He pulled a small panel away from the area under the steering wheel and reached up inside, felt around, found a bundle of wires. He pulled them loose from their harness and stretched them out about halfway to the floorboard, where he could just make out their colors in the dim glow of the dome light. He found the two he wanted, yanked them from their connections, and used his fingernails to strip back the insulation a bit. Would this do the trick? It seemed right, but he couldn't remember for sure. Maybe it would fry the car’s electrical system entirely, and put them right back where they’d been a few minutes earlier—stuck here with no transportation, in the middle of a huge storm, and with their loot getting farther and farther away by the second. But they didn’t have any other options. He was just about to touch the wires together when a car horn sounded from the other end of the parking lot.
He sat up, somehow expecting to see a police cruiser. The rainfall was too heavy to make it out, though. He brushed his fingertips on his gun under his jacket and waited to see.
First pale headlights, then the vehicle itself emerged from the curtain of rain. It wasn’t the cops. It was a plain blue Chrysler. And it drove straight over to him.
Salsa and Connie jogged up. Salsa gave Harper a puzzled look. “Expecting someone?” he asked.
As the Chrysler pulled to a stop next to them, Harper peered through the pelting, now almost horizontal downpour. The driver was a man he didn’t recognize. But in the passenger seat sat a tall blonde. Salsa saw her.
“Lois!”
Salsa came truly alive for the first time since the boat landing, where Harper had broken the news to him about his girlfriend’s no-show. He grabbed her as she was getting out of the car and hugged her tight. She appeared a little wide-eyed at this at first, but then hugged him back. Connie came over and gave her a hug, too.
Salsa was asking for explanations, but Harper knew there was no time for them. He didn’t know who the guy at the wheel was, but he did know that, one way or another, they now had a car.
“Get in, get in, all of you,” the man called to them. “It’s horrible out there!”
One hand near his Colt, Harper got into the passenger seat, while Salsa followed the two ladies into the back.
“Drive,” Harper told the man.
The guy frowned, seeming puzzled. “You don’t want to know who I am, or—?”
“Of course I do,” Harper said, keeping his hand where it was. “But we’re in a hurry right now. I need you to get on highway 41 and drive west.” He paused just a moment, then added, “Or I can.”
By this point it had to be quite clear to the guy what Harper was saying, and what he was threatening.
“Of course,” the man said, warily. He put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot as quickly as the storm allowed.
Harper hadn’t wanted the women to come along, but—where else could they have gone? He couldn’t strand them in the middle of a remote parking lot during a hurricane. He supposed he could have left them in the car he’d broken into; at least that would have provided them some cover. But something was telling Harper he needed to keep everyone together for now. And, in any case, there hadn’t been time to discuss it. So he hadn’t objected. Neither had Salsa, who appeared so grateful to have found Lois alive that Harper doubted he wanted to part with her now.
Once they’d made the turn onto US 41 and had at Harper’s urging achieved a speed that was only slightly insane during a hurricane, Harper allowed himself to move his hand away from the Colt. He eyed the driver, curious about him and where Lois had found him, and why he didn’t recognize him.
Lois spoke up then, introducing them all. Harper and Salsa were quite taken aback to learn the new guy, one Ricky Garcia, was a former cop from Vegas—and one they’d encountered before. Harper moved his hand right back to where it had been a moment earlier.
Salsa, of course, exhibited a different reaction.
“Why not?” he exclaimed almost hysterically, shaking his head in amazement. “If Rooker is still around, why not everybody from back then? It’s like a class reunion or something.”
Lois quickly explained the deal Garcia had made with her and, by extension, with all of them. She emphasized the part where Garcia would be content with just capturing Rooker.
Harper took this in and reluctantly nodded. He didn’t like working with a lawman—even a former one. Not to mention a guy who admittedly had been investigating and trailing them. But, when he considered all the factors, Harper found he couldn’t fault Lois. She’d done the best she could, probably the best that could’ve been done, and in an impressive fashion. And if she hadn’t made the deal she had, she might now be in jail and this man Garcia waiting for them back home, with half the law enforcement in Dade County alongside him. Or worse.
And, in any case, all deals became moot once the bullets started flying—and Harper strongly suspected they would be flying, before this night from hell was over.
So Harper relaxed a bit and focused his mind on the confrontation he intended to have very soon. Rooker was the real danger, the real objective. This Garcia man could be handled later. Right now, they had to catch up to Rooker.
Garcia was giving it his all, hunched forward in his seat, his eyes locked on the road ahead, pushing the Chrysler faster and faster along the ultra-straight highway. The car rocked side-to-side from the force of the winds buffeting it, occasionally venturing frighteningly close to the swamp that lay just beyond either shoulder, but Harper figured Rooker was dealing with far worse in that big, lumbering Army surplus vehicle. No, it shouldn’t be long…
Onward they pushed, the wind rocking them, the rain blasting them… And then...
Red lights! Just ahead, appearing out of nowhere, exploding through the sheets of rain.
Garcia slammed on the Chrysler’s brakes.
The car slid wildly, spinning around. The women screamed. Salsa shouted a panoply of pejoratives.
