Trident Force (11 page)

“When's the last time you saw them?”

“At least a week ago. Maybe more.”

“Know where they are?”

“No idea.” As she spoke, Ted noticed that her smile, while still in place, had a certain hollowness to it. As if the sense of strange power the girl radiated was a masterful act that might collapse from exhaustion at any time. Not tonight, perhaps, but some night.

“You said Coccoli was a big talker. What did he talk about?”

“Recently? He seemed to think he was on to something big. You know, big bucks. I assume drugs. That's the big business around here.”

“There anybody here they talked to who we can also talk to?”

Suddenly, Dani's smile completely disappeared, replaced by an expression as cold and disinterested as the heart of the most heartless terrorist. “That's all I can tell you except they both talked about somebody named Omar. Omar this and Omar that. I'm sure Omar had something to do with their big plan.”

Without making any sudden moves, Dani stood and, giving no warning whatsoever, somehow just disappeared into the crowd. It was as if she hadn't been there at all.

So intent were Ray and Ted on trying to figure out the girl's actions that they didn't notice, until it was too late, the two men who had appeared alongside the table. One, who moved around behind Ted, was short and wiry, much like the SEAL. The other, now standing beside Ray, was seriously overweight. “You are Mr. Anderson and Mr. Fuentes?” asked the fat one.

Ray looked at him without saying anything.

“Show me your identification. Your passport.”

“Who are you?” asked Ray, suspecting he already knew the answer.

“Federal police,” snapped the fat one, flashing an ID quickly in his face. “Now your passports!

“You are insurance investigators?” asked the fat one after perusing the little blue books.

“Yes.”

“You have been asking questions all over the shipyard. Now we wish to ask you some questions. Come with us.”

Ted tensed, certain he could overpower the guy behind him but unsure whether or not the two were really cops. The boss had made it very clear he didn't want any incidents. Ted decided to follow Ray's lead. He was, after all, senior.

The two Americans glanced at each other. “These aren't cops,” the glances said simultaneously. “Or if they are, they're bent.”

Before either could act, both their heads erupted into sharp, overpowering pain. The sort of pain that makes you quiver from head to foot and want to vomit. Stunned by their assailants' blackjacks, neither reacted when the Berettas were stripped from their pockets.

“Get up! We're leaving.”

Clutching his spinning, screaming head and on the verge of screaming himself, Ray just looked up at him stupidly.

“Up!” shouted the fat one again, dragging Ray to his feet.

None of the Bar Tiffany's other customers seemed to show the slightest shock at, or even interest in, the proceedings.

The blackjacks had been applied with a high degree of finesse. The blows had been calculated to stun rather than totally incapacitate, and they had done just that. Even before they reached the door, the two Tridents had regained the ability to move under their own power and their heads had cleared somewhat, although the pain continued to throb nauseatingly.

With the fat one walking beside Ray and the other thug behind them, they started down the brightly lit street. The bars and the sidewalks were still jammed with pulsating masses of humanity, desperate to grab a little bit of life and joy from the physical bleakness that dominated their daily existence.

“In!” said the fat one, stopping alongside a van.

While the fat one issued the orders, the smaller one reached to open the door, thereby making the last stupid mistake of his life. Driven by instinct and a totally unprofessional fury, Ted was all over him—knocking his legs out from under him, grabbing and breaking his arm and slamming his face into the side of the van. The fat man, who had overestimated the lasting power of their blackjack work, was stunned himself by the speed of Ted's attack on his companion and was no match for Ray. It took the marine officer another fifteen seconds to force his opponent onto his knees with his arm half torn off and the gun now in Ray's hand.

“Not bad for an officer,” hissed Ted, slightly winded.

“Oh shit!” growled Ray, also slightly winded, as he noticed the three men standing in a shadow at a corner about fifty feet away and felt the thunderous crashing of their automatic weapons pound against his mangled head as they opened fire. “God damn it, Ted, under the van!” he shouted. “We've walked into the middle of a turf war.”

While the two Tridents wormed their way under the van, wishing they could take their pounding heads off and throw them away, the automatic weapons tore the bodies of their first two assailants to shreds. They then processed the shreds into canned dog food.

 

Omar sat in a darkened car two blocks from the Bar Tiffany. He was little more than a shadow as he watched the gang he'd hired to kill the Americans massacred by another gang.

He'd made a mistake. If al Hussein had given him more time to arrange it, he would have been able to check out the gang's current position more carefully. But more important than the mistake was his growing conviction that the operation itself was endangered. The Americans were not part of the plan and neither was this fiasco. Al Hussein was a very precise person—too precise. He'd be angered by tonight's events, maybe even thrown off balance. He might well make a mistake himself, and he'd blame it all on Omar.

Even if al Hussein represented no serious threat, it was still time to move on. Omar was a very sensitive man and knew when an operation had veered out of control and might well blow up in his face. There was nothing more for him to do but leave. Tonight. To drive to the airport and get on one of the first flights out. Despite computers, despite identity chips, despite everything, the world was still a big place and Omar knew how to disappear into it. He'd done it before. And at the right time he'd reappear, although certainly not as Omar.

 

“Shit,” grunted Anderson just as his arm and head disappeared under the van.

“What?” Fuentes had to shout to be heard above the firing of the automatic weapons and the thunking of their heavy rounds into the van's body.

“The pricks got me in the arm.”

“Keep moving. They're going to hit the gas tank any second now. Then across the street and down that alley.”

“If this is a gang hit, why do they want us too?”

“Because we're here.”

“Roger.”

