Our only hope of averting the inevitable was to stop it at its source. We had to find Viskhan, take out the leader. Our walk had taken us to a point midway along Lummus Park, where the Miami Beach Ocean Rescue Headquarters was situated on the park. Being as it was a department of public safety I was tempted to go inside and alert them to our fears. The parade should be cancelled and civilians evacuated from the area. But to do that would expose us, and most likely it’d be us under the guns of the police even if we were allowed to walk out of the building unchallenged. We cut past the building, through Lummus Park and stood between some sculpted dunes to see over the beach. I checked the locale for any sign of the super-yacht Nephilim. There were larger boats on the horizon, but at that distance the haze rising off the ocean made it impossible to distinguish yachts from tankers or cruise liners. Already there were beachgoers by the hundreds on the white sand and out in the surf. Boats sculled back and forth, and further out speedboats towed water-skiers behind them.
I exchanged a sour grimace with Rink.
‘Do you get the feeling that we might be barking up the wrong palm tree here?’ I asked, and received a smirk for my lame cliché.
We continued our walk, retracing in part steps I’d taken two nights ago while fleeing with Trey from Sean Cahill. Once we reached the end of Lummus Park we turned and strolled south again. As we kept watch for anything suspicious, our conversation turned to Raul Velasquez, who hadn’t yet been released from custody. It wasn’t a good sign; the cops obviously intended charging him. Stamping somebody to death probably wasn’t acceptable as a self-defence plea. Our buddy probably wasn’t helping his case by sticking to the assertion that he was also responsible for the death of the man I’d speared on Trey’s shoe heel. Once we were done with Viskhan we both agreed that we should concentrate on getting Velasquez out of jail.
Somewhere nearby a marching band struck up for a matter of seconds before the music degenerated into a cacophony of random beats and notes: an impromptu rehearsal. I smelled frying onions and cotton candy. In the short period we’d walked along the beach, the carnival atmosphere had grown adjacent to us. I could tell Rink was as frustrated as me, but without going direct to the police and telling them what we suspected, there was little we could do there. We’d both hoped to spot the Nephilim sitting offshore, but with no hint of the yacht out there, I was flummoxed.
‘This is a waste of time,’ I announced.
Rink adjusted his shades without comment. He dug out his cell and phoned Harvey. By the lack of any urgency in Harvey’s reply, I deduced all was fine back at the Coral Gables hotel. Rink asked our pal to do his magic on his laptop and find the current location for the Nephilim. A visible scowl formed on Rink’s face. He bears a scar on his chin courtesy of a fight with a demented knifeman, and when he gets angry it blanches of all colour, as it did then. He made his goodbyes, hung up and turned to me. ‘Well that idea’s fubar.’
‘What’s up?’
‘When Harvey fought those gunmen back in Flagami his laptop took a couple rounds intended for him: it’s trashed. Harve is gonna see if the hotel has an IT centre where he can do some searches but he isn’t hopeful of gettin’ what he wants in time to help us.’ Rink held out his phone. ‘As much as I hate to admit it, brother, we’re fucked. It’s the only reason I’m gonna ask you to call Walt. I don’t mind sellin’ out to the devil if it means he can help find Viskhan and stop him. If it means we have to take a back seat to Homeland, then so be it: the safety of innocent civilians trumps us gettin’ revenge for Mack.’
‘I’ll call him,’ I said, ‘but when I ask for his help it’ll be with a caveat.’
A hundred yards or more to the south another marching band launched into an impromptu rehearsal, this time the snare drums accompanied by an out of tune alto saxophonist. The music was more chaotic than before. Bystanders collectively lifted their voices in disapproval.
That was as long as the illusion held.
The snare drum rattle was that of automatic gunfire, the saxophone the squeals of terrified victims, the roaring of disapproval was actually dismay and panic.
People fled from Ocean Drive through Lummus Park. On the beach, holidaymakers all turned towards the sounds of gunfire. Then they too were fleeing, a stampede of humanity, away from its source.
North of us another gun began a staccato beat.
The crowds wheeled in confusion like a flock of birds disturbed by an electromagnetic pulse. Some people plunged into the surf. Others dove flat on the sand, seeking any hole to hide in. Some scrambled over friends and strangers alike to get away.
A third gun joined the assault, this one further away to the south, then a fourth, much closer to where Rink and me had gone to cover behind the boles of some palm trees. Across the park people fled in terror, parents carrying or hauling children to safety. A temporary food stand had been erected about fifty feet away, seats and tables set on the grass for the convenience of customers: people ploughed over and through the flimsy aluminium furniture, some becoming entangled in the legs of chairs and falling before scrambling up again and racing for their lives. Although I couldn’t see where, other similar pockets of chaos reigned: I could hear the bleating panic, the rumble of fleeing people. The guns continued their rattling assaults.
Viskhan’s spectacular was underway and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it.
