Feliz realized what was happening and tried to knee Stone in the balls, but Stone turned his hip to him. Then he shoved Feliz backward over the seat.
Feliz got to his feet. There was a crazy glint in his eyes. If his men could have seen him now, they might have renamed him: Crazy Enrique.
"I'm going to be numero uno in Miami," Feliz grated. "That fucking Crazy Charlie couldn't stop me. The Colombians couldn't stop me. And you won't stop me either, whoever the fuck you are."
He stepped up on the seat and crouched like an animal about to spring.
The airboat whipsawed through the water. Stone was afraid that if they hit something now, both of them would be killed. "It's over for you, Anglo!" Feliz yelled.
He jumped, hands outstretched, fingers clawing for Stone's neck.
Stone ducked beneath him, then raised up, taking him around the waist and aiding his forward progress.
The cage that housed the propeller had wide spaces between the wires. It was like a normal house fan, into which one can easily stick one's hand or fingers if one is not very careful, except that the spaces were much wider than the spaces on a house fan.
They were quite wide enough to accommodate a man's outstretched arms.
Feliz screamed, a scream of pure terror and horrible realization. He didn't have a chance to do much else.
There was a sort of schnicking sound as the propeller sheared off both his hands. His screams went higher and higher.
Stone threw him into the water, the stumps at the ends of his arms jetting blood and staining the area around him bright red.
He kept on screaming.
Stone watched him and thought of Wofford.
A bubbling sound cut off the screams. Feliz had gone under.
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.
Chapter Eighteen
Hog 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."
Stone'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.
They 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 so
metimes 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.
In 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.
"You 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.
Rosales 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.
"And speaking of rules," Allbright said.
"What about them?"
"Stone lied to us. He didn't cooperate at all."
Rosales smiled. "We didn't cooperate either. We didn't tell him about the drug lab. He had to find it out on his own."
"He did it pretty fast."
"A good thing, too. If he'd waited another two, three weeks, why, we'd have beat him to it."
Williams was not pleased when he conferred with Bass, Benton, and Ferguson at their office.
"Stone screwed it all up," he snarled. "We had ourselves set up, with Wofford right in the thick of things. He was out on a buy that could have eventually led us right to Mr. Big."
Ferguson snickered. "Bigger than Feliz, Crazy Charlie, and Don Vito?"
Williams glared at him. "How can we be sure that they weren't just small fry? And now we'll never know, because Stone has killed them all."
"But how about the drug lab?" Benton asked. "We've been after that one for years, and we never even came close to finding out the location, much less doing anything about it."
"We would have gotten around to it, one of these days. It was just a matter of time."
"How much time?" Bass wanted to know. "We've been working for years, and Stone is in town twenty-four hours and takes it out."
"I don't want to hear any more about that goddamn Stone!" Williams yelled. "And where's Wofford? Answer me that one. Where's Wofford?"
They all knew the answer, had all heard it from Rosales, just as Williams had, but nobody said a word.
"I'll tell you then. He's dead. Just like everyone else that Stone got mixed up with. I think we could have gotten him out alive if Stone hadn't butted in and ruined things."
"I don't see how," Ferguson said. "We didn't even know where he was." He took a cigar out of his coat pocket and put it in his mouth. He didn't light it.
"We would have found him—"
"—eventually," Benton finished. "But by then he would have been just as dead. We all know that."
"I don't know that!" Williams roared. "You don't know that! I think something should be done about Stone!"
"And what would you suggest?" Bass asked.
"Stone should be arrested."
"You saw his credentials. We're not interested, right, gentlemen?"
"Right," Benton said.
Ferguson rolled the cigar around in his mouth and nodded. "Admit it," Bass said. "He's broken the back of the pipeline. Drug Alley won't ever be the same after this."
"Yes it will!" Williams stormed.
"No, it won't. There'll be a power struggle, maybe a few more deaths, and some new strong man will come out in the open. But there won't be an organization like Feliz's again for a long time. And I doubt that there will ever be another drug lab like the Colombians had. We ought to think about giving Stone a medal."
A lot of the steam seemed to go out of Williams. "You really mean that?"
"Of course I do. We all feel the same way."
Williams shook his head. "Maybe you're right, after all. I hate to admit it, but maybe you're right."
Stone and his team were wrapping things up at the safe house. Carol had booked a commercial flight for them early in the evening, but most of their gear would have to be transported another way. Since
there was no rush, they had arranged through their Fort Bragg connections to have it picked up at the safe house later.
Stone was packing his camos when he remembered the papers that he had picked up in the drug lab. He knew that Rosales would want to see them, and so would the D.E.A. He called police headquarters and got through to Rosales.
"Meet me at the airport at nine-thirty. I have something for you."
"What is it?"
"Just a little present. It may be nothing."
"That's all right. I'll be there. I want to thank you."
Stone broke the connection and called the local D.E.A. headquarters. Williams was there, and they had a similar brief conversation.
There would also be a third party meeting them at the airport. Kathi Wofford was flying in to claim her husband's body. She would be arriving at nine o'clock, and they had arranged to meet.
Stone wanted to tell her in person that he was sorry he had been unable to reach Jack in time, and Hog wanted to tell her about Jack's death.
After hanging up the call to Williams, Stone thought he might have a look at the papers himself. He never knew when such information as they might provide would come in handy. He was not ready to devote his life to stopping the drug traffic, but if he ever found himself in a situation where he had to deal with it again, he wanted to know all he could.
He found a chair and rustled through the papers, stopping every now and then when he came to some interesting point.
Hog, Loughlin, and Carol went on with the packing. Stone seemed to show no particular attention to any one page, but they all thought he would tell them if there was anything they should know.
When he was finished, he folded the papers and put them in his pants pocket. "Ready?" he asked.
"Just about," Hog said. "I think we've got time to eat before we get out to the airport. I'd hate to leave anything in that refrigerator. I'm so hungry I can see cornbread walkin' on the ground."
"We don't have any cornbread," the Brit reminded him. "I'll have to fix you some one of these days. But right now, a sandwich would go just fine."
M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone Page 17