The Black Death

Chapter 4

I brought the Sea Witch alongside a floating dock, and Lyda tossed a line to the kid who had come out to greet us. He was a skinny kid with a bad case of acne and hair cut reasonably short. I cut the engines and went forward to handle the bow line. When the cruiser was well snubbed in I told Lyda to stay aboard and keep out of sight.

“Go easy on the booze,” I added. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

“Yes, Captain darling.”

The kid was staring and probably having nasty thoughts, so I took his arm and we crossed the duck-boarding to the main pier and I said, “Is Tom Mitchell around?”

“Yes, sir. In the office. Usually he ain’t here at this hour, but tonight he stayed late. Taxes or something.”

I knew Tom Mitchell when he was a Marine guard at the Consulate in Hong Kong. He was an old gunnery sergeant, transferred to diplomatic duty, and we had shared a few brawls and done each other a few favors. I’d had one letter from him since he opted out and invested his life savings in the marina.

The kid was still with me. I pointed to the little brick building just ahead. “That the office?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks. I know Tom and I won’t be needing you any more. A little private business.” I gave him a five dollar bill. “That’s for your trouble. Good night.”

“Good night, sir. If there is anything else I—”

“There isn’t. Good night.”

The door was half open. Tom Mitchell sat at his desk with his back to me. He was getting bald and there were fat bulges on his neck. He was working on a tax form with a ball point and he didn’t look happy.

I rapped on the door and waited. Tom swung around in his chair and stared at me.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Nope,” I said. “You flatter me, but nope. Nicholas Hunting Carter, in the flesh, come to spend a little money in this poor-looking marina. And ask a few favors.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch!” Tom pulled himself out of the chair and charged at me and grabbed my hand and tried to tear it off. He was getting fat but he was still as powerful as ever. His plain shanty-Irish face lit up like a beacon as he steered me to a chair and opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Old Pile Driver. He went into a lavatory and came back with two dirty glasses. This was the Tom Mitchell I remembered. No talking until the drinking started.

He poured my glass half full and I shuddered and took a little of it and said: “Good to see you, Tom. And I’m glad that you’re glad to see me, but let’s get one thing straight— this isn’t going to be any booze bout. I’m working. I need a little help, mostly negative help, like I’m not here and you never saw me and can you handle that kid out there? He never saw me either.”

“Wayne? Sure. Be right back.”

I lit a cigarette and took another sip of the cheap booze. I could hear Tom talking to the kid somewhere out on the docks. Tom didn’t know I was AXE, but he did know that I did some very special jobs. I didn’t talk and he didn’t ask and that was the way we both wanted it. I figured that he thought I was CIA and I let it go at that.

He came back into the office and closed the door behind him. “It’s okay now. Wayne won’t talk — he likes this job, and he needs it, and he don’t want his neck broke. Jesus H. Christ, Nick, but it’s good to see you.”

I grinned at him. “Fine. Now cut it out. We’ll have the reunion another time when we can let our hair down and tie one on. Now — who belongs to those other craft out there?”

Tom sank into his chair and picked up his glass. “Local people. I know them. Nothing to worry there, Nick. The yawl belongs to an insurance man and the cruisers, well, just locals like I said.” He stared at me over the glass. “You need any sort of physical help, Nick?” He sounded wistful.

I shook my head. “No. You should have stayed in the Corps, gunner, if you want the physical bit.”

“I know. But I got old, Nick. Too damned old.”

I wasted a tenth of a second in feeling sorry for the old war horse, then I picked up the phone on his desk.

“All I want from you is discretion,” I told him. “Silence. Forget I was here. And keep everybody, but everybody, away from that 57-footer out there as long as I’m here. I can’t say how long that will be.”

Tom Mitchell nodded. He reached into another drawer and came out with a Colt .45 automatic, the 1911 model, so old that the bluing was worn off the barrel so it sparkled like silver in the light.

