The man from Uruguay made it to his feet, his face revealing his severe pain.
Medianoche reached for his gun, pulled it out with a quick, snapping motion.
But the man from Uruguay ran and jumped into the air, sprang up on the rail, did that with amazing agility, his bloodied face the epitome of fear, and without saying another word, lunged into the blackness, leapt like he was a bird about to take flight. His flight had grace and style, took him headfirst, his trajectory sending him out beyond the edges of the café, beyond the trees, into the streets. Didn’t flap his arms like he had changed his mind. He just fell through darkness into the lights on the streets below.
The man almost landed on top of a city bus on the street in front of Torcisco Café.
Almost.
He splattered right in front of the city bus. An empty bus weighed twelve tons, but this bus was close to being full. The bus ran over his broken and mashed-up body before coming to a dragging stop. Gun in one hand, fifteen-pound briefcase in the other, Medianoche stood there, winded, wet, lower back aching, angry, staring down at the scene.
The man from Uruguay had chosen to kill himself rather than face his employers.
“Medianoche.”
He let the package go, let it fall at his feet as he jerked around, gun drawn, rain thumping his hat, prepared to shoot into the shadows.
Señorita Raven was one landing up, gun in her hand, aimed at him.
His gun was aimed at her.
He snapped, “Stand down, soldier.”
“Stop pointing your weapon at me, unless you plan on using it.”
“Stand the fuck down.”
“If I wanted to shoot you, I wouldn’t have called your goddamn name.”
“Last time. Stand the fuck down.”
Señorita Raven had come from above him, not from down below.
In his head he was in the middle of a countdown, finger squeezing the trigger.
Three.
Two.
Señorita Raven lowered her weapon.
Medianoche did the same, kept it at his side, ready.
Señorita Raven. So uncontrollable. Her own woman. Hardheaded.
Down below. People walked by the scene. Few stopped. No one screamed.
Medianoche adjusted his eye patch again, adjusted his fedora, then adjusted his long coat. There was a sharp pain in his lower back. He knew his muscles would stiffen up by sunrise. That pain. The sign of aging. Of a slow-moving end. Twenty years ago he could bench three times his weight with no aftermath. There was nothing nice about aging. Nothing nice at all. And nothing that could be done to prevent it. Nothing stopped the march of time.
Jaws tight, he headed up the metal stairway as Señorita Raven headed down.
Señorita Raven asked, “Sir, you okay, sir?”
His scowl remained on her frown.
Medianoche grunted. “I’m fine, soldier.”
“You were frozen. I thought you had been hit and were making peace with your maker.”
“I wasn’t frozen. I don’t freeze.”
Medianoche’s knees popped when he squatted and picked up the black briefcase. He ignored the popping, looked at the package. Made sure it was the one they were after, that it somehow hadn’t been swapped, hadn’t been compromised. Something wasn’t right, but it was the briefcase in question. This simple black briefcase was worth a man’s life.
This was part of the key to the fortune that had brought out the evil in many.
Señorita Raven asked, “Package secure?”
He ignored her, positioned himself to keep her in his periphery. “Where is the team?”
“They have the other two men from Uruguay.”
“Injuries to our team?”
“None that I know of.”
“Good.”
“I understand that what’s inside is worth millions. Maybe close to a billion.”
“That’s not our concern.”
“Lots of casualties. Made me wonder what’s inside.”
“Not our fucking business, soldier.”
“I heard it was connected to the missing stimulus package money from the Bush admin.”
“I don’t care about rumors, soldier.”
“A lot of that money vanished; some say it was tucked away, spread out over several accounts, and this is the key to consolidating those funds and cashing in on that lottery ticket.”
Medianoche thought about gunning down Señorita Raven.
He grunted. “Might take a thumbprint to open the package.”
“Whose thumb?”
“Maybe the Presidente de la Nación de Argentina
.”
“
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner?”
