Martin Caidin - Prison Ship

CHAPTER 1

Jake Marden hated the low hill country of north central Florida. He hated the dirt farms and the narrow

roads and the marshy land that infested the countryside. He especially hated the town of Starke and

nearby Hawthorne and Waldo and Keystone and the rest of the crumbly shitheel burgs with their

tourist-hunting cops and dirty gas stations and redneck shacks that the flatheads accepted as restaurants.

He hated all these shitheel towns that lived off the institutions dotting the countryside. The biggest of them

all sprawled across more than seventy-thousand acres of scrub pine and weak soil. Camp Blanding. A

great flat shitheel military training camp for all sorts of high-firepower maneuvers. He hated Blanding and

all it stood for. Because there came those times when the good old U.S. Army loaned its Cobras and

other killer choppers and hundreds of armed soldiers, loaned these assholes to the other shitheel

institutions of the countryside. The prisons. The hardtime prisons. Correctional institutions, they called

them. Bullshit. But you name it and north central Florida had it. The whole fucking countryside was a

splattering of incarceration camps.

The worst of them all was Old Millford Prison and it was the worst for a whole bunch of reasons, the

primary one being that Jake Marden was a return visitor to The Rock. He'd made a trip before to what

the crazy-grin cons called Rock Motel. Jake Marden's first visit had been for shit, but then, nobody ever

had a good visit, for Christ's sake. He'd been a lot younger then and he'd been wet behind the ears.

Brilliant, he was. Pure genius in many ways. If they'd measured his IQ they would have stamped his

papers with the word GENIUS. The problem for Jake was that he was also as stupid as all get-out. He

was brilliant but he didn't have the common sense to pour piss out of a goblet without a roadmap. He

also had the malady common to strapping adolescents. He spent half of every day goaded and driven by

a crowbar-stiff erection that seemed to propel him from one hour to the next in search of

juice-overflowing pussy. Along with outbreaks of zits went his perpetual hard-on and his ability to

perform sexually without respite through several hysterical ejaculations. Jake met his match-or his

Waterloo, depending upon the side from which one weighed the matter-in a fluffy little thing by the name

of Lisa with a wasp waist, outrageously up thrust breasts, and the blessing of nonstop orgasms that

thrilled her soul and body whether she performed vaginally or orally. Lisa and Jake appeared locked in a

raw sexual embrace of pleasure and combat in which they were both winners, until that moment that Lisa

discovered there was more to physical relationships than being dicked. There was that subtle pleasure of

power, and noting Jake's reaction to her absence for even a few days led her to her own daring

experiments.

If they hadn't been pounding their loins so wildly it would have been a classic case of cocktease. Lisa

sniffed with an elevated nasal posture. "Don't you do anything except screw?" she pouted.

"I never hear you complaining," Jake countered. "I'm not complaining. But a girl's gotta' think about her

future, y'know."

Jake had never considered Lisa capable of thinking. Except to remember to remove her clothes before

he plunged into her. "No, I don't know," he answered. "Jesus, Lisa, what are you talking about?"

"How are we going to live? I mean, on what?" "That's dumb. Real dumb. Like asshole-dumb," he said

with open contempt. "You know what my old man's worth." She knew. Millions. But she was also under

the tutelage of her mother. Get control now, Lisa. Get control now and you'll control him later.

"What are you worth? Y'know, what can you do? You got all those computer things, I don't understand

them, but what good are they?"

He wasn't about to start school instruction with Lisa. What he liked about her head was her lips and

tongue and her mouth and the terrific things she could do with that equipment, but he'd never considered

that anything worth mentioning might rest between her ears. "I can do plenty," he said, feeling nettled at

her unexpected sharpness. What the hell was she after?

"Could you make money with it? The computers, I mean?"

"Shit, yes."

"How?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Sure I would. What would you do?"

He thought that over. Just outside New Tamiami Airport the Westinghouse corporation had built a

sprawling research facility. It was also a main terminus for computer hookup to the rest of Westinghouse,

as well as DARPA, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It was supposed to

have ironclad security, but the people who designed security programs did so for their own ilk, and not

streetwise smartasses who were also teenaged electronic geniuses.

"I could make that Westinghouse outfit, you know, down at Tamiami? I could make them pay plenty if I

ever got inside."

She laughed at him. At him. She'd never done that before. She teased him and she ridiculed him and he

didn't know which would give him more pleasure, fucking her to insensibility or beating her to the same

condition. "I'll show you," he said quietly, unaware that those three words had brought more misery to

youngsters than any other phrase coined by youth throughout the world.

