The King of Swords (max mingus) (40 page)

F
riday morning. Carmine woke up and found Solomon standing at the end of his bed, partly illuminated by the thin spears of light slicing through the gaps in the blinds and falling across his dark blue shirt and parts of his face. Carmine wasn't so much looking at Solomon as at what he was holding-the M21 sniper rifle he'd used to hunt gators with Sam. He'd left it in the store. They must have collected it with Risquee's thawed remains.

'What do you want?'

'Do this one thing and you're free to go.'

'Free…? To go where?' Carmine sat up. He hadn't been out the house in two days. His mother had grounded him. He'd barely left his room, except to eat, piss and have his bath. His mother had hardly spoken to him. She'd seemed preoccupied, worried even. He hadn't dared ask her what was wrong because he knew she'd blame him and probably go into a ShitFit.

Solomon didn't answer his question, simply carried on standing there with the rifle in his hands.

'What's this "thing"?' Carmine asked.

'I'll tell you in the car. Get dressed.'

F
riday morning, 8 a.m. Wearing his tux and a fresh set of facial bruises, Ismael was brought back to MTF in the back of a mail van. He was put in an interrogation room and left alone. He asked for his lawyer. He didn't get an answer. He asked to see Max or Joe. He was told they were unavailable. He asked for his lawyer again. He still didn't get an answer.

2 p.m. The bogus news story hit the airwaves. TV and radio carried a report about an ambush on three unmarked police cars ferrying murder suspect Sam Ismael back to Miami on the junction of North West 29th Street and Coral Hills Drive. Two security trucks (reported stolen out of Tampa the day before) had blocked the convoy and about eight men wearing monkey masks, black boiler suits and armed with assault weapons had poured out of the back of the trucks and surrounded the cars. The suspect-Sam Ismael-had been abducted and bundled into a green Plymouth Barracuda. Meanwhile the cops had been disarmed, the radios smashed, and their cars shot up. As the attackers were fleeing, one of the officers-Pirro Oviedo-managed to reach his weapon, but had been shot and killed before he could use it. There was now a city-and state-wide manhunt for Ismael and his abductors.

TV news showed repeated images of paramedics stretchering what appeared to be a body in a bag from the scene.

4.30 p.m. Ismael was put in the back of a police cruiser, made to lie down with a blanket thrown over him. He was then driven out of MTF and taken to an underground parking lot near the courthouse across the road, where Max and Joe were waiting for him in a black bulletproof Deville sedan with tinted windows. The car was on loan from the DEA, who'd recovered it in a raid on a drug dealer's house.

'My lawyer's not coming, is he?' Ismael asked Max when he saw him.

'No,' Max said, studying Ismael's swollen nose, black eye and the bruise to his left cheek. They'd worked him over good-more than they needed to. He almost felt like apologizing, but it wasn't the time or place.

Ismael, understanding exactly what was happening, gave Max a bitter, yet resigned smile.

'Is my family safe at least?'

'They've been moved to the embassy,' Max answered. But with the way things were going, he wasn't sure if it was true.

'Then let's go,' Ismael said.

Max opened the passenger door. Ismael got in, followed by Joe.

They headed out towards Little Havana, where Max would make the call to Boukman's number.

4.50 p.m. Max called the number he'd found in his mailbox from a booth on Calle Ocho.

It rang three times before it was answered.

Max heard traffic in the background.

'This is Mingus. I have what you want.'

A man's voice came on the line. According to the surveillance they had on the booth, the man Max was addressing was a skinny, tall, young black male in dungarees and with short dreadlocks. He'd been watching the callbox since the morning.

'Come to the place you're calling,' the man said slowly and mechanically, like he was reading from a piece of paper.

'What?' Max asked.

'The phone you're calling. You a cop. You know where it's at.'

'Who did he kidnap?' Ismael asked as they drove to their next destination.

'My girlfriend,' Max said.

'He'll kill you both, you know-maybe me too-quickly, if I'm lucky.'

'It won't go down that way.'

'You hope.'

'I know,' Max corrected him.

'Oh?'

'I wouldn't be here if I thought differently.'

'Is that why you're smoking two cigarettes at once?' Ismael sniggered.

Max looked from the Marlboro burning between his fingers to the ashtray, where another cigarette was smouldering at the halfway mark. He crushed it out.

