M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone Page 16

  A trapdoor to the roof had opened. Hog turned to watch it.

  For a full minute, nothing moved. Someone was below, waiting for a telltale noise or motion to let him know if anyone was waiting above.

  Hog watched patiently.

  Suddenly a man catapulted through the opening and rolled across the roof, cradling an Uzi in his arms.

  Hog opened fire at the movement, bullets from his Model 10 chopping across the roof and sending chunks of it high into the air, but the man had been too fast and had guessed correctly, rolling to Hog's left and avoiding the shots.

  He came to his feet behind a vent and got off a quick burst at Hog, who dodged to avoid it.

  The bastard had him at a disadvantage. Hog was a long way from cover, and the shooter was too near the chopper. Hog didn't want to shoot his own transportation. Besides, the army wouldn't like it.

  The roof was flat, covered with tar and gravel. Hog grabbed up a handful of the small rocks and tossed them to his left.

  The man blasted at them, but he didn't uncover.

  At the first sound of his gun, Hog moved, the faint scraping of his feet on the gravel hidden by the noise.

  The man must have sensed something because he whirled around, but it was too late for him.

  Hog triggered the Ingram, and the bullets jerked the man like a puppet without strings, his arms and legs dancing loosely on his body and his Uzi skittering across the roof.

  Hog moved back toward the edge of the roof. Just as he got there he heard a scratching at his back. He twisted around and saw nothing.

  His eyes searched the roof.

  Still nothing.

  Then something moved.

  It was a gigantic palmetto bug—a roach, as Hog had called them in East Texas. It looked at least three inches long as it crawled rapidly over the gravel.

  Hog drew his .357 and took aim.

  The bug probably never heard the shot that pulverized his chitinous body.

  "Fuckin' roach," Hog said. He hated roaches.

  Loughlin moved efficiently through the building, planting his plastic explosive where he thought it would be effective.

  Hog had already done a damn fine job of demolition on the place. There were holes in the walls, and small fires burned here and there. But Stone wanted to level it, utterly destroy it, and that was Loughlin's job.

  As he put each bit of explosive into place, he molded it around an electronically activated detonator. When they left, he would set off the charges and blow the lab—and whoever was left in it—to kingdom come.

  Stone saw Feliz go out through the hole, but he didn't risk a shot. Feliz was too well covered, and Stone didn't want to warn him that there was somebody gaining on him.

  Instead, he followed.

  When he put his head through the wall, a bullet socked into the concrete blocks above him and showered him with dust. Feliz's man with the pistol had seen him.

  "Kill the sonofabitch," Feliz snarled. He didn't stop moving. He was looking for a way back to his airboat.

  His hip was still hurting, so he walked with a limp, but he was able to move fairly swiftly. Fear is a great motivator.

  The unarmed man with him was even more frightened, and he was the one who saw the gap in the fence, probably made by one of Hog's shells when he was strafing the grounds. The links were ripped apart for three feet or so off the ground.

  The man began pulling on one side of the rip, separating the links even farther.

  "C'mon, c'mon," Feliz urged him, looking back over his shoulder for any sign of the man who was pursuing him.

  Stone didn't see how he was going to catch Feliz. The man with the pistol had him pinned down. He looked out and another bullet ricocheted off the concrete.

  Stone cursed, not because he had nearly been hit, but because he had seen Feliz squeezing through the opening in the fence.

  The man who was firing at Stone was behind a small tree, with a trunk no thicker than his body. Stone could think of only one way to get him.

  He jumped through the hole, rolled, came up firing the Beretta.

  Nine-mm death slammed into the tree trunk, startling the man behind it.

  Instinctively he reacted, leaning to the side to fire back.

  The Beretta's bullets hammered him backward. He went limp and died.

  Stone was on his feet and after Feliz again. He got to the fence and went through, knowing that the Cuban would head for the airboats. He hoped Tim Congrady would stay out of the way. Feliz would kill him otherwise.

