Cash Landing (29 page)

R
uban parked in the alley behind a hardware store about a half block away from the Blue Grotto restaurant. Not another vehicle was in sight. It took only a few seconds to retrieve the folded assault rifle from his backpack, make sure the clip of full-metal-jacket ammo was secure, and run through the usual prefiring safety checks. All was in order. At the ready, finger on the trigger guard, he started walking.

Ruban was operating on the assumption that this was all a setup, that Pinky was waiting inside the truck for him, and that Jeffrey wasn't even there. His plan was not elaborate. Spray the driver's side with bullets. Change magazines. Walk to other side. Pump in another thirty-two rounds. Approach carefully. Make sure Pinky is dead. Run. Simple and effective. Even a steel door is no match for FMJ ammo fired straight-on at close range from an assault rifle.

But what if Jeffrey is in there?

The thought shredded his conscience like a weed whacker. It was one thing to refuse to pay a ransom and allow Jeffrey to
be killed
thanks to his own stupidity. It was another thing to pull the trigger—to be his killer.

He stopped at the end of the alley. A gravel parking lot stretched before him, about half the size of a basketball court, with only one working streetlamp. The pickup truck was at the opposite end, parked against the chain-link fence. Ruban took a
deep breath. It was justifiable on some levels. He'd warned Jeffrey. Stupidity has consequences. Jeffrey did this to himself.

“He's my brother, Ruban!”

Ruban started toward the truck, pushing Savannah's pleas from his mind as he raised the stock to his shoulder and took aim at the driver's door—when the voice of another woman stopped him.

“FBI! Freeze!”

Ruban stayed calm. “You're making a mistake. My brother-in-law has been kidnapped. He's in that truck over there.”

“Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head.”

“My car is parked in the alley. Look in my backpack. There's fifty thousand dollars in ransom money.”

“I know there is. It's from flight 462, Frankfurt to Miami. Now drop your gun.”

Busted.
Ruban couldn't see behind him, but this seemed odd.
One agent? By herself?

“You can't be FBI,” he said. “Who
are
you?”

The engine cranked, tires spun, and the pickup was suddenly barreling toward them in reverse, bed first. Ruban and the agent hit the ground and rolled in opposite directions as the pickup passed between them. It skidded to a stop and then leapt forward, no longer in reverse. Gravel flew and a cloud of dust rose as the truck headed straight toward the agent on the ground. Ruban sprang to his feet and jumped into the open bed. Through the rear window he saw Pinky behind the wheel. A minute earlier, he would have put a bullet in the back of Pinky's head, but everything had changed. The truck roared past the agent, just missing her as she rolled out of the way. Ruban stayed low but raised his rifle above the tailgate and squeezed the trigger, again and again, unleashing a hailstorm of bullets that sailed across the parking lot as the truck crashed through the chain-link fence and peeled away into the night.

Andie climbed to her feet and ran down the alley. Littleford was in the car, racing toward her, and met her halfway. Andie jumped in the passenger seat, and Littleford chewed her out while speeding in reverse, back toward the street.

“Henning! What do you think you're doing? I told you to wait for backup!”

“Betancourt was about to empty an Uzi into that pickup truck,” she said, breathless. “I had to move.”

“Not by yourself, damn it!” The tirade continued as the car sped away from the alley. “You're lucky to be alive.”

“Our hostage wouldn't be alive if I hadn't done something.”

Sirens blared and lights flashed behind them. A string of speeding squad cars joined their pursuit. They were suddenly part of a police armada.

“So
now
we have backup,” said Andie. “Where were they two minutes ago?”

“They diverted to the Vagabond Motel. SWAT launched a smoke grenade to flush the perp out of room 207, and it ended up in the mattress. Huge fire. Half the building is burning.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“Just subject one. Dead.”

The radio crackled. MDPD had the pickup truck in sight: “Subject entering Palmetto Expressway, southbound from Flagler Street on-ramp.”

Andie keyed the microphone. There was a good reason she'd held her fire in the parking lot, and she wanted to make sure MDPD did the same.

“Possible hostage inside the truck. Proceed accordingly.”

“Roger.”

Littleford hit the gas.