He and a close friend, Loose Louie, who had a body seemingly composed of flexible rubber and who

could squeeze through spaces only a rat should have traversed, broke the security system at the

Westinghouse computer center. Louie was an absolute natural for sensing and feeling his way through

everything from motion detectors to infrared-activated lasers. He was as adept with alarm systems as

Jake Marden was with the main computer systems. They didn't simply break in; that was too clumsy and

too prone to failure. They got inside through the contacts of Moishe Green, lawyer for the Marden family,

so that Jake and Loose Louie could apply for jobs in the packing and shipping departments of the

company. Once inside it didn't take Louie long to plant his equipment and set up his interrupter system on

the alarms for the warehouse section of the building. Everything else was like moving down one security

domino after another.

Then Jake went to work, installing in hidden places his software trapdoors so that later he could use the

computer database system to call in through telephone lines and get just about any information he

wanted. Once he accessed the main computer databanks he figured he'd collect some really top secret or

sensitive information, present it to their top people, and "sell" what he knew and how he accomplished his

task to Westinghouse. Presto; he'd be a hero, Westing-house would be grateful to plug the holes in their

security system, he'd get a bucketful of money and then he'd kick Lisa's beautiful ass up and down the

street. Besides, with what he'd probably cop from Westinghouse, he figured it was worth at least a

hundred Gs, and he was starting to lose interest in Lisa.

It didn't all work out the way he planned. He couldn't get his software to perform the way he expected,

because Westinghouse was using advanced systems still foreign to the outside world. With a touch of

anger and a bit of hard desperation, Jake went to breaking into the main hardware systems with his own

devices. Loose Louie knocked out the security alarms, Jake tied in beautifully to the Westinghouse

hardware, and the whole time they were inside half a dozen video cameras, out of sight and using zoom

lenses, made a wonderfully sharp recording of the two teenagers.

So instead of copping a hundred grand-and Westing-house, if they hadn't had all that video film, would

have been glad to pay off in millions to plug their security gaps-young Jake and his cohort found

themselves pissing up a long rope held by the law. Westinghouse had had enough of hackers and meanies

and bust-ins and they pressed very hard charges with a very tough bunch of legal eagles. Because federal

security contracts were involved there simply wasn't any way out. They found their asses nailed to the

wall of the federal courthouse.

It could have been worse. The law gave Jake Marden eight hard years. "Mind your manners, son," said

the unkindly judge who had the insipid manner of the lecturer who's holding both the bible and the gun,

"and you can get parole in three years. Get some religion, boy. Read the good book instead of those

computers of yours. Three years or eight years. It's worth thinking about, boy."

Right; sure. They sent him to the Rock Motel where the guests waited with nervous, wet lips for fresh

meat like Jake Marden. Twenty-three years old, and to the anxious, horny hardtimers the first sight of the

kid as he came shuffling in with the heavy chains about his feet was lovely virginal flesh. Places like Old

Millford were whorehouses and it was the filthiest and worst-kept secret of the whole goddamn national

prison system. But to Jake Marden the issue was very local, very immediate, because they were bidding

for his ass and that beautiful mouth before the guards ever removed the chains and laughingly sent him off

to the "wedding chambers."

Jake didn't get out in three years. No way. Being young and spoiled didn't spell an easy or a soft mark.

Jake Marden was anything but. He was a big bastard and in the University of Miami he'd been a top man

in just about every sport in the business from football to karate, and he was a skindiver and a skydiver

and a boxer and a wrestler and all that crazy stuff. He was also a graduate of Little Havana and some

very nasty disputes usually carried out with fists, feet, and knives. For a guy from a nice family he

buddied with a lot of nasty scum.

All that barely saved him. Just barely. The Rock's oldtimers with wet lips and hard dicks nailed him in a

darkened corridor, four very tough hombres who'd been running the prison system in their wing, and they

were all going to enjoy this six-feet-four piece of meat and they promised to fuck his brains out. He

fought them, but this was a graduation level a notch above even Little Havana. They were tough as

concrete and they chopped him in the windpipe to slow him down. A powerful hand clenched his balls

and twisted his scrotum to immobilize him while they pulled him down and over a bench and ripped his

trousers and his shorts from his

body. An ugly face with zits and scars was close against his and grinning while the others held him down

and he knew, he absolutely knew, he must not let this happen or he'd be dead inside himself the rest of

his life. He couldn't move his hands or his arms or his legs as they held him in a long-practiced vise of

muscle, and the only part of him he could move was his head. He heard the animal behind him grunting at

the edge of violent anal penetration and with everything he had left, with his last ounce of strength, he let

himself go mad and he lunged forward with his shoulders and his head just enough to reach the zits and

scars before him with his teeth.