'If you think you're going to trap him, you're not.' Ismael caught Max's eye in the rearview mirror.

'Hey!' Joe snapped at him. 'Shut the fuck up, will ya? You're ruinin' my good mood.'

Ismael looked out of the window at the clear blue sky, the palm trees passing by like they were on a conveyor belt, the open-topped cars, the people in them heading to the beach in sunglasses and smiles, the whole road drenched in golden afternoon sunlight.

'Shame,' he sighed, 'such a beautiful day.'

5
.30 p.m. For the past hour and a half, all the tails on the SNBC members had reported the same thing. Six cars carrying between four and five people, and a red transit van, had left various locations in Miami at around the same time, and were all taking the same route: straight up North West 7th Avenue, left down North West 119th Street, up Opa Locka Boulevard, and then right down Unity Boulevard.

Once in Opa Locka, they'd navigated the side roads, until they'd reached a stretch of wasteland right in front of the Biscayne Canal, very close to the airport. Now they were all standing around, stretching their legs, waiting. There was but one building nearby-a derelict, three-floor structure that had once been the offices of the Florida Aviation Camp.

Eldon, Jed Powers, Emilo Anorga and Rico Casados had watched the SNBC's progress in the MTF control room on the second floor. Eight operators manned radios and shouted out locations to a man moving pins across a large road map of Miami and its surrounding area. The air was thick with static crackles, disembodied voices, tense anticipation, cigarette smoke and sweat. The pins were red, orange, yellow, white, pink and black.

'You know why he picked that spot?' Powers pointed to the row of pins lined up next to North West 37th Avenue. 'We can't fly into that airspace, 'cause of the planes. Rules out choppers.'

'No it doesn't.' Eldon studied the map. 'We'll just have to ground all the flights.'

'Shall I tell Max about the meet?'

'Not until he gets his final instructions,' Eldon said, looking at the blue pin representing Max's car. He was in Overtown, waiting by a phone.

'They're probably holding the girl in the van,' Rico said. 'We could move on 'em in forty minutes, an hour at the most. End this now.'

Eldon shook his head.

'Boukman hasn't arrived yet.'

'How do you know?'

Eldon had made notes of all the physical descriptions of the SNBC members in Opa Locka.

'According to Ismael, Boukman never goes anywhere without his bodyguard, Bonbon. Big fat guy in a hat and long coat. No sign of him yet. When he shows, Boukman'll show.'

Rico nodded, took out a cigar and lit it, moving the end slowly around the flame of his Zippo.

'If that's Cuban, I'll have to arrest you,' Eldon joked, wafting the thick, pungent smoke out of his face.

One of the radio operators shouted out that a dark blue Mercedes had left the Desamours house.

D
aylight was starting to fade. Carmine panned the area below him, left to right: six cars and a white van parked with their tail ends to the filthy brown-green Biscayne Canal; close to thirty people were hanging around. He recognized a few familiar faces-core SNBC killers, several of them old guard, Solomon's original Liberty City crew. The others were new to him, mostly male, although there was a smattering of women too. They were milling around, talking, joking, laughing in voices which didn't carry. Most of them were in bullet-proof vests, and all were wearing those same piece-of-shit disco-throwback Compuchron watches Solomon had made him put on. He'd seen plenty of heavy artillery being passed around: Uzis, Macs, M16s, AKs, Mossberg pumps, a couple of British SLRs. Everyone had handled the main attraction, the Austrian Steyr AUG rifle, with its translucent magazine and weird design, like something out of that movie, Day of the Jackal. Across from them lay a long, wide and flat stretch of ground, brown dirt with tufts of dead or dying grass sticking out, nothing either side of it.

Carmine checked the time: 6.47 flashed up in red on the LED screen at the touch of a button. He'd been here under an hour. He was nervous as hell and sweating like a motherfucker, his shirt sticking to his chest, back and underarms, the crotch of his trousers damp. It was hot up here on the third floor of the crumbling building he was stationed in. The constant sound of planes taking off and landing at the nearby airport wasn't helping his state of mind either-lots of jets and two-seaters, engines farting through the air, tyres squealing on the runway. The heavier ones made the building shake and creak as they landed, dislodging plaster and stirring up dirt, which he'd breathe in and sneeze out. Solomon, his driver Marcus, Bonbon and his two killer dykes-what were their names?-Danielle and Jane-were up here with him too, standing behind him, saying little. Once in a while Bonbon would come over and look through the glassless window, inspecting the troops, communicating with them via walkie-talkie, saying nothing of any importance, most likely getting off on playing General for the day.

