He tore out of the parking lot, heading in the direction the blue car had been going a few minutes earlier.
Garro fought to keep the Lincoln on the road as he pushed it to about as fast a speed as he felt he could manage in these abysmal conditions. Swampland raced by on both sides of the highway, but there wasn’t another vehicle in sight—which made sense to him, given it was late at night during a massive storm.
On he raced, both hands clutching the wheel, leaning forward, water spraying in on him through the hole where the left window had once been. He had the windshield wipers set to maximum as he peered through the downpour, terrified he would come up on another vehicle with no chance to stop. At least he didn’t have to worry about any blind curves. Highway 41, crossing the state just north of the Everglades, was about as straight a piece of road as there was in the country.
And then he roared past a car that was stopped in the eastbound lane. In the flash of his headlights he was just able to tell that it had been a blue sedan. A man was running from it, heading into the woods.
Garro managed to bring the Lincoln to a stop some distance down the highway and jumped out, his SIG in hand. He’d seen where the man had run, and figured he could take an angle this way and cut him off.
Water splashed under his shoes as he crossed the shoulder and ran onto the grass. It was a morass, mud everywhere. Cursing, he aimed himself in the direction of the guy with the gun. No sooner had he penetrated the woods, though, than he began to question his decision to do this. Maybe he should have checked the car first. But then the guy might have gotten away. Garro had lots of questions, and he was determined to get some answers.
So he pushed on into the woods, and it grew darker and darker around him, the rain pelting down relentlessly, the wind howling.
Where was he now? That fallen tree— hadn’t he already passed it once? Did he have any idea how to get back to the highway?
Still the rain fell, growing colder. Darkness surrounded him, enveloped him. Still he wandered about, afraid to call out, to make himself a target of the other man—the other man with the gun.
Where had that guy been running to? What was he doing? There was nothing here but wilderness. What was Garro doing chasing him now?
After an indeterminate time of absolute misery, wandering lost in the woods, questioning most of his choices to date, Garro heard the gunshots.
He ran towards them.
39
The tracks had vanished once Harper had gotten a very short distance into the woods, and now he could rely only on his senses and his animal cunning. He knew Rooker was here somewhere, and not too far away. The big man had been wounded—badly, he guessed—or else he would have stayed at the truck and fought it out. The fact that he’d fled, apparently blindly, into the woods around the swamp only proved to Harper that he was hurt, unhinged and half-wild now.
After what felt like hours of pursuit, but he knew was probably about ten minutes, Harper stumbled upon his quarry. As he passed through a tight stand of trees, a bullet whizzed past his left eye. He was down and behind the next tree before he had fully registered hearing that first shot. Then came another, gouging a chunk out of the tree.
Harper kept low and moved, silent in the storm, to his right. A dense bush of some kind provided cover and he leaned around its far side, looking into the clearing beyond.
There was Rooker, leaning against a tree, gun in hand, blood streaming from at least two bullet holes in his torso. His breathing was ragged, his expression a frightening mixture of pain and rage.
“I know you’re there, Harper,” he shouted, looking about twenty feet to Harper’s left. “I’m going to kill you!”
Harper couldn’t tell if the grotesque gurgling that surrounded Rooker’s words came from the rain, internal bleeding, or both. But the man didn’t sound healthy at all.
“Come on out, Harper! Come and face me!”
Harper continued to watch and bide his time, trying to judge the big man’s condition as well as his remaining potential for deadly force. On the one hand, Harper knew he could just wait there and allow Rooker’s wounds to catch up with him, as they surely would, sooner or later. But then again, the big man had survived all that had happened to him in Vegas. He had the constitution, as well as the size, of a bull elephant. Was Harper sure these wounds would prove any more fatal to him?
And there was also Salsa to think about. He had to wrap this up and get Salsa to a doctor, as soon as possible.
And of course there was the gold, still on the truck. Harper hadn’t liked how it had been sliding down, down that embankment toward the swamp.
It was as if Rooker read his mind. “I don’t even care about the gold now, Harper. You hear me? I just want you. I want you dead!”
Rooker’s ravings were decreasing in volume, as if the spring inside him were winding down, ever so slowly. But still he shouted.
“And once you’re dead, I’m going back and finishing off your friends. And I’ll save that little brunette for last. For special treatment.”
Harper shrugged to himself. That was enough. Time to end it.
“You hear me, Harper?” Rooker shouted, finding a last store of energy somewhere. “This isn’t over! I’m not done yet! Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Harper said as he stepped out into the clearing and shot Rooker in the head.
But that didn’t kill him either.
40
Don Garro ran almost blindly through the underbrush, aiming in the direction of the gunshots. Tree limbs and briars lashed at him viciously, slicing his face and hands, and his shoes felt like he was carrying about a gallon of water in each, but he didn’t slow his pace.
He burst out into a clearing just in time for a man—a massive mountain of a man, roaring in pain or fury, his forehead gashed open and blood splashing everywhere—to barge directly into him.