They didn't expect that. The ugly face smiled and twisted his ears to hold him for a violent kiss and Jake

opened his mouth and he screamed and his teeth came down like those of a pit bull, clamping against the

lower lips of the subhuman before him, and with the madness upon him Jake ground his teeth together

and twisted his own head violently. They heard the scream echoing down the darkened corridor and

along the cell blocks. They'd heard that primal scream before and the older prisoners smiled without

humor. Screams are old shit in the jungle. They didn't know it was different this time.

The animal jerked backwards with the savaging of his mouth and Jake shook his head like a starving

shark holding a great chunk of bloody lips and chin and cheek in his teeth. Hot blood splashed

everywhere and Jake yielded to the madness, no longer caring if he lived or died. He hardly felt the nails

raking his scrotum as his shoulders, now free, swung around and he got one hand loose so he could jab

out with his thumb. He knew this bullshit of fists and punching would only get him raped and maybe killed

and his thumb stabbed deep into an eyesocket. He clamped his fingers along the side of the head,

grinding into the temple and the eyeball popped out like a great dead white grape trailing slivers of flesh

and mucous and more spraying blood and there was a hell of a lot more screaming.

Jake took a foot in the mouth and he felt teeth loosen and he grinned when his own lips split with the

blow, because now he had his other hand free and it snapped forward, a striking rattler of hooked bone

and nails. Forefinger and middle finger hooked upward into the nostrils of another face and when he felt

skin split and sensitive bones breaking he twisted his hand with all his might. With full maniacal strength he

twisted the nose completely away from the face.

He didn't bother listening to the terrible shriek. There was still one left, that animal with the tremendous

hard-on about to ravage him. The bastard also had a long shiv in his right hand and it came expertly at

Jake. He knew he must accept the cut to gain final advantage. His left arm came up to take the blade but

the rest of him was inside the swinging arc of the knife. His right hand went down and forward, hooked

and rigid as a great claw and he grasped that hard-on and tightened his fingers and in a single snapping

downward motion jerked his hand toward himself.

They talked for years about that moment. No one had ever seen a man's dick de-skinned in a single

incredible wet snap!

Gasping with the pain now embracing him, Jake tore the blade loose from his arm and flung it away. He

dragged shorts and pants back to his waist and staggered down the corridor. He stopped before stunned

guards, swaying, but still on his feet and covered with blood. "Where's my fucking cell?" he rasped in a

voice he barely recognized. The blow to his throat would damage him forever and he would always talk

in that angry, rasping sound. Without a word, two guards opened the cellblock door and led him to a

cell. He stumbled inside, squeezing his arm to stem the pulsing blood and he eased in terrible pain to the

floor, back to the wall, staring upward with great unblinking eyes. "Get the fuck outta' here," he snarled.

The guards were gone. Red haze and rushing darkness toyed with his brain. He looked up into a black

face. "Don't fight me," the voice in the black face said from a hundred miles away. "I'm gonna' help you."

Jake nodded and yielded to hands that had fixed many a torn body. He didn't sleep that night. He didn't

sleep for three days and for three nights, and the black man, this Sergeant Jubal Bailey whose name he

didn't even know yet, guarded him, fed him water and soup. By the time Jake lapsed into sleep the

legend was full-blown.

No one ever touched him. Not ever. No one tried. He'd been tested and against all odds, against all

reason, he not only survived his savage welcome, but had whipped his tormentors. The man whose face

had been torn away died and another spoke forever in a wet, lisping drivel because his face was

permanent hamburger. Another was blind in one eye. The last man, the one whose dick he'd de-skinned,

stumbled along the cellblock corridor, screaming, until the guards slapped him with a club on the side of

his head and strapped him onto an iron cot in the infirmary where he slowly regained penile skin but never

his sanity.

On the fifth day he saw the black face clearly. "Who the hell are you?" Jake asked through a throat still

clogged with pain.

"Bailey. Sergeant Jubal Bailey. I'm the head nigger, the head man, the head everything on this cellblock

and I've been feeding you and taking care of you like a little white baby since you got in here. Man, you

look like shit."

Jake blinked. Thoughts whirled through him. Thinking was coming back. Realization; rational thinking.

No shit talk anymore. "You saved my life," he said to Sergeant Jubal Bailey.

"Yeah. By the way, call me Jube. You earned it."

"Earned it?"

"Yeah. The scum here call me Mister Bailey. I am a very large, very mean, very dangerous motherfucker.

You better get up. The warden wants you for a parade in his office."

He stood in manacles between four guards before the unblinking old hollow eyes of Herbert J. Spunt,

longtime warden and shitheel master of Old Millford Prison. Herbert J. Spunt didn't have much of a chin.

His lower lip was almost blue in color and it seemed to flow right down the turkey-like skin of his throat

and bunched up around his Adam's apple. He had wet lips and thin hair and eyes that were cold and

pitiless. "You're a mess," Spunt said. "And you smell. Very badly."