In the car on the way over, Solomon had had the radio tuned to the news and turned up loud. Sam Ismael had been sprung from a police convoy by an armed gang. A cop had been killed. That had amused Bonbon no end.

'Mingus must want his bitch back baaaad-dumbass pig!' He'd clapped his hands and slapped his big blubbery thighs, laughing in a high-pitched staccato wheeze.

Without anyone needing to tell him, Carmine had understood what they wanted him to do, although no one had actually said anything.

By 8.00 it was getting close to dark. Heavy shades of scarlet, purple and orange-tinged black dominated the sky. The area directly in front of the building had a faint steely-blue glow about it, as if it had soaked up most of the airport's ambient light.

Bonbon came over, his small feet crushing and popping and scratching across the debris-strewn floor, his entry into Carmine's orbit announced by the stench of candy and carrion coming from his mouth and the crackling of his walkie-talkie.

But it was Solomon who spoke to him.

'Max Mingus will arrive here with Sam Ismael between ten and eleven. His girlfriend will be brought out from the van and walked over. They'll meet in the middle there, to the right of you. My man takes two steps back. I want you to shoot her first. In the head. Then count to four and shoot him. Think you can do that?'

'I ain't done this kind of shit before.' Carmine saw Solomon standing against the wall, right next to his rifle, the sparse light catching only his eyes. 'Why don't you get one of your guys instead?'

'You can put a bullet in the eye of a tic on an angel's wing. This has to be very precise. You're the man for the job.'

It was true, he was a great shot. Ever since he'd got his hands on a.38 Special his mother had kept around their home in Liberty City, he'd had an affinity with guns. He'd taught Solomon to shoot when they were teenagers. Back then, Solomon couldn't have hit the Freedom Tower if he'd been standing right in front of it. Carmine had showed him how to hold, aim, stand and breathe. Solomon had turned out OK-the right side of competent.

'And after this you'll let me go?' Carmine asked in a near croak. His mouth and throat were dry from fear and the dust in the room.

'That's what I said,' Solomon replied. 'You can take all that money you stole off me and move to Nevada.'

Carmine felt his guts clench. How the fuck had he found out?

'I-I-I didn't steal any money off you!' he stammered.

'No such thing as a half lie, Carmine. You ran hookers on the side. You kept the money. That's not the way we do things.'

Carmine was stunned. How had he found out? Had Sam told him? How long had he known? What was he going to do about it? There was no threat in Solomon's voice, no anger, no emotion. But then there never was.

'Why you lettin' me go? You've killed people for less,' Carmine managed to say.

'If I killed you I'd be doing you a favour. You are and were nothing without me and your mother. She gave you life. I gave you a life. I want you to remember that for as long as you live.'

With that Solomon walked away, leaving Carmine to his turmoil, confusion, fear and a hundred unanswered questions.

He picked up his rifle and looked through the sight, checking the vision. He focused the crosshairs on a small rock on the ground. The light was fine. He wouldn't miss.

How the fuck had Solomon found out about his business? He'd been so discreet, so careful…It had to be Sam, he thought, because there wasn't any other logical explanation. Sam had told Solomon or his mother or both of them. But why hadn't they done anything sooner? Why hadn't they made an example of him?

He heard crickets in the air. He heard the people talking by the cars. He heard Bonbon, Danielle and Jane whispering. But he didn't hear any more planes.

W
hen they reached the stretch of open wasteground they'd been directed to, Max flashed his headlights twice in the direction of the canal. He caught two brief glimpses of the seven vehicles he knew were lined up there, and an even briefer one of the heavily armed platoon crowded behind them.

Joe, in the front passenger seat, looked at the building to their left, a typical Opa Locka structure-1920s faux-Moorish, with a domed roof, arched entrances and windows-derelict, crumbling and begging for the wrecking ball. Three floors, three windows apiece, too dark to see inside.

A pair of headlights flashed back at them across the plain of dirt.

'We got the signal. Over,' Joe said into the radio and then glanced across at Max, who was staring through the windscreen, his face tight, his expression rigid, giving nothing away.

