by Tim Dorsey
“What for?”
“They’re going to make another attempt at the big summit finale at Bayfront.”
“Know who they’re using?”
“Evangelista.”
“That’s the smart move,” said Serge. “He must have contacts with all the top freelancers.”
“We think the hitter he hired is already in town, but his whereabouts…”
“So why don’t you pull Guzman out of the summit?”
“Won’t budge. Says his nation’s enemies will win.”
“I like him more and more.”
“Then help your country,” said Glide. “Make sure they don’t succeed.”
“But if you and everyone else can’t find the shooter, how can I?”
“It may come to more drastic measures,” said Glide. “These things go down to the last hour, even minute.”
“Cut the head off?” said Serge.
“And the mission collapses.” Malcolm sat back and folded his arms.
“You’re actually serious,” said Serge. “You want me to do Evangelista?”
“Only as a last resort. Right now he’s too valuable. We’ve never gotten so deep inside the Latin American arms network. All his houses and mobile phones are tapped, even his yacht and the car that got blown up. Can’t tell you how hard it was to wire the second Ferrari.”
“One question: Why me?”
“Because of your particular skill set. I’ve gone over your police record.” He pulled a packet of folded paper from his jacket. “Did you really kill all these people?”
Serge grinned like a schoolboy. “We may have had words.”
Malcolm flicked his wrist. “I don’t want to know. They all look like regular crimes, and the odds are astronomical that you’ve never been caught. So the only answer is you had clearance-and protection. Plus the trail is so insane and random. Only a completely organized mind with ten million dollars of government training could have meticulously planned every last detail of a madman’s profile…”
“But I really am insane.”
“And that’s exactly what you’d be ordered to say. You have discipline, deny everything.” Malcolm returned the document to his jacket. “But we went over your record ten times. Never seen an operative so thorough. No trail to the government whatsoever.”
“And?…”
Malcolm paused and stared earnestly into Serge’s eyes. “If things go south, you’re expendable. The perfect patsy.”
Serge smiled for the first time. “I knew that was the answer before I asked the question. And you were honest about it, so we’re halfway to trust.”
Malcolm stood abruptly. “Great. Glad to have you on board.”
“I said half way.”
“Realize that,” said Glide. “We wouldn’t want you if you just went by what I’ve said here today. When we meet again, I’ll provide solid proof.”
“Where do you want to meet?”
“You pick again. I’m sure I’ll get a laugh.”
Serge picked.
Malcolm laughed. “I was right. Tomorrow at one?”
“Thirteen hundred.” Serge pressed a sequence of buttons on his wrist. “I’m resetting my watch to military time. You should, too.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re within a day of the strike. I learned it from the TV show 24.” He clicked a last button. “We’re now on Serge time.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Big Day
One P.M.
“Can I help you find anything?”
A man in a tailored suit set down a five-hundred-dollar purse. “No, just looking. Wife’s birthday.”
“Please let me know if you need any assistance.”
A curt nod.
The saleswoman left.
Another man picked up a purse.
Malcolm Glide turned and checked his watch. “Serge, right on time.” He smiled and tapped his lapel: Miami Seaquarium pin.
Serge nodded his approval, then opened his mouth.
Malcolm stopped him: “I know…” He removed the souvenir and stuck it in his pocket.
“What have you got?”
Glide reached in another pocket and looked around the department store to make sure no one was in earshot. “First time I ever met in a Saks Fifth Avenue.”
“The Dadeland Mall. History motivates me.”
Glide glanced around again. “But it looks brand new.”
“Not the store.” Serge held palms out in midair. “The space. It speaks to me.”
“What’s it saying to you now?”
“Nothing. That would be crazy.” Serge chugged a 7-Eleven to-go cup. “Before Saks, this was the location of Crown Liquors, where, at two twenty-eight P.M. on July eleventh, 1979, two customers pulled machine guns from paper bags, spraying the store with eighty-six rounds and cutting down a pair of rivals in a scene no less brazen than the Wild West or Prohibition-era Chicago. It has since been dubbed the first shots fired in Miami’s so-called Cocaine Cowboys War.”
“That’s all very interesting,” said Glide. “But-”
Serge suddenly dropped the empty Styrofoam cup and staggered backward like he was being riddled by bullets.
Salesclerks ran over, helping him up from where he’d fallen and taken down a rack of blouses.
“Sir, are you okay?”
“I got it from here,” said Malcolm. “My friend’s prone to seizures.” Then he turned to Serge and helped straighten out the front of his tropical shirt. “Man, you are good.”
“Thanks.”
“No, really.” Malcolm bent down and picked up what he’d dropped from his pocket. “A few seconds ago, when you were lying there under women’s clothes, I initially thought, ‘Maybe I’ve been wrong about this guy. He actually is off his rocker.’ Then it hit me. I’ve never seen such exquisite technique before.”
Serge made a sweeping motion with an invisible machine gun. “Don’t be fooled by cheap imitations.”
“What brilliant spycraft! Most people check for surveillance tails by secretly peeking around. But you go the opposite direction, way over-the-top.”
