AGAINST THE WIND (Book Two of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (9 page)

Desi Junior

North Miami, Florida

Friday, April 6, 2012

10:25 PM

D
ESI RAMOS
JUNIOR DROVE DOWN 128TH STREET
with his lights off. He turned his
Escalade around and parked it in a lot next to a small vacant building bearing
a "FOR RENT" sign over its doorway across the street from the lumber
yard. He pointed the vehicle outward so that he faced the yard's rear area.

Darkness enveloped the silent street. He sat there
for a moment, checking it all out. Other than routine traffic on I-95, there
was no activity either on the street or in front of him in the big space behind
the lumber yard. It worried him to have to park across the street from the
fence, because it meant more exposure getting back to his car after the action.
It would be much easier to park alongside the fence itself, but he couldn't
risk having his car spotted by Bebop, who no doubt would be alert to anything
out of the ordinary. Desi was fairly certain Bebop had scouted the area before
agreeing to meet here, and in doing so had noticed no reason for a vehicle to
park beside the chain link fence. If one showed up in the glare of Bebop's
headlights as he maneuvered around the rear of the lumber yard, he would almost
certainly become suspicious.

Quietly, he slipped out of the Escalade, Kleins in
hand. He made short work of the chain link fence, cutting a three-foot by
three-foot hole near to the building itself, enabling him to comfortably crawl
through. After replacing the cutters, he pulled a black case out of the Escalade's
boot and opened it.

The neatly-arranged components of a Huldra Mark IV
stared up at him out of the velvet interior. An excellent tactical weapon,
relatively small, fairly quiet, low recoil. It was accurate up to more than a
hundred yards, but the target would be a lot closer than that. He assembled the
rifle, mounting the scope last.

He bought the rifle right after having lunch with
Alicia the other day. Then he went directly to a shooting range out in West
Miami-Dade to practice using it.

He remembered his father's words from years ago.
Always practice with a new gun if you have
the time
.
Practice for hours every
day for as many days as you can before you have to use it. You don't want to
fumble with it the moment you need it. You want it to feel secure in your
hands, ready to do exactly what you want it to do.
And then Desi remembered
the warning,
And don't spend too long
practicing at any one gun range. You don't want to attract anyone's attention,
make them wonder why you're there for so many hours. You want to blend in just
like everyone else. Shoot a few clips and then move on to the next range.

So he shot forty or fifty rounds, then headed up
to more ranges in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Big ranges, where there was
less of a chance his Mark IV would stand out. A small range, you basically have
guys (and girls) coming in with their .38s and nines and whatnot looking to
blow off steam. A sniper rifle, and its owner's description, would sear itself
into the memory of the manager of such a range. After two days of anonymity at
the big ranges in South Florida, Desi felt comfortable with his weapon.

He crossed the street and crawled through the
fence.

The carelessly-stacked cinderblocks a couple of
yards inside the fence gave him the cover he needed. One stack to his left,
about three feet high and six feet long, ran parallel to I-95, providing
shelter from passing motorists, not that any of them would ever look over in
that direction. Another stack in front of him was about four feet high, hiding
him from anyone in the large area behind the building where the deal was set to
go down. He loaded his magazine and attached it to his weapon. Then he sat back
to wait.

He looked behind him. No activity on the short street
or in the vicinity of the vacant building where he parked. The only motion was
the droning of passing traffic on I-95 on his left. The thick, moist night air
kept the temperature hovering around eighty degrees. No breeze, no clouds, only
a fingernail-shaped moon peeked out of the sky. A line of sweat formed on
Desi's forehead and under his arms.

It wasn't long before headlights swung around the
rear area entrance at the far end. Desi peered over the cinderblocks and caught
the car coming into the area. It slowed and turned around to face the entrance
at a point about forty yards away from his nest. As the car wheeled around into
position, he made it to be a BMW, one of the really big ones, black or maybe
dark blue. The car rolled to a stop, facing away from Desi, leaving its
headlights shining toward the entrance. No one got out. Traffic sped by on I-95
not thirty yards away, but nobody passing noticed the car in this godforsaken
lot behind a nondescript building.