“She is the president.” He grunted. “She is the
woman
who runs the country. What’s your point?”
“Is part of the mission to extract her fingers, sir? Do we have a plan to break into La Casa Rosada, the Residencia Presidencial de Olivos, and cut off the president’s fingers?”
“We have to cut off her hand.”
“We take her hand?”
“
Soldier. At ease.”
“Oh. Sarcasm. My bad.”
“More than likely, the men from Uruguay know the key to opening the package.”
Señorita Raven said, “We’re not supposed to open it, sir.”
“That’s my point. And if we had the key, not our fucking business,
comprende
?”
“
Sí
,
comprendo
. I’m not that kind of soldier, sir.”
“So whether it’s worth a billion U.S. or two pesos in South America, it’s not our concern.”
“I doubt if anybody would go through all of this for two pesos. That’s sixty cents, U.S.”
What was inside the briefcase had cost more than a few dozen men, and just as many women, their lives over the last few months. And now a family man had lost his mind and gone kamikaze from the top of a building, committed suicide over whatever was inside. He had seen many men kill themselves with guns and cyanide to protect secrets. That was nothing new.
Curiosity rose up inside him, something that rarely happened.
I understand that what’s inside is worth millions. Maybe close to a billion
.
The package was locked. What looked plain and black, upon closer inspection, wasn’t plain after all. It was a high-tech number. Solid material. A thumbprint was needed to open the case. Might’ve even had a sensor that would make the briefcase explode if compromised.
He stood, looked at Señorita Raven, then glanced at the path the man from Uruguay had taken. Thirteen floors below, traffic was at a standstill. The bus rested on top of the dead man.
There was a rumble.
He looked to the sky. A helicopter was coming in. It paused over the roof. A light shone down. Medianoche began firing. Señorita Raven followed his lead. His first shot killed the spotlight. The chopper fled, took off as fast as it had come. Now he knew where the man from Uruguay was running. A helicopter had come in, like a rescue chopper in Vietnam.
A rescue chopper, not a chopper carrying more warriors.
The man from Uruguay had lied down to his last breath. Had been loyal to the end.
Medianoche headed back down the metal stairway, his coat flapping in the wind, his hand holding his fedora on his head as he moved with quickness, blending with the storm, Señorita Raven behind him as they reunited with The Beast and Señor Rodríguez.
They were in the hallway. A hallway filled with the scent of war.
The remaining men from Uruguay were tied to chairs.
The Beast was in front of them.
The Uruguayans cried, were in too much pain to scream.
The Beast held an axe in one hand. The kind used by firemen. One of the men from Uruguay was covered in blood. His foot was three feet away from his body, cut off above the toes.
The soldiers stood and watched The Beast show how he had earned his moniker.
A man who despised the Geneva Conventions.
War should have no rules. Wars were about winning.
The Beast walked toward the remaining Uruguayan, gun in one hand, dragging the axe by its handle, letting the noise of the bloody metal blade meeting tile terrify the final man.
The Beast smiled. “Talk, and I will not kill you. That is my promise.”
The final man began talking. He told of a hacker in La Boca. A hacker who had broken into Hopkins’s system and had information. Told how to get in contact with the hacker. He told The Beast the code to say to initiate business.
The information was about a hacker who worked for an American who used a name he could not pronounce.
But he could spell the name.
“Siete . . . César . . . Ana . . . María . . . Zulema.”
Those words represented the letters
S-C-A-M-Z
.
The Beast said, “Scamz?”
The man nodded a dozen times, his dialect Uruguayan, unable to pronounce that word.
The Beast asked, “Is that an organization? What do those letters stand for?”
The Uruguayan cried out that was the word he heard, said that was all he knew as he looked toward his bloodied friend, blood draining as he lived in a misery worse than death. The Beast walked over to the suffering Uruguayan. Raised the axe high. Brought it down.
The Beast walked away. He nodded at Señor Rodríguez and Se ñorita Raven.