Powers' voice crackled back: 'Waiting on your word. Be safe. Over and out.'

Be safe! Joe thought. He'd never been so damn scared in all his life. Apart from his sidearm, he had three rifles lying across his lap-an Atchisson assault shotgun with a 20-round drum magazine, and two fully automatic M16s each fitted with a taped together pair of 30-round box magazines. His palms were sweating and he couldn't stop blinking.

Suddenly seven pairs of headlights came on, full beam, momentarily dazzling them with an eruption of white, as they lit up the ground-grey-brown, rubble-and trash-strewn, dry as a desert, save a large puddle close to the car.

'You set?' Joe asked his partner.

Max nodded.

Joe handed Max an M16. Max took a deep breath and opened the door.

'Keep the engine running,' he said to Joe and stepped outside.

Joe lowered the driver's door window, lay across the seats and positioned himself so he could get a clear shot at the building. They'd guessed Boukman would be holed up in there, directing operations. He'd have at least one sniper with him too. The trouble was, they didn't know exactly where he was in the building, and Joe couldn't see much of anything beyond the outlines of the windows.

Max began to walk forward, head slightly down, squinting into the beams. The hot air smelled of plane fuel and rank water. He glanced at the building as he moved, scanning it left to right, floor to floor, window to window. He felt eyes on him, tracking him, aiming at him. And he could feel Boukman most of all, the weight of his scrutiny, the same sense of dissection and evaluation, of being broken down into core components, strengths and weaknesses, heart and fear.

'Stop!' a voice yelled out from the glare.

Max complied.

'Where's Ismael?'

'Right here. Where's Sandra?' Max shouted back.

'Show and tell, baby!' a different voice shouted out. There was some laughter.

'Bring her out! Let me see her!'

Max heard a short burst of walkie-talkie static come from the building. He looked across. Definitely the third floor. He didn't know which window, but he was guessing the middle one. Best vantage point. He signalled this to Joe-three fingers of his left hand tapped against the back of his thigh.

Joe saw the sign. He aimed at the middle window. Behind him, in the passenger seat, Ismael was breathing heavily through his mouth and nose. Poor bastard sounded like he was on a respirator.

Max saw someone step out from behind a car and blot out one of the headlights, then both as he began to approach. Max raised his rifle and got the figure in his sights: a tall man, walking slowly-behind someone else. Someone shorter.

Sandra.

At the sight of her, Max's heart started beating hard in his chest and his legs shook, tremors running from his hips to his toes and back like a high-voltage current.

He felt rage and a lot of fear for her safety. He wanted to get her out of there and he wanted to kill the fucker behind her, then he wanted to kill Boukman and his whole crew.

He kept his rifle aimed at the tall man's head, which wasn't hard, because the asshole had given him an optimum target-a bright yellow sweatband around his forehead.

They stopped a few feet away. Sweatband stood off to Sandra's right and pointed a chrome-plated.44 Magnum with a four-inch barrel at her head and cocked it.

Max shot a brief look at Sandra. Their eyes met. She was terror-stricken. She was wearing his denim shirt. She'd hated it on him. He'd loved it on her.

He wanted to say something reassuring, something about how everything was going to be OK, but they both knew that was bullshit. They were in deep deep shit.

He stared at Sweatband-a muscular six feet two in military khakis and desert boots, a bulletproof vest over his chest, black camouflage on his face and bald head.

Fucken' wargame-playin' dumbass, Max thought.

'Here's how it's gonna go,' Max said to him. 'First you lower your weapon.'

'Fuck dat!' Sweatband spat.

'At this range I can put three bullets in your brain faster than you can pull that trigger. You'll be dead before your fingers know it.' Max watched Sweatband's eyes cloud over with doubt and uncertainty. This wasn't in the script.

'Lower your weapon,' Max repeated, slightly louder and more insistently.

Sweatband tried to eyeball him, but he couldn't exactly front convincingly with the muzzle of a high-powered assault rifle pointed at his forehead. So he lowered his gun.

'Good,' Max said. 'Now, she's going to walk to the car. She's going to get in. Then Ismael's going to come out. You got that?'

'Ain't-ain't my call,' Sweatband said.

'You're the guy with the gun in his face. So it is your call,' Max answered.

Now Sweatband was really lost-freefalling through dense fog. His eyes were straining off to the right, upwards. He wanted orders.