Slithering backward as fast as they could, the two dragged themselves out from under the van. Crouching, they ran like hell across the now totally deserted street. By keeping the van between themselves and their assailants, they managed to make it almost to the alley before their retreat was appreciated by the gunmen.

“Wish to damn I'd grabbed that scumbag's gun,” remarked Ted when the two stopped about fifty yards up the alley.

“I've got the fat guy's,” Ray reassured him. “How bad's your arm?”

“Nothing's broken.”

“You going to be able to kill one of these bastards?”

“It'll be a mixture of pleasure and pain.”

“Good. You make yourself disappear behind that crap piled along that wall. I'll hide behind that next pile of garbage. As soon as I can get a good shot, I'll take out one of them. That should make the remaining two concentrate on me, allowing you to slip behind them as they pass and take out another. With luck I can then get the third before he blows you away.”

“What if they don't follow us in? What if they just wait for us?”

“Don't think they will. These guys are simple thugs. All of them. They'll either come after us or leave before the cops arrive.”

“Can they get in behind you?”

“Looks like a dead end to me.”

Without uttering another word, Ted disappeared into the mound of boxes, garbage cans and whatever else was there. Ray sprinted to the next pile and slipped behind it. They waited in the tropical night, sweating and listening to the rats rooting around them. The air stank of garbage and humanity. Multicolored lights flashed dimly down the alley. Tense and alert, Ray checked over the gun. Even in the dim light he knew it was a cheap one. Probably not very accurate. But, fortunately, it had eight unused rounds.

Then, although Ted couldn't see it, the light from the street dimmed and the shadows of three men became faintly visible to Ray. He tensed even more, a cascade of sweat now pouring down his neck. Long shot. Cheap gun. How long would it take them to respond and how accurate would their response be? If they got him, or if he failed to get at least one of them, he and Ted were dead.

The thugs advanced slowly, looking carefully around and behind anything stacked along the walls. Ray held the pistol in both hands and steadied it on the top of a garbage can filled with something that generated a sharp, nauseating stench. The thugs reached the pile in which Ted was mixed, and one angled over to look at it. Ray squeezed off four rapid shots and one thug collapsed onto the slick, grimy pavement. Cursing, the other two split, one moving to take cover on the left and the other moving unwittingly to take cover alongside Ted.

Despite his injured arm, it was the work of a second or two for the SEAL to break the thug's neck as his victim virtually dove into what he'd hoped would be safety. Without saying a word Ted then grabbed the dead thug's weapon and opened fire on the remaining assailant, dashing as he did across the space between the two piles.

The third gunman didn't stand a chance.

“Okay, ditch that gun,” hissed Ray, staring at the small but impossible-to-conceal machine gun, “and let's get the hell out of here. You have the map?”

Ted reached into his left pocket and pulled it out.

“To the car?”

“Yes, but by side streets.”

Ted studied the map in the barely adequate light. “Down this alley then right for . . . three blocks then left and we should come out opposite it.”

“Shit! I didn't think the alley had another end.”

“One of us is damn lucky.”

“You lead.”

The pair sprinted down the alley and turned right onto a virtually unlit street, bordered on either side by low, dark concrete block buildings—each hiding behind its own barbed wire-capped fence. Partway down the first block they shrank back into the shadows and crouched, listening for pursuit.

“If somebody is chasing us,” whispered Ray, “they know the neighborhood better than we do. They may be ahead of us.”

“Roger.”

Making as little noise as they could and keeping in the shadows, they worked their way tensely down the street. At one point, Ray backed up against a fence, only to jump halfway across the street when a dog snarled and tried to bite him through the mesh. Frustrated, the dog—which sounded very big—started barking furiously. It was a tune taken up by a number of other four-legged watchmen along the way. Moving a little faster now, the pair reached the third corner, turned right and reentered the street they'd originally left.

“Damn it.” Ted groaned at the sight that greeted them. The rental car was right where they'd expected it. But it had been totally stripped. No tires. No wheels. No doors. And undoubtedly very little left inside.

“Somebody must have offered the little bastards more than two bucks each for it,” grumbled Ted.

“We're going to find a cab.”

“What about this pile of scrap?”

“That's why we've got the Good Witch on our team. She'll just have to wave her magic wand and get us out of town before they find it and trace it to us.”

“What if the cabbie doesn't want blood in his car?”

“In this part of town I think they have to put up with that sort of thing. Anyway, I've still got this sidearm.”

“The way things are around here he's undoubtedly got one too.”

“Then we'll just have to try money. That works sometimes.”

“I don't think we'll find one here,” observed Ted after scanning the street.

Then they heard the first siren. “We don't want to be here at all,” said Ray. “There's a main street about eight blocks to the east as I remember. Let's get the hell out of here and see what we can find there.”

“Roger.”

“And remember, at the moment, the police are
not
our friends.”

“Roger.”

 

It was barely six in the morning when Mamoud al Hussein's home phone rang. The engineer was already up, preparing for the day ahead.

“I apologize for calling so early, Mamoud,” said Roberto Palmeira, “but our two ‘insurance investigators' seem to have been involved in a shoot-out a few hours ago between what the federal police believe are two rival drug groups.”

“Are they injured?”

“They're back at their hotel and Anglo-Swiss says they're to fly out on a chartered jet in a few hours.”

“What more is known?” asked Mamoud, struggling to avoid showing—even to himself—his irritation that Omar's efforts had been so messily unsuccessful. While he still had total confidence in the project, this sort of thing could not be permitted to happen again.

“There was some sort of shoot-out between two groups of drug dealers. Several witnesses mentioned that two foreigners were involved somehow. Knowing how the police feel about these drug wars, I doubt they will make much of an effort to investigate unless we pressure them to.”