Jake stood before the desk, weaving slightly, missing teeth, his face bruised and his lips hugely scabbed,

his arm a giant throb of pain and his scrotum slowly grinding knives in his

lower belly, but his brain worked and he pushed aside any stupid ego. "Yes, sir," he said and not a word

more. Colorless eyes widened in Spunt's face. No games here today.

"You want the whole story or just the decision, Marden?" Nothing personal. The warden talking to one

more useless piece of human shit. If Spunt got crap he dished out terrible punishment. If he got

cooperation he went easy. Simple rules.

Spunt looked at the lead guard. "In the hole for a month. Bread and water. Get him out of here. Then

send some men in here and fumigate this place." A hand moved limply. "Take him away."

Jake didn't think he'd live out the month. No infirmary. No antibiotics. No decent food. The poison was

already in his arm. By the time the month passed it could rot right down to the bone. He sat in his cocoon

of pain in the dark cell on the cold and unyielding floor. They shoved a tin cup of water and a chunk of

bread through the sliding plate at the bottom of the cell door. Fuck you, Jake said to nobody and

everybody. "Eat the fucking bread," his own voice said aloud to him.

That same night the plate slid back. A muffled voice came through. "You still alive?"

"Yeah." Jake was already a different person. He didn't waste his words anymore.

"There's hot food on the floor. Eat it slowly. There's sulfa powder and penicillin tablets. Take them."

"Who the hell are you?"

He recognized Bailey's voice. "God. I'm God," Bailey said. "Don't forget it. I'm your survival, your

redemption." The metal plate thumped back into place and the voice was gone. In the darkness Jake ate

like an animal with his fingers. He took the antibiotics. He tore open the sulfa powder package with the

teeth still together on one side of his face and by feel sprinkled it on the festering arm wound. ,£j A week

later, for the first time in a week, he neard Bailey's voice again. "You exercising yet?"

"What?"

"Don't go mind-dumb on me, you asshole. Start exercising. You want to live, you exercise. Otherwise the

Hole will beat your white ass." The plate thumped.

He exercised. Slowly, at first, as torn skin readjusted to movement. Knee bends. Just enough room for

pushups, grimacing with the pain, working his arm until it wanted to kill him. He did isometrics, he lashed

his body with deliberate anger, got his adrenalin pumping, wondered who the hell was this nigger and

why he was doing what he did. But he could go crazy thinking like that so he concentrated on exercise

and strengthening his body, and the food and medication were miraculous.

A month later they stared at him in amazement. They'd given him an extra week just for the hell of it and

they expected an emaciated, hobbling prisoner to emerge from the cell. He came out leaner and meaner

then they dreamed possible and he didn't give the guards any shit as they marched him back to Cellblock

Nine and opened the barred door and stood aside for him to walk in. Jubal Bailey met him with a brilliant

smile and offered him a cigar.

"Graduation day," he offered, holding out a light.

"Why are you doing all this?" Jake took a long, heavenly drag. This was unbelievable.

"What I do is my business. From now on, Marden, all you need to know is you watch my back. All the

time. Got it?"

Jake wanted to ask a thousand questions but somehow knew to take it slow. "That's all you want? I'm

your man."

"That's enough." Bailey smiled. "For the moment."

"You gonna' get fucked in the head if I ask you some questions?"

Bailey eased onto his bunk and slipped a flat bottle of whiskey from under his mattress. He took a long

pull and gave the bottle to Jake who took his own shot before returning the liquid gold. Bailey lit a cigar.

He blew out smoke and gestured with the dark tobacco.

"I tell you, it stays with you."

"Yes. You said sergeant. Military?"

"Long time ago. I was a first looie then. Chopper pilot. The sergeant is Florida State Forestry Division.

Right out of the army into the woods. Always wanted to live that way. Man and nature. Forest ranger

work gives you the best of all worlds." Bailey offered a flash of a grin. "Especially if you don't like being

cooped up with people every day." He rolled

10

his eyes and gestured with his head to take in the insanity of where he was compared to how he felt.

Jake picked up on it. "I guess you didn't come here by choice," he said carefully.

Bailey's laugh was more grunt. "Engraved invitation. By the time I got my ranger uniform," he went on,

"the service had changed whole bunches. I lived in the Ocala forest. It's national and state. Whole

goddamned place was like a lemming trek of drug runners. They came in by plane and chopper, on foot

and all kinds of vehicles. Moving coke, mainly. But they also planted grass by the acre. Worst of all they

had a lot of heavy firepower and they never balked at using it. Tough on just one poor old nigger like

me."

"Yeah. Real tough." Jake had the idea it might have been the other way around.