Both took out their weapons and walked toward the surviving Uruguayan.
The man screamed that he had been promised he would live if he told all he knew.
The Beast had only promised that
he
would not kill him. That promise was being kept.
Medianoche handed The Beast the package.
The Beast asked, “The other guy?”
“Threw the sonofabitch off the goddamn roof. Thirteen-floor swan dive in front of a bus.”
“Hate I missed that.”
Medianoche looked at the headless man. Then at the head that had no body. Then at the man who was screaming and crying, these his last seconds of life.
Señor Rodríguez frowned, eyebrows furrowed, nose flared, the expression of a rabid animal before attacking. Señorita Raven smiled like a saint.
A soldier and a psychopath. Both were loading fresh clips into their weapons.
Medianoche moved away.
The Beast moved with him, stood shoulder to shoulder.
The young soldiers stood in front of the crying man, became a two-man firing squad.
The sweet whispers of silenced guns muted the terrified man’s screams.
When it was done, Señorita Raven holstered her gun and looked at Medianoche.
Nothing was said.
Medianoche led the way. The Four Horsemen became part of the night.
Chapter 8
the big con
Thieves and psychopaths
had fled into the balmy night.
It was moments after the chase and battle on Miami Gardens Drive.
We left carnage in our wake, slipped inside the darkness, took separate directions.
Arizona’s baby’s daddy had shown up like a knight on an Italian horse and whisked her away. I did the work on Miami Gardens Drive, but he would take the credit for that save.
I rode my Streetfighter up I-95, then exited, took the streets, made a few turns, then doubled back toward Fort Lauderdale. I abandoned the Ducati in the parking lot at Chuck’s Steak House, wiped away my prints, tossed the keys and my smoking hardware.
I went back to my deluxe lanai guest room at the Hyatt on S.E. 17th, off the intercoastal. Had been there the last two days. About ten minutes from Fort Lauderdale’s airport and Port Everglades. Three minutes from the beach. Twelve minutes away from Aventura.
An old enemy had given way to a new threat. That meant I would need security to watch over Catherine and the boys until I could get this new problem sorted out. Or until this new problem put me in the ground. I used my iPhone, made a call to a friend who had an apartment in Lithia Springs, Georgia. Alvin White answered on the first ring, his Southern voice thick and powerful.
I said, “Alvin. It’s me.”
“Everything okay?”
“It’s that season again.”
Alvin White was the closest thing I had to having a best friend. The Alfred to my Batman. I told him I was off the continent. Then I told him contact had been made.
He knew what I meant. He knew I’d been waiting for bad news to show up.
He said, “I can load up a couple of guns and go watch the house.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Want me to do like I did last time?”
“Do what you have to do.”
“Me and my wife were looking at CNN a few minutes ago.”
“Same here.”
“Crazy stuff down in Miami.” He paused. “You be careful.”
I said, “Doing my best.”
Alvin yawned. “I have some schoolwork to do anyway. I can pack up a snack and coffee, sit out there and work until the sun comes up. The schoolwork will keep me awake.”
“The thing Catherine is helping you with, how is it going?”
“Hardest thing I’ve ever done. My wife saw this movie,
The Reader
. She saw me doing my work and she broke down crying. Can’t thank you enough for everything you’re doing for me.”
“Glad I could help.”
“Got this book. Might call you up. Read some things to you. Not much.”
“Okay. Do that.”
“I got my passport. The one you got for me. I picked it up. Gonna get another one, too. A real one in my name. My wife filled out the paperwork for me. Used some of that money you gave us and paid for it. Got me a passport. Never had one before. So I guess I can leave the country.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew what he was asking me.
He said, “That money you gave me, my wife done gone through most of it. I guess when a woman sees sixty thousand dollars sitting in the bank account, she gets to wanting things she’s never had before. A lot of it was spent on the kids. But she went through that money like termites go through wood. Like I said, I have my passport. The one you got for me.”