These are not your mother’s and father’s bad guys!  There has been an upgrade to the evil that stalks the Trail-verse…  The kind that has a payroll, offers benefits and a retirement plan!  The kind that invents its own technology… like the over-the-water conveyances seen below… what the hell are they?  No doubt the bad guys are aware that they are down three in the first inning of play and are plenty mad about it!!

Like angry hornets that have had their nest tampered with, out they come… How prophetic is it that Bill Ellis suggested that Mark “get a fast boat…”

Probably a good thing that the divers couldn’t talk anyway since they probably only spoke Español… and among all of Mark’s considerable talents, pretty sure speaking Spanish isn’t one of them…  and where is the big boat that made Ken all wide-eyed??

But let’s be really clear, here… no one attacked you, Mark.  They might have been lurking menacingly, but I believe that you are the aggressor here…  but no one will ever know anything but your version of the truth…  What is it we say?  History is written by the victors?

I guess that’s what happens when you leave no witnesses… you can make up your own version of the story and there’s no one to challenge it… Mark, let’s be clear… no one attacked you…  these could have been three people out for a leisurely dive and you dispatched each of them, with extreme prejudice…

And Ken, let’s be honest about why you want out of there…  the humidity is really getting to your hair!

The propulsion device is already winging its way out of the frame… it would come straight out at the audience and cause everyone to flinch!

With all three supposed henchmen dispatched, Mark will now go to the surface and find that his boat has also winged its way out of the picture…  hope you have saved a little energy for the swim home!!

OK, so it took me a while to catch on to Mark’s plan…

“Very clever, Mr. Trail, very clever… (he says in his best Dr. Evil voice…)  But you haven’t finished me off yet!  I still have the high ground aboard my luxury yacht!”

Poor Schlub… did not realize that signing up for evil was not going to pay- In fact it was going to cut short what might have been a productive life!  So many lessons we can learn in the Trailverse- Keep your nose clean boys and girls!  Hard work and dedication to good lead down the real path of righteousness and success.  That, and marrying well…

Well, here we are at the Humpback Plane…  KONK, KLUNK…  Oh…  of course!  It’s the home of the spam-colored Moray Eel!  Knock, knock!  “Who’s there?”  Moray!  “Moray who??”  Moray’s gonna get you!  That’s who!

OK, that was terrible.

Love how Mark is using his luck and special dominion over the animal kingdom to save his ass!  Remember how the Moray was two sets of jaws? An inner one to pull prey into it’s mouth- that’s as gross as the alien in Alien…

OK I get the reference now…  a little thin, but we’ll go with it…  causes the mind to race, though…  what could this old wreck of a plane have to offer Mark in his time of need?  And did the Author have all this in mind before we started down this path?  Impressive, since I have always supposed that these story arcs were left to chance…  At least it feels that way sometimes.  But on second thought, I do recall the Indian Artifacts story that introduced, in a very random way, Maple Syrup… only to have that be what cracked to case!

Still, we wonder what is going on above the surface…  last we knew, Ol’ Mississippi Ken was face to face with a Luxury Yacht…

…and is gaining.  But never fear, boys and girls, Nature always finds a way.  Never fails the Trails.  Because they are on the side of GOOD, as opposed to EVIL.

So as Mark prepares to wrangle the whales and have them do his bidding, he’s about to make Mr. “I’m cool because I have the propulsion device” look a little foolish…

…harpoon guns don’t kill people… People kill people. Or is it cut air hoses and pierced air tanks that kill people?  I am so confused.  So Mark is now avoiding the third henchman, who is dutifully standing (floating?) guard outside the sunken freighter…  a fellow who apparently has very limited peripheral vision- especially with his underwater breathing apparatus on… and I wonder how he rates- he gets to use the one propulsion unit while the other guys, now dead, had to swim there under their own power…  makes me wonder, too, whether the two ‘bad guys’ are still inside the ship, since there was no apparent attempt to climb to the surface and breathe the clean fresh Gulf air.

So Mark, just keep swimming, real quite-like and maybe you can get away…

Yes. Compressed air can have an acceleration effect on an-otherwise un-tethered body, I suppose, but to send a full grown man “spinning wildly out of control?”  OK, we’ll go with that…  Count him as dead.  No way he makes it out of the freighter and to the surface without blacking out…

So is that two down and one to go?  And we still don’t know who they are and what they are up to!  No chance to assess guilt or innocence, even in the Trailian sense of the words… Wrong place, wrong time, I guess…

Or does an arrow fly in the water??  Or is it a harpoon? Or an ‘arpoon?

