Free Operation Caribe by Mack Maloney

Timeline or not, voodoo angle or not, they were still on a good pace to wrap up these Capaz monkeys, get paid by BABE, and then spend a little time enjoying the fruits of their labor on a warm beach somewhere.
    So what if it didn’t come all wrapped in a bow?
    What in life did?
    *   *   *
    THE PIRATE NAMED Jumbey had never flown so high.
    He’d been on Colonel Cat’s plane on four occasions, going to and from raids on the yachts or while they were taking care of witnesses. But on those flights, he could clearly recall looking out the plane’s observation blisters and seeing the ocean or land just below him, no more than a thousand feet away.
    Now, they were flying so high, he couldn’t see the earth—land or water—below him at all. It was also cold inside the airplane, and it was rattling and coughing and seemed to be bouncing all over the sky.
    But creature comforts were the least of Jumbey’s worries at the moment.
    He was lying on the deck of the passenger compartment, still bleeding from his wounds, his hands and legs tied with multiple strips of duct tape. His head was jammed up right next to an observation blister; this was how he knew how high they were flying. But he couldn’t move. He could barely turn his head.
    At one point, though, he realized by the voices bouncing back and forth in the cabin that the man with the hook hand was flying the airplane. He also knew that, besides the man with the eye patch, there were three other masked men in the cabin with him. All five of them were huge, wore military suits and carried large weapons and nightsticks. Beyond the cold, the rattling and the terrifying altitude, it was these men themselves who were scaring the shit out of him. They seemed capable of anything.
    Colonel Cat was tied up on the floor right next to him.
    “How did they know about us?” Jumbey managed to whisper desperately to the pilot. “We were always so careful to keep it all secret.”
    “How the fuck do I know?” Cat spit back at him. “Maybe they’re fucking psychics.”
    At that moment, Jumbey heard the man with the eye patch give an order to the three other masked men. Straining mightily to turn his head, Jumbey saw one man open the rear hatch of the airplane, while the two others grabbed Crabbie and dragged him over to the doorway. Jumbey and Cat were horrified.
    “What’s your voodoo name?” one masked man asked Crabbie. But the pirate had no idea what he was talking about.
    The man smacked him hard across his face.
    “Why didn’t you wait until the full moon this time?”
    Again, Crabbie was totally baffled by the question.
    “I do not know what you mean,” he told the masked man.
    The masked men didn’t ask Crabbie any more questions. One simply said to him: “You shouldn’t have killed all those people, mon. You shouldn’t have killed those cops.”
    Then the largest man of the three simply picked Crabbie up off the floor and threw him out the open hatchway.
    There was a look of complete bewilderment on the pirate’s face as he went out the door. Even as he was falling, everyone on the plane could hear him scream: “What cops?”
    Then the masked men turned toward Jumbey.
    The young pirate started crying.
    “What do you want from me?” he yelled. “I’ve only been hooked up with these guys for a month!”
    “Tell us where your hideout is,” the large man demanded of him.
    Jumbey became hysterical. “I don’t know, general. I’ve never even been there. That’s just for the senior crumbs.”
    The large man started dragging Jumbey toward the open door.
    “Better talk now,” he yelled at him.
    But Jumbey could barely breathe, never mind talk.
    “I don’t know!” he screamed again. “I’ve never been there! I’m just a new fish. That guy you just tossed? He was a senior man. He was there all the time!”
    At that point, all the masked men looked at each other. They just realized they’d thrown the wrong guy out of the plane.
    “So much for