Gator Bait (21 page)

A couple seconds later, she dropped next to me and pointed to a row of tall metal buildings across the back of the lot. We grabbed our gear and hurried down a row of buildings for the back. “It’s a good thing they don’t have a guard dog,” I said.

“Rumor has it that Big and Little are afraid of dogs.”

“I guess they don’t need them as long as that bodyguard’s around. If he was fighting a grizzly bear, my money wouldn’t be on the bear.”

“Mine either.”

We got to the end of the row and I scanned the taller units in both directions. “Which way?”

“From what she could make out on the computer screen, it looked like the units were on the end on the right.”

“Okay. Check for locks as we go. If there’s nothing inside, it shouldn’t be locked.”

We slipped around the corner and hurried down the row of units, scanning for locks as we passed. So far, the information appeared to be correct. None of the units we’d passed so far had a lock. Until we got to the end. The last two units had padlocks on the doors.

“It would be easier to back a boat into the end one,” Ida Belle said.

“Yep.” I pulled a set of small tools out of my backpack and went to work on the padlock. It took me a couple of minutes, but finally, I heard a faint
click
. I pulled down on the padlock and it slid open. “Bingo.”

I grabbed the door and lifted it up high enough to crouch under. “Head to the front of the row and keep watch in case the guard makes his round.”

Ida Belle gave me a nod and headed off down a row toward the office building. I dropped to the ground and rolled underneath the door. I supposed pushing it up farther and walking in would have been easier, but old habits died hard. I jumped up and clicked on my flashlight, shining it at the center of the unit. The mangled boat rested on a trailer. It was still dripping through cracks in the side, and pools of water formed below the battered structure. The stench of Louisiana mud and salt water filled the enclosed space.
 

I stepped closer to the boat, shining my light across the hull. Halfway down the front, I found the first bullet hole. I put my face up close to the hull, inspecting the size of the hole and the way the metal bent as the bullet entered and exited. Then I hurried to the other side of the boat and located the matching exit hole.
 

I stepped back from the boat. I knew what had made that hole. I’d seen it too many times before. An AK-