I dialed Operator. Tom said: “You want me to leave? I can take a little walk, make sure that Wayne isn’t still hanging around.”

It was a good idea. I had trusted Tom Mitchell with my life more than once, but this was no affair of his and it is only routine, SOP, to keep secret matters secret.

I nodded at him. “You do that. See you in a few minutes.”

The girl put me through to the AXE office in Washington. I got the night duty officer, identified myself, and after a code check the night man told me that Hawk was flying to New York to see me.

“He left about nine, sir. He should be there by now. He left word that if you called here he would be at your place.”

I thanked him and hung up. The old man at my penthouse? All the way from Washington just to see his number one boy? All hell must be popping!

My house boy, Pok, answered the phone in the penthouse. When he recognized my voice he said, “Is ancient gentleman here to see you, Missa Nick.”

I liked that. I hoped Hawk was listening in. Ancient gentleman!

“Good,” I told Pok. “Put the venerable gentleman on, Pok.”

“Yes, sir. Is here now.”

Hawk came on like a tiger with a sore throat: “N3? Good — remember no scrambler. This is plaintalk. Clearcode. Got it?”

I said I had it. Hawk can be irritating at times. He thinks everybody but himself is still in kindergarten.

“There is a lot of Hades over the SB thing,” Hawk said. “The spooks are covering and we haven’t surfaced yet. What occurred and where is the tinsel in the crackerjack?”

Hell was being raised over Steve Bennett’s murder and AXE was not connected with it, and where was the girl?

“I’ve got the prize,” I told him. “A toy swan. The SB thing was straight waylay — Papa’s boys trying to make Papa proud. Surprise achieved. I caught two, then track meet seemed advisable.”

I had the girl and I had run like a thief.

I could hear the relief in his voice as he said, “You’ve got the prize?”

“Yes. And a gunboat.”

“Hmmmmm — safe?”

“For now safe. But tempus fugit and things change. Anything from HQ for me?”

I was asking for orders.

I got them. For fifteen minutes I got them. A lot of info had come into the hopper, a lot of cards popped out of the computers, since I last talked to Hawk. I listened with what is commonly known as a sinking sensation in my gut.

At last he let me say something.

“Just me?” I asked. “All alone by my lonesome? Maybe the deal is too big, H. Maybe I can’t swing it.”

“You’ve got to swing it,” Hawk said. “There is no one else. The spooks are dead in subject, and so are we for the moment. You have to do it alone.”

The CIA was well blown in Haiti — I had known that already — and there were no AXE men on the island who could help me. That I hadn’t known. Nick Carter. One-man invasion force.

“It could be complicated,” I said. “The prize is axe grinding. Own ideas about matter at hand. Unreliable.”

“Understood,” the old man said. “Cope.”

Sure. Just like that. Cope.

I sighed and said okay. Then, because I had to know and I had to hear it from Hawk, I asked: “Ultimate on V?”

Final decision on Dr. Romera Valdez, the bone of contention, the guy who was causing all the trouble. The character I was supposed to bring out of Haiti.

Hawk cleared his throat. “Final is kill or cure. Cleared with White.”

If I couldn’t get Valdez out I was to kill him. Decision made by The Man.

“Tempus does fugit,” said Hawk. “No waste. I’ll do the best I can on CG. Make first landfall KW and take on new supplies, if any. Okay?”

Get with it as of right now. Hawk would fix it with the Coast Guard and I was to check in at Key West for new orders. If any.

“Okay,” I said. I sounded like a man going to his own hanging. “I’ll have a voucher here,” I added. “Honor it, eh?”

“Sign it correctly and it will be honored,” Hawk said. Dry. Matter of fact. Like an accountant demanding proof of a swindle sheet.

“Goodbye,” Hawk said. “Put the jig together as you go. No plan. No help. Good luck. Good night.”

“Good night,” I told the dead phone. “And thanks for nothing.”

