M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone Page 7

  "One, two, three!" Hog puffed, and raised his hands.

  Stone went through the hole. He had no idea whether there were dogs on the grounds or not, and it was his job as leader to find out. He hadn't had time to reconnoiter, and he wouldn't have been able to see through the thick stone walls of the estate anyway.

  He found himself rolling through dirt and flowers. It was no wonder the iron cover had been so heavy. Someone, at some time in the past, had planted a flower bed over it, bringing in topsoil for the plants to grow in. At least Stone was sure they didn't have to worry that anyone was guarding it.

  Rising to his knees, a silenced .22 automatic drawn, he surveyed what he could see of the grounds.

  Some of the area was planted in trees and flowers, but the land around the house was conspicuously bare. Outdoor lighting illuminated the entire circumference of the house.

  If you could call it a house. Villa was more like it, a Spanish villa, the kind of place that in a town smaller than Miami might have been turned into a historical site or an art museum.

  From where he was kneeling among the flattened flowers, Stone could see the front, one side, and the back of the house, which was around seventy-five yards away.

  There was a pool in back, and most of the back and side seemed to be accessible only by crossing a stone patio. Patios often meant pressure-plate alarms, and Stone hoped that the plates, if anywhere, were indeed in the patio. He didn't want them to be in the yard.

  So far, no dogs.

  "Hey, Sarge, what the hell is goin' on up there?" It was Hog's voice, coming from the drain. "I'm ready to get out of this damn sewer."

  "Storm drain," clipped British tones corrected.

  "Whatever. How about it?"

  "All right. But no lights." Stone crept over to the hole and reached in, taking the flashlights that were handed to him. Then he reached back and took Loughlin's hand, helping as Hog hoisted him up.

  When Loughlin was out, they both extended their arms to help Hog.

  When Hog emerged, he took a deep breath. "About time. What d'you think, Sarge?"

  "I haven't seen any dogs, but that doesn't mean they aren't here. And I haven't seen any men. Keep the .22s ready just in case."

  Each man had a silenced .22 automatic for dealing with dogs as noiselessly as possible.

  "We can cut through those trees over there and get a little closer to the house, but there'll still be a wide open space to cross."

  "We'll become invisible," Loughlin observed wryly.

  "Right. We're going in through the second floor. Everybody has a security alarm on the first floor, but who expects anybody to come in through the second floor?"

  "Mafia bosses?" Hog asked.

  "Let's hope not. You can see how well the whole thing is illuminated, but there's at least a little bit of a shadow on that back corner, right near that decorative balcony. That's where we go in."

  "Good idea," Hog rasped. "Except here come the fuckin' dogs!"

  Chapter Eight

  Williams was hellaciously pissed when they finally located the wrecked police car. "You fucking lost them!" he snarled. "By God, you'll be sorry you did. You'll be lucky if you can get a job rousting queers in Key West after this."

  One of the cops, a young man with a sandy mustache, protested, "It wasn't our fault. Their driver was a demon! Shit, nobody can drive like that."

  Williams's rage turned from hot to cold, and his voice leveled out. "Someone did. And it wasn't you. Think about it when you begin your new career."

  He stalked away from the wreck. The car's bar lights were still flashing, sending red and blue beams reflecting off the walls and pavement of the alley.

  Bass was waiting by an agency car for Williams. He had been talking on the radio to his office, and he could hardly wait to report to Williams. Bass had never actually seen anyone have a stroke before, and he thought it was at least a fifty-fifty chance that Williams would have one when he heard the news.

  "Assholes," Williams muttered as he walked up to Bass. "Sometimes I think the whole world is turning into assholes."

  And you're the living proof, Bass wanted to say. He didn't, though, because he generally liked his job and didn't want to spend the rest of his life rousting queers in Key West.

  Instead he said, "It may be worse than you think."

  "Don't tell me Stone has killed the fucking governor," Williams fumed.

