M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone

by Mertz, Stephen

  Hog and Loughlin hit the floor behind overturned tables.

  Stone ducked behind Rodriguez.

  The four men who burst through the door wasted no time in looking for their targets; instead they began firing indiscriminately, long bursts from automatic weapons that sounded like Uzis.

  Chips of wood spun through the air as the bullets ripped over the edges of tables. Splinters of concrete mingled with white dust as jagged lines were chewed up the walls.

  Bodies danced and hopped on the floor as the deadly fire jerked them this way and that, tearing ragged gobs of flesh from the bodies and filling the air with a red haze of blood.

  Rodriguez was pinned to the chair in front of Stone as the slugs ripped into him, flinging his head backward and taking off the top of his skull.

  The screams of the dead and dying echoed off the hard concrete walls.

  Stone and his men had not even felt the need to draw their weapons in the previous fracas. The opposition was too amateurish and hardly worth considering, despite the numbers.

  Besides, they really had nothing against the patrons of the Black Pussy Cat and no desire to kill them in a simple brawl.

  But this was different.

  This was trained killers, firing everywhere, killing everyone their bullets could reach.

  Stone pulled out his Beretta 93-R and began firing around Rodriguez's body in three-round bursts. He smiled as one of the 9-mm parabellum rounds punched out the eye of a man with an Uzi and went on through the top of his head, taking with it a dollar-sized piece of his skull.

  Hog was blazing away with his Colt Trooper .357 Magnum with its six-inch barrel. One of the gunners looked terribly surprised as a bullet opened up a hole in his belly. He dropped his Uzi and stumbled backward. Hog shot him again, in the chest. Blood spurted and stained his shirt a carmine red, and he fell forward.

  Loughlin shot the third man with the .45 automatic that he had been carrying cocked and locked. He slipped off the lock and started firing. His second bullet went through the man's neck, severing a carotid artery. Blood fountained and sprayed as the man put his hand to his neck, trying vainly to cut off the fatal flow.

  The fourth man was the unluckiest of all. He was shot by all three pistols, bouncing to the left and right as the slugs hit him, his chest virtually disappearing in a shredded red mass.

  Suddenly it was quiet, except for a few last groans and screams. Stone stood up and looked around.

  "What the fuck?" Hog growled. "This place is worse than a war zone."

  "I don't understand it," Loughlin agreed. "This wasn't murder. This was a massacre."

  "The important thing is, who were the targets," Stone said. "And I think I know."

  "Us?" Hog asked.

  "No. That's simply not possible. Only one person knew that we were coming here, and that's one person I know we can trust."

  Hog nodded. He would have trusted Carol Jenner with his life—and he had, more than once. He believed in her just as Stone did.

  "So if it wasn't us . . ."

  ". . . it was them," Stone finished for him, pointing to the bodies of Rodriguez and Castillo. They couldn't even see Castillo's face now. The bullets had torn it apart.

  The room smelled of cordite, carnage, and death. They heard sirens in the distance. A war would bring the police even to a neighborhood like this one.

  "Time to go," Stone snapped.

  Hog slipped his .357 into the clamshell holster at his waist. "Yeah. I bet there ain't too many folks in this neck of the woods who drive white Toyotas."

  They faded out of the club and into the humid Miami night. Hog got them back to the safe house without getting lost even once.

  "Charlie . . ."

  ". . . Charley . . ."

  "Charlie . . ."

  ". . . Charley . . ."

  "Charlie . . ."

  The words rattled in Wofford's brain, ricocheting from one side of his head to the other, bouncing around in his skull.

  He saw the leering face of the major, his mouth cracked in a gruesome grin, his teeth stained from the incessant cigarettes that he smoked, his breath as foul as a sewer in hell.

  "So, Yankee turd, how do you like your friend now?"

  Creel's body still hung from the bamboo bars of the cage.

  Wofford had no idea how long it had been there.

  Hours?

  Days?

  It didn't matter. The flesh was peeling from it in strips.

