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

second floor?"
    "Mafia bosses?" Hog asked.
    "Let's hope not. You can see how well the whole thing is illuminated, but there's at least a little bit of a shadow on that back corner, right near that decorative balcony. That's where we go in."
    "Good idea," Hog rasped. "Except here come the fuckin ' dogs!"

Chapter Eight
     
    W illiams was hellaciously pissed when they finally located the wrecked police car. "You fucking lost them!" he snarled. "By God, you'll be sorry you did. You'll be lucky if you can get a job rousting queers in Key West after this."
    One of the cops, a young man with a sandy mustache, protested, "It wasn't our fault. Their driver was a demon! Shit, nobody can drive like that."
    Williams's rage turned from hot to cold, and his voice leveled out. "Someone did. And it wasn't you. Think about it when you begin your new career."
    He stalked away from the wreck. The car's bar lights were still flashing, sending red and blue beams reflecting off the walls and pavement of the alley.
    Bass was waiting by an agency car for Williams. He had been talking on the radio to his office, and he could hardly wait to report to Williams. Bass had never actually seen anyone have a stroke before, and he thought it was at least a fifty-fifty chance that Williams would have one when he heard the news.
    "Assholes," Williams muttered as he walked up to Bass. "Sometimes I think the whole world is turning into assholes."
    And you're the living proof , Bass wanted to say. He didn't, though, because he generally liked his job and didn't want to spend the rest of his life rousting queers in Key West.
    Instead he said, "It may be worse than you think."
    "Don't tell me Stone has killed the fucking governor," Williams fumed.
    "It's not that bad. But it seems that there's been a shoot-out somewhere outside town. Cubans and Colombians are dead all over the place. All the earmarks of a real drug war, they say."
    Bass watched Williams's face closely. It was amazing how red the man could turn. Or maybe it was the light from the cop car hitting his face at the right moment.
    Williams ground his teeth. "Shit!"
    "I guess that about sums it up, all right," Bass said.
     
    F lood lamps mounted on police vehicles threw the clearing into surreal daylight. There were a dozen or more local and fed vehicles. Shortwave radio bands crackled in the air as just-arrived authorities moved about the floodlit wilderness area, which was littered with sprawled corpses.
    Allbright and Rosales surveyed the carnage.
    "How many this time?" Allbright asked.
    "Maybe as many as thirty," Rosales said. "Colombians and Cubans, caught in the middle of a drug deal."
    "You sure?"
    "There's a lot of money scattered around, and a lot of dope. Someone was in a real hurry here."
    "It doesn't make sense," Allbnght said, half to himself. "Why would anyone kill all these people, probably at considerable risk, and then leave all the money and the dope?" He thought about it. "How much dope?"
    Rosales shrugged in the darkness. "Street value? In the millions, if that means anything."
    "Just lying around? It means that this is probably even crazier than I thought it was."
    "Maybe they shot each other."
    "No way. The angles are all wrong. The fire was coming in from the side, against both forces here."
    "We found a couple of dead Cubanos out there." Rosales gestured to the side from which the firing had come.
    "I can see how they might want to double-cross the Colombians, but why would they shoot their own men?"
    "Another double-cross?"
    "And leave the dope and the money? No way."
    Rosales sighed. "I suspect you are right. But what did happen?"
    Allbright didn't answer.
    "You don't know, and neither do I. Let's go and think about it. Maybe we'll come up with an idea."
    Allbright shook his head. "Don't count on it."
    "Oh, but I do. I am an optimist."
    "Me too." Allbright clapped his friend on the shoulder.
    "But I still wouldn't count on it."
     
    E nrique Feliz was forty years old, with a