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Dark Caribbean
by

Rick Magers

CHAPTER 1—The story begins with Ray and Jesse out to catch a thief. During the long run north along the pre-dawn shoreline of Key Largo, Ray’s memory goes back to St. Croix. During this period he was working for his father, who sold his traps and moved from Key Largo to the Virgin Islands to begin trapping. He thought there would be no thieves. It's here that Ray meets the only woman he will ever love but fate intervenes. His mind is brought back by Jesse’s voice coming from the CB speaker. The chase begins, but it appears the thief will once again get away. A small error made by the thief changes everything.

CHAPTER 2—1962 Ray meets Aretha in Bebop Charlie’s bar on St. Croix. She’s a tiny island girl nicknamed Little Bug by Bangor while still a schoolgirl. Ray and Rita, as she prefers, fall in love. While working with his father, Ray finds it difficult to find time to be with her. Thieves come in a large ocean racing boat from Puerto Rico to pull Ray and his father’s traps. Unknown to anyone, Bangor is involved with a wealthy drug smuggler who has homes on St. Croix, Bogotá, San Juan, and Miami. Bangor is his airplane pilot and yacht captain, and is allowed the use of both when his boss is not there. Bangor and Ray devise a plot to eliminate the Puerto Rican thieves.

CHAPTER 3—Bangor’s friends provide the location of the town where the thief boat is docked, and they pull it off perfectly. Bangor takes his boss’s yacht close to the marina entrance and Ray uses a rubber dinghy powered by a Seagull motor to sneak in and board the boat. After the thieves are taken care of, Ray finds time to spend with Rita and eventually hands her an engagement ring. The wedding engagement party for Ray and Rita is a success and is still talked about to this day. After the reception, Bangor begins teaching Ray to fly, but fate intervenes again. Bol and Jennifer return to Key Largo and give their son Ray the boat and traps.

CHAPTER 4—Ray uses every ounce of energy he has on re-establishing his trapping business in Key Largo. In the Pilot House Bar, owner Moon Mullins introduces Ray to Roland and Becky Cameron. Roland had just lost his crawfishing boat to the bank in Riviera Beach. Becky was raised in a swordfish longline family on Martha’s Vineyard, so they get along great. Before leaving, it’s settled that Roland will be Bol’s First Mate, and Becky will build traps for Bol.

CHAPTER 5—After losing his boat, Roland and his long-time mate, Lester Mutt are allowed to use an old Whaler with an outboard engine to pull his traps one last time to get an accurate count. They spot a small dive boat near his line and soon determine that a thief is emptying their traps. A west wind is blowing hard, so Ray decides to use it to get rid of a couple of thieves. He and Les then head to Marathon in the Keys to operate a crawfishing boat for an ex-employer. Becky hates being left behind and settles the bank problem quickly, then heads to Marathon. Becky is building traps when she meets Mongo. He arrives on a Harley but his size makes it look like a scooter. When she spots the tattoos covering much of his face and neck, and the long chinaman ponytail protruding from his bald head, she’s tempted to run, but... Les meets Rose Manicossa and immediately hates him because of a slur he made toward his ‘Lynie.’ Les later beats him badly, but for another reason—killing of his pal.

CHAPTER 6—This begins with a true story of a shooting on Cay Sal Bank, a few miles from Cuba, but still international water. Les accepts the job of mate on another boat while Roland and Becky are on vacation in Jamaica. His captain, Billy Brown, was known to crowd other crawfishermen. When Rose and Doc show up on Cay Sal aboard the Rose Garden, all hell breaks loose. While vacationing in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Roland and Becky meet Cheeta, the bartender in the Treehouse Bar, and soon learns that Cheeta is part of a marijuana smuggling operation...On the next trip to the lobster bank behind Cuba, Roland brings out a Thompson Sub Machine Gun that he bought. It proves to be a persuasive tool when dealing with pirates.

CHAPTER 7—After a successful trip to Cochinos, another trip is planned. A shoreline trapper named Chili-Mac temporarily takes the Captain’s place on Sea Shadow. When the small Marathon fleet arrives on Cochinos Bank, the weather begins turning bad. As the boats all monitor the Marine weather bands, Becky gets an up to date forecast as she listens to country music station WQAM in Miami. Her love of country music is why several fishermen are alive today. The storm turned into a hurricane, but because of Becky, all of the boats but Sea Shadow had time to put out extra anchors and ride it out. Everyone hopes Chili-Mac and his crew are okay. Once Roland and Becky return to Marathon, they board their new airplane and head to Montego Bay for some R & R. While there, Ernie Pehoff approaches them with a problem. He needs a co-pilot for a drug run. Roland eventually tells Spank that he and Becky are tired of the offshore fishing and thieves, and are going to Martha’s Vineyard where she grew up.

CHAPTER 8—Roland loves the Vineyard and accepts a job with Captain Sean O’Malley who operates a small longline swordfish boat. The work suits Roland and he gets along great with all but the Portuguese First Mate. The brute’s drunken attempt to knife Roland when they’re on the deck alone in the middle of the night fails and...When Roland must beat ice from the rigging before leaving port, he begins planning to return to warm weather fishing. They buy an offshore boat and locate dockage in Riviera Beach. They're soon carrying traps to the shallow bank near Walker’s Cay, in the North Bahamas. Les shows up and moves aboard to resume his duties as First Mate. Raymond James buys an offshore boat and the two men team up. The island natives soon learn that they can make good money stealing lobsters from the two men’s traps. When Roland and Les deliver the natives a message by ‘chain mail’ from their airplane, the natives abruptly stop stealing their lobsters. Everything goes smoothly for a while, but soon the shooting will resume.

CHAPTER 9—Ray sends word for his crew to get to THUNDERHEAD and prepare her to leave within the hour, and then he visits a gun shop. When at sea he unwrapped four new AR-15s and the crew realizes that this trip will be different. When it’s obvious that the Miami River boats have set a few traps among Ray and Roland’s 3000, they approach the rusty old boats with a warning. Roland fires a burst from the Thompson as Ray empties a 30 round clip from one of the new AR-15s along the waterline. “Load your few traps and leave. You won’t get another warning.” Antonio Pelez and his Nassau partner, Broffus Pinder show up with a small load of traps. They’re smart and keep away from Roland and Raymond when they spot their boats. Lester tells Roland that he’s missing quite a few new traps. Ray and Roland begin checking closely with their LORAN-C and quickly determine that many of their traps are also missing.

CHAPTER 10—Becky spots a small town nestled amongst the Everglade’s near the bay. Roland takes the plane down to low altitude and circles Everglade’s City. They spot traps everywhere, so they land and spend a couple of days. They return to tell Ray, “We’ve found paradise right over on the west coast near Naples.” Within a month they have all of their traps on shore and are beginning the migration west. They are soon settled in as stone crab trappers and are accepted by the locals. Most have followed their battles by reading the newspaper and watching the television reports of their war against pirates. It actually could have been the paradise we had searched so long for, except for one small fact. It was the drug import hub of South Florida. During the next few years, many tons of marijuana is smuggled into the surrounding swamps. The small town becomes like a lawless town of the Wild West, and there’s damn near as much shooting. Some of the scenes are almost slapstick comedy, but that’s the way we were—carefree, cow town rich, drunker’n hell, and didn’t givashit about anything but the next load and next round of drinks. Soon Ray and all of my pals were sent to prison. My wife and I climbed into our plane and headed for South America.

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