Max looked quickly at Sandra.

Then he saw Sweatband turn, first his head, then his whole body towards the building. He looked up at the middle window.

That was all Max needed.

He rushed between Sweatband and Sandra and pushed her to the ground.

'Go to the car! Crawl! Keep down!' he yelled at her as he got behind Sweatband, hooked his arm around his throat, shoved his knee in his lower back and pulled tight.

Sweatband dropped his gun. He kicked and flailed, trying to get Max off him, gurgling and gasping and spluttering for air through his constricted windpipe.

Max jammed his M16 under Sweatband's armpit and fired straight at the middle window. He heard a cry and a scream.

A shot came from the building and struck Sweatband full in the chest, pushing him and Max to the ground. The fall knocked the rifle from Max's hand. Sweatband went for it. Max pulled out his ankle piece and shot him in the head.

A barrage of automatic fire erupted from behind the headlights and swarm after swarm of bullets cut through the air, smashing into Joe's car, killing the light.

He saw Sandra speed-crawling towards the car.

The window sniper fired at him three times, missing his head by ever decreasing margins. Max pushed Sweatband's body on its side. Two bullets smacked into it. He shot back, emptying his gun into the black space that was the window.

'Shooters on the canal and the third floor! GO! GO! GO! GO!' Joe yelled into his radio and fired a volley at the middle window. 'Stay the fuck down!' he yelled at Ismael as a continuous hail of lead pounded the car, taking out the windscreen and blowing out the front tyres. It sagged. Bullets tore into the roof.

Max got hold of his M16, switched it to fully automatic and fired at the bank of headlights.

Joe didn't hear the passenger door open, nor see Ismael creep out of the car.

Max heard a splash of water behind him and turned to see a dark figure stealing up on him.

Ismael. What the fuck?

Ismael flipped over and fell on his back.

He heard someone yell 'NO!' from the third floor.

At that moment Sandra made it to the side of the car and got in.

Two spotlights simultaneously lit the row of cars and the building.

Max hadn't heard the choppers and neither had Solomon's men.

Twin streams of high-calibre tracer fire came down from the sky, pouring into the upper floors of the building, tearing up the brickwork, ripping through the open windows.

One of the choppers was directly above Max. Spent casings fell from the sky and clattered and bounced on the ground.

The volleys of bullets stopped coming from the cars as they were pounded by machine-gun fire, first from the chopper then, behind them, from the canal. The headlights died in blocks. Cars started up. One tore out of the line, then swerved and crashed into the building.

Max saw people running towards him, shooting. He fired back. So did Joe, leaning out of the window, pumping rounds out of the Atchisson.

Then Rico's SWAT teams moved in behind Joe and opened fire on the stragglers.

The van blew up.

Solomon's men were cut down. They fell flat on their faces, their sides, or keeled over on their backs.

Some dropped their weapons and started to raise their hands, but they were shot too-from above or from the front, sometimes both.

The firing stopped. One of the choppers took off, flying towards the airport, searchlight fixed on the ground.

Max turned around and looked for Sandra. She was nowhere in sight.

He called out for her.

SWAT moved past him.

'Sandra?' He stood up and went to the car.

She was lying in the back seat with her hands over her ears, shaking.

She screamed and kicked out when Max leant over her. When she saw it was him, she sat up, threw her arms around him and held him tight, sobbing.

'It's OK, baby. It's over,' he said, kissing the top of her head. Then he buried his face in her hair and started crying himself, overwhelmed with relief and by a million prayers all being answered at once. He swore he'd never put her in harm's way again.

Joe got quietly out of the car to give them some privacy. His legs and shoulders were tensed up and tight, and he was getting the beginnings of a nervous headache. He looked at the aftermath of the firefight; the carnage and destruction lit up by the hovering chopper's quivering spotlight. A noxious mist of gun smoke hung in the air, wafting back and forth like wan muslin drapes. SWAT personnel combed the wasteground, checking the still, rounded forms that were the dead, kicking weapons away from the wounded before cuffing them. A team entered the building, torches mounted on their weapons. Soon they were barking 'Clear' multiple times. The van burnt near the canal, its skeleton visible in thin geometrical lines under layers of burning flame. All around him he heard sirens-police, ambulance, fire service. After gunplay, paperwork.