M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone (27 page)

Maybe the alligators and turtles would find him.

It didn't matter to Stone. It was time for him to get back to the lab, if he could find it. He turned the boat in what he hoped was the right direction.

Feliz
had surfaced and was screaming again.

Stone didn't look back.

H
og went over to the trapdoor. There was no sound from inside the building, so he went down. He found himself in an attic, with a stair leading into the lab itself. He took the stairs.

He passed no one in the halls. No one living, that is. There were lots of bodies, lying in blood already beginning to congeal. Hog could smell the blood, and the smoke of cordite seemed to hang in the air.

He located the front door and went out to the body of the man he had watched from the roof. He knelt down and turned the man over. Hog still wasn't sure just what he had witnessed, but he knew that he would never see anything like it again. It had been strange and almost mystical, and it made Hog feel funny. He couldn't explain it.

There was almost an expression of happiness on the man's face as he stared up at the leaden sky. Hog gently closed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

"Who's that?" Loughlin called from the doorway of the lab building.

"I don't know for sure," Hog answered. "I think it must be Jack
Wofford
." Hog looked at Loughlin and shook himself, trying to recapture his usual high spirits.

"What's he doing out there?" Loughlin wanted to know.

"I'm not sure. Up till a minute ago, he was
gunnin
' down the bad guys, though." Hog stood up and looked down at the body. "Don't ask me how. I don't see how he could even walk with all those bullet holes in him. Where's the
sarge
?"

"I don't know. I thought you might have an idea."

"Not me. I been otherwise occupied."

"So have I," Loughlin told him.

"Yeah, right. You got the charges all set?"

"Set and ready. It wouldn't be a good idea to set them off until we get a safe distance away. And not until we know where Stone is."

"Let's check at the boats." Hog bent down and lifted up
Wofford's
body as easily as if it had been that of a child. "We want to take him back with us. The rest of these scumbags, we can just leave here."

"Good idea. I'll show you where the boats are."

Loughlin led the way to where the airboats had been left. At the sight of the red-haired Brit, Tim
Congrady
came out of the brush where he had concealed himself. "Your boss left here in a hell of a hurry, chasing after some Latino guy in another boat," he told them.

He looked curiously at Hog and the body he was carrying. "Passenger for the return trip," Hog grunted.

"It sounded like a war over there,"
Congrady
said.

"It was," Loughlin assured him. "And it isn't over yet." Hog laid
Wofford's
body carefully in one of the boats.

"Which way did the
sarge
go?"

Congrady
pointed. "But that don't make much difference. Directions don't mean a thing in the 'Glades if you don't know what you're
doin
'."

"You mean you think he's lost?"

"It'd be a wonder if he wasn't, pal, and that's nothing against him. I've heard stories about men
wanderin
' around in the backwaters for weeks,
livin
' on water moccasins and
drinkin
' swamp water. Some of '
em
eventually get out. Some never do."

Hog shrugged. "Just one thing to do, then."

"What's that?"

"Go find him."

S
tone's head was throbbing, not so much from the heat as from the blows he had taken from the Uzi that Enrique
Feliz
had hit him with. Because the sky was so thickly overcast, he had little idea of directions.

Let's face it
, he thought.
You're lost
.

It wasn't a good feeling, but at least he had taken out
Feliz
. One less big-time drug dealer to worry about.

He had made a little headway at first by trying to follow the path of broken grass left by the airboats in their earlier flight, but soon that method had failed. They had crossed stretches of open water and gone in among trees where there was no grass.

He knew that they had kept pretty much to a straight line, but it hadn't been entirely straight. He sat in the middle of a field of bright green lily pads and wondered how long he could hold out.

Probably for quite a while. He was an expert in survival.

He looked out over the expanse of the swamp to his left. The snout and eyes of an alligator showed above the surface. There were other animals in the swamp besides himself, and they were also survivors. Some of them had been at it for a long time.

The gator suddenly disappeared without a sound, as if he had heard something. Stone strained his ears, and then he heard it too.

The sound of a helicopter.

Within minutes Hog was just above him, the chopper's blades stirring the water and whipping the lily pads into a frenzy. Hog dropped a line, and Stone climbed aboard.

T
hey flew back to the island and waved the all-clear to Loughlin. He and
Congrady
got in the airboat and pulled away.

As soon as they did, the Cubans' pilot came out of hiding and got in the only remaining boat. Loughlin thought about shooting him, but decided against it. Maybe, like
Congrady
, he was simply an innocent bystander.

When the boat had gotten about five hundred yards from the island, Loughlin activated the explosive charges he had planted throughout the coke lab.

The thundering concussions drummed into their ears, and they could feel the vibrations through the bottom of the boat.