  "It's not that bad. But it seems that there's been a shoot-out somewhere outside town. Cubans and Colombians are dead all over the place. All the earmarks of a real drug war, they say."

  Bass watched Williams's face closely. It was amazing how red the man could turn. Or maybe it was the light from the cop car hitting his face at the right moment.

  Williams ground his teeth. "Shit!"

  "I guess that about sums it up, all right," Bass said.

  Flood lamps mounted on police vehicles threw the clearing into surreal daylight. There were a dozen or more local and fed vehicles. Shortwave radio bands crackled in the air as just-arrived authorities moved about the floodlit wilderness area, which was littered with sprawled corpses.

  Allbright and Rosales surveyed the carnage.

  "How many this time?" Allbright asked.

  "Maybe as many as thirty," Rosales said. "Colombians and Cubans, caught in the middle of a drug deal."

  "You sure?"

  "There's a lot of money scattered around, and a lot of dope. Someone was in a real hurry here."

  "It doesn't make sense," Allbnght said, half to himself. "Why would anyone kill all these people, probably at considerable risk, and then leave all the money and the dope?" He thought about it. "How much dope?"

  Rosales shrugged in the darkness. "Street value? In the millions, if that means anything."

  "Just lying around? It means that this is probably even crazier than I thought it was."

  "Maybe they shot each other."

  "No way. The angles are all wrong. The fire was coming in from the side, against both forces here."

  "We found a couple of dead Cubanos out there." Rosales gestured to the side from which the firing had come.

  "I can see how they might want to double-cross the Colombians, but why would they shoot their own men?"

  "Another double-cross?"

  "And leave the dope and the money? No way."

  Rosales sighed. "I suspect you are right. But what did happen?"

  Allbright didn't answer.

  "You don't know, and neither do I. Let's go and think about it. Maybe we'll come up with an idea."

  Allbright shook his head. "Don't count on it."

  "Oh, but I do. I am an optimist."

  "Me too." Allbright clapped his friend on the shoulder.

  "But I still wouldn't count on it."

  Enrique Feliz was forty years old, with a face like a bare-knuckled fighter's fist, pitted and scarred by the battles it had known. He sat at an old wooden desk covered with papers and faced the men standing across from him.

  "The money is gone?"

  One of the men was taller than the other; blood dripped slowly from his sleeve and pooled on the wooden floor. "Yes. All of it."

  The shorter man only nodded.

  "And you are alive to tell me this?" Feliz's tone was soft, almost soothing.

  This time, neither man spoke.

  Feliz put his hands on the papers in front of him and twined the fingers together. The fingers were thick and fat. "So. The money is gone. I accept that. And the product?"

  "It is gone too," the tall man said. The blood continued to drip, but very slowly.

  "The money is gone. The product is gone. But at least two miserable lives are saved. At least you managed to escape to bring me this wonderful news." Feliz's eyes were like two black marbles, and as cold as outer space.

  The tall man looked as if he wanted to say something. His throat worked, but he was unable to get the words out.

  "There is still one thing," Feliz said. His voice was still
soft, level, calm. "No doubt it is the reason for your return. You have come back to tell me who did this thing."

  "We . . . do not know." The tall man's voice was so low that it could hardly be heard. He felt terribly guilty, since his short friend had begged him to point the car for the north and keep going as far as they could go until the gas ran out. But he had not listened. He had felt an obligation to inform Enrique Feliz of what had happened.

  "You do not know," Feliz said. "You do not know. Someone kills my best men, steals my money and my product, and you do not know who did it. You do not know." He forced the last words out low and hard.

  "I . . . I am not sure the money and the product were stolen," the tall man said hesitantly.

  "What?"

  "I . . . think it is possible that the money and the product were not stolen."

  Feliz stood up. He was a huge man, nearly seven feet tall, and had once been of an athletic build. Years of criminal activity had not allowed him to retain his physique in top shape, however, and most of what had once been muscle had now turned to fat. Nevertheless, he was an imposing specimen. To the two men in front of him, he was especially frightening, because they knew that he had the power of life and death over them.

