sour tobacco odor of his cheap cigar.

  “Everything aboard this vessel is mine, Chief—except for the drugs. Like I told you.” I rolled over to my back and sat up. I was between O’Davis and the girl. In the deck lights I could see the Irishman’s broad face. He was smirking at me. And for good reason. It was a tricky situation. Ironic, too. Three different times I had been retained by an agency of the United States, as a freelance emissary. They needed a Florida Keys local with SEAL expertise to occasionally shake up the drug kingpins. They needed a man who knew when and how to kill; an outlaw working on the side of the law who could keep his mouth shut.

  And here I was being arrested for suspicion of drug trafficking.