M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone (19 page)

Ahead of Charlie was his alligator pool. Most of the stories about it weren't true, but Charlie liked to encourage them because they gave him an exaggerated sense of himself and because they made people fear him. He appreciated the value of fear.

He had never thrown dogs or cats to the gators, however. He didn't even know how those stories got started. He'd thrown them a couple of turtles once, just to see what they'd do, but that was all. Mostly they ate fish that one of Charlie's men bought at the market, or sometimes he'd give them a few gobs of raw meat.

Charlie rarely fed them himself. He liked to watch them crawl around, and he liked the way they sounded when they bellowed, but he hardly ever even looked at them anymore. They were just a part of the landscape these days.

One of them bellowed now, maybe aroused by the rainstorm. Charlie had no idea why they made that noise. It could be that they were just horny. Charlie didn't care.

He was skirting the edge of the pool, a low brick rim that was the only restraint necessary. The pool was large and deep, except for the shallow edges, and the gators were quite happy there. As long as they were fed, there was no problem with them trying to escape. Even if they did, who was going to complain? They couldn't get off the estate. It was illegal for Charlie to have them in the first place, but no one had ever investigated.

He could hear the gators moving in the water, and he thought of their sharp teeth and powerful jaws. He moved to give the pool a wider berth just as the bullet struck him in the heel. He fell sprawling in the grass, the rain plastering his hair to his face and weighting his clothes to his body.

Charlie rolled over and fired back, the bullet grazing
Feliz's
hip. The Cuban hit the grass even harder than Charlie had.

For a few seconds the two men blazed away at each other, their revolver barrels spitting blue flames into the rain.

Neither one scored another hit.

The pain in
Feliz's
hip was bad, but he struggled to his feet and went after Crazy Charlie.

Charlie met
Feliz's
charge on his knees, flailing away with his fists and trying to get the Cuban off-balance.
Feliz
went for Charlie's face.

Both men were once street fighters, but now they had been off the streets for a long time. Both had grown soft, and both had forgotten what real pain was. They fought ineffectually but fiercely, their pain adding to their ferocity.

Charlie saw the dark stain at
Feliz's
hip and struck at the wound.

Feliz
screamed and fell to the ground, rolling to the side. Charlie crawled after him.

Lightning crackled, revealing the thrashing forms in the pool to Charlie's right. One of the gators bellowed.

Charlie fell on
Feliz
, trying to get his hands around the Cuban's throat, but
Feliz
thrust him away. Both men rolled in the wet grass, staining their sodden clothing and covering it with mud.

Charlie grabbed a handful of mud and grass and tried to rub it in
Feliz's
face. The Cuban turned aside and aimed a punch at Charlie's stomach. It landed, and Charlie coughed and fell.

Feliz
got to his feet, trying to ignore the pain that shot all the way from his hip to his toes, and grabbed Charlie under the arms. He began dragging him toward the alligator pool.

When he finally realized what was happening, Charlie dug his good heel into the ground to slow his progress. It didn't help much.

Charlie then drew both legs up under him and pushed backward as hard as he could. The push, in the same direction that
Feliz
was walking, threw the Cuban off-balance and brought them both to the grass again. They tumbled together, Charlie grabbing
Feliz's
hand and biting it until his teeth met through the muscle of the heel.

Feliz
was beyond screaming. He finally ripped his hand away, leaving a bloody hunk of it in Charlie's mouth, and then kicked Charlie in the face, giving his nose the full force of the muddy foot.

Charlie's head snapped to the side and
Feliz
crawled over to him, grasping his jacket in his hand and pulling him toward the low wall that ringed the gators.

Charlie tried feebly to resist, but his strength was gone.
Feliz
got him to the wall, sat him with his back against it, and then began to push him over it.

Charlie's eyes were full of mud and beginning to swell shut from the force of
Feliz's
kick, but he could hear the sound of the gators behind him. He tried to throw himself forward and away from the sounds.

Kneeling beside him,
Feliz
chopped him across the face.

Charlie fell back across the wall, half in and half out of the pool area.

Feliz
raised his hand to hit him again, but then he glanced up to see a huge bull gator outlined against the thick, dark clouds.
Feliz
pulled his hand down and tried to wipe the wet hair out of his eyes.

The gator opened its gigantic jaws, then clamped them shut, taking in Charlie's head and most of his torso.

Charlie's legs hung obscenely out of the reptile's mouth. They kicked and jerked spasmodically, and
Feliz
thought he heard Charlie screaming. Or trying to. The sound came dimly from the inside of the gator's mouth.

As
Feliz
watched, the gator backed into the pool, carrying Charlie with him.

Serves you right, you bastard
,
Feliz
thought. He stood up again and limped back toward the fighting.

A
s Carol Jenner drove the van toward the estate of Crazy Charlie, Stone and his team heard sirens in the distance. "Could be just an accident somewhere," Loughlin observed. "Or a fire."