The sound made by said ‘arpoon as it hits the breathing tank of supposed villain?  TOONK… we certainly can’t have it impaling the poor fellow…  no blood here kids!  Just massively inconveniencing and frustrating the bad guys- that’s what Mark has always been good at…  at least they know how to breathe…

There has been nary a bubble emanating from our hero’s regulator for quite a few days now…  that’s quite a trick, Mark…

And as the door handle goes from 6 o’clock to 9 o’clock and the door begins to open, we are all holding our breath… As Mark balances the spear on his thumb (advanced technique??) and takes careful aim, this intruder must know he’s in the bulls-eye…

Yes!  They must be here to retrieve the nuclear material… there could be no other possible explanation…  therefore they all must… die…

Meanwhile, what’s happening with Ken on board el barco de cigarrillos?  Has he been taken out?  Has he taken a powder?  Is Mark all alone??

Taking an informal poll of the dozen or so people reading this:  does your inner monologue ever include the word “clearly?”

Well, depending on how fast this poor schlub can mke it out of the boat and to the surface, he may be as good as dead anyway…  and rest assured Mark’s advantage of surprise is no longer his when this guy zooms past his fellow henchmen on his way to the surface…

So with a SNIP and a THUD, Mark has one less foe to worry about, and perhaps one more weapon in his arsenal… that snappy air powered harpoon launcher, locked and loaded.  The only bad thing about this scene is that there’s no chance for monologues or stilted dialogue…

Is it just me? Or do we see our hero’s bare arm in the second panel?  Hiding behind the aft bulkhead door, he is ready to ambush the other diver… which again he assumes to be his enemy…  heck could be another recreational diver, right?  I mean, what evidence does Mark have that this guy or his diving buddies are up to anything?  Sure, a harpoon grazed him, but that’s easily explainable…  In a world where hand signals are your only form of communication, misunderstandings must abound!

Sure is an awful lot of ambient light inside the ship, too…

…and none come out…  they don’t know who they are dealing with do they??  And I am not sure what, if any, element of surprise is on Mark’s side, since they just saw him go in the boat…  didn’t they?  This is really disturbing. People have died in the Trailverse, usually at the hands of some animal- be it an Angry Elk or a Pissed-off Rhino, but Mark has only ever punched people which has generally not led to death…

But even if Mark takes care of the two,  that leaves the one standing (floating?) guard outside the freighter…

I had to study this for a minute and look back…  Mark is not using the Commando Cody full body suit that Leslie Joyce provided- his legs are bare!  And have been for the last few “days” he has been under water… so Armed with the harpoon that narrowly missed him, his big plan is to commit murder- on people he doesn’t even know…  wow.  Vigilantism at its best, without regard for due-process or anything resembling an extended thought-process…

What a cold-hearted SOB you’ve become, Mark… poke, poke, stab, stab, and then what?  The Evil Yacht lies above, menacing your (fast) rental boat and its second mate… and I am guessing they might be somewhat put out once they realize that you have done away with their compliment of henchmen…

Unless that was a random spear shot that got launched your way in the previous installment…  And second, don’t breathe!  Your bubble “Trail” will be a dead give-away!

Mark I think it’s OK for you to talk to Ken… The bad guys down there wouldn’t be able to hear you on your own intercom…  and are they wearing radioactive-proof suits?  At least that would give an indication of their knowledge and intentions…

Leave it to Mark Trail to stumble onto an international terrorist ring bent on making dirty bombs with the Cobalt-60!  A well funded international terrorist ring judging by the yacht they are tooling around in…

So with the ever-popular “What Th-?!” coming from the Trail-brain, we are left to wonder until Monday who this is and what they are doing…  They are certainly not friendlies and are somehow hooked up with that thug in the dive-shop who clearly dimed on them… Who can you trust in this world?  Apparently no one…

And Action!  Cue Yacht!  Cue Tablet Alarm!  Cue Big Eyes!  Well, I was almost going to sleep there for a minute… Mark is at the Freighter and it’s glowing!  But what is eliciting the “OH NO” from Ken?  I think we all expected the freighter to be full of Cobalt-60…  is the Yacht going to ram the rental?  Is Woods and Wildlife magazine going to have to pony up for another sunken craft?

I love how Ken is pointing at the big boat… and talking out load… as if he has to show himself what he’s talking about…  I wonder if he ever refers to himself in the third person…  “Mississippi Ken’s a little scared now…”