Andie glanced behind her. The string of squad cars was still with them. “All together now.”

R
uban crouched low in the bed of the pickup, his windbreaker flapping as they sped onto the Palmetto. Pinky was at the wheel. The back of his head was an easy, stationary target through the cab's rear window. One bullet was all it would have taken, but Ruban had lost the spare clips in his roll across the parking lot and was out of ammunition. He laid his rifle aside, pulled the pistol from his belt, clicked off the safety, and then stopped.

The truck was moving like a rocket. At three a.m. the expressway was as wide open as a five-lane test track. The bed vibrated beneath him, and the wheel wells roared with the power of eight screaming cylinders. At this speed, a dead driver would mean a dead passenger.

Jeffrey's face suddenly appeared on the other side of the rear window. Their eyes met, a toothless mouth fell open, and Jeffrey shouted something that was impossible for Ruban to hear. He understood, nonetheless.

“Bro!”

The window cracked in spiderweb fashion as a bullet pierced the safety glass and punctured the tailgate just inches from Ruban's shoulder. Pinky was shooting at him! Ruban was about to return fire, but Jeffrey's face was in the way. Jeffrey was beating his fists against the cracked window, unable to shatter the safety glass, and shouting at the top of his voice.

“Ruban!”

The wind continued to howl. They were doing at least eighty, maybe ninety miles per hour. Ruban couldn't jump without killing himself. He couldn't shoot the driver. Through the cracks, beyond Jeffrey, he saw Pinky turn his head and raise his weapon. He was driving with one hand while taking aim with his pistol. Ruban was going to have to shoot first.

“Rooo-ban!”

He was unable to get off a clean shot, but his brother-in-law wasn't just getting in the way in his usual fuck-up fashion. Like a breaching Orca, Jeffrey somehow launched himself from the back of the cab. Hands duct-taped behind his back, he sailed nose first over the front seat and belly-flopped on Pinky's shoulders. The truck veered left, then right, then back again. Ruban thrashed from side to side. The tires screeched, the brakes screamed, and the smell of burned rubber rose from the asphalt. The truck fishtailed to a stop, and Ruban smashed into the side panel.

The pistol left his hand, sailing high over the side panel as if launched by catapult.

T
he FBI was second on the scene, right behind an MDPD squad car and the black pickup. Andie and Littleford jumped out. The truck's bed was empty. A uniformed officer was tending to an unconscious man in the front seat, driver's side. From the size of him, Andie knew it was Jeffrey Beauchamp, though she wasn't sure why his arms and legs were taped like a gray mummy.

“Two men fled on foot,” the officer said. “My partner went after one of them. The other went that way.” He was pointing toward a cluster of buildings in the darkness, just beyond the guard rail.

“Let's go!” said Littleford.

They drew their weapons, hopped the rail, and ran down the embankment to a two-lane access road that ran parallel to the expressway. Warehouses along the access road were built to zero lot lines, each building separated from the next by a narrow alleyway. Their suspect could have fled down any one of them.

A shot rang out. The agents instinctively went down. It had come from one of the alleys, but a single gunshot in the night was hard to pinpoint.

“Wait for backup,” said Littleford, his tone adding the words
this time
.

“That first-responder back at the truck said his partner pursued on foot. He could be down.”

Two more MDPD officers arrived on foot, then another pair. They shared Andie's concern. A plan was hatched in seconds. They split into teams, one led by Andie, the other by Littleford. They sprinted to opposite corners of the warehouse, each team with its own alley to flush out before regrouping at the loading dock behind the warehouse.

With her back pressed to the brick face of the building, Andie poked her head around the corner, peering cautiously down the black alley. The warehouses were much deeper than wide, nearly the length of a football field from front to back. The alley had no streetlamp, or at least not a working one. The moonlight did little more than create confusing shadows in what seemed like an endless black tunnel. If there was an officer down, Andie couldn't tell; and if his shooter was in hiding, Andie couldn't tell that, either.

Andie hand-signaled to Littleford. He signaled back, and their coordinated sweep was under way.