  "Suppose you tell me," Feliz grated, "exactly what you are sure of. No more fairy tales. Only tell me the certainties."

  The tall man swallowed. "After the attack began, we returned fire. We managed to . . . escape . . . only when it was hopeless for us to go on with the fight. The fight was over."

  Feliz glared at him. "The fight is never over, if there is one man left alive."

  The tall man obviously wanted to disagree, but he did not dare. "As you say. But the firing had stopped, or so it seemed to Adolpho and me." He looked at the shorter man, who nodded in agreement. "It appeared that our attackers were moving out. And no one came for the money or the product. We managed to get away only shortly before the first of the police arrived. I believe that everything must have been there still when they got to the place."

  Feliz's eyes were narrowed to slits. "Perhaps you have brought me some useful information after all. Perhaps it is well that you returned here to tell me of this. I must think about it now." He waved a hand in dismissal. "You may go."

  The tall man and his shorter friend turned and walked from the room. Their legs would barely hold them up, and the tall one had almost forgotten about the wound that still dripped an occasional drop of blood.

  Both of them were thanking God under their breaths for their lives.

  Neither had expected to leave the room alive. . . .

  There were six dogs, two for each man.

  Dobermans. Their vocal chords removed, they were silent, swift, and deadly, their eyes intent and shiny.

  "Only six of them. No guns," Stone ordered. The animals were innocent of any wrongdoing, and although the innocent were often killed in war, Stone did not believe in killing when it was not necessary. His team could handle six dogs without weapons.

  He hoped.

  There was no more time to wonder about it. The dogs were on them.

  They were well trained, and rather than bunching up, two of them went for each of the men.

  Hog moved with a speed that no one would have expected, considering his size. Probably even the dogs were surprised.

  He rose straight up, catching two dogs in mid-leap, smashing one in the side of the head with his hamlike fist, removing his other hand from in front of a slavering mouth and grabbing the dog by the throat.

  Loughlin fed his .22 to the first dog that leaped for him, and with a high, spinning kick nailed the second in the side, knocking all the air from its lungs.

  The animals leaped with their forepaws extended. Stone reached for them, grabbed the feet, did a backward roll, and using the dogs' own momentum, heaved them into the stone wall that was ten yards away. Both of them struck the wall and lay still.

  Hog looked at the dog that had attacked Loughlin, the one with a .22 automatic jammed halfway down its throat. "The sarge said not to use the guns."

  "Bloody sorry about that," Loughlin apologized. "It seemed quite the thing to do at the time."

  The dog lay on the ground, choking and trying to dislodge the weapon.

  "I'll take care of it," Stone told them. He reached into his fatigues and came out with a hypo kit. He quickly walked around to each of the animals, and after checking the heartbeats to make sure that they were strong gave each dog a shot.

  When the animal with the gun in its mouth quieted, Stone removed the weapon. "They have enough dope in them to keep them down for an hour. Let's hope their trainer doesn't check on them before then."

  He returned the kit to his fatigues. "Let's see about the house."

  They cut through the trees that they had seen earlier, shadows among the darkness.

  At the edge of the trees, Stone signaled them to halt. They knelt in the blackness and looked toward the house.

  What they saw cheered them up quite a bit. Most, if not all, of Don Vito's security force seemed to be in one room, drinking and watching television. All were highly visible in the well-lighted room, and Stone could see them laughing, eating sandwiches, and pouring drinks from what appeared to be a bourbon bottle.

  Stone thought that he might have been right. After a few years of relative peace and quiet, the years since Enrique Feliz had wrested control of the drug trade from them, the old bosses had grown complacent. And if they had not, their Security forces had. When no attacks come, it isn't easy to remain alert, on edge.

  "I wonder what they're watchin'?" Hog whispered.

  "MTV," Loughlin suggested.

  "Probably some dirty movie on cable," Hog returned.