"Some people called me super nigger." Bailey chuckled. "I sort of liked that. I mean, I took this forest

ranger uniform real serious. I knew my shit, too. I had a master's degree in what I was doing. And I was

real content out there in the dark woods. Did some banjo strumming, had my two hunting dogs with me

for company, every now and then a couple of prosties drove into the woods in their rolling pussy wagon

and I got it on with them. A good life. Except for them fucking drugs. It was a snowstorm."

Marden knew the score. A lot of people called Miami by the name of Siberia, the snow was so^facking

high. He listened to Jubal Bailey sigh.

"It came apart when I busted a bunch of kids on a coke run. They weren't playing with little baggies.

Them fuckers had over a million and a half bucks worth of powder with them. I got them at the end of a

twelve-gauge and them dogs of mine and tied them all up and shoved them into the back of a truck and

drove the whole lot to the state office in Ocala. Signed 'em in, got my receipt, and went back to the

woods to watch the big bust story on the tube." He cocked his head at Marden. "Can you guess what

comes next?"

Marden carefully lowered a silvery ash into a tin can. "Uh huh. No news. And that meant bad news."

"You got it. No news at all. I got on the horn and called the Ocala office and they like to blew me away.

Everybody was

free on bond and the desk lieutenant, he's a bro, he sort of hinted the whole thing was being tucked under

a blanket and if I was a smart nigger, like Smokey Bear, I'd forget it ever happened. The next day this

big blue chopper rolls in from Tallahassee and these dudes in pointy shoes and dark suits come out, big

smiles and handshakes all around. I guess you can call this shit sum and substance. One of them nice

white boys was the son of the lieutenant governor. The dudes in the pointy shoes hand me an envelope

and say there's ten grand in unmarked bills in there, and if I take the envelope everything will be dropped

and I'll go on their private honor roll as a trusted friend. Man, the shit was dripping from the trees."

Marden smiled coldly. "You're not in the woods any more. I guess you weren't a very smart nigger."

"Not smart? Hah! Talk about dumb! I got principles! I'm real pissed, man. I busted the nearest guy in the

chops. They'd thought of that. They were counting on it, the motherfuckers. They shot my dogs and shot

me in the knee and before I could get my hands on my own piece they decked me from behind, and

when I was down they stuck a needle in my arm with enough coke to kill a fucking mule. I guess I was an

unconscious sack of shit for a long time. When I came around I wasn't a smart or a mean nigger no more.

I was a drug user and a pusher and a dealer and a very dumb mother of a nigger. Them fuckers burned

my cabin to the ground, dumped all sorts of shit and pills in my truck-"

"And they gave you for a Christmas present?"

"Twelve long ones, my white-skinned asshole buddy. Twelve long ones. I done three. Nine to go for the

full trip, out in less if I'm a good Yassah, Massa nigger, but I can't cut that shit and that's where you come

in."

"I'm all ears."

Jubal Bailey laughed. "You're one lucky motherfucker you still got ears." The laugh fled and Bailey leaned

closer. "Straight out, man?"

"You saved my life, Bailey-"

"Jube to you, turkey."

"It's Jake."

They held eyes for a long moment and all the necessary

meaningful messages went between them. They were tight. They didn't need words to know that.

"All right, Jake. I got a sister, see? Name's Jewel. Pretty little thing. She works in the records office up in

the state capitol. She and I love each other. Only family we got left." Bailey sniffed and grinned. "Except,

of course, now there's you."

Jake waved two hands in the air. "Hallelujah," he said quietly.

"Your family is big shit down Miami way, Jake." Marden nodded.

"And they got all kinds of beagles. Short, tall, fat, skinny, white, black, brown, spic-y'know, legal

beagles."

"Yeah, we got lawyers up the ass." Jake glowered. "Didn't do me much good."

"That's because your old man is a God-fearing dumb Jew son of a bitch. He figured, like the bible says,

you do the crime, you do the time."

"That was Baretta and he wasn't no Hebe."

"So what the fuck's the dif, man? You took the fall because your old man is a righteous son of a bitch

aiM-he figured what was good for Moses is good enough for his kid, and here you are learning how to

be God-fearing. But if he wanted you'd never have seen the inside of this place. Right, man?"

Jake nodded slowly. "If anybody asks I'm probably going to kill that God-loving motherfucker when I

get out of here."

"Can that shit," Bailey protested. "Your pop's a do-gooder. I need a do-gooder who's got money,

contacts, religion, and lawyers. It's simple, Jake. The lieutenant governor whose kid I busted is out of

office. They lost the elections. No one gives a shit any more if I'm in here or out there. That's why I'm

doing the time without ever having done the crime. No one gives a fuck."

"Not true, Jube."

Bailey showed surprise. "How come?"

"This is one dude," Jake tapped his chest, "who has your best interests at heart."

"Then you get the message."

"Uh huh."

