JET - Escape: (Volume 9) (2 page)

The man next to him, a whippet-thin Rastafarian with a carefully trimmed goatee, wearing a yellow shirt with a graphic of Bob Marley on it, nodded as though Renoir had revealed the secret to eternal life. “They on fire, all right, those boys is.”

Renoir downed the remainder of his bottle of beer and slammed it on the wooden table, glanced at his watch, and signaled to the waiter for the bill. The man scurried over. Renoir threw down a wad of American dollars and then pushed back with a wave to the musicians. The girls drained their drinks with practiced ease, and the one on his right clutched his hand possessively. Renoir’s entourage stood, the distinctive shapes of pistols in the bodyguards’ waistbands barely covered by their shirts, and the band struck up another song as Renoir’s group made their way to the entrance. The restaurant owner, a heavy woman with a scarlet head scarf and a white blouse, approached with her arms outstretched.

“Jon, bless your heart. Always good to see you, it is,” she said with a smile.

The big man hugged her. “Got to do this more often, mama.”

“You come back soon as you want. Always got my best table for you, I do.”

Renoir pressed a twenty-dollar bill into her palm and turned to his goateed companion. “Ate too damn much again, I did.”

“Man got to keep up his strength.”

The young woman who’d been holding Renoir’s hand now took his arm and pulled close to him. Her head barely reached his shoulder. “Tha’s right, honey child, you going to need all of it tonight, you are,” she slurred in a loud stage whisper.

The front of the restaurant was dark, its neon pink and yellow façade barely visible in the gloom. As Renoir’s entourage moved to two copper-colored SUVs, the rumble of a big motor from the end of the street drew their attention. The three bodyguards who framed Renoir and his female company reflexively reached for their pistols. Both SUV engines were running, having gotten a warning call a few minutes earlier, alerting them that Renoir was ready to depart, and the driver of the nearest reacted to the unexpected sound by reaching for a machine pistol that rested on the passenger seat.

Bright spotlights blinked on across the street, blinding the gunmen, and a voice called out over a megaphone.

“Renoir, this is Lieutenant Ponchet of the Port-au-Prince police. Drop your weapons.”

Renoir ducked behind the SUV’s front fender with his date as his gunmen whipped their pistols free. An assault rifle barrage barked from across the road as the police opened fire. The nearest bodyguard screamed as two rounds slammed into his torso and he fell back, squeezing the trigger of his handgun reflexively as he went down. The young woman screamed at the sight of his bloody form next to her, and then the driver emptied his machine pistol at the muzzle flashes and there was a lull in the incoming fire.

Renoir worked a Glock 19 pistol from his belt and signaled to his remaining bodyguards. One of them nodded and took a deep breath. He poked his head from around the fender of the adjacent vehicle and was instantly pummeled with rounds. Renoir swore – the police had to be using night vision scopes, taking no chances, which meant he and his crew had no chance.

The side of the SUV shredded as dozens of slugs tore through it, killing the driver, cutting him nearly in half. Renoir got off several shots of his own, and then the girl screamed again – a stray round had ricocheted from the pavement and hit her in the stomach. She clutched the spreading stain and stared at Renoir with wide, pained eyes, and then closed them with a groan.

Renoir grimaced and moved a few feet to his right, where the engine block and steel tire rims would shield him as he considered his next move. His Rastafarian associate clutched a chrome-plated Desert Eagle .45-caliber pistol, and watched Renoir for a signal of how he wanted to play the situation. All the men in Renoir’s entourage were veterans of countless shanty-town gun battles, so exchanging fire was nothing new to them, but this was the first time they’d been ambushed by heavily armed police. They would all give their lives if he gave the nod – that was how they rolled – but the signal was his to give, and nobody else’s.

Renoir glanced behind him at the restaurant entrance, calculating whether he could make it back inside without being hit. It was a fifty-fifty proposition, but better than the certain death that awaited across the road. He understood how things worked on the island, with as many enemies as he had – the all-out assault on his men told him that he would be summarily executed by his assailants, whether or not they were actually police.

His only hope was to take refuge in the restaurant and then make a break for it down the beach, perhaps swimming to safety to avoid any shooters lying in wait by the water.