Andie entered the alley, keeping close to the wall, her gun at the ready. The MDPD officer worked the other wall, directly across from her. They were ten feet into the darkness when Andie signaled a stop. They listened, and Andie reassessed. Roll-down steel shutters covered the windows and doors that faced the alley, blocking off escape routes. Corrugated boxes, flattened and stacked for disposal, one on top of the other, rose in cardboard towers along the wall near the Dumpster. She took another step forward, then stopped. There was a noise. Something—or someone—was behind the Dumpster. She and her partner took cover behind a thick stack of flattened boxes and waited. Her heart pounded. The chorus of sirens in the distance grew louder. More backup was on the way. It gave her comfort.

For another, it was cause for concern.

Two quick shots rang out. Andie heard the pops in the stacked cardboard. She hit the deck and saw a man running away from her.

“FBI! Freeze!” Andie shouted.

He turned and fired again in her direction, still running. Andie started to give chase but stopped quickly, her fears realized: an MDPD officer was on the other side of the Dumpster, motionless.

“Officer down!”

Andie checked his pulse. Still beating. The wound was to his upper thigh. He'd had the initial presence of mind to rip a ropelike fastener from the stacked boxes and make a tourniquet, but the blood loss had pushed him near unconsciousness. Andie checked the tourniquet. The other officer radioed for help. A third gunshot pierced the darkness, the bullet whizzing overhead as Andie dropped for cover between the shooter and the fallen officer. She braced for more gunfire, but heard only the echo of footfalls on asphalt. He was making a run for it.

The officer applied pressure to the first-responder's leg wound. “I was a paramedic. I got this,” he told Andie.

She jumped out from behind her position of cover. The shooter was well ahead, rounding the corner and exiting the alley. Andie sprinted to the corner and stopped. Bursting carelessly into the open would have made her an easy target. She peered around the corner. The loading area was shut down and deserted, save for a single eighteen-wheeler that had backed up to the dock. The rig was parked with its external cab lights aglow. Andie could see the driver inside, behind the wheel, but he wasn't moving.

Asleep?

He'd probably driven all night and was sleeping in the cab until the warehouse opened, completely unaware that an armed killer was bearing down on him and his rig.

“Freeze!”

Her command was ignored. Andie took aim, well aware that a shot in the back was a dicey situation.

“I said freeze!”

He continued toward the rig. A string of dangerous possibilities flashed through Andie's mind. The driver might be taken hostage. He might be pistol-whipped, yanked from the rig, and
viciously thrown to the ground. Or he might be shot in the head at point-blank range—a senseless murder—the way those New York thugs had shot Littleford's father in the armored truck.

Andie fired a warning shot into the sky. It woke the driver but didn't stop the gunman, who jumped up onto the running board and flung open the door. There was another shot—from inside the cab. The gunman's head snapped back. His gun flew as he tumbled backward and landed on the pavement.

Andie shouted to the driver—“FBI!”—and he raised his hands. He wasn't armed. Andie ran toward the rig, and as she approached she could see that the passenger door was also wide open.

Littleford was standing on the running board, gun in hand. In the sweep, he'd come around on the other side of the warehouse through the alley.

Andie checked the body and recognized the face. Pinky Perez was dead.

She climbed onto the running board and displayed her FBI shield to the terrified truck driver. His eyes were like silver dollars. “Are you all right, sir?”

“I guess so. What the hell is this about?”

Andie looked across the cab, straight at Littleford. He was still on the running board, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Somewhere in the past.

“It's about a lot of things,” he said as he stepped down from the truck.

R
uban woke at 6:45 a.m. to the sound of an annoying buzzer on the nightstand. He sat up in the darkness, confused, momentarily forgetting that he was in a motel. The buzzer continued. He hadn't set the alarm clock, but apparently the room's previous guest had been an early riser. He silenced the damn thing with a slap of the button and settled back into the pillow.

Running from the cops was exhausting work. With such a huge head start, he'd easily won the footrace with the MDPD officers who'd given chase from the Palmetto Expressway. He needed rest, but the night had cost him much more than sleep.