I’d hoped that with the heightened alert status and the number of armed police in the area, the terrorists would have aborted their operation, but no. They’d gone for broke, in a concerted and coordinated attack on at least four fronts. At that moment I dreaded to think how many casualties there had already been, how many were to come, and I was ashamed that I hadn’t done more to halt the attack in the first place. But that was as long as my regret lasted: I fell into the trained response of the soldier who’d spent fourteen years combatting terrorism throughout the world, as did Rink alongside me. While the civilians around us ran from the sounds of gunfire, we headed directly towards it.
35
Various things became obvious within a few seconds, and the first we should have figured out, considering we’d been given hints through the truck used to collect the smuggled weapons from the port, the use of a Chinese restaurant as an operating base for Cahill’s team and the fact that Viskhan trafficked some of his human slaves through other service and catering outfits. Their weapons had been smuggled to various locations alongside Ocean Drive hidden within various mobile concession stands, the terrorists posing as servers at the food counters until it was time for the coordinated attack. The second thing that struck me was how the attack felt premature; it had been launched before the parade had gotten underway, when the greatest impact would have been felt. There were a large number of people in attendance, but come midday when the festivities and accompanying regatta were due, the crowds would have swollen tenfold and therefore the casualties would have been exponentially greater. I wondered briefly if one of the terrorists had been uncovered by the police and had responded with a hail of gunfire, setting off the others in a deadly chain reaction, or if one of them had simply lost their nerve and gone for broke, causing the same domino effect. Or had Viskhan been behind the early triggering of the attack for reasons yet unknown? Not to underplay or trivialise the horrific event, but it was less a spectacular than a half-arsed attempt to go out in a lacklustre fizzle.
I considered these points even as I ran through Lummus Park for the main street, concluding the wrongness of the situation even before I spotted the first shooter. Rink was moving adjacent to me, about thirty feet to my right so that we didn’t offer a single target. We were yet to pull our guns out: It’d be a poor end to our day if we were mistaken for the bad guys and brought down by an armed police officer. Civilians streaked past us, hurtling towards the beach, faces stricken, pale, mouths wide open in that age-old question: why? An elderly man fell, losing his walking stick. I sacrificed a few seconds to drag him behind the bole of a tree, and
commanded him to stay down before I charged on. My actions were so automatic I couldn’t recall a single detail about the man’s features a second after I’d left him. Rink had gained on me, but had come to a halt where the park met the street. I went to a knee alongside a tree, using it as a shield. We exchanged looks, and Rink nodded. I followed his gesture and spotted a skinny young man standing in the centre of Ocean Drive, indiscriminately pulling the trigger of an assault rifle. He was screaming wordlessly, and as much in horror as those scattering for cover. Having launched his attack from a hot-dog stand, he wore a paper cap on his head and an apron tied at his middle. He had the fair hair and deep-set pale eyes of an Eastern European, not your typical jihadist portrayed by the media and pop culture.
He didn’t know how to shoot well. With each burst of his rifle, the barrel pulled up and to the right, and most of the bullets were spent in the walls of the buildings on the far side of the street. Only misfortune had placed some running civilians in his way, and I spotted at least three casualties crumpled on the far sidewalk. The youth turned around, trying his luck firing down the middle of the street. Brass shells ejected from his rifle tinkled on the asphalt. From our positions either of us could have dropped the youth with a shot to his body, but Rink didn’t shoot and neither did I. It was unnecessary. An armed MPD officer shot him dead and saved us the trouble. The cop advanced on the youth, hollering at him despite him being dead, then kicked aside his gun even as other officers moved in to secure his body and weapon. Further along the road, other cops were in the process of directing people away from the shooting, towards the beach or into buildings where they could take cover. A female officer accompanied by a medic rushed towards the first fallen casualty on the sidewalk.
Guns competed to either side of our respective positions. Police sirens squawked. Pointed commands were hollered, directed at the shooters to lay down their weapons. Screams and shouts echoed off the stores and hotel fronts. More gunfire. The response was concerted. The gunfire fell silent, but none of the rest of the sounds adding to the cacophony.
I didn’t hear the cop moving in behind me until he challenged me. Caught with one knee on the ground, I had to turn awkwardly to look up at him. Through my sunglasses I stared up at the muzzle of his service pistol. I held up my empty hands. The cop was a Marine Patrol Officer – denoted as such by the insignia on his uniform – and must have been patrolling the beachfront when things kicked off. He’d come upon me while trying to evacuate other civilians away from the fighting. In my baseball cap and shades, crouching fearfully behind a tree, I looked like many others caught up in the atrocity. He quickly scanned the fallen terrorist on the road, the huddle of cops around him, and decided he’d serve better to get more civilians to safety.
‘Sir, get behind me and make directly for the beach.’
I gave him no cause to believe anything less than I was grateful of his assistance. I rose up, keeping the tree between the road and me, and nodded emphatic thanks at my saviour. He covered me while I moved back, and then inserted himself in the space I’d just vacated, his pistol still held at the ready. He spotted Rink, who’d crouched similarly to me, but behind some shrubs. Rink was watching, and accepted the cop’s instructions when he too was waved back towards the beach. We retreated at a running crouch, exactly as any other innocent civilian might have under the circumstances. Only when I was out of the cop’s line of sight did I swerve towards Rink.
‘That was a close one,’ I said.