Harper could see it then: It was the Army truck. And it, too, was skidding to a halt just ahead. Its brake lights were what they had seen.
For an excruciating moment that felt like an eternity, both vehicles slid, both utterly out of the control of their drivers. And then, mercifully, miraculously, both of them came to a stop, both intact, neither crashing.
The Chrysler had ended its long spin facing back in the direction it had come, and in the left lane. Garcia all-but-collapsed over the wheel, breathing heavily. He fumbled with the gear shift and put the car in park while he tried to recover. Salsa and the ladies in the back were all moaning. Harper had both hands out against the dashboard to brace himself, and was shaking his head to clear it.
A gun fired, from Harper’s left, from beyond where Garcia sat. A second later it fired again, deafening.
The driver’s side window exploded.
37
Another bullet blasted through the Chrysler’s front side window opening, no longer encumbered by glass.
Garcia jerked involuntarily.
Another shot. Now the back window exploded. Lois, in the center of the back seat, screamed.
“Get down!” Harper barked to everyone in the back seat. “Go out the other side!”
He spared only an instant to look back, and saw that Salsa had been sitting on that side and had apparently been hit. Garcia was still hunched over the steering wheel, not moving. Then Harper had the passenger-side door open and was out, rolling on the soaked asphalt, his Colt Super .38 Auto ready. He popped up behind the Chrysler and saw that the Army truck had pulled up alongside the car, facing in the opposite direction. Rooker was leaning out, gun in hand, about to fire again.
Harper leveled his Colt and fired two quick shots.
A roar of pain from the cab of the truck. The arm with the gun was gone now, and the truck’s engine roared to life. It pulled forward, as if trying to escape the bite of a smaller animal that was proving to be unexpectedly vicious.
Keeping his head down, Harper ran to his left around the far side
of the car, seeing as he went that Garcia still hadn’t moved. Well, he couldn’t help but think, that problem has been eliminated. It wasn’t the answer he necessarily would have preferred, but it was certainly final.
Around the front of the Chrysler he went, bringing the pistol up. The truck was still moving, though not very quickly now. He fired a single shot, conscious to conserve his bullets. He suspected he’d yet need them.
His shot must have hit Rooker or at least panicked him, because with a jolt the truck sped up and then careened to the right, off the pavement and across the narrow shoulder. It didn’t slow down there; the front wheels dropped off into a lower area Harper hadn’t been able to make out in the rain, tilting the truck sharply forward. The back wheels came off the ground momentarily and it slid forward, until the entire length of the truck was beyond the shoulder and aiming down some kind of angled embankment.
Now Harper slowed himself, moving toward the truck much more carefully, because Rooker was likely holed up in the cab, wounded and angry. He needed to approach this situation very delicately.
Through the increasingly cold rain he crept, coming up on the truck from behind. As he drew up to it, he could see from the inside light that the door was standing open. Holding his gun before him with both hands, he moved a few steps down the muddy slope, to the point that he could see all the way across the front seat.
The cab was empty. Rooker was gone.
“Dammit,” he muttered.
The truck, he could see now, was indeed on the slope of a sharp embankment leading down to a swampy area that the storm was only swelling with more water by the moment. As he stared at it, the truck slid another half a foot and stopped. He didn’t like the look of that, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Certainly it wouldn’t be able to back itself out under its own power. It would take an industrial-strength wrecker to move it at all.
He turned back to the Chrysler, keeping low just in case Rooker was lurking nearby, waiting for a clean shot. He saw that the others had gotten back inside. “How’s Salsa?” he called back.
“He’s been hit,” Lois shouted, pain evident in her voice. “He’s alive, but... he needs medical attention, John. But I think I’ve got the bleeding stopped, for the most part.”
Harper cursed. “Everyone else okay?”
“Yes,” came the voice of Connie. “About as well as could be expected.”
“Alright,” Harper said. “You all sit tight. We’ll take care of him as soon as we can. But I’ve got a job that has to be done. I’ll try to make it quick.”
“Can you drive the truck out?” Lois asked. “If we go ahead?”
“No,” Harper said. “It’s stuck. Just move the car off the highway and wait here. I’ll be right back.”
He expected Lois to object, on behalf of Salsa, but she didn’t. He supposed she’d been around them long enough by now to understand how these things worked.
He studied the truck for another moment, looking at the open door and the big, broad footprints leading from it. They were washing away even now, but he could tell they led off into the woods to his left.
He moved stealthily in that direction, following the remnants of the tracks.
No sooner had he passed the outer line of trees than headlights rippled through the rain from somewhere in the direction of Miami.
There was no time to see what it could be. If it was the Law, so be it. It wasn’t as if Salsa could have gotten away from them now, and the women wouldn’t abandon him. Let the police make of the situation what they would.
In any case, Harper had zero intention of allowing Brett Rooker to escape him again, no matter what.
Head down, gun up, Harper moved silently into the woods.
38
Don Garro had woken up from his unexpected nap to find himself sprawled on the floor, in the back area behind the main hall of Thurston Lansdale’s mansion. His jaw was sore; he worked it carefully as he stood and looked around. Someone had ambushed him. They had come out of nowhere and clipped him.