Garro brought his gun around, but he was too slow. They both went down, the big man crashing on top of him. The wind went out of him as the massive weight pressed down, and Garro felt his SIG fall from his deadened fingers. He blinked his eyes to clear them momentarily of rain and blood and saw the face of the giant looming over him. A bullet had torn a grisly furrow along the right side of his forehead and the skin was laid back top and bottom. More blood spilled down, splattering into Garro’s eyes. He tried to shout, to scream, but he couldn’t breathe, and besides, the sounds would be swallowed up instantly by the storm. Not that there was anyone else around to hear.
The big man held Garro down with his left hand, easily, and with his right he brought up a pistol. He aimed it at Garro’s face.
Well, this is it, he thought. I don’t know who this monster is, but he’s clearly out of his mind with pain and on his last legs—and apparently determined to take me out before he goes.
Garro flinched as a gun discharged above him.
+ + +
Dead weight. The dead weight of the huge man fell upon him and held him down. For a few seconds, Garro went from realizing he himself hadn’t been shot—the big man had instead, apparently—to fearing he would now suffocate.
Then the weight was moved off of him, a little bit at a time, and he could breathe again. He gasped in the air, nearly choking on the rain that was falling into his mouth as well. He struggled to roll over on his side, coughing and hacking, and now there was only air going in and out. The world stopped spinning quite so much and he began to recover.
“Are you going to live?”
He looked up and saw the man he’d originally been chasing, standing over him and over the body of the monster, gazing down impassively. He held a smoking Colt Automatic in his hand, but it wasn’t exactly pointed at Garro. Not exactly.
“I... think so,” he managed. Then, “Did you—?”
“Shot him. Yes.”
Garro nodded. “Thank you. Who was he?”
The man shook his head. “A ghost. From the past.”
Garro took this in. “Well. He cert
ainly is now, anyway.”
The man looked at him for another long moment, then began to walk away.
“Wait—hold on,” Garro called after him. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” the man replied. “You were on that island. You’re the security guy. You know.”
Garro blinked. “Of course. I recognize you now. You came out to the island several times before. During the bridge tournaments.”
The man stood there, looking at him, a blank look on his face. The Colt in his hand seemed very large and threatening now.
“What I meant to say,” Garro backtracked quickly, “was that I don’t remember ever seeing you before, and I doubt I ever will again.”
“How’s that?”
“You saved my life. I owe you a debt. So I never saw you. That’s my word.”
The man appeared to consider this, then nodded once.
“I’d rather not have to kill anyone else tonight,” he said.
Then he walked into the woods and vanished.
41
Harper, Salsa and Lois were driving west again from Miami on US 41 a few hours later, this time in a large pickup truck with plenty of space in the back for cargo.
The rain had finally slacked off and the sun was beginning to rise over the Atlantic, peeking through the remnants of the storm clouds. The main destructive body of Inez had moved on to points west.
When Harper had returned from his business in the woods, the four of them had taken Ricky Garcia’s blue Chrysler back into the city, after first disposing of the unfortunate detective’s body out there in the swamp. They’d found a doctor they could trust and had gotten Salsa patched up to the point that he could travel, and he of course insisted on coming along, though he doubted he’d be much help in carrying anything heavy. His wound turned out to be mostly superficial, though for a time he’d talked deliriously about settling his affairs and bidding the world a fond farewell. Now he’d moved on from that to speculating about what he would be spending his new fortune in gold on.
Their plan was to find the Army truck and relieve it of its cargo as quickly as possible.
“We’re sure he’s dead this time?” Salsa asked after they’d driven in silence for a while.
“Rooker? Yes,” Harper replied. “He’s dead.”
“Thank God,” Lois said.
Salsa didn’t say anything for a second. Then, “But we don’t know where he hid our Vegas cash. You couldn’t have inquired about that first, could you? I mean, before you, you know…?” He made a croaking, dying sound and moved his finger across his throat.
“No,” Harper said. “I wasn’t really able to ask him that.”
Salsa nodded, then shrugged. “Okay. I guess we’ll never know what he did with it, then.” His tone grew wistful. “All that money. Damn.”
“It won’t matter if we get the gold,” Lois pointed out.
Salsa brightened. “That is very true, my dear.”
“Here it is,” Harper said.
He saw the white Lincoln parked on the right shoulder, just as it had been a short time earlier. He pulled in behind it and they all got out.
“If I remember correctly,” Salsa said, “the truck was right back this way.” He strode a short distance back in the direction they’d come and looked over the side.
There was no truck. No truck, no tracks, no anything. Nothing but swamp.
Harper and Lois came up and flanked him and together they studied the bleak tableau.
“Could it have slid all the way down?” Salsa asked. “Gone totally under?”
“It must have,” Harper said. But his tone was not one of absolute certainty. Frowning, he looked around, first at the swamp, then at the slope leading down to it, then at the highway, then at the white Lincoln that had been sitting there when they arrived. Sitting just as it had sat a few hours before. But something wasn’t right. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but…
They continued to search all along the shoulder for almost half an hour—which would’ve been plenty of time to have offloaded the gold, if the truck had been where it was supposed to be. Finally Harper had taken off his shoes and climbed down into the muck, feeling beneath the surface for any signs of the truck. But it wasn’t there.
