M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone (20 page)

A search of the van was something else, and Stone was determined to avoid it if he could. The police had plenty of other things to occupy them, such as the twenty or thirty bodies lying around leaking blood into the chewed-up lawn.

Stone was talking persuasively on this point when Rosales arrived. His passengers got out, and Williams, being the big dog from Washington, flashed his credentials and took over.

Rosales let him get away with it, wanting to see what would happen and perhaps find out more about what was going on. He cooled the local cops, who continued their investigation of the crime scene.

It was after dawn now, but the clouds still hung low and heavy in the sky. Dozens of bar lights were flashing, giving the scene an eerie glow. It was almost as if things were taking place in some cavern of hell. The dozens of dead bodies added to the illusion.

Ignoring the strangeness of the scene, Williams began his tirade. He was wearing a windbreaker with the letters DEA in orange on the back. Hog figured he needed it to keep his own men from shooting him in the back in a heated action. Hog also figured it might not be enough protection. A man like Williams must not have any friends.

"This is it," the agent from D.C. snarled. The cords in his neck stood out. "I warned you at the airport that I wouldn't stand for this wild-eyed cowboy shit. But now you've done it. You think you're still stuck in Vietnam in some jungle war, but by God you're in the USA now. You can't murder innocent people like this and get by with it!"

Stone glared at him. "Innocent?"

"Until proven guilty. These men didn't receive any trial, did they? Or did you have a kangaroo court before you slaughtered them?"

Stone's eyes were hard. "Who says we slaughtered them?"

"I do,
goddammit
."

"Didn't you say something a second ago about innocent until proven guilty?"

Williams paused. "What if I did?"

Stone looked past him at the other D.E.A. men, also in windbreakers, and at the two plainclothes policemen. "Have you proved anything here?"

"What the hell are you trying to say?"

"Have you proved that I'm guilty?"

Williams waved an arm. "I'd say all those bodies out there prove something."

"They don't prove we killed them. What did we do it with?"

Williams looked wildly around, as if expecting to see weapons lying somewhere nearby. "I . . . don't know."

"We didn't get here much before you did," Stone snapped. "My team didn't hit anybody."

Rosales stepped forward. "I am Bill Rosales, head of the Organized Crime Division in Miami. It doesn't matter to me who you killed. What the hell, most of these scum deserved what they got, I'm sure. When we check their records they'll all have more convictions than Al Capone.

"But that's not what worries me. What worries me is a completely unauthorized group of men like yourselves, a death squad if you wish, free in my town. You feel that you can come in here, do as you please, and leave, with no thought to the consequences. That is not the way it works, Mr. Stone."

Allbnght
moved up beside Rosales. "I'm head of Homicide. Murder is still murder, no matter who gets killed."

"And I say we didn't kill any of this bunch," Stone growled. "We came here to look for a friend. That's all there is to it."

Williams shoved Rosales and
Allbnght
aside. "What about your friend?"

"We didn't find him."

"That's another thing," Williams growled. "You're interfering with an official government investigation into the disappearance of one of its agents. You're placing him in grave danger!"

"What investigation?" Stone snapped.

"Uh . . . what do you mean?" Williams stammered.

"I mean
what investigation
?" Stone looked at Bass. "Can you tell me? What is the D.E.A. doing to find and rescue
Wofford
?"

Bass looked at the ground. "Well, we.
 
. . uh, we are pursuing several avenues of possibility."

Hog choked back a laugh.

"That's exactly what I mean," Stone snapped. "You're 'pursuing several avenues of possibility.' Bullshit. I've heard that lie a hundred times, in other circumstances. What it means is that you've written Jack
Wofford
off the list. As far as you're concerned, he's history. Disappeared is as good as dead. You don't care what happens to him now, just as long as he doesn't make the agency look bad."

"That's a lie," Williams snarled. "We are concerned about
Wofford
and his safety. Our agents make the agency what it is."

"Tell that to his wife," Stone said. "I know it would be a comfort to her right now."

"I think the man has a point,"
Allbright
said. "I think we all know what really happened here. After all, we were on our way here, too. It's just another action in the drug war, just another action like we've seen too many of."

Rosales agreed. "I don't think Stone and his team are guilty of what went down here. This is retaliation for whatever occurred earlier tonight. But we can't allow ourselves to sink to this level."

"Why not?" Stone asked.

They all looked at him.

Stone glared back. "That's right. I said, 'Why not?' What good has your way done so far? I'll tell you. It hasn't done
any
good. There are more drugs in Florida now than ever before. Miami gets painted up like a tourist town, and the chamber of commerce wants it that way. But we all know there are parts of Miami the tourists never see, and the members of the chamber don't see them either. They'd be afraid to go there, because they've heard about what goes on—the murders, the robberies, the muggings, the rapes. The shop owners know, and parts of this town are like an armed camp.