  Stone had no idea what had happened to the pilot of the Cuban boats, though they had been tied up at the edge of the island. He had probably hidden himself at the first sound of Hog's chopper, or maybe he was one of the men who had been waiting outside the fence.

  Feliz circled around to get to the trail from the front of the lab to the boats. Stone was too far behind to shoot in the dense growth. There was too much likelihood that something would throw the bullet off the track.

  Stone could hear the shooting at the lab, but it was only sporadic. The Cubans and the Colombians had no doubt wiped each other out, with plenty of help from Loughlin and Hog. It was all cleanup now.

  He wondered how Wofford was doing, or if he was even alive. More than ever he wanted to get his hands on Feliz.

  Wofford was still alive, but not by much. There was massive internal trauma, and he had bled freely.

  He thought briefly of his wife, but mostly he thought of the major without a name. He had never hurt as much as he hurt now, except in the camp. When he had been beaten and kicked past the point of exhaustion for those who were beating him, he had felt as if his organs were on fire and as if they might simply swell to colossal size and burst through his skin.

  He felt that way now.

  His fantasy in the camp had been to awaken one day and find the cage bars gone and himself with a machine gun in his hands. He had visualized himself stepping from the cage like some ancient god of doom, striding through the camp dealing out death to all the grinning little men who had hurt him and destroyed his friends.

  He looked down at the Ingram Model 10 that he held now, and then he looked back at the lab grounds. The heat, the humidity, the lush vegetation, even the calling of some bird far off in the swamp—all these things reminded him of the camp.

  And suddenly he was there again, just as he had been in the drug-induced dreams at Crazy Charlie's house. Except that this time he had the gun in his hands, the way he had always thought it should be.

  Wofford stood slowly up in the doorway. He felt strong, refreshed. They could beat him and kick him. They could hang Creel's rotting corpse on his cage, but they couldn't break him.

  They should have known that. They could never break him.

  He looked out from the shadows where he stood. They were out there, hiding from him, but suddenly it was as if he could see them all, as if the trees and grass clumps behind which they were hiding were invisible and they were all exposed to his gaze.

  He walked out from the doorway.

  Bullets flew past him, striking the building. They churned up the ground in front of him and to the sides.

  He kept on going.

  "Who the fuck is that?" Hog said to no one in particular as he watched from the roof. "He must be crazy."

  Wofford wasn't crazy, just possessed by something that somehow seemed to lend him invulnerability. Not a bullet touched him.

  Wherever he walked, he left death behind.

  Three men behind a large stump fired at him. He turned calmly to face them, and the Ingram ripped them to shreds. It was as steady in his hands as a cap pistol.

  He saw movement to his left, turned without haste, and blasted two more men, their bodies flying backward until they fell sprawling.

  Hog watched in awe from the roof. He had never seen anything like it, and he knew that he never would again.

  Wofford went on, his head swiveling from side to side as he searched the ground. At every look, a man die
d, his bullets tumbling them like straw men.

  And then suddenly it was over.

  There was no more firing, because there was no one left to fire. Wofford had cleared the grounds. Occasionally a body would twitch, a last muscular spasm, but aside from that nothing moved.

  Wofford knew that he had done his job, and done it well. Now he had to free the others, release them from the bamboo cages where they had been whipped and starved and humiliated.

  He turned back. He could hear them cheering, rattling the bars of the cages, calling out his name. He could see the smiles that threatened to stretch right off their faces.

  Even Creel.

  Creel hadn't died after all! He was there with the others, cheering him on, wishing him well!

  And then somehow Creel became his brother, and his brother became Kathi. "Kathi," Wofford said. He dropped the Ingram and reached out to her.

  She came into his arms, and he held her close.

  Then he fell forward and died.

  There was no one at the boats when Feliz got there. Congrady had wisely taken to the cover of the swamps when the shooting had begun. He was willing to haul passengers to do whatever it was they wanted to do. His cousin at Fort Bragg had assured him it was all right. But he didn't have to take any part in it himself.