  Maggots writhed in the shoulders and back muscles.

  Birds had been at the eyes and face. Wofford had heard them and been thankful that he couldn't quite see.

  "He is shit now. Garbage. Just like you. You are shit. All the Americans are shit. And this is how you will all die."

  The major kicked at the bars of the cage, and Creel's body swung out for a few inches. Then it swung back with a sickening scrunch.

  Creel's face began to grow. It puffed up larger and larger, and then it exploded.

  A spasm went through Wofford's body and he tried desperately to sit up. He couldn't, being still bound to the bed where he had awakened some time earlier.

  His mouth was burning fiercely, as dry as sand.

  For a brief lucid moment, he wondered just what in God's name kind of drugs they must be feeding him.

  And he wondered where in God's name he was, and if Kathi knew.

  Kathi Wofford was distraught. Stone had promised her that he would be on the job at once, and she had believed him. Still, there had been no word.

  She had been trying to reach Bass all day with no success. Someone always answered at the D.E.A. number he had given her, but they always told her that "Mr. Bass was out," and they never told her when he might be expected back. She knew they were lying to her, but she also knew there was nothing she could do about it.

  Nothing except wait, sit by the telephone, and hope for a call that would tell her everything was all right.

  A call that somewhere deep inside she felt would never come . . .

  Bass wasn't saying or doing much at the moment. He didn't have much of a chance, considering the antics of Williams, the man from Washington.

  Bass, Ferguson, and Benton were sitting quietly and listening to his tirade.

  "I can't fucking believe this!" Williams raved. "Castillo dead! Rodriguez dead! And who knows how many others! They tell me that club looks like a terrorist attack hit it! That goddamned Stone is in town for how long? Five hours? Six? And the whole goddamned town is like South Vietnam all over again!"

  "Sir," Bass began quietly, "there's no proof—"

  "Don't fucking talk to me about proof!" Williams yelled. "And don't fucking interrupt me! You sons of bitches don't give a shit! You don't care if Stone wipes out everyone in Miami. Hell, it would just make your jobs easier. For a while. But not for long. Then the big boys would just get back in gear and crack up the whole thing again. And where would you be then?"

  He paused, but no one answered.

  "Answer me when I'm talking to you, goddammit!"

  "Sir," Ferguson said, unconsciously rubbing his neck, "we think that it's at least possible Stone might be of a lot of help to us. We're bound by the law and the right way of doing things." He put up a hand to still Williams's protest. "Not that we shouldn't be. But there are times when the law just doesn't seem to help."

  Williams's face grew very red. "Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you—"

  "Hold on," Ferguson said. His voice was low, but something in his tone made Williams stop and listen. "Have we slowed down the drug traffic into this country one bit in the last ten years by doing things the 'right' way? Or has that traffic increased steadily? Have the criminal scum that trade in drugs been put into prison to suffer behind bars, or are they all living in mansions and driving bigger cars than you and me?"

  "That's not the fucking point!" Williams exploded. "The fucking point is that everyone in this room is sworn to uphold the law, and the law is what makes this country work. Whil
e that crazy vigilante out there is blowing people away, including our major leads in this case, we're sitting here with our thumbs up our asses watching the whole thing slide away from us and he's kicking the Constitution to pieces."

  "Uh . . . sir?" Benton said.

  "What, goddammit?"

  "Like Bass said, sir, we don't have any proof that Stone was anywhere near the Black Pussy Cat."

  Williams grew ominously quiet. "I know he was there. You know he was there. We all know it."

  No one said anything. There wasn't anything to say.

  After a minute, Williams spoke again. "Now here's what we're going to do. We're going to find Stone. We—"

  "But sir," Bass began.

  "No, Mr. Bass. There are no buts. This is what we will do. We will find Stone, and we will trail him and know his every move. He is not going to fuck us up again. Is that understood?" He bore down on every word in his last sentence, trying to look each man in the eye as he said it.