"Sure, people watch
Miami Vice
while they're sitting comfortably at home in their reclining chairs, but they really don't think about the crimes they see on their TV screens. They think about what a hunk Sonny is, or what pretty girls those are in their bikinis, or how blue the water is.

"And all the time it's rotten underneath, in the places nobody ever sees. Nobody but the cops, that is, and you guys ought to know. You can't fight people who make war like this"—he waved a hand to indicate the bodies lying in front of them—"with Miranda rights and the Constitution. The people who do things like this don't give a damn about rights, anybody's rights. They take what they want, they kill who they please, and they dare you to stop them.

"That's why you need somebody like us right now, somebody who can fight them on their own ground, who can give them back exactly what they're giving out, and who doesn't have to answer to a mayor or a city council about what happens while I'm doing it."

Stone stopped. It had been a long speech, but it had been building up inside him. Someone had to do whatever it took to find Jack
Wofford
.

Rosales looked at
Allbright
. "We need to talk."

Allbright
nodded.

"You can't be serious!" Williams exploded. "You can't really be considering letting this maniac have a free hand."

"Shut up," Rosales snarled.

He and
Allbnght
walked a few paces away and put their heads together.

It was still raining lightly, and Hog thought he could see steam rising off Williams. It was probably just an optical illusion, though, he figured.

Rosales and
Allbnght
came back.

"I'm going to take a chance on you, Stone," Rosales said. "Care to make a deal?"

"Deal, hell," Williams snarled. "Rosales, you and these men are interfering with a government operation—"

"We
are
a government operation," Stone informed them quietly, nodding to himself and his men.

"What the hell—"
Allbright
snorted.

Stone then showed his presidential authorization to these men without further ado; the ID and accompanying letter that stated that Mark Stone and his team were indeed on Uncle Sam's payroll.

Each man studied the authorization and passed it to the man next to him.

Bass whistled when his turn came. "Damn, this
is
from the top. Operating out of Fort Bragg, yet. A regular fucking commando team."

Williams had studied it longer than anyone.

"I plan to check this shit all the way to the top," he snarled. He spun and stalked off, followed by his D.E.A. men. Rosales turned back to Stone, not
unamused
at
Williams's
chagrin.

"Okay, you guys, split. But, uh, about that deal, Stone. Stay in touch, huh.
Allbright
and I've got jobs to do, too. You could help."

"Understood."

"Good. Now get out of here before I let my good judgment get the better of me and change my mind."

Stone and the team climbed in the van.

"You didn't really mean that, did you?" Loughlin muttered.

"What's that?" Stone asked.

"That we'd tell him every move we make."

Stone smiled. "I didn't say that. I said I understood."

T
he orange-and-black-painted moving van, about which Stone had neglected to tell the police, moved carefully through the gray dawn, never exceeding the speed limit, always obeying all the traffic signs. Although
Feliz
was wounded, as were several of the men in the trailer, the driver had been ordered to take no chances on being stopped.

Finally the van came to a halt in front of a warehouse deep in the barrio, a warehouse almost identical to the one to which
Wofford
had been lured for the phony drug deal. It was, in fact, only about two blocks away, and of the same cheap construction. Even the graffiti was similar, but in this case the name painted on the building was KRAZY KATZ, in a shiny Day-Glo orange.

The moving van stopped in front of a huge corrugated iron door. The driver punched a button under the truck dash, and the massive door began to rumble upward. The van moved inside, and the door rattled down behind it.

The inside of the warehouse consisted of a vast open space, with a small office area built next to the wall on one side. Enrique
Feliz
climbed awkwardly down from the truck cab and hobbled to the office, where there was a telephone. He called the doctor that he generally used to treat bullet wounds, a man who liked the money and could keep his mouth shut.

Then he called Ramón Flores.

"It went well?" Flores said.

"Not entirely. But well enough. We need to talk."

"Fine. Where?"

"At the warehouse."

"I can be there in an hour," Flores said.

"Good."
Feliz
hung up the phone and sat in one of the desk
chairs that furnished the room to wait for the doctor.

"Y
ou really think Stone will do what he says?"

Allbright
and Rosales had dumped Williams and his D.E.A. men at their headquarters and were now alone.

"I didn't make any deals just to irritate that Williams, if that's what you mean," Rosales told him.

Allbright
shook his head. "That's not exactly what I mean." He grinned. "But I wouldn't blame you if you had."

"Yeah, he really is an asshole. But the local guys aren't so bad. I don't know why that Williams has such a bug up his ass."

"Those Washington guys are always like that. Think they've got something to prove."

"I know all about macho," Rosales said. "It's not just that."

"I guess not. But what about the deal?"

"All right. I think Stone will tell us what we want to hear and then do exactly what he wants to do. He doesn't give a damn what we think, and he won't let us get in his way."

"I sort of got that impression, too."