"There's hope for the white race yet. You get them to work on my case. New hearing, suppressed

evidence; whatever. It may cost."

"My old man's loaded."

"You work on it that way, I keep your white ass alive and I teach you how to climb to the top of the

heap in here. Deal?" "Deal." Jake lit his cigar again. "Jewel, that's your sister. How'd she figure in all this?"

"I told you. She works in the capitol in state records. Man, she's inside them computers. I know more

about you and your religious freak of a father than you do."

"You're pretty good for a wood-chopping nigger, Jube."

"You ain't bad yourself for a big dumb Jew." Bailey clapped him on the shoulder. "And you're about to

get a lot better. You ready for a walk?"

Jake looked at the barred cell door. It might as well have been frozen shut. But he learned fast. Don't ask

dumbshit questions. These guys have all the answers. "I'm ready," Jake said. Bailey smiled and stabbed a

wall button. Moments later the cell door slid open.

"Neat," Jake said. "Very neat. Must be magic."

They walked out onto the corridor. "I told you, turkey, I run number nine. This whole cellblock. I want

out, I tap the button and I'm out. Or a guard is dead by morning. It pays to advertise."

"You run this whole cellblock?"

"Man, you living in some fucking dream? The guards work here. They don't run the place. Old scumhead

Spunt-the warden?-he don't do shit we don't allow him to do. Start getting smart, Jake."

"Watch me learn, Jube."

The inmates didn't fuck with Jake Marden again. The word flows swiftly in Old Millford, and the word

was out that the big Hebe was crazy and strong as a fucking ox, and he tore off arms and ripped out eyes

and his favorite trick was wearing these steel nails, see, and he could de-skin a man's dick without even

blinking. Jube Bailey did his part, because even the biggest tree can fall when a lot of woodchoppers get

together to cut it down. Bailey passed the word to the Latinos who were all members of the Satans, and

the blacks who ran under the banner of God Sucks, and there were the Eyeties, the Italians, who were

known simply as The Hand, and all sorts of racial and ethnic groups that banded together and regularly

fought and maimed and killed. They were stir-crazy and most had nothing to lose and they were dumb;

for a pack of cigarettes and a nod from a gang leader they'd rip out the belly of their own mother. Not a

man alive could survive in that kind of jungle unless he had plenty of his own cover. Jake Marden was

mean and tough and he was getting better all the time and Jube Bailey and his Cellblock Nine crowd

covered his back all the time. It was simple. "You fuck with Marden, you're dead meat, asshole. It's a

blood chit on which we always pay."

Marden had always had a lot of muscle in his body and between his ears and Jube honed it all nice and

sharp for him. Jake did his next three years boxing, wrestling, working karate and hand-to-hand combat

and some verfrmean niggers taught him how to handle cold steel in ways he'd never dreamed. He did

road work and track and body building until his reflexes were all big cat and his muscle was water

buffalo. He didn't bother getting in touch with that miserable Jew motherfucker who was his father, but he

talked with with Moishe Green, a very sharp lawyer who'd been close with him all the way through high

school and college and turned Green loose on Jube's problem. They were making headway when Jake

finished his three years and Green had been busy on his case as well and they opened the doors and

kissed him goodbye.

He went back to Miami just like it said for him to do in the parole papers. Be good to your web-footed

friends, kiss your parole officer's ass and grease his palm, and keep your indiscretions out of the public

eye. Not too tough to handle. There was enough money in the family till that belonged to him, and his

nasty parent even went along with an extra check to open an electronics shop for Jake to run. It added

up to business smarts. That gave him the job he needed for parole, he was learning a. trade, as his father

spat at him (he still intended to kill the old bastard at the right time), and he was now an ex-con with

respectability dribbling from his ears.

That was all great cover for Jake. He hadn't emerged from

The Rock with any Cinderella crap between his ears. He knew he had to be damned capable at what he

decided would be his completely visible profession. Electronics and computers; those were the tickets.

Not for a nice career and more ass-kissing for the parole people. Screw that; he had that shit under tight

control. He wanted his own money. He wanted a hell of a lot of the long green and it had to be

accessible to him only. You had a professional calling card and a fat bank account and you could do or

buy just about anything. That was how you spelled the word freedom.

Marden Electronics was the perfect cover. He hired a bunch of Cubans who had smarts but the wrong

skin color and citizenship and let them run the repair shop, fixing televisions and radios and computers

and all sorts of electronic junk. That attended to the ledgers to satisfy the State investigators who came

down to make sure he was behaving and to get their monthly envelopes with crisp bills stacked neatly

inside. Jake also set up his office for such meetings so that every payoff and every shakedown was

recorded in stereo sound and taped in beautiful living color. He considered those his bank withdrawal

slips for some uncertain moment in the future.