  Chapter Six

  Guillermo "Bill" Rosales, head of Organized Crime investigations in Miami, stood beside Homicide lieutenant Rod Allbright as the two men stared at the interior of the Black Pussy Cat. The block walls were striated, holes were punched in the tin roof, and bodies lay all around.

  "Jesús Christ!" Rosales exclaimed. "We've had street wars before, but nothing like this!"

  Allbright nodded. "Fifteen dead, maybe more. And it couldn't have lasted more than a minute. If this escalates . . ."

  He didn't have to finish. Rosales knew what he meant. "It's not that I don't think some of these people deserved to die," Rosales said. "José Rodriguez has a rap sheet you could use to cover a mattress. Still, this is ridiculous."

  The two men watched as bodies were bagged, evidence collected, positions marked. Flash cameras snapped as portions of the scene were permanently recorded.

  "Almost all Cubanos," Rosales sighed. "Ah, I can imagine what the newspapers will make of this." Rosales, though an American by birth, had Cuban parents and when very young had visited the island of his heritage. "It won't be good."

  "There were others here," Allbright told him. "Cuban or not, we don't have any way of knowing."

  "What others?"

  "The ones who walked away. The ones who took out those shooters with the Uzis like they were amateurs, which they weren't. I'd like to know where those guys are. I'd like to know who they are."

  "So would I," Rosales said. "So would I."

  There were times when Crazy Charlie Lucci wished he'd gone into some other line of work, something simple. Like pumping gas, maybe, or running one of those all-night convenience stores.

  Then he wouldn't have had to deal with his father.

  Charlie thought the old bastard was losing it.

  Oh, he'd gone along with Charlie's ideas, all right. It was just that he seemed vague on the details of what was going down. And then there was that D.E.A. guy his father had bought from the Cubans.

  Charlie didn't like that part of it at all.

  "It's stupid," Charlie had argued. "He's a nothing. Why take a chance on messing with the feds any more than we have to? It's bad enough as it is, but if one of their guys disappears . . ."

  The old man hadn't listened. He thought it was a fine idea, and it was about the only idea he'd had in the last few years. So he stuck by his guns, and Charlie had given in.

  Now Charlie was going over his plans for the rest of the night with the old man. He'd told him everything twice already, but Don Vito had to hear it all again. His mind was like a sieve.

  "It's real simple," Charlie said loudly. The old man was partially deaf, too. "We go in, we blow 'em away, that's all there is to it."

  They were in the master bedroom of the mansion on Don Vito's estate. When his wife had died nearly ten years before, the don had redecorated.

  There was a circular bed with red silk sheets, and a black spread. The walls and the carpeting were white. There was a huge mirror on the ceiling over the bed.

  Probably the only way the old fucker can get it up, Charlie thought. Pretend he's in a whorehouse.

  Don Vito was propped in the bed, supported by five or six pillows in red and black silk cases. He was wearing black silk pajamas and looked like a waxen corpse, his face thin, the flesh hanging on it loosely. The only thing about him that looked alive was his eyes, which were still darkly black and shiny.

  "Nothing's ever that simple, Charlie. I thought I taught you that. I want you to go through it again, carefully."

  Shit, Charlie thought. I know he's got a broad waiting in the next room. Why can't he just let me go and get on with it?

  Aloud, Charlie said, "All right. It's like this. You remember I told you about the big drug deal that's going down between the Colombians and the Cubans?"

  "Of course," Don Vito said. And he did. He remembered much more than people thought. For several years he had been cultivating the image of a senile old man, but it was merely that—an image. Let them think he was harmless, and they would reveal much more to him than they might do otherwise. Even his own son. "I remember. Go on."

  "Good. Right. Well, of course the Colombians and the Cubans don't trust each other. We know that."

  Don Vito tried not to smile. For his son to state such an obvious thing was almost an insult. Or maybe Charlie was none too bright, which the don had long suspected might be the case. At any rate, no one in the drug pipeline trusted anyone else. That was an article of the faith: "Trust no one."

