The Blue Tango Salvage: Book 2 in the Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc. Series

by Chris Poindexter

  “Me?! I seem to remember--”

  “It was totally your fault,” she said defiantly, cutting me off.

  “How do you figure?”

  “You have a penis,” she pointed out, dragging herself out of bed and shuffling off to the bathroom. And that was the end of that argument.

  I made my way downstairs to find Q up and ready, reading the comm buffer Deek set up.

  “How do you always do that?” I grumbled, fumbling with the coffee maker.

  “Do what?” he asked, looking up from his tablet.

  “Always manage to be up and ready without setting an alarm?”

  “Years of practice,” he grinned.

  “It’s annoying,” I informed him.

  He chuckled and went back to the message buffer. “Deek got us a last known address for Pig Fucker.”

  “Hopefully we can catch him out behind the store.”

  We decided that, depending on what we got from Pig Fucker, Pierson Brothers would be the next logical step but we’d have to think about how to approach them without raising suspicion. Q thought Amber would be the least threatening to send in. We already knew she could pass as a delivery driver or we could dress her up as a reporter. Those machinations were interrupted by the lady herself dressed in jeans that looked like they had been put on with a paint sprayer.

  “Deek thinks it’s funny to send clothes that are too small,” she said, noting my gaze.

  “You want me to have a word?” I asked.

  “I’ll handle it,” she insisted, slapping a plastic cup in the coffee machine. “It’s between him and me.”

  That was my cue to stay out of it. Amber didn’t want anyone thinking she was getting privileges because she was sleeping with the boss, though a few, like this villa, were inevitable just due to our physical proximity.

  We went over the plan one last time. We’d stake out the parking lot and bus stop for Mr. Turner and try to intercept him before he got to work. We’d let Amber front the initial contact because he’d seen Q and I. She’d have a taser in case the conversation didn’t go as planned. I cautioned her not to stay on the taser trigger too long because fat ass might actually die. She promised she’d be careful.

  Like any big city the heartbeat of Miami goes on pretty much 24 hours a day. Traffic was light but there was traffic, even at 4:30 in the morning. Q called shotgun on the coffee shop across the street from the bus station, hiding behind a copy of the Herald. Amber watched the waterfront and that left me watching the parking garage. It took us all of 10 minutes to get in position and then all we had to do was wait.

  Because of where she was parked, security stopped by to talk to Amber. When the guard found a hot girl on a hot motorcycle his body language changed immediately. Without earpieces I couldn’t hear them but it was pretty obvious the conversation changed from what she was doing there to where’d she get that awesome bike.

  SECURITY HITTING ON MY GIRL, I texted Q.

  HAVE THEY EVER GOTTEN THAT LUCKY? He answered.

  Amber encouraged the conversation because there’s no better cover than hanging out with security. In the parking lot two people with store polo shirts made their way through the still darkened parking area but neither was our target.

  STORE PEOPLE ARRIVING, I texted to both Q and Amber. NO TARGET.

  I could see Amber nonchalantly check her phone, still engaged in talking to the security guard.

  BUS NO TARGET, Q informed us. It was closing in on 5 am and, so far, no sign of Pig Fucker.

  Amber excused herself a moment to send us a text.

  STORE PEEPS AT ICE MACHINE, she informed us. NO TARGET.

  It seemed unlikely the store would have three people to set up the display case. More likely they sent two to take Keith’s place.

  BLOWN, I informed Q and Amber. NO TARGET.

  We waited a few more minutes to make sure and, to my complete surprise, the security guard went over and opened the gate out to the marina for Amber. I was about to ask how she did that, then remembered that having a nice set of tits and decent ass opened a lot of doors in life. I lost her when she walked toward the back door of the store. A couple minutes later she texted us what she discovered.

  PF OUT SICK, she informed us.

  MEET AT COFFEE SHOP, I texted back. Damn.

  A few minutes later we were sharing coffee and muffins at the coffee shop with Q.

  “Well, shit,” Amber complained. “We could have slept in. Instead I spent 40 minutes vamping a wannabe rapper security guard. I got his number if either of you need a date,” she said showing us the number scrawled on her hand. She spent the next few minutes using a napkin to wipe it off.

  “I say we give everyone at his apartment time to head off for work and go see how he’s feeling,” I suggested.

  “Visit the sick,” Q agreed, with a smile. “Our good deed for the week.”

  We decided to meet back at the villa for breakfast and head out from there.

  “It bothers me Pig Fucker wasn’t at work today,” I complained on the way back. “I don’t like it.”

  “It is a little coincidental,” Q agreed.

  “We take our time and look this one over,” I emphasized. I had to make an effort to stay calm because if I got agitated it would rub off on Q. We both needed to be focused for the day ahead.

  “We should probably be prepared for him not to be home, either,” Q suggested.