“Did the earth just swallow it up?” Salsa asked. He’d deferred from joining Harper in the muck on account of his grievous injury. “I’ll just stay up here and supervise,” he’d explained.
Crawling on hands and knees back up the slope, Harper looked like he was made of mud, and the now-light rainfall wasn’t doing much to rinse him off.
“This isn’t right,” he kept muttering.
“That’s the truth,” Salsa said. “I want my gold!”
“No,” Harper said. “This spot. This area here. It’s not right. The tire tracks are gone.”
“Well, Harper,” Salsa said, “There was a hurricane last night.”
“No,” Harper said again. “The grooves were deep. That truck was heavy. The bottom scraped the ground. It tore some major gashes in the shoulder and the slope. The rain wouldn’t have been able to erase that entirely. But there’s nothing here at all. This ground is all pristine. Like it never happened.”
“What are you saying?” Lois asked, looking from one of them to the other.
At that moment, a convoy of vehicles appeared, coming from the direction of the city. There were two sedans, a pickup truck and a big, industrial-type wrecker. They roared past and kept right on going. As Harper watched them, his frown deepening, their brake lights at last lit up and they pulled over onto the right shoulder, about a mile further down the highway. Immediately men swarmed out of the sedans and the pickup. One was shouting orders and the others were obeying. Then the wrecker pulled out again, moved a short distance further down the highway, and backed in a curve onto the shoulder such that its rear end was almost hanging over the drop-off. A couple of the men grabbed its tow cables and started pulling them down the muddy slope.
Harper, Salsa and Lois stood there next to the white Lincoln and watched this happening for more than five minutes without saying a word. Then Harper looked at the Lincoln again and cursed. “That bastard tricked us,” he said.
Harper got back into the truck. Lois helped Salsa into the passenger side, positioning him between the muddy Harper and herself. Harper started up the truck, pulled out and accelerated smoothly toward the vehicles and the activity.
“I don’t understand,” Salsa said, wincing as he tried to sit up straighter in the seat.
When they had halved the distance, Harper pulled onto the shoulder again, still rolling forward but very slowly.
In the distance along the straight highway, they could all see the big wrecker was now dragging an old Army truck up out of the swamp. As they watched, the truck emerged rear-end first from the muddy waters, was pulled slowly up the slope, and stopped once it made it onto the shoulder.
“Son of a bitch,” Harper exclaimed.
“Oh,” Salsa muttered. “Oh. I think I get it now.”
Lois just shook her head and groaned.
“Tell me again why we just left the gold here last night?” Salsa asked.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Harper said, angrily. “By the time I got back from dealing with Rooker, the truck had slid halfway into the swamp. The cops could have come along at any moment. Our car was full of blood. We still had Garcia’s body to dispose of.” He glared at Salsa. “And of course we thought you were dying.”
Salsa made a sour face and shrugged at that. “It certainly felt that way at the time,” he said defensively.
Harper continued to let their pickup roll slowly forward along the shoulder until they were just under a hundred yards from all the activity, which was as close as he dared to get. He stopped again and studied the group of people now surrounding the Army truck.
There. Amid the small crowd was one man directing the operation, shouting to the guy manning the wrecker winch. Hair so blond it was almost whi
te. Ruddy complexion. Harper recognized him immediately. He was the security man from the island. The man Rooker had nearly killed the night before. The man whose life Harper had saved.
“I should’ve killed him,” Harper stated. “I absolutely should have killed him. Or let Rooker do it. But I didn’t think he even knew about the truck, or the gold, or…” His voice trailed off and he brought his fist down hard on the steering wheel.
It was as if somehow the security guy heard Harper, though they were more than fifty yards apart. He stopped what he was doing, looked up and saw the pickup truck. Even from so far away, his eyes met Harper’s. He couldn’t be sure at such a distance, but Harper could have sworn the guy smiled.
Harper slammed the truck in reverse, spun around, and sped back toward Miami, cursing all the way.
42
The night before, Don Garro had stumbled through the dark woods for quite a while after Harper had saved his life and then left him there. For a time he feared he might die anyway, of exposure or pneumonia or from simply drowning under all this ridiculous rain. But eventually he’d managed to find the highway and started walking along it, seeing the white Lincoln where he’d left it in the distance. The blue Chrysler, of course, was long gone.
He was almost back to the Lincoln when he happened to notice something off to the side of the road, down the slope. It was the purest happenstance that he saw it; if he’d been walking on the other side of the highway, or if the rainfall hadn’t chosen a moment earlier to slacken up, he never would have.
But there it was: an Army truck, pointed nose-down into the morass, its cab partly underwater. The tracks its tires had cut in the grass and soil on the way over the lip of the highway were still relatively fresh, especially considering all the rain and wind. So it hadn’t been there very long at all.
Miami Heist Page 17