  Charlie was going on. "So naturally, the Cubans don't go to the processing plant. The Colombians won't tell where it is. Shit, even we can't find that out.

  "Anyway, the Cubans naturally don't want the Colombians in their territory, either. The Colombians import, process, and wholesale to the Cubans, who sell it on the streets. So they've set up a meet at a neutral site, like they always do. But it's always a different place. This time, we found out where."

  "How did we do that?" Don Vito inquired.

  "You know that. It was your guys that found out." Charlie admitted the last part grudgingly.

  "And what about my guys?"

  Charlie looked at the old man sharply. How much did the old man know? "You heard something?"

  "People still tell me things, Charlie."

  "I guess they do." Charlie watched the old man speculatively. "So you heard about the nightclub?"

  "Nightclub? Strip joint, no more. Why give it such a glamorous name? Yes, I heard."

  "It was a fucking slaughter. I heard some guys must have got away, but there was a lot of dead people. Cubans mostly."

  "Including any particular ones?"

  "Yeah, right, including your two tame boys, Castillo and Rodriguez."

  The old man shifted on the pillows, trying to reach a more comfortable position.

  "I need a drink," Charlie said. He went to the padded leather wet bar on one side of the room—red leather with black diamond patches on it—and poured himself a stiff bourbon.

  "And do we know who is responsible for this 'fucking slaughter'?" Don Vito said when Charlie came back to the bedside.

  Charlie took a deep drink. "No, we don't."

  "And is there more to the story?"

  The drink gave Charlie the courage to admit the rest. "Yes. There were some guys in there, we can't find out who, and they blew away a four-man hit team. Just like that."

  "I don't like this, Charlie," the old man snapped.

  "Neither do I, goddammit! We don't know who called the hit and we don't know who walked out of it. You think I like that shit?"

  The old man just looked at him.

  Charlie took another drink to calm himself. "Anyway, we've got to go through with our plan. Me and my guys will hit the spic drug deal tonight." He looked at his watch. "In one hour from now."

  "And the Colombians will think the Cubans have double-crossed them, of course, since the Cubans chose the site. Or perhaps the Cubans will think it is a Colombian double-cross. Either way, we win."


  "Right." Charlie finished his drink.

  "You believe that Enrique Feliz will fall for it? Or the Colombians? You believe that Feliz is that stupid?"

  Charlie walked over to the bar and refilled his glass. "Sure he is. The only hitch in the deal is that D.E.A. guy you bought."

  The don stiffened. "That is the smartest thing we've done."

  To Charlie, this defense of his action was a sure sign that his father was indeed senile, and that the flashes of life he had shown only moments before were a freak occurrence.

  "Let me explain it," the old man continued. "If there is any question in the mind of the Colombians about the Cuban double cross, they might hesitate to throw their business to us. How will we ever be able to gain their confidence?"

  "There won't be a question. Hell, I've hired a bunch of Cubans for this deal, through Castillo and Rodriguez. Me and the guys will be out of sight, just helping out if they need us."

  "There is always the chance of a slip-up. At any rate. I want to have the D.E.A. man tortured, so that we can learn everything we possibly can about his agency's information on drug smuggling and the operations in the Miami area in particular. The Colombians would pay generously for this information, but we will give it to them freely when they agree to wholesale to us instead of those damn Cuban fucks. And they will agree to such a thing if they believe Feliz has double crossed them."

  Torture, Charlie thought. Just goes to show how far behind the times the old man has fallen. Nobody tortures anybody anymore. Chemicals work so much better, and quieter.

  "I still don't like it," Charlie said. "I've got this thing planned perfect. I'm paying off some spic boys of my own to make the hit. The Colombians'll think they've been burned by Feliz, and we're back in the drug business in Miami instead of the Cubans, the way it used to be. But this thing with the D.E.A. guy, turning him over to the Colombians . . . and the thing at the strip joint . . . Pop, believe me, it'll screw up everything."

  The don said, "Who knows I own that club?"

  "Nobody," Charlie assured him. "We're so clean on that, nobody could connect us."