Put the puzzle together as I went along. By guess and by God and play it by feel and by ear. Get into Haiti and get Valdez out — or kill him. Keep an eye on Lyda Bonaventure. See that she didn’t stage an invasion. See that nobody staged an invasion. Stay alive. Keep Lyda Bonaventure alive, because if I could get our asses out of this in one piece, both Hawk and the CIA wished to have long conversations with the lady.

Sometimes I wonder if my head is pointy. There must be easier ways of making a living than being a senior Killmaster!

I lit a cigarette and had a belt of Tom Mitchell’s bad booze and let out a minor groan and faced it. It looked like old Carter was going to cross the raging main, was going to make it on the high seas. Anchors aweigh.

I stuck my head out the door and whistled softly. Tom came out of the darkness, the .45 tucked into his belt under a fold of flab. He gave me that shanty Irish grin.

“Business all concluded?”

“Yeah,” I said sourly. “Business concluded and maybe me, too.”

He watched me. “A bad one, Nick?”

I nodded. “Bad enough, but nothing to worry you. Give me some sort of paper, form, whatever you got. I’ll make out a voucher for you.”

He shook his head. “No need to do that, Nick. Hell, man! We’re friends, buddies. I—”

I was feeling snappish. “Cut out the crap,” I barked at him. “It’s only the taxpayers’ money, and you’re going to earn it.” Then I grinned and nodded at the tax form he had been filling out. “Anyway you’re really paying for it — I’m only giving you your own money back.”

Tom took a bolt of his skull-popper and wiped his big mouth and grinned back and said, “Well, since you put it like that.”

He gave me one of his billing forms and I scrawled on it: For Services Rendered. $2000.00. I signed it NC and put a special little curlicue in the C so Hawk would know it was genuine.

I handed him the paper. “For that you’re going to stay up all night and do a little patrolling. If anyone, anyone at all, tries to get near the cruiser, by land or sea, you let off a couple of shots to warn me. Just warn me, you understand? Don’t go shooting anybody and getting your ass in a jam over something that doesn’t concern you. You got that?”

Tom smiled and nodded. “I got it. I also wish I had what you got on that cruiser.”

I stared at him. He gave his eyes a comic roll and said. “I walked out to the end of docking. She was singing. I didn’t see her, but the voice ain’t bad. Sounded like she was singing French?”

I patted his arm. “Remember what happened to the curious cat, old buddy. You just do your job and earn that two grand. Nobody gets close to the cruiser. I may hang around here tomorrow, 1 may not, but if I do the same applies. No snoopers. Only in daylight don’t do it with a meat axe, huh, or a gun. Invent something. Say we’ve got plague aboard.”

He was pouring himself another jolt of old pop skull. I declined. “I’ve got a hard night ahead of me.”

“I just bet.”

“Anyway you’re a married man. Didn’t you tell me in that letter that you got married?”

“Yeah. I got married.” He sounded glum. “Her name is Myrtle and she weighs close to 300 pounds by now.”

“Serves you right,” I told him. “You should have stood in the Marines.”

“Yeah. I should have. But I told you, Nick — I got too old.”

I shook his hand. “Thanks for everything, Tom. I may see you again, or I may not. I don’t know just when I’ll cut out. But thanks. And I’ll be depending on you tonight.”

He gave me a half salute. “No sweat, Nick. Not to worry.”

I left him staring after me. He still looked wistful.

The Sea Witch was dark except for a faint glow in the owner’s stateroom. She had the record player going softly, which didn’t surprise me; she was playing Ravel’s Bolero, which did, a little. But as I legged it over the rail and went forward toward light and music I decided that she knew what she was about — the original title of the Bolero was Danse Lascive, until the prudes made him change it.

I went softly through the deckhouse and down a companionway and stood in the door looking at her. This kid was something of a showman, and she knew how to use color.

She was stretched on the divan, a glass in her hand, a cigarette smoking blue between her fingers. She was wearing long white stockings and a white garter belt and that was all. Her large breasts, soft in repose, lay flat and tender along her rib cage. Her head was resting on the arm of the divan, arching back to show all of that long Modigliani throat. Her eyes were closed but she knew I was there.