A few minutes later, Desi saw stirring at the
other end. More headlights came into view, making the turn into the rear area
of the lumber yard. They pulled closer to the BMW and stopped a short distance
from it, maybe ten or fifteen yards, pointing itself directly at it. Desi
couldn't tell if the new car was a Land Rover because of the headlight glare,
but it was definitely not a normal car, more a squarish Rover-type of vehicle,
maybe an SUV. Desi raised his weapon. He set it against his shoulder atop the
stack of cinderblocks, then looked through the scope to make the necessary
adjustments. He tried wiping the sweat away, but there was more right behind
it. All his skin around his head itched — his neck, his nose, right under
his eyes.

People got out of the vehicles and stood in the
headlights. Two men stepped out of the SUV. He ID'd Bebop exiting the BMW from
the passenger side. Three others got out with him, two black men and a white
woman, one of the men from the driver's side, the other man and the woman from
the back seat. They stood with their backs to Desi, Bebop blocked by the men
and the woman who positioned themselves behind him. The groups exchanged words,
then Bebop walked to the center to meet the others. The woman went with him.
She carried the briefcase.

A loud siren cut the relative silence of the night
and everyone looked to the source. It came from I-95, a cop car speeding by on
its way somewhere, not here.

They all turned their attention back to the deal.
Desi could not fix his crosshairs on Bebop because the woman was tall, nearly
as tall as he was, and she stood behind him and a little to the right, the
perfect spot for blockage. He wanted a clean head shot, because he knew for
deals of this size, the participants often wore vests under their clothing. His
gun might penetrate it, but only if the vest were a cheaper model, thinner and
less resistant to the Huldra's 5.56-caliber round. Desi had decided Bebop's
head would instead take the bullet.

Desi squirmed and made a pass at his sweaty
forehead with his sleeve, scratched his nose, then returned to the scope. Bebop
and the woman made minimal movements. Cutting the bag of coke, testing it … he
couldn't line up a clean shot. The top of Bebop's head rose above the woman's
but it made for a very small target. Desi couldn't draw a reliable bead on him.

The briefcases were exchanged and they backed
toward their vehicles. Still the woman was in the way. They got to within ten
feet of their car and turned around to walk forward. The two other men headed
to separate sides in order to enter their original positions in the car. Bebop
and the woman appeared to do the same, he to the front seat, she to the back.
Bebop's head was finally in the crosshairs by himself, the woman slightly to
his right. Desi's finger wrapped around the trigger.

At the exact moment Desi mentally committed to
squeezing the trigger, the woman whirled around to give Bebop a big hug. The
sudden movement, coming at the very moment he squeezed the trigger, caused a
slight involuntary jerk in his aim. The weapon fired, a relatively soft pop, and
the round hit her between the shoulder blades instead of her head, splattering
her insides all over Bebop's shirt. Despite the fact the round was a
hollow-point, it went through the woman's body and struck Bebop in the chest,
throwing him backward to the ground. Desi's suspicions about the vest were
confirmed as Bebop struggled to his feet and instinctively ducked behind the
car, as did the other men. Alicia's clients near the Land Rover darted inside
it and rapidly backed it up toward the entrance, spitting gravel all the way.
Bebop and the other men returned fire, but their aim was way off, firing in all
directions, not knowing exactly where the shot had come from.

Desi scrambled back through the hole in the fence
and sprinted for his Escalade. He heard someone yell, "There! There! In
the street!" More gunshots, all wild, as he scrambled for his SUV in its
darkened parking spot, sparked the engine, and raced out of there. He sped down
State Road 7 to 125th Street and from there to I-95 southbound, where he melted
into nighttime traffic.