  The Cubans' pilot was hidden nearby, but neither was aware of the other. They were interested only in staying under cover and out of the way.

  Feliz was upset. "Shit! I don't even know how to start this thing. Can you do it?"

  "I can try," the man with him said. He had found a way through the fence, and maybe he could do this, too. "It looks simple."

  It was, in fact, and he got the engine started immediately. Feliz climbed in and they took off.

  Stone arrived in time to get off a few futile shots, but they were already out of range. Stone got in one of the other boats and went after them.

  As the pursuer, Stone had one advantage. The propeller and cage were so large that Feliz couldn't turn and shoot at him. He would have chopped his own propeller to pieces. Stone, on the other hand, was under no such restriction. He could fire at the fleeing boat, and he did.

  His shooting didn't seem to have much effect, however. It was very difficult to shoot with one hand and steer the boat with the other.

  Besides, the boats were skimming along over the water and through the grass at such high speeds that it was almost as if they were not touching the surface. It was like flying two or three inches off the ground, which for all Stone knew might actually have been the case.

  They were going in more or less a straight line, and Stone knew that the men in the other boat were afraid of getting lost. In fact, he had no idea that he could find his own way back to the island, which was by now completely cut off from sight by meadows of saw grass and thousands of trees.

  As he zipped through a soggy mass of weeds and grass, Stone realized that he had another advantage. The other boat was the trailblazer. He could follow their track with confidence, but they had to watch closely or they might run into a submerged log that was close enough to the surface to cause damage to their boat. Or they might run into a rare piece of solid ground.

  Stone did not bother to keep track of the time. Time didn't matter. He just hoped that he had as much fuel as the boat in front. He would chase them until his fuel ran out, and if that happened he would swim. He would never let them get away.

  It happened quickly, so quickly that Stone barely had time to throttle back to avoid the same fate.

  Feliz's boat had run aground.

  The water in front had not looked any different, but the grasses had been matted together more strongly, or maybe a gator nest had piled up enough mud to solidify a barrier.

  For whatever reason, the airboat, instead of going over, stopped abruptly and suddenly. Feliz and his pilot had not fastened their seat belts, and they flew over the prow of the boat, Feliz still clinging to the Uzi as he sailed through the air.

  Stone slowed his own boat and went forward carefully, fighting the prop wash from the other craft. He put into the hummock of land and got out.

  He couldn't see the other two men, which wasn't surprising. The "ground" was far from solid. Maybe someday, say in a hundred years or so, it would be a real island, with trees growing on it and sure footing. Now, it was a precarious mass of vegetation bound stoutly together with roots and vines but likely at any moment to give way and leave one treading water rather than walking.

  Some of the weeds were quite tall, and the men could be behind any of them. Or they could have sunk into the water and drowned. Stone had no way of knowing, but whatever had happened, they were keeping absolutely quiet.

  Stone could hear insects singing, but nothing else. He could hear the insects only because they were close to his ears. In the background, the engine of Feliz's boat still ran on, pushing the craft only slightly deeper into the heaving vegetation.

  Stone walked carefully but awkwardly. It was like walking on springs. Sometimes his feet would sink into the growth for only a few inches. Sometimes, they went much deeper.

  He stopped and looked around. The two men had to have hidden themselves. It was not possible that they had been thrown this far.

  There was a rustling to his left. Feliz's henchman.

  Stone turned, snapping off a shot with the Beretta and hitting the Cuban dead in the center of the chest.

  Blood pouring from his mouth, the Cuban slammed into Stone and they both fell backward into a soft spot. They broke through the grassy cover and fell through into the water.

  The Cuban was dead, but he had managed to get his hands around Stone as they fell, clasping him in the proverbial death grip. They sank through the brown water together.