The decision was an easy one. He pointed first at the entrance, then at himself, and then motioned to his gunmen to continue engaging the police, his message clear: lay down covering fire while he made his move.

A pause in the onslaught was followed by Renoir’s bodyguards firing at the shadows as he dashed back to the restaurant. Plumes of dirt sprayed the ground where bullets narrowly missed him. The façade erupted in a spray of colored mortar beside the crime lord, goading him to greater speed. He darted through the entryway as rounds whistled around him, and then he was safely behind the cinderblock wall, the panicked eyes of the diners and waiters glued to him: a mountain of a man clutching a gun, panting and sweating as he sized up his escape route through the tables.

More gunfire boomed from outside the entrance, driving him forward toward the band, which had stopped playing as the musicians scrambled behind overturned tables. Gunfire was nothing new in Port-au-Prince, to the point where there was a certain laissez-faire to hearing it a few blocks away; but an armed assault at the front door was a different story, and everyone took cover as best they could.

Renoir pushed through the dining area and hurried to the stage. He stared out over the beach, which was empty save for the fishermen knee-deep in the surf. With a final glance behind him, where the shooting was slowing – presumably as his men died – he ran across the strand toward the water, returning his pistol to his belt as he moved with surprising speed for such a large man.

Fountains of sand geysered next to him and a burst of automatic rifle fire sounded from the side of the restaurant. He ducked instinctively and clumsily zigzagged the remaining way to the water’s edge. The rounds followed him, and when he hit the gentle swell, they tore at the sea around him before stopping as he waded to his chest.

“Renoir, no more warning shots, you hear? Hands up, or the next one’s between your eyes. Serious, I am. You want to die tonight, big mon?” Lieutenant Ponchet’s voice rang out from the darkness.

Renoir stopped. If the cop had wanted to kill him, he’d have already blown his head off. So he wanted Renoir alive. Why, Renoir didn’t know, but now that he was in full view of the restaurant’s diners and staff, it was unlikely he’d get a bullet in the spine on the ride to jail.

A wave surged past him, and he took the chance to pull his pistol from his waist while the water obstructed the cop’s view of his hands. He debated a final shoot-out for a split second and then dropped the gun into the sea – leaving the crooked Haitian cops to arrest an unarmed man guilty of nothing but running for his life.

Renoir slowly turned until he was facing the restaurant, hands high over his head. “Ain’t got no gun, I don’t,” he shouted.

Three members of the Haitian police’s elite SWAT team materialized from the side of the building, M16 rifles trained on the big man, and as they neared Renoir, he could see the tension in their faces. The lead man, obviously Ponchet by his bearing, hung back as they approached.

“Come on outta the water, Renoir. We got to cuff you, we do,” Ponchet ordered.

“What’s the charge?”

“Littering. Now out of the water, you. Let’s get this over with.”

“You boys making a big mistake here, you are.”

“Yeah? Maybe.”

“Ain’t got no gun. My people thought you was gangsters trying to kill us. Got no beef with the police, I don’t,” Renoir said as he made his way back onto the beach.

Ponchet nodded, and one of the officers pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt, the M16 still clutched in his other hand with its ugly snout pointed at Renoir’s head. “Turn around and let’s do this.”

Renoir obliged and stood patiently as the man searched him. Finding nothing, the officer clasped Renoir’s wrists behind him and locked the cuffs in place. Renoir turned toward Ponchet and eyed him in the faint light as the moon peeked between the clouds. “You shot my girl. She wasn’t doing nothing, she wasn’t – just eating dinner.”

Ponchet shrugged. “Plenty more where she came from, what I hear about you.”

“She was special.”

“She should a been more careful ’bout who she opened her legs for.” Ponchet tilted his head, studying Renoir’s dripping form, and then reached down to his belt for his radio and held it to his mouth. “We got him.”

The cop on Renoir’s left nudged the crime lord with his gun barrel. “Come on, you. Nice and easy.”

“I want my lawyer,” Renoir said, his tone resigned, as he took lumbering steps forward on the sand.

“Oh, yeah. Bet you do,” Ponchet agreed.

“You gonna regret this.”