  “Or worse,” I cautioned. “Home and waiting for us.”

  “Aren’t you Mr. Sunshine all of a sudden,” Q observed.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” I maintained.

  “Just like every other job,” Q reminded me. “It never goes smooth and never goes in order.”

  “Something’s not right,” I couldn’t shake the feeling but it wasn’t anything definite enough to act on.

  Deek was on the TV when we walked in. “I think I found our missing fish boy,” he informed us.

  “How’d you find him?” I wondered.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Deek confessed. “I had to go through the cell tower data in that neighborhood and cross reference it with the GPS coordinates of his last known address and finally came up with a number.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Hasn’t moved,” he confirmed. “His phone is still pinging, but he hasn’t made any calls or moved for the last eight hours.”

  “The store guys said he called in sick,” Amber filled in.

  “Could be,” Deek agreed.

  “After all that Pig Fucker’s actually just sick?” I pondered.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Q reminded us. “Maybe that’s why he was in such a hurry to get out of there yesterday.”

  All of a sudden my nagging suspicions had a very plausible explanation. Still, he didn’t look sick to me when we saw him.

  “Deek, we need a sat view of the area,” I requested.

  He brought it up on the TV and, I had to admit, being able to take over smart TVs was kind of handy sometimes.

  “It’s this building here.” A red square appeared around the building which was in what looked like a mixed light commercial and residential area. The street in front of the building was two-way but the surrounding neighborhood was a tangle of one-way streets.

  “Amber can post up here,” I pointed to an area just to the north of building. “There’s good cover and the one-way street means she only has to worry about vehicle traffic from one direction. She’ll be able to see the whole front of the building and have a good view to the south.”

  “We can park back here,” I said, pointing to a side street that intersected with the alley behind the building. It would have been nice to have V on the roof of one of the industrial buildings to the west but there was still no word from the terror of the Amazon jungle. It wasn’t great but Q was right that we’d done more with a lot less.

  Deek brought us up to speed on the latest he’d gleaned on Mendenov and the Pierson Brothers while we had brea
kfast. There wasn’t any obvious connection between them; no unusual loans, no phantom companies passing them money.

  “The girls then?” Q wondered.

  “There’s gotta be something else,” I mulled, “we’re just not seeing it.”

  “Maybe Pig Fucker can shed some light on the connection,” Q speculated.

  We waited around a couple more hours, figuring that was enough time for those with a job to be out of the building and off to work. Amber fell asleep on the couch while Q and I debated whether it was too early for beer, agreed that it never was, but decided it would probably be smarter to stick with coffee this morning.

  The route was relatively straightforward so we sent Amber out ahead of us. She’d keep her full face shield helmet on and pretend to be working on her bike. After making a slow circuit of the area she pulled onto a one-way side street that provided good cover but also a clear view of the front of the building.

  ALL CLEAR, came the text.

  We managed to find a parking space just beyond the back alley of the apartment which was a multi-story building with a small coffee shop occupying the lower floor. This was one of the less bad areas of Golden Glades and we didn’t stand out too badly. The coffee shop had outside tables and several were occupied. We crossed the street and made our way up the north side of the building. I could just make out Amber a little ways up the street, pretending to be fixing something on her motorcycle.

  As we approached the corner to the edge of the building my cell phone buzzed with a message, we kept walking as I pulled it out to check the message and my blood immediately froze.

  CLEANING GUY DEAD

  I reached out and pulled Q back around the corner just as the paper coffee cup in front of the girl at the table next to us exploded and she grunted and pitched over off the chair. Bullets snapped and tore at the edge of the concrete and ripped through the windows behind us and we had to squat low to keep cover.

  It was a surreal moment. Q and I knew what was happening but, because there were no gunshots, the other patrons at the coffee shop were slow to catch on, even as bullets tore through the front and side glass of the coffee shop searching for us. Whoever was shooting at us was using a silenced semi-auto firing subsonic rounds. The biggest common mistake on TV and movies is you can’t really silence a big rifle. You can diffuse the muzzle blast and flash with a suppressor, but the supersonic flight of the bullet still made a very audible bang. These were subsonic rounds, designed to fly below the speed of sound. Not as powerful as regular rifle ammo but, in the right weapon, they really were as quiet as the silencers on television. While sub-sonic rounds didn’t penetrate as well, they could still be deadly against human flesh out to 400 meters and whoever was shooting at us really knew their business. I guessed they were on the roof of the strip mall across the street.

  “He’ll have to move,” I said to Q. Because we had ducked back behind the corner of the building the shooter didn’t have any angle on us but there was plenty of mini-mall roof for him to move over a few feet. As soon as the WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! paused Q and I sprinted, zig-zagging across the street. Almost immediately the bullets started whizzing past and I felt a tug on my jacket. We ducked behind the car as bullets started tearing into the body and glass with a fearsome PANK! WONK! PANK! Glass showered down on me while Q made himself as small as possible behind the front tire. This was piss poor cover and whoever was shooting at us obviously had plenty of ammo.