Josh

Deerfield Beach, Florida

Saturday, April 7, 2012

7:05 PM

T
ONI YAWNED.

"How much farther?" she said, relaxing her posture behind the
wheel.

"Not long," Josh replied as he climbed into the front seat of
the white Hyundai. "We just crossed into Broward County."

"So what does that mean?" She pulled out to pass a pickup truck
towing a boat.

"It means we're not far from where we're going. Maybe an hour or so
away. I'm supposed to text our location to this guy right now."

He shot off the text —
I'm in
Broward
— then consulted the GPS for further directions. They
appeared to be a little less than an hour from their destination. Within
moments, he got the return text from the guy in acknowledgement:
E Hialeah. U know the place.

"Can we get something to eat after we drop off his car?" Toni
asked. "I'm starving."

Josh looked her over. She must have weighed all of a hundred pounds,
maybe one-oh-five tops. "Starving" for her was certainly relative.

"Sure," he said. "We'll find a good spot."

"
Some
body I know took a
pretty good nap back there?" She tossed her head toward the back seat.
"Gee, you didn't move since Orlando."

"Yeah, I'm fine. But we'll get some good sleep tonight."

She cast a sidelong glance at him, a half-smile. "We will?"

"Yeah. We've got a room somewhere."

"Somewhere?" she said, still smirking. "Why, Josh b'gosh,
you don't know where?"

He maintained a straight face and looked out the windshield. "We're
going to pick up another car at the same place we drop this one off. There'll
be a hotel reservation for us on the seat."

"Oooo, sounds mysterious! I feel like we're spies or
something."

Josh chuckled. "Yeah, spies. That's us."

Her imagination took over and, holding onto the wheel with her left hand,
she began moving her right in time with her speech. "I can see it now. We
get in the car and meet some stranger in a trenchcoat in a dark alley and he
gives you a key to a bus locker someplace that holds a briefcase and you
handcuff it to your wrist." She shivered a little. "Ooo, this is
exciting!"

Josh thought,
I wonder if this was
how she was growing up. So easily pleased. Her parents back in — where
did she say? Bayshore? — probably had a smooth time raising her if she
was like this the whole time.

"Don't get too hopped up," he said. "We're just picking up
another car and going to a hotel."

"Mmm, I'm starting to like that part. The hotel, I mean. But can we
eat first? Pleeeease?"

"Yeah, of course. Like I said. We'll grab something as soon as we
get the other car."

≈ ≈ ≈

As Josh predicted, an hour later, they arrived at an
alley off East 25th Street in Hialeah. Toni maneuvered the car down an alley
and around behind a long strip of retail operations which fronted 25th Street …
back doors, the occasional small loading dock. Two white vans sat in the near
darkness with space for a car between them.

"This is it," Josh said. "Pull in here. Between these
vans."

She did and they got out. They looked around. Nobody in sight. A pale
wash of thin light drifted back there from the street. Josh saw a car parked on
the other side of one of the vans. Ford Focus, looked like it was about ten to
twelve years old.

"That's it," he said. "That's ours. Put the keys to the
Hyundai on the floor."

They retrieved their luggage from the Hyundai's trunk, one carry-on bag
each. Toni had wanted to pack a regular-sized suitcase. "We're going to
Florida for a few days. I've just got to bring more things," she'd said.
Josh told her they could have a great time with the bare minimum, emphasizing
the word "bare". She got the idea.

As expected, the Focus keys were on the floor. They got in and Josh fired
it up. Toni flipped on the interior light and read the reservation document in
the glove box.

"Airport Hilton," she said. Her big, round eyes had a puzzled
look in them, which made them look much bigger and much rounder. "Why are
we staying there? Why don't we stay on the beach somewhere?"

"The Hilton'll be okay," Josh said. "I'm sure it'll be
fine." He pulled out of the space and turned on the specially installed
GPS for the directions to the Airport Hilton which he knew would be in there.