Free M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone by Stephen Mertz

or run into a dead end.
    "There's an alley coming up," Stone said. "Try it."
    Carol looked at the dark space between two storefronts. She jammed on the brakes and spun the wheel to the right. The rear end of the Toyota drifted, but thanks to the front-wheel drive, the forward tires bit into the pavement and the car swung into the turn.
    The car sizzled down the alleyway, driving over excelsior from thin packing crates and barely missing a Dumpster. The alley was only one block long.
    The white Corolla leaped into the street and across into the next alley. Fortunately, there was no car coming from either direction. Carol didn't look or make any attempt to yield the right of way.
    The alley ended in a T, with the top of the T being the brick wall of another building. Carol literally stood on the brakes, bringing the car to a shivering halt inches from the wall. As she turned the wheel to the left, they all heard the police car carom off the Dumpster from the other alley.
    Carol got her foot off her brake, cut her lights, and turned left. She drove out of the alley and turned left back onto the street, then hooked another left and drove slowly to the alley entrance.
    The police car hit the wall.
    Not hard enough to stop it, however, but hard enough to shake up the occupants. They had almost managed to stop in time. When they finally recuperated from their close call, they would have no idea about which way to turn.
    Carol drove past the alley with her lights out.
    "Can you find the highway again?" Stone asked.
    "Sure. But it might be better if we took the secondary roads."
    Stone agreed. It took them a little longer, but they found the entrance to the storm drain before two o'clock. It was on a dark side street, and no one saw the three men slip out of the car, lift the cover, and disappear inside.
     
    "I t smells like shit in here," Hog complained.
    He, Stone, and Loughlin were walking through a pipe five feet in diameter, their flashlights glinting off the sides and off the narrow trickle of water that ran along the bottom. They were all dressed in camo fatigues, their faces blackened.
    "This is a storm drain, not a sewer," Stone reminded him. "There is a difference."
    Hog wasn't convinced. "It still smells like shit. What's that over there? Looks like a turd to me."
    Loughlin walked ahead to where Hog's light picked an object out of the shadows. He nudged it with the toe of his boot. "A bloody rat," he said. "But don't worry, Hog. It can't bite you. It's dead."
    "I ain't afraid of any rat," Hog growled. "I just don't like walkin ' in shit."
    "Let's go," Stone ordered. His words echoed off the metal walls of the pipe. He moved ahead, and the others followed.
    "You sure the weather forecast didn't call for rain?" Hog asked.
    Stone ignored him. The information Carol had drawn from her computer said that there was a city storm drain running beneath Don Vito Lucci's property. When the estate had been built, it had taken in a considerable amount of land, including one of the openings of the storm drain near the far edge of the property.
    Stone believed that the opening might still exist. "Why cover it up?" he had asked Carol. "It was concrete, with an iron cover. It must have looked like something useful. Unless they investigated the whole estate, they don't even know it's there. I'm sure the previous owners wouldn't have covered it. There would have been no reason to."
    Carol had agreed. "But what if you're wrong?"
    "Then we'll pull back out and go through the front gate."
    "Quietly?"
    "Probably not. So let's hope the opening's still there.
    "This should be it." Stone shined his light upward at a round iron covering. "Now if no one's built a summerhouse on it, we'll be all right."
    The three men had all been walking bent over, and Hog welcomed the chance to stretch out. He stepped to the spot beneath the cover, gave his light to Loughlin, and pressed his hands against the iron.
    He pushed upward.
    Nothing moved.
    Hog looked big