Then came his real work. "Moishe, you set up the legal structure," he instructed his lawyer. "I want an

outfit that's legal for credit references, credit card investigations, computer uplinks with the whole banking

system, domestic and foreign."

"You taking over the world, Jake?"

"Up yours, holy one. I need a legal guru, not a suspicious saint."

Green held up both hands. "Perish the thought. What else?"

"Everything tied in to computer scan, request, interrogation and retrieval. Give me enough shit to function

as an everyday business. Doesn't matter if it makes money or not, just so long as the stuff is legit and the

books add up for the IRS. Okay?"

"Your poppa would be real proud to know what you're-"

Green found himself looking at a dangerous stranger. "Moishe, I'll say this only once. You open your

fucking mouth to anyone, to anyone, hear me? and I'll tear out your fucking heart."

Jake meant it and Green knew he meant it, so they got along just terrific from that day on. Free of the

complexities of legal coverage, Jake plunged into the meat of what he'd set up so carefully. With a solid

year of intense study he'd become an expert in computer operations and one hell of a hacker. He began

to manipulate computer systems from blind-alley companies (that vanished with the first whisper of

investigation). He shifted credit card accounts and bank accounts through dummy partnerships and

companies and within another two years he had over a million dollars clean in a dozen banks throughout

the world, all of it manipulated from the sealed back room of his Miami repair shop. He had women, a

fatcat parole officer, he was a successful businessman, and he was bored right out of his mind. "

Only one real flash of interest reached^him. A telephone call. A woman; he recognized the voice even

though Jewel didn't give her name. "Call me tonight at twelve sharp. Use a pay phone." She hung up and

at midnight he was at Miami International Airport making the call. "Jube gets out tomorrow," she told him

in a voice that should have been elated but was heavy with worry. "He needs you."

"Can he get to a nearby town? Does he have-?"

"I'm picking him up. We have enough money for a while. Two weeks or so, I have him listed for a job,

but-"

This time he broke in. "Never mind that." He plumbed his thoughts swiftly. "Drive him to Gainesville.

There's a football game tomorrow and the town will be apeshit. They wouldn't notice King Kong if he

showed up in a red suit. Get Jube registered in the Bambi Motel. It's a nothing place on the main drag in

the south end of town. I'll meet him there tomorrow at ten. The whole town will be drunk by then. And

don't worry about jobs or bread."

"I won't. Thanks. Tomorrow night, then." She hung up.

He met them in the motel and embraced Jubal Bailey with more feeling than he'd ever known before.

"Man, just tell me what you need and you got it," Jake said.

"I need a car, clothes, a lot of bread."

"How much?"

"Ten thou, my friend." Jube looked doubtful.

"I brought twenty. Five cash and the rest in traveler's checks. Makes more sense that way. We'll buy a

car for cash in Ocala tomorrow. Highway 200's got a thousand of them. Walk in, pay, drive out."

"Thanks for everything but one, Jake. Stay away from me. You leave here tonight. I don't want any

connection between us. I'll get in touch with you later."

Jake caught the fearful look from Jewel. "Man, what the fuck you got in mind?" he snapped at Bailey.

"He's got bad debts in his mind," Jewel answered for him. "He figures he's got to do payback before he

can live his life again."

Jake swallowed his own protests. "Jewel, he didn't stop and have me fill out any forms when he saved

my ass in Millford. I can't do anything less for him now."

She bit her lip. "I know." She lapsed into silence, but she was one frightened lady. Jake knew the wisdom

of Bailey's moves. He didn't ask questions. He dropped the money and checks on his blood brother,

hugged Jube and kissed Jewel, and went off into the night. He'd just have to wait to see how it all came

down.

He itched from head to foot. Jesus Fucking Khee-Rihst, but he was bored. Sucking tit to electronics

gadgets was still shit for the libido. He craved action. He needed howling down the avenue of life on one

long wheelie of screaming rubber. He went flying again. He dove the reefs of the Bahamas and had

knife-fights with barracudas but that was a lot of crap, fighting some dumb-assed fish with big teeth. He

bought the biggest Harley he could find and rode with a bunch of madmen and that didn't do much good

because whatever it was he was after he wasn't finding himself.

He never got even with that fucking machine that had goaded him into three years in prison. For a while

he hadn't even thought about Lisa. He wasn't aware that the Lisa he had known didn't exist any more.

Three years up and out from a luscious teenager is everything. What he remembered was the wild and

overwhelming success, the incredible orgasms. When he found her he was stunned. In one single

swoop the period of three years struck him with almost physical force. Time reared up before Jake and

roared.

Lisa had aged twenty years. The girl had vanished. The appeal he once saw had become ragged disease.

She'd been buried under an avalanche of drugs she'd poured into her system. She hooked with any male

animal who'd pay a few bucks for the goodies that transported her, however briefly, to never-never land.