“That’s where I live.”
Malcolm turned his neck. “See how absolutely everyone in the store is staring over here like there’s something deeply wrong with you?”
“I’ve gotten used to the popularity.”
“It’s perfect! Surveillance teams are trained to avert their gaze. But when you create this kind of public spectacle that’s so weird and embarrassing, it would be abnormal not to look. Then anyone who isn’t paying attention stands out like a sore thumb, and you’ve nailed your tail.” He turned again. “As you can see by the crowd’s universal disgust, we haven’t been followed.”
“You mentioned solid proof.”
“Obviously I can’t let you keep this.” Glide handed him a large brown envelope with a bulge in the side, then turned toward a row of white doors. “You can check it out in there. And these are your credentials.”
Serge grabbed a shirt off a table and went inside the nearest dressing room.
Two p.m.
Biscayne Boulevard. North of the Herald Building. Beemers, Saabs, city bus with a vodka ad. A crew in safety vests worked jackhammers. Salsa music echoed from alleys.
An attractive woman in a pantsuit sat on a bench along the 2100 block. Pedestrians walked by. Another rude suggestion. She checked her watch, just like the minute before.
2:02.
A screech of tires.
Serge hopped out and took a seat on the bench like he didn’t know her.
“You’re late,” said Felicia.
“Got caught in traffic… taking pictures.”
“At least nobody’s following us-” Felicia cut herself off. “Check that. We have company.”
“Where?”
“High noon across the street. That guy with the telephoto camera taking pictures this way.”
“He’s not following us,” said Serge. “He’s following
the building.”
“Building?”
Serge arched his neck back over the bench and aimed a small digital camera straight up. “ That building.” Click, click, click …
Towering behind them stood a vertical glass rectangle perched on a pedestal. Running up the side, blue-and-white patterns of leaves like a giant ceramic kitchen tile. One of those buildings that looks old and new at the same time: designed to be futuristic when it was christened in a bygone era.
“What so special about that?” asked Felicia.
“The Bacardi Building, crown jewel of the recently embraced MiMo architecture movement during the fifties and sixties.”
“MiMo?”
“Contraction of Miami Modernism. Buffs are constantly coming out to take photos. And spies always meet in culture.”
“To hell with the building. What did you find out at Dadeland?”
“Shit’s on. It’s going down this afternoon during the big outdoor summit gathering at Bayfront Park.”
“So Glide’s really on the level?”
“As level as they come. He showed me the files. All the bank records, photos of Evangelista meeting the generals and an assassin called the Viper. Plus taped phone conversations with same. Most of the stuff exactly matched what you’ve developed-and more.”
Felicia jumped up. “We better get moving.”
“I’m ahead of you.”
They dove in the Road Runner and raced south. “Have a plan?” asked Felicia.
“I scouted the area around the summit. Too many high-rises within eight hundred yards of the amphitheater. Even an average shooter…”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“People picture snipers’ nests like Oswald resting a rifle on a window ledge of the School Book Depository. That was amateur hour. True pros set up way back in the room for concealment, with highly calibrated rifles on stands in steady vise grips. Then they fire the kill-shot through an open office or hotel window ten feet in front of them.”
“So we just look for an open window,” said Felicia. “In this heat, there shouldn’t be a lot.”
“Except the window only has to be open a few inches for the shot. And like I said, there are a lot of buildings.” Serge reached into his pocket. “Here are the credentials Glide gave us.”
“What are you doing now?”
Serge had a cell phone to his head and waved for her to be quiet. “Mahoney? Serge here. Remember the backup plan?… Time to back it up. Bring all you got… Yeah, and call the Volkswagen Boys.”
Serge hung up and hit the gas. “Things are going to start happening fast from here on out.”
Things did.
Other phones rang in Miami.
Building 25. “Agent Oxnart… What?… When?… Right.” He hung up. “Everyone, code black. Bayfront. Move!”
A former safe house in Coral Gables. “This is Lugar… Where?
… We’re on it.” He hung up. “Bayfront. Directive Omega…”
A cell phone buried deep in a pants pocket: “Evangelista here
… Change in plans?… Who?…”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Downtown
Mass confusion.
Ten times worse than when the arena lets out after a Heat play-off game.
Flashing lights, police cars everywhere in the middle of streets, sealing the entire grid. Motorcycle cops zipped down the middle of the evacuated roads ahead of limos with bulletproof glass and flapping flags on fenders.
The Road Runner got stacked up twenty deep under the I-95 interchange. Police with batons waved drivers back in the direction they’d come.
“We won’t be able to get anywhere near the place,” said Serge.
Felicia stuck her head out the window. “We’re not even moving.”
“You look like the running type,” said Serge.
“But we still have to park.”
“I hate to do this.” Serge cut the wheel. “Hold on to something.”
The Road Runner broke out of traffic, jumped the curb, and crashed through a chain-link fence. Serge downshifted and drove sideways along a forty-five-degree embankment beneath the overpass.