His car: gone. The assault rifle and backup pistol: gone. The backpack was gone, too, along with the ransom money for Jeffrey. Another fifty thousand squandered. Ruban was down to three hundred dollars and change in his wallet, but it was more than enough to pay cash for the room. Plenty of guests paid cash at the Princess Lodge, a pink stucco motel with kitschy themed suites such as the Jungle Room and the Disco Room. Each unit had its own garage, a convenient cover for the businessman who might be worried that a divorce lawyer was hiding in the bushes, ready to snap a photograph of the new girl in HR stepping out of her boss's Porsche 911. Ruban found the garage particularly useful, having arrived in a stolen car. He'd lost one backup firearm, but he still had his ankle pistol, which had done the trick at the all-night gas
station. The poor kid pumping gas into his car had wisely handed over the keys when staring down the barrel of a gun.

Gotta get some rest.

It was futile. He couldn't sleep, but it hurt to roll out of bed. The wild ride in the bed of the pickup had left him bruised and battered. He was actually worried about Jeffrey. His stunt had been amazingly courageous. Stupid, but courageous. Pinky must have been shocked. It was hard enough to drive and shoot at the same time, but virtually impossible with three hundred pounds of blubber pressing down on your neck and shoulders.

Ruban walked to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, and returned to the room. He wanted to call Savannah, but he couldn't possibly reach out to her. Surely the police were all over his wife and mother-in-law. If his cell hadn't been tapped earlier, it sure was at this stage of the game, and likewise for Savannah's. Going to his mother-in-law's house, or anywhere near Savannah, was out of the question.

The digital alarm clock sounded again. He'd hit “snooze” on the first try. He silenced it for good and noticed the time: 5:00 a.m. Everything that had happened after 11:00 p.m. would be on the morning news, sunrise edition. He turned on the TV, sat on the edge of the bed, and scrolled through the local channels until he found a news anchorwoman who couldn't have looked happier to have been awake since 3:00 a.m.

The lead story bore the tagline
“CA$H LANDING.”

“The driver has been identified as Craig ‘Pinky' Perez, who was pronounced dead after a shootout with police that left one MDPD officer wounded. Sergeant Frank Sanchez was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital and is reportedly in satisfactory condition. Perez's nephew, Jeffrey Beauchamp, reportedly found covered in gray duct tape, was also taken to Jackson and is in good condition.”

Ruban smiled to himself, glad his brother-in-law had made it. The warmth quickly faded.

“Law enforcement is still searching for Karl ‘Ruban' Betancourt, the suspected mastermind behind the multimillion-dollar heist at Miami International Airport just three weeks ago. Police are also searching for a second man who has disappeared with Betancourt's twenty-nine-year-old wife, Savannah.”

Ruban felt chills as a photograph of Savannah appeared on the screen.

“According to police, Savannah Betancourt was staying with her mother when a man forcibly entered the house and took Savannah with him. That man is described as a black male, possibly Jamaican. He left in a white Japanese-model sedan. Anyone having information relating to Ruban Betancourt's whereabouts or to Savannah Betancourt's disappearance is asked to call Crime Stoppers at the number on your screen. In other news—”

Ruban tuned out. That was all he needed to hear.

Ramsey, you son of a bitch.

He reached for the landline but thought better of it. Caller ID on Ramsey's end would reveal Ruban's location. His cell was useless, but it occurred to him that he still had the burn phone that Jasmine had given him. He started dialing Ramsey's cell, but again he stopped. Did he dare dial Ramsey's number? The news report had said they were looking for a black man, possibly Jamaican. Had they figured out yet that it was Ramsey?

Ruban debated it. The bastard had Savannah. This was no time to be timid. But he also had to be smart.

Think, Ruban, think.

Then it came to him. The news report had made no mention of Jasmine, but Ruban had seen her true colors. He dialed her cell. It came as no surprise when it was Ramsey who answered.

“Been waitin' on dis call for two hours, mon. Where you been?”

“What did you do to Savannah?”

“Nothing. Got her right here. This one is going to cost you everything, mon. Keep the burn phone on. I call you later.”

Ramsey hung up before Ruban could reply. He gripped the phone so tightly that he nearly cracked the LCD. “You do that, Ramsey,” he said aloud. “You call me.” He put the phone away and reached for the gun on the nightstand.

I can't wait to blow you away. Mon.