  Stone had taken a shallow breath before they plunged in, but he knew he had to get free of the Cuban's grip quickly. He didn't want to die down there while Feliz was still free up on top.

  The water was not deep, no more than five or six feet. Stone and the dead man sank into the soft mud, Stone on the bottom. He released his grip on the Beretta, sorry to see it go. He reached behind his back to try to break the Cuban's grip.

  The Cuban stared at him with dead, bulging eyes as Stone worked on prying his hands apart. It wasn't going to be easy. Stone's lungs began to burn. The pressure within his chest was becoming unbearable.

  He tried not to give in to the temptation to breathe. He knew the water would simply fill his lungs and he would drown.

  At last he felt the dead man's fingers loosen. He jerked the arms apart and stood up.

  His head hit the heavy growth above. They had drifted slightly past the hole where they broke through.

  There was a slight air pocket, and Stone turned his face upward, breathing deeply. After several breaths, he began looking for the hole.

  He located it and pulled himself out of the water, his fatigues clinging clammily to him. He ducked back as the Uzi hacked away at the weeds behind him. He wasn't worried. A few feet of water was enough of a barrier to stop nearly any bullet. However, he didn't want Feliz to get away.

  He looked out again.

  The Uzi chattered.

  Stone took note of the direction and submerged, swimming under the thick matting above him. It didn't work. He had no way to judge where Feliz might be standing. The underside of the growth bulged in various places, all or none of which might have been caused by Feliz's weight.

  Stone went back to the hole. He wondered how many clips Feliz had. Probably only one. In fact . . .

  Stone came out of the hole.

  There were no shots. Feliz was out of ammo. He hadn't taken any extra clips.

  He was desperately jiggling and joggling over the moving island, trying to get to the safety of the airboat.

  Stone went after him.

  Thanks to Feliz's bad leg and the extremely uncertain footing, it was a fairly equal race. Stone caught up to him ten feet from the boat and made a flying tackle. This time, they didn't break the s
urface.

  Feliz was trapped and furious. He still held the useless machine pistol, and he twisted around, beating Stone with it. "You bastard! Let me go, you Anglo bastard!"

  The barrel of the Uzi cut his scalp, but Stone hung on. Feliz clubbed at him again and again, screaming all the while. "Let go! You Anglo pig! Let me go."

  With a particularly vicious swing, Feliz clipped Stone on the side of the jaw, rocking his head and snapping his teeth together.

  Stone let him go.

  Feliz wriggled out from under the dazed Stone, flinging the gun into the water and crawling for the airboat. Reaching it, he pulled himself up by the prow and stepped on board.

  Stone got up, shook his head, and started after Feliz, who was by now at the controls. The engine was still running, and he figured out how to manipulate the rudder.

  Stone clambered in just as Feliz backed away from the hummock and headed for the open water. Steadying himself with one hand on the seats, Stone walked back to Feliz, who seemed only then to notice him for the first time.

  Trying to cling to the rudder with one hand, Feliz swung wildly at Stone, connecting only with his shoulder.

  Stone put one granite fist into the side of Feliz's head, knocking him aside and causing him to lose his hold on the steering handle. The boat pitched wildly from side to side, sending Stone to the floor.

  Feliz got up and grabbed at the handle.

  Stone got to his feet and hit him again.

  Again the boat veered sharply from side to side. Stone braced himself this time and got hold of the handle.

  "You wanna kill us, is that it?" Feliz yelled. "Well, keep on trying!" He got up and flung himself at Stone.

  The boat sped along out of control as the two men grappled. Feliz had the strength of desperation, and he forced Stone back toward the wire cage that contained the whirling propeller.

  "I'll just squeeze a little of you through there and see what we can chop off," the Cuban panted. He held both of Stone's wrists in his hands as he pressed him backward.

  Stone's muscles were rippling with effort. One of Feliz's hands was weaker than the other. It was the one Crazy Charlie had bitten, and its grip could not hold Stone. Slowly, slowly, he pushed it down.