Without opening her eyes she said: “You were a long time.”

“Just long enough to get things squared away,” I told her. “We’re all right for now, I think. Nobody is going to bother us tonight, anyway. And we won’t be here long.”

She waved her cigarette in the air like a smoky wand. “That’s good. That is nice to know. Now let’s not talk about that any more. We’re safe. Forget it. Have a drink or two and take off your clothes and come here to me.”

I scaled my cap at a chair and went to the little bar and had a Scotch, straight. It had sounded like an order, and I didn’t mind obeying. I agreed with her that it way safe, at least for a few hours. I had tossed her little pea shooter into the Hudson. Not that it mattered. Lyda had only one thing on her mind at the moment. When I had eased her pain— then was the time to watch her again.

I sipped at my Scotch as I undressed. I studied her. White on tan made a pleasing, and exciting, color scheme.

“Very fetching,” I told her. “White garter belt and stockings on dark skin. It is also a whore’s trick. I suppose you know that?”

She had closed her eyes again. She smiled and arched her neck and said, “I know that. Captain darling. I am a little bit of a whore, I suppose. Aren’t all women?”

“Beats me,” 1 said. “I don’t know that much about women.”

She was looking at me now. I was naked and I was ready.

Lyda stared at me for a moment, then she let out a long shuddery sigh and put down her glass. She crushed out her cigarette. “I knew it,” she said. “Somehow I knew it — that you would look like this with your clothes off. Come here, Nick. For God’s sake, come here!”

I went to the divan and stood beside her. She reached for me and stroked me lightly with her finger tips and then she kissed me and pulled me down on top of her. Our mouths met and her tongue was hot and coarse and moist as she probed my mouth and twisted and writhed under me.

She was a talker. “Oh, darling,” she said. “Oh, Captain Nick darling. Oh sweet, oh honey, oh my God, darling. Ahhhhh — ohhhhh — darling, darling, darling, darling—”

Yet she would not let me enter her. Not that way. Things got pretty rough for a time, because by now I was like a long chaste bull who spots a cow. Sex took over and what few brains I am supposed to have were fast being blotted out by the pleasure principle. During these bouts I usually keep a little cold part of my brain on guard, but tonight I didn’t think I needed it. I said to hell with it and let her ignite my rocket and got ready to blast off.

Lyda stopped talking and started biting. She took some pretty good hunks out of me and I didn’t feel a thing. I got a knee between her legs and tried to wedge them apart but she still wasn’t having any of that. She writhed fiercely, humping and arching, and suddenly she twisted from under me and rolled over on top of me.

“Me on top,” she moaned. “Me on top for now. I’m the man darling, I’m the man!”

Doc Freud might have been able to explain it Me, I didn’t give a damn at the moment.

She grabbed for me and got me fixed where she wanted me. Her breasts had come up hard and the nipples were half an inch long. Before long — long before I was ready — she started to screech. Loud and long and tremulous cries and if Tom Mitchell was listening he probably thought I was torturing her. I guess I was, in a way.

Lyda let out a final scream and collapsed on me, her breasts like melting brown butter on my face. By now I was a demon lover for sure and I turned her over — her eyes were staring and she was only half conscious — and I paid no heed to her whimpering little sounds and I took her hard and for a long time. Then, at last, I heard someone groan from a long way off and it seemed funny that it could be me. I let my weight come down on her and she cradled my head in her arms, on the soft pillows of her breasts, and crooned something that made no sense at all. All I wanted to do was float — float and sleep.

That is what I thought. In ten minutes she was back at me again. We were, it seemed, now going to get down to the real business of the evening. She hadn’t been kidding about everybody doing everything to everybody. And I had a technician on my hands. I have been around, God knows, but this gal knew tricks that I had never heard of.