  Stone silenced them. "There's still that open ground to cross before we can get to that little bit of shadow on the side of the house. We can't count on it that no one will look out that window."

  The expanse of grass in front of them glowed greenly in the floodlights that surrounded the house. It wasn't as bright as day, but there were no shadows at all.

  "Probably one reason they picked that room," Hog whispered. "That big window gives them a good view of this part of the yard."

  Loughlin nodded, though Hog couldn't see him. "But who's watching the back of the house?"

  "They may all be gathered here," Stone said. "It doesn't matter, anyway. We won't be going to the back." He paused. "Ready?"

  "Ready," Hog and Loughlin answered.

  "Let's go."

  They started across the lawn in a low crouch, moving deliberately but quickly. Loughlin and Stone had almost made it to the side, out of the range of the vision of the men in the room, when they heard a dull thud behind them.

  They looked back.

  Hog was sprawled in the grass.

  Stone touched Loughlin's arm, and they went on. If Hog was seen, it was better that no one else be seen with him. They reached the corner of the house. Still in the light, they were at least out of sight of the men in the room.

  Hog lay still, waiting to see if there was any reaction to his fall. Though his bulk was clearly outlined on the lawn, he knew that his camos would blend in somewhat. Motion would only give him away more quickly.

  None of them could hear anything from the room. The window glass was thick. Hog didn't even turn his head to look in that direction.

  Loughlin and Stone drew weapons from holsters, the .45 for Loughlin, the Beretta for Stone. Stone had wanted in to see the don, and he had wanted in quietly. If anyone saw Hog, the quiet would end.

  Hog lay without moving for a full five minutes. He began to itch in inconvenient places; an ant crawled across his hand.

  Finally, he drew himself up to his knees, then got swiftly into a running crouch and moved out.

  "Fuckin' sprinkler head," he whispered hoarsely when he reached Stone. "I thought it rained all the time here. What does this bastard need with a sprinkler system?"

  "Emergencies," Loughlin answered.

  "Fuc
k emergencies." Then Hog thought about it. "I guess this is kind of an emergency, though. That damn sprinkler did a hell of a lot better job than those high-priced goons in there."

  "Right," Stone said curtly, cutting him off. "Give me the grapple."

  Loughlin unfolded the rubber-covered hooks of the collapsible grapple he had been carrying attached to coils of nylon rope that were looped over his shoulder. The rope had been dyed black.

  Stone took the grapple and tossed it over the balcony railing. He pulled back gently on the rope, and the hooks grasped the rail.

  There had been little noise, no more than a softball might make if it had been thrown gently onto the balcony. Nevertheless, the three men waited for a minute, pressed against the side of the house. Though there was a small bit of shadow, they all felt exposed.

  When there was no investigation of the sound, Stone got ready to ascend the rope. "I'll go up first. That balcony is purely decorative, and there's not room for more than one of us at a time. That looks like a pair of French doors up there. I'll open them, and then you can come on up."

  "If you don't set off any alarms," Hog reminded him.

  "I don't think there'll be any alarms."

  "Right. Nobody sets alarms on the second floor. You said that."

  "Now we'll find out if I'm right." Stone grasped the rope, braced a foot on the wall, and started up.

  If he had felt exposed on the ground, he felt doubly exposed here, like a fly on a piece of white paper. Still, he didn't hurry. Each move was careful and deliberate. There was no time for a slip or a fall. Either one could prove fatal.

  He reached the balcony and pulled himself over the rail, crouching there for a minute before checking the doors. Then he looked through the glass panes.

  The doors apparently opened onto an unused bedroom. Stone could see a bed, a dresser, and two chairs, or rather he could see their dim outlines.

  There was no sign of an alarm.

  No tapes, no wires, no infrared beams, no pressure plates. At least, not as far as Stone could tell.

  He reached for the door handle and jiggled it. The door was locked, but Stone had expected that. Even if there was no alarm system on the second floor, everyone would take the elementary precaution of locking any door that led to the outside.