The blow to the back of Renoir’s head stunned him. For a second the sky tilted, the torchlight from the restaurant pinwheeling as he reeled, but he didn’t go down. Ponchet moved close to him and whispered in his ear, “Any more threats, you gonna have broken bones by the time we get to the station, you.”

Renoir bit back the insult that sprang to his lips and instead grunted, his eyes flat and dead as a shark’s, revealing nothing. The little group continued up the strand to the restaurant, which was now silent, the gunfire having died down while the crime boss was bolting for the water. When they reached the concrete stage, Renoir spotted the restaurant owner, and before Ponchet could stop him, yelled out to her, “Call Antoine and tell him what happened. We going to the station. Tell him be quick about it.”

A savage blow from Ponchet’s truncheon caught Renoir in the temple and his knees buckled as he dropped. The surroundings and the horrified expressions on the faces of the band and the diners faded as his vision blurred and he lost consciousness.

Chapter 2

La Virginia, Colombia

Jet squinted in the predawn gloom at the bank on the far side of the river. The leaky boat they’d commandeered after escaping from the monastery had taken them as far as she dared hope, and as morning light glowed beyond the eastern peaks, she made her decision.

“We’ll stay on this side of the river. I remember seeing a decent-sized town on the map. We must be near it by now,” she said.

Jet, Matt, and Hannah had spent the long night on the water, allowing the current to carry them south at a crawl, and had come up with a plan as they’d meandered toward the little hamlet of La Virginia. They would find a computer and contact one of Matt’s old agency acquaintances – a black sheep former analyst named Carl, who had long ago retired to Cuba in an effort to be free of the U.S. intelligence community, his patriotism having waned as he’d seen too much over his years with the CIA. He’d set up shop there and was now an accommodator – helping the locals with forbidden currency and equipment, facilitating illegal transactions, and generally playing middleman on anything that paid in the black-market economy that was the byproduct of communism.

Matt nodded groggily, and Hannah stirred beside him. Jet motioned to the primitive rudder. “You take the helm. Pull in anywhere that looks good. How’s she doing?”

“She feels a little hot to the touch, and you heard her coughing. She’s definitely coming down with something,” Matt said, half-standing as he moved in a crouch to the stern and took the tiller from her. Jet edged forward and sat next to Hannah and then laid a cool hand on her forehead.

“Not too bad,” Jet murmured, as much to herself as to Matt.

“She’s been through an awful lot,” Matt whispered.

“Yes, she has. We all have. But we have to keep moving. We don’t know who’s after us, only that one of the cartels is helping them, which means it’s not safe anywhere in Colombia.”

“It has to be because of the diamonds. Nothing else makes sense.”

“Maybe, but knowing that doesn’t help us. We have to get to either Ecuador or Venezuela. Panama is out of the question after what I went through there. The police will be looking for me for a long time.”

“Venezuela is hostile to the U.S. – I vote for Venezuela,” Matt said. “If it’s the agency after us, they’ll have a hell of a time getting any help.”

“True, but it’s also way too unstable to live there, Matt. I’ve been to Venezuela. It’s always been dangerous, but I hear it’s getting way worse.”

“We’ll talk to Carl and see what he can do for us. Maybe one of the islands? Aruba?”

“Too close for comfort. This all started for me on Trinidad, remember?”

“That’s right. I keep forgetting.” Matt pointed at a spot on the bank. “Let’s hear what Carl has to say, and we can go from there. It’s going to be daylight soon, and if they’re still looking for us, the more distance we can put between ourselves and the monastery, the better…”

“You can bet they’ll be looking. Whoever sent them is still out there. And don’t forget the shooter at the base of the mountain.” She hesitated. “We have to assume that even though we bought ourselves some time, they’ll figure this out eventually. By then we need to be anywhere but Colombia.”

The boat drifted toward the river’s edge, and the wooden hull scraped on the rocky shore. Jet hopped out and pulled the bow further onto the spit of land, and Matt handed a still-slumbering Hannah to her before climbing out himself. She waited as he pushed the boat back into the current, and they watched it slowly float into the fog.

Matt took in a small circle of stones surrounded by broken glass by the brush line and leaned into her. “Come on. We can take turns carrying Hannah. There’s a trail I can just make out by the fire pit. There’s probably a road somewhere close by.”