The police saw him, but with the traffic chaos, only the motorcycle unit could get to him, and they were tied up on escort duty. Bums and bottles scattered ahead of Serge’s front grille. He cascaded down a grass berm and skidded to a stop in the mushy edge of a retention pond. Driver’s door against a tree. Tires spun, spraying mud.
Serge removed the keys. “That’s as far as this train goes.”
1433 military time.
Bayfront Park.
Amphitheater.
Festive. Standing room only. A crushing sea of people in light clothing filled every inch and spilled down the esplanade. Disposable cameras raised in the air above heads. TV trucks. Balloons. Schoolchildren in native costumes, waving flags on little sticks.
On the opposite side of the street, in small, constitutionally roped-off squares, tiny groups of protesters quarreled with one another and thrust homemade signs at passersby: “I MMIGRATION N OW! ” “ S TOP I MMIGRATION! ” “ F REE C UBA!” “ N EED C ONCERT T ICKETS!”
A band played a national anthem that included flamenco guitars and bongos. A president approached the podium. He led a vibrant little country with no armed forces that Americans couldn’t find on a map. The president raised his hands to acknowledge the applause, then introduced the national soccer team that had just defeated Zimbabwe. Louder cheers…
Two people urgently pushed their way through the crowd without great success.
“How are we going to find the shooter with this mob?” Felicia checked the official schedule. “Guzman’s the sixth speaker.”
“I need to get someplace high and scope angles.” Serge looked around. “Over there. The roof at Bayside Market.”
“Hooters?”
“See that rifle barrel?”
“A sniper!”
“Yes, but one of ours,” said Serge. “Stay close and grab the back of my shirt. This’ll be rough going.”
The pair began plowing ahead. “Excuse me, excuse me…”
“Hey, watch it, fella!”
“What’s your deal?”
“Coming through. Excuse me…”
14:38.
On the fifteenth floor of a downtown high-rise hotel, a room-service tray sat in the hall.
The guest hadn’t left the room since Tuesday. Lying on the bed, staring with patience at a textured pattern on the ceiling, and wondering about the tool that had been used to create it.
No complaints from his neighbors. No TV or sound of any kind. One of the few people who could go a week without speaking a word-not on the phone, not to the hotel guy delivering his food, not even to himself. He liked it.
The room remained dim with curtains pulled.
A cell phone vibrated on the nightstand.
He checked the text message.
“#.”
Thin leather gloves slipped over hands. The hands checked the tightness of the mounting bolts on a five-leg titanium stand that held a Galil 7.62mm Israeli sniper rifle. The cap came off the scope.
14:41.
Serge and Felicia finally broke free from the suffocating mob and ran up an escalator.
A woman in tight orange shorts smiled. “Table for two?”
Serge flashed the credentials Glide had given him. “Which way to the roof?”
“That employee door to the kitchen and up the stairs.”
They took off again, jumping two and three steps at a time, reaching the roof with clothes that smelled like buffalo wings.
A two-man tactical team heard the access door crash open. The one not manning the rifle swung and aimed a pistol. “Freeze! Both of you!”
Serge held his badge high and ran toward them. “Government agent.”
“Stop right there. Let me see that.”
The one with the rifle glanced over. “Who are they with?”
The spotter
studied the laminated photo ID with a bar code. “OCI.”
“OCI?” said the marksman. “I’ve never met one of them before. What the hell are they doing here?”
The other handed back the badge. “What are you doing here?”
“Got an intel intercept. Thirteen hundred hours. Assassination plot on President Guzman.”
“We haven’t heard anything.”
“Just came in,” said Serge. “Looks like freelance flew into town. I’m guessing one of those windows across Biscayne.”
“You mean one of those thousand?”
“Got an extra pair of binoculars?” asked Serge.
They began scanning facades of bright, reflecting glass.
The spotter finished one bank tower and went to another. “When’s Guzman speak?”
Serge worked his way down an office building. “Sixth.”
“I think it’s too early to find him,” said the spotter. “If this guy’s any good, he’s not going to open the window until Guzman’s at the podium.”
“What can it hurt?”
Down on the street, motorcycles revved, lights flashed. Police on foot opened the gates for more limos, including one with the national seal of Costa Gorda.
The dignitaries were met backstage at the amphitheater in a large, open-air tent. Handshakes, champagne, caterers circulating with shiny trays. Stereo speakers piped in the live program from the stage, a joke about sugarcane export policy.
Across the street, in a fifteenth-floor hotel room, a cell phone vibrated.
A hand in a leather glove flipped it open to a text message:
“!”
The cell flipped closed. The room’s guest walked over to the window.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
15:03
Binoculars made another sweep from the roof of a building full of chicken, beer, and breasts.
“This isn’t good,” said Serge.
“We still have at least an hour,” said the spotter. “Three more speakers before Guzman.”
Serge took a full breath and lowered his binoculars. Thinking. Eyes wandered the teeming summit grounds. Families, faces, food carts. The stage and the next marching band assembling below the side steps.