Smoke and flame rose above the trees as the lab exploded, effectively entombing all the dead bodies that were within it. Those on the outside would lie where they were, but scavengers would eliminate most traces of them soon enough.

In the subtropical climate of the 'Glades, it would not take long for nature to erase most of the marks that the Colombians had made on the island. Grass and vines would cover the remains of the lab. More trees would grow to conceal the concrete blocks that were left. Even the galvanized fence would one day rust and fall down.

The birds and small amphibians would take over the island again, and it would almost be as if the Colombians had never been there.

Almost.

Every change that man made in the Everglades had its effects, and sometimes the effects were not measurable at first. Yet left alone long enough, the swamp would heal itself and go back to being what it was before.

I
n the chopper on the way back to Miami, Hog tried to explain to Stone how
Wofford
had died. "It was really weird. I never saw anything like it. It was as if they couldn't hit him, but he was hit plenty at one time or another."

"He was hit before he went after them," Stone told him. "He was hit so bad that I never thought he'd last more than a minute."

"He did, though." There was a note of awe in Hog's voice, something that Stone was sure he'd never heard there before. "That may not be much comfort to his wife."

Hog didn't know about that. "Maybe she'll understand."

"I don't know. I just wish we could have gotten there sooner."

"It don't do much good to go
wishin
'," Hog said.

Stone knew the big East Texan was right. But he still wished it.

"Y
ou can't save them all," Carol said, shaking her blonde head. "It's not your fault, and it's a miracle that you got there in the first place. How could anyone have acted sooner?"

"I don't know." Stone was exhausted in body and spirit.

"They couldn't have. If you'd waited for the police to act on the same information, you'd be an old man in a rocking chair!"

Stone knew that she was right, as right as Hog had been, but it didn't make him feel any better.

"Think how his wife sounded when we called," Carol went on. "She knew that you'd done your best, and she was glad to hear that it was over. She knew all along what kind of job her husband had, and what the risks were. He died doing a job that he wanted to do. And look at what you've done. Don Vito
Lucci
is dead. Crazy Charlie is gone, probably killed at the drug lab. Enrique
Feliz
is dead. The biggest drug lab in Florida is destroyed, along with the men who built it and ran it. Why, you and Hog and Terrance have practically wiped out the drug trade in this part of Florida. It will take months, maybe years, for anyone to get things going at anywhere near the same rate again. Can't you be satisfied with that?"

"No," Stone growled wearily.

R
osales was satisfied. Word had a way of getting around, and though Stone had not yet reported to him, Rosales had a pretty good idea about what had happened. Tim
Congrady
had talked to friends, who had talked to others, and word had gotten to the police.

He and
Allbright
were trying to put it together.

"If we're right,"
Allbright
said, "
Feliz
hit Crazy Charlie. Stone took out
Feliz
, and probably Don Vito. Crazy Charlie is the one who hit the Cuban/Colombian drug deal. Stone's taken out the Colombians' lab and found his buddy from the D.E.A."

"That's it," Rosales agreed.

"But is it right?"

Rosales shrugged. "It doesn't even matter. The result is still the same."

"Yeah,"
Allbright
said. "It ought to be a little quieter around here for the next few months."

"I wonder why I don't feel any better about it?" Rosales said.

"The same reason I don't,"
Allbright
growled. "You didn't have any part in it. While all this blood was being shed, and while the biggest racket in Miami was being cleaned up, we were sitting on our asses."

"Not exactly. We were trying to keep up, to get a handle on things."

"Sure we were. Running from one side of town to another, from one crime scene to the next. Johnny on the spot, that was us. Except that we were always about ten minutes too late to do anything."

Rosales thought about it. "I guess you're right. And this cowboy comes to town and cleans house."

"Kind of makes you wonder about Constitutional restrictions, doesn't it,"
Allbright
suggested.

"No, not really. We're sworn to uphold the laws, which means we have to play by the rules. We knew that when we got in the game."

"Still, when somebody comes in and blows the rules away . . ."

"It was a special case," Rosales argued. "It can't be that way all the time."

"Okay. Okay. Then why do you feel so rotten?"

"I don't know. Can you think of any loose ends?"

"Not a one. Stone tied it all up with a red ribbon and handed it to us. All we have to do is enjoy it."

Rosales still wasn't sure. "What about Crazy Charlie?"

"What about him?"

"Where is he? He wasn't at the estate."

Allbright
didn't think it mattered. "He probably got killed at the lab. Apparently
Feliz
was taking
Wofford
there to give him to the Colombians. Maybe he had Charlie, too."

"I wonder," Rosales said.

"I don't. As long as he's gone, I don't care where he is."

No one had thought to search Crazy Charlie's alligator pool, and no one ever did. No trace of Charlie was ever found.