  Just then unmuffled shots rang out from across the street. Three sharp pops followed by five louder answering gunshots. I could make out the roar of Amber’s bike followed by more gunshots. The loud shots finally clarified the situation for the patrons of the coffee shop who were, up to that moment, just milling around outside trying to figure out what was happening. They screamed and scattered, some with their hands up. I caught just a glimpse of Amber roaring the wrong way down a one-way side street with a black SUV in hot pursuit.

  I hit the speed dial on my phone. “Operator,” I could hear Deek answer. “Deek, abort one alpha!” I yelled. “Send it now!” We had two types of abort codes. One was a simple abort, which meant everyone disperse and meet back at the boat. The abort one alpha was a different animal and the one signal everyone in our entire organization knew to obey immediately and without question. The message itself was simply A1A, which could be confused for a famous highway that ran along the coast in Florida but the meaning was vastly different. It told everyone outside the corporate side of organization to drop whatever they’re doing and haul ass. Drop your phones, ditch your IDs and run like hell for three days. It was our version of the Big Red Button and I had just scattered our organization to the wind for the next 72 hours.

  “Shit, there’s someone here,” Deek said hanging up. He still managed to get the message off as my phone dinged the A1A a second later.

  We had our own problems as a pair of black Jeep Grand Cherokee came squealing into the alley in reverse. The layout of the ambush was suddenly clear. The sniper on the roof would take us out and the black SUVs would roar by making it look like a drive-by shooting. The only thing that saved us from walking right into it was ducking back behind the building. But now the vehicles were coming up the alley.

  “Cover!” I yelled.

  Q just guessed at where the sniper was hiding and fired some quick shots at the mall roof. From this distance he might as well have been throwing rocks but maybe the shooter would flinch if he got close. Keeping as low as possible I came around the back of the car and snapped off three shots at the lead vehicle. The first hit low on the hood, the next two went into the windshield on the driver’s side. The car pitched sideways and ran into a dumpster. The passenger got out and chased me back behind the car with some well-placed carbine shots.

  “Fuck!” I yelled as much out of frustration as anything and that’s when I noticed Q was bleeding from a nick on his right arm.

  Sirens wailed in the distance as the team in the alley started making their way towards us, picking their cover and covering one another’s advance with textbook military precision. The average response time for the police in Miami was just under four minutes and that was two minutes longer than we had. Every time I tried to put fire on the people advancing up the alley rounds from the sniper started clawing at the trim and windows of the car.

  “What are we doing?!” Q yelled.

  Dying was the first thought that went through my head. We had nowhere to go. If we tried to sprint down the street we’d be cut down by crossfire.

  Right then there was a very loud crack from an unsuppressed rifle shot, clearly audible above the small arms fire and ringing in our ears. Q and I looked at each other, each expecting to see a hole in the other. It was a silly thing to do because at a speed of nearly 4,000 feet per second you’re dead before you ever hear the bang. It took us a moment to notice the sniper fire had stopped.

  If the rifle shot surprised us, it also came as a surprise to the team coming up the alley. They moved to cover which told me the shooter wasn’t in their copy of the script.

  “It’s gotta be V!” I yelled, looking around for her hide.

  “Parking garage, 200 meters northwest,” Q pointed to a low parking garage on the side of an office building up the street.

  One of the team in the alley took cover behind the car door of the Jeep. I could just make out the white blond hair of the driver, also keeping low behind the wheel. While a car is okay cover from subsonic rounds, V was using the real deal 7.62mm steel tipped rounds. There was another shot and the guy behind the door grunted, a neat hole appearing in the door. That was enough for the alley crew. The blond man reached over and pulled his partner into the vehicle, throwing it into reverse and gunning it back down the alley. The others jumped in as the vehicle slowed only slightly as it passed their cover.

  “Gotta go!” I yelled and we made our low, zig zag way toward the side street in the direction of the parking garage.

  We holstered our guns as quickly as possi
ble. It was then I noticed that, bizarrely, there were people standing out in their yards and on the sidewalk shooting cell phone video, panning their phones along to follow us away from the scene like some kind of urban war correspondents. Deek could intercept some of it but that was, in some ways, worse than the ambush. No one saw the sniper but they all got a really good goddamn look at us and the police would be around in the next few minutes to take their statements. The cacophony of sirens was getting louder and closer and this whole area was going to be swarming with cops in mere moments. We had to find a way out of here.

  We walked quickly but didn’t run. People running from crime scenes attract attention, so we did our best to look as nonchalant as possible. Q was doing something on his phone and I thought it was a damn peculiar time to be checking messages.