He realized then that his SIG was gone. Had they taken it? No—there it was, the barrel protruding out from beneath a big China cabinet. He retrieved it and stood there a second, thinking.
There were more robbers than he’d first realized. That much was clear. And apparently some of them were working back here in the rear of the mansion, while the others were taking wallets and purses in the main hall.
So—what were they stealing back here?
He surveyed the area and didn’t spot anything obvious that was missing.
Then he noticed the line of mud tracks leading from the back doors to the basement stairs. He frowned. The basement? What was down there that was valuable? Nothing that he knew of.
He looked back at the muddy footprints. Different sizes, so at least two different men involved. Lots of them, too. Whatever they were stealing, the robbers had needed quite a few trips back and forth to carry it out. And—out to where? It looked like they had been taking whatever it was out the back of the mansion. To the shore? To a boat?
Probably.
But—why would they go to the trouble of bringing a boat over to Ruby Island to steal old furniture Lansdale stored in the basement?
On a hunch, Garro ran down the stairs and into the long, narrow room beneath the house. The lights were still on but shadows and spider webs gave the entire area a spooky appearance. He looked around, puzzled. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing, except…
He noticed it then. A portion of one wall had been ripped away. A crowbar lay on a table that had been dragged over. The surface of the table was very scuffed, with streaks of gray paint on it that matched the color of the wall.
Why were burglars ripping bricks out of the basement wall? Did they think there was a vault behind it, or a hidden room of some kind?
And—where were the bricks that had been taken out? It looked as if they had been stacked on the table, but now they were gone entirely.
The burglars had taken them? The bricks?
None of it made any sense to Garro. He stood there a minute, absently rubbing his sore jaw, thinking.
Then he noticed one of the bricks still in the wall had been partially dislodged. It was sticking out at an angle, and the crowbar must have scraped it, because part of the gray paint that covered it was scratched away. Garro moved closer to it, peering at it in the dim light. He blinked. It glinted.
It couldn’t be, could it?
Yes. Knowing Lansdale, yes, it could.
A second later he was sprinting up the stairs, through the rear doors and out the back, into the rain. Down the hillside he raced, coming to a halt just before the shore.
A boat had been there, definitely. Even with the rain washing everything clean, he could see the indentations in the shore. Some kind of pontoon thing, clearly. But it was gone now.
He put a hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes, and looked out into the bay.
There. A houseboat, big and dark green. It had a big head start on him, but it wasn’t to the other side of the bay yet.
Garro turned and ran for the boat house a little further around the curve of the island.
Garro lost more ground to the houseboat while fetching his own craft, a little fishing boat about twelve feet long, and getting it out into the water and its engine started up. He lost track of his quarry entirely for a while in the storm, once he got out to sea. At one point he asked himself, What the hell am I doing out here? There’s a hurricane blowing through, and I’m in a little boat, right in the middle of it. Am I insane? But the thought of what just might be aboard the houseboat he was chasing drove him on, overcoming all objections.
Around the halfway point, he narrowly avoided the notice of a police boat. Not that he had anything to hide, but the delay in dealing with them would surely allow his quarry to escape. Fortunately, the wind and rain and darkness provided plenty of cover, and he scooted right past. The storm was helping his efforts as much as it was hurting.
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He headed for the coast, pushing his little Evinrude engine to the max, taking the same course he’d last seen the houseboat taking. Reaching the shore, he patrolled up and down until he spotted it. Big and green—yes, it was hard to miss, even in the rain.
He pulled in alongside it and jumped out, looking around. Just up from the shore lay a parking lot. He could make out brake lights from a car pulling out and onto the highway at the far end. It looked to be turning onto US 41, heading west. From this distance and in the storm, he wasn’t certain, but he thought it was a blue sedan of some kind. Was that them? Was the car filled with disguised gold bricks? How hadn’t he known about them?
And, for that matter, what had Lansdale been doing with them in the first place?
Filled with conflicting emotions, Garro quickly checked the inside of the houseboat. No one was aboard it, and there were no bricks—though he could see scuff marks where they might have been piled earlier.
A moment later he made out two low shapes lying on the pavement. He ran over to them and saw that they were bodies. They’d been shot at close range. Most of the blood had been washed away, but some was still visible. One of the men he didn’t recognize, but the other—a big guy—he’d seen before, somewhere.
What to do now? He didn’t have a car. And the lot was deserted.
No—not entirely deserted. There—on the far side—sat a white Lincoln.
He ran over to it, and saw that the driver’s side front door was open. Glass littered the ground beside it and he realized the window had been smashed. Beginning to suspect what had happened here, he leaned in and, sure enough, the wires beneath the steering wheel were exposed. Someone had hotwired it, or been about to hotwire it. He didn’t know exactly what had happened here and didn’t much care. All he knew was, he was mobile again.
Climbing in, he pulled the door closed, bent down, selected the correct wires, and touched them together. The big V-8 roared to life.
Miami Heist Page 16