‘Yep, you might just have dodged a bullet, brother.’
If the cop had recognised me as the fugitive responsible for shooting dead three gunmen a few blocks away, and engaging in a high-speed escape from other gunmen in a stolen van, things could have ended badly for me, if not for him. Rink wouldn’t have let him take me in, and it could have become an armed confrontation on all sides. Neither of us would willingly shoot a police officer, but the same might not have been the case for him or the dozens of other cops now swarming the area.
There was still an overall state of alarm, but there was no hint of gunfire any more. I’d counted four shooters during the initial launch of the attack, and hadn’t heard any more join the fight. Law enforcement officers had taken out, or captured, the other three terrorists: somehow I didn’t believe any of the three was Viskhan, Cahill or StJohn. The police wouldn’t now be complacent: if anything they would be at an even higher alert as they braced for more attacks. Soon they would begin a controlled sweep of the area, seeking other threats.
‘We’d best git,’ Rink suggested, ‘before they shut SoBe down tighter than a clam.’
He wasn’t wrong. The last we wanted was to be caught within a tightening cordon while armed and with a bunch of illegal firearms in the trunk of our car. Besides, there was nothing more for us to do there, and the last I wanted was to cause any undue work for the honest cops already overwhelmed with mopping up on Ocean Drive. We jogged along the perimeter of Lummus Park, out of sight of the various pockets of activity, blending in with other fleeing civilians, then when it was safe to do so we cut across the main street, found access to an alley and through to where we’d left the rental.
As Rink drove us off the island, I scanned Biscayne Bay for any sign of the Nephilim. When it again eluded me, I took Rink’s cell phone out and called Walter Hayes Conrad. Before I’d ended the call, Rink hit the gas and we tore up the I-95 expressway, hurtling in pursuit of the super-yacht that was already sailing off the coast somewhere between Boca Raton and West Palm Beach. Viskhan hadn’t hung around to observe the aftermath of the terror assault he’d arranged, but had made himself scarce, possibly intending to sail to some prearranged flight out of the US… but was that it? His spectacular had been anything but; what if it was only the precursor to something much worse?
36
The Nephilim had a healthy lead on us, but Rink jammed the throttle to the floor and every second we gained on it as we rocketed up the expressway. My buddy drove as if he was auditioning for the next movie in the Fast and Furious franchise, pushing the rental car to extremes. He overtook slower-moving vehicles, whipping around them on whatever lane was clear, and left them almost standing in his wake. How a keen-eyed highway patrolman didn’t spot us and give chase I’ll never know, but am thankful for. As we hurtled northward, I periodically scanned the sea for signs of the super-yacht, without ever losing course of the conversation I was engaged in.
Walter Hayes Conrad was sequestered in some government office on Capitol Hill, but to hear his breathless voice it was as if he were along for the chase with us. After agreeing to use his resources to find the Nephilim’s current whereabouts and setting us in pursuit, he’d been busy. Due to the reports coming out of South Beach he had fully bought into our assertion that another attack was not only possible but also imminent. Against our wishes, he was rallying a team of Navy SEALs to board the Nephilim and contain the situation. The SEALs were already en route. But we were still ahead of them.
‘I want your eyes on them only,’ he ordered. ‘You report back to me, do you hear me, Joe? Do not engage.’
‘I hear you, Walt.’ I exchanged a wry smile with Rink. We heard; it didn’t mean we’d obey.
‘I mean it, goddamnit! Stay out of the damn way and leave Viskhan to—’
I cut him off. ‘Who, the professionals? Do you forget who we are, Walt, what we did for you in the past?’
‘I’m not questioning your abilities,’ Walt snapped. ‘I’m trying to protect you boys.’
‘We’re big enough and ugly enough to take the knocks,’ I told him. I caught a glimpse from Rink, and under his breath he whispered something about me being ugly enough at any rate, before he went back to undertaking a freightliner by accelerating along the shoulder of the expressway: the truck driver pressed angrily on his horn as we shot past and swerved back onto the road. ‘Walt, Viskhan ordered my murder, and that of his wife. He killed one of our closest friends, Harvey got shot too, and Raul is currently in jail because of h
im. He’s just triggered a shoot-out in South Beach and innocent people died. Believe me, if he’s in my sights, I’m not going to stand there with my dick in my hand.’
‘He will be dealt with.’
‘So you say. But that’s not good enough. You owe us, Walter, don’t ever forget that. You owe us big time.’
He was silent for a moment. Possibly he was weighing up the amount of debt he was in to us, mentally ticking off the times he’d used us for his personal political agenda, and not least saving the lives of his granddaughter and great-grandson. Finally he showed signs that he was weakening in his resolve. ‘I can’t buy you any time; I can’t take a chance on Viskhan getting away. But if you’re there before the SEALs…’
‘We’ll do everything in our power to hold Viskhan until they arrive,’ I said. ‘Just ensure they know there are a couple of friendlies in the firing line.’
‘I’ll do what I can do, but there are no promises.’
Before he could backtrack, I changed the subject. ‘So any hint yet on what has motivated Viskhan?’
Marked for Death Page 23