A couple of hours later I woke up on the floor beside the divan. My nose was in the carpeting — the lack of perspective distorting the rose pattern a bit — and I felt like I had been worked over by the KGB in one of the Kremlin dungeons. My lips were swollen and sore, raw on the inside, and I had a clutter of little bites all over me. Exactly as though an enraged swan had been pecking at me. It was a pretty good simile at that.

She was asleep on the divan, on her side, curled into a fetal position with one arm flung over her face. I listened to her breathe for a minute, then I summoned my strength and got up and put on my shorts and my cap — why the cap I don’t know — and found a flashlight and went looking.

I started at the bow and worked back. The Sea Witch was loaded. Man, was she loaded! She had been stripped of every fixture that wasn’t absolutely necessary to make room for cargo. And what a cargo! I was impressed. Whoever had loaded her had done a professional job, too, because she was balanced just right, with no list, and the cargo secured so it couldn’t shift.

I took my time. Lyda would sleep for a few hours and anyway it didn’t really matter — she would expect me to find this stuff sooner or later. I made a rough mental tally:

9 recoilless rifles, 57 mm.

Rifle and hand grenades, 15 crates each, smoke and fragmentation.

Machineguns, some fifty of them, ranging from the old Chicago drum magazine Thompsons down to modern U.S. and Jap and Swedish weapons.

Mortars, 20, with at a guess some 7000 rounds.

200 mines. Mines! Some of them were anti-tank, some the old schu mines, the deballers that came up and burst in your crotch.

Five old Browning machineguns, heavy, water cooled. Shades of World War I.

Rocket grenades.

14 crates full of small arms, everything from Colt .45s to Jap to Italian to one ancient Webley Naval revolver that needed wheels to transport it.

About a thousand rifles of every make and vintage: Mausers, Mis, Krags, Springfields, Enfields, AKs, Ml6s, a few, and even an old Italian Martini. A flintlock wouldn’t have surprised me, or a jebel.

Ammo for all the above. Ammo in plenty. I guessed at nearly a million rounds. Here the amateur showed, because the ammo was jumbled every which way and it would be one hell of a job to unsnarl it and fit ammo to gun.

Radio equipment — some modern, some old, transmitters and receivers and a couple of modern transceivers.

Walkie-talkies, World War II.

Medical supplies in plenty.

Field phones and drums of wire, DR4s from World War II. Batteries, tools, one small generator, dismantled.

Uniforms — old Army surplus fatigues with caps, green.

Insignia — freshly stamped of shiny brass, a circlet with a black swan inset. Stars, bars, eagles and leaves as of U.S. Army. I could just visualize Lyda wearing four stars. That was a little too much so I sat down and had a cigarette. There was a whole case of them. C rations, too, and some aged Australian bully beef.

I smoked and I thought. Even as packed as she was the Sea Witch should be able to carry fifteen to twenty men. That wasn’t much of a force for an invasion of Haiti, though it has been tried with fewer, and that meant she was hoping to pick up her main force after she landed. Had intended to, because she sure as hell wasn’t going to invade now. Unless it was over my dead body. I didn’t like that thought much. I tossed my cigarette out a portlight and went back to the stateroom where all the comforts of life were concentrated.

Lyda was still sleeping. I tossed a light blanket over her and took a shower in the owner’s deluxe tiled bathroom. As I showered I thought and I grinned and I got to laughing. It did have its funny side — There was the Sea Witch, like any harmless rich man’s pleasure craft, lying innocently at anchor in the 79th Street basin. Right in the midst of thousands of cops and FBI and CIA and, as I now knew, an unknown number of Papa Doc’s goons. The Tonton Macoute. Carrying enough powder to blow half of Manhattan out of the water. No wonder she had been in such a sweat to get the cruiser out of there.

I toweled myself dry, still laughing. Then I stopped laughing. I was stuck with all this hardware. There was no way, nor any time, to unload it! 1 would just have to take it with me and hope I could keep her hot little hands away from it. Orders were not to let her use it on Papa Doc.

I didn’t want her using it on me, either.