"Have to be a pretty damn big accident," Hog growled, "or a damn big fire. And I don't see any fire."

"How far is it now?" Stone asked Carol.

"Not far. Couple of blocks, probably."

"I hope those cops aren't headed the same way." Hog looked at Loughlin. "Or ambulances, or fire trucks, or whatever they are. I don't feel like
messin
' with the cops."

"Bloody nuisance," Loughlin agreed.

"Let's get there fast," Stone ordered Carol.

She stepped on the gas.

F
eliz
hobbled toward the moving van, working his right hand up and down as a signal to the driver to sound the air horn.

The driver had been watching him through the rain and immediately began honking. This was the agreed-on signal for the
Marielitos
to begin reloading themselves in the van.

Bodies lay all around the cars in Crazy Charlie's convoy, and not a few were scattered around on the lawn where the
Marielitos
had fallen.
Feliz
had won, but he had taken heavy casualties.

When
Feliz
glanced at the convoy, he thought that he saw a body lying in the middle car. The door was still open from Crazy Charlie's hasty flight, and the drugs were beginning to wear off
Wofford
. The D.E.A. man twitched ever so slightly.

Feliz
called a
Marielito
over. There was no opposition to worry about. All Charlie's men were dead.

The two Cubans hauled
Wofford
out of the back of the car.

"This is the guy I want,"
Feliz
said. He had never seen
Wofford
, but there was only one reason why a drugged man would be in the back of Crazy Charlie's car. He was a prisoner, and no doubt the prisoner that
Feliz
had been hoping to find to offer the Colombians.

Feliz
pulled himself up into the cab of the moving van as the other man dragged
Wofford
to the back and tossed him inside.

"Get us out of here,"
Feliz
ordered the driver.

S
tone knew that something was wrong as soon as he saw the wrought-iron gates hanging limply from their stanchions, and in his gut he knew the reason for the sirens they could still hear behind them, but it was too late to turn back now.

Carol tossed him a quick, questioning look.

"Keep going," he snapped.

She wheeled the van in through the gate.

As they headed up the drive, they could see the moving van backing and filling, trying to get back on the road and started in the right direction to get off the grounds.

They could see little else through the rain-smeared windshield. The van hid the cars and most of the bodies.

The moving van's tires cut deep ruts in the wet turf, but the driver got it back onto the asphalt and headed toward Stone's vehicle. There was room for both of them on the road, but the driver of the moving van seemed to want the entire road for himself.

"Hang on!" Carol yelled. She cut the wheel hard to the right, trying to get out of the way, but the moving van's reinforced bumper clipped them anyway, sending them spinning off the drive. Carol fought the wheel as they did doughnuts across the muddy lawn, grass and mud whirling away from beneath their wheels.

She finally got the vehicle under control and brought it to a shuddering stop. By then
Feliz
and his crew were out the gate. Stone saw the bodies and the three motionless cars. He got out and started toward them.

The rain had almost stopped.

R
osales had heard the sirens, too. He got on the radio to check it out, and he didn't like what he heard. "The war is spreading," he informed his passengers.

Williams was in the back seat. "Crazy Charlie's, eh? That's where we're going?"

Allbright
was in the front seat with Rosales. "Right. And so is every other cop in Miami."

It might have been early in the morning, and a good time for a sneak attack, but it was also a time when neighbors are easily aroused. Though Charlie's estate was fairly isolated, the police had received twelve different calls about the disturbance.

Five blocks from the estate, siren whining, the car passed a moving van headed sedately in the other direction.

Williams shook his head wisely. "At least somebody's gotten smart. They're moving out of this damn place."

S
tone and his crew left their weapons in their van. There was no need for them now.

They walked around the cars and lawn, inspecting the dead bodies. There was no one there that they knew, no sign of
Wofford
at all.

That was the good news.

There was also no sign of Crazy Charlie.

"Whoever was in that moving van may have both of them," Stone said disgustedly. "If only we'd gotten here a little earlier . . ."

"Don't say that," Carol said. "What if we'd had a flat tire, or an accident? What if the police had chased us again? Anything could have happened. It's no one's fault."

She knew that Stone was bitterly disappointed. He had really hoped to find
Wofford
at Charlie
Lucci's
house, and now it appeared that the last chance was gone. Their last lead, as well. She didn't know where they would turn now.

A police cruiser careened through the gate, followed by another and another and another. They kept coming in.

"Looks like a cop-car parade," Hog grumbled. "You think they're here to award us a good-citizenship medal?"

Stone forced a smile. "Somehow I doubt it."

S
tone, Carol, Hog, and Loughlin had been thoroughly hassled by the cops, many of whom had come close to shooting them. Stone understood. He had his people at the scene of a massacre, and the natural first assumption would be that they were involved.

They cooperated fully with the police, however, keeping their hands well in sight and then going along with the obligatory weapons search, at least to the point that they allowed personal searches.