And she had a disease new and strange to Jake, but mention of the word AIDS brought instant fear to

anyone within physical reach of the girl. He saw her once, he wouldn't let her touch him, and to keep her

from ever getting again into his life, because she would pursue him for money, he arranged for her to have

all the heroin she wanted. She was dead in four days. End of game.

Well, Miami, fortunately for the itch he couldn't scratch, was really the capital of the Caribbean. Piss on

Havana. Miami was the action. He started listening to certain people who'd been making overtures to him

for aKpng time. Especially Pedro Garcia who welcomed him to his penthouse overlooking Miami harbor.

"Hey, man, this is real stuff, yloiow? Real business," Garcia said with expansive waves of pure Havana

tobacco. "I no say it easy but it ees big." Garcia wore a thousand dollar suit in an apartment with air

conditioning on so high the marble statues had icicles on their balls, and still the Cuban sweated all the

time. He was hot to trot.

"Big, huh? You know how to spell big?" Jake asked.

"Sure! You think maybe I some kind of spic asshole?" Garcia grinned and scattered ashes as he gestured

wildly as he talked. "Big? That is spelled money. Dineros, pesos, escudas, francs, rubles, marks, the

green, bread, all them things, no? Big is also she is spelled power. I tell you, my friend, we are talking no

little games here. It is for keeps. Governments, lots of people, whole countries." Garcia snapped a swift

sharp look at Marden and went on immediately. "I have a customer for you. Someone who needs your

special talents."

"I never offered myself as a mercenary," Marden said with a shrug. "And as far as the money is

concerned-"

"You mean a man with a gun?" Garcia looked almost in credulous. "Pah! We have all the crazies and the

heroes we need who shoot guns. A dimes a dozens. No, no, compadre, these people desire your

services as a genius of the electronics, of the computer, a man who also has little respect for the law . . ."

It was the damnedest arrangement Jake ever imagined. He didn't operate in Honduras or Nicaragua or

Mexico or any one place. He had the whole banana including Panama and El Salvador and the top

stretch of South America through Ecuador and Colombia, Peru and most of Venezuela. Through it all he

worked for only one government, a single invisible government of men and women beyond visible

politics. An invisible network that hired Jake Marden to slip within their web of power and intrigue and

manipulation.

"One year. One year and one million dollars. That is what you will earn and it is after all taxes. For you to

keep. We will attend to all costs. You will have all the help you need. All the people you want. We

provide you with all the electronics you require. Radar, computers, satellite uplinks for real-time

communications anywhere in the world. Weapons. Missiles of almost any land." The man he'd just met

smiled comfortably.

"What kind? From where?"

Alvarez smiled. That was the only name Jake had. Just Alvarez. Jake couldn't lock in his background. It

didn't matter but it gnawed at him. They'd had their first meeting at a fine hotel in a sleazy bar in Quito,

Ecuador. Maybe it was a fine bar in a sleazy hotel. It didn't matter nearly two miles up on the great

plateau. The first meeting was all gin and bullshit. Their second meeting was across the middle of a huge

abandoned airfield once used by old Nazis who rumbled through South America in ancient German

bombers before time and weariness buried men and machines alike.

Now Alvarez held his smile. "Kind? Where?" He laughed softly with subdued power. Like a humming

diesel engine. "All kinds. From everywhere. Russian, American, English, French, Chinese, Italian,

Brazilian. They are all available. That, my friend, is one of our problems. Much of what we deal with

does not mix well. Operational manuals do not translate easily with the so many technical terms. It is too

easy to make mistakes. What is called transliteration problems, I think. I know little of such matters. But

you are not the fish from out of the water. We need to mix all of these goods. Missiles, computers;

everything. We will help you in every way. You will set up electronic command posts. Link them all by

satellite. Do you understand?"

Jake stood in the middle of the field lost in time and lit a cigar. He turned his head and body slowly until

he caught the glint of reflected metal in the heavy brush a mile away. "You do not trust me," he said at

last.

Alvarez chuckled. "Very good. Yes, they are picking up every word from that distance. And neither of us

is wired. But it is me they watch, not you. Pleasefcontinue with what you were going to say."

"All right." Jake made his last self-question on the spot. Screw the games, play it absolutely straight. "I

was way ahead of you."

"I am fascinated." Alvarez smiled and waved at men a mile away he could not see.

"You want uplink comsat ties so that you can direct missiles and aircraft from any command center you

choose. Distance from command to execute won't matter."

"And-"

"To anticipate your next question, and for the benefit of our unseen audience, yes, I can do it. The

question is not can I do it, but how quickly. And," he added suddenly, "it is going to cost."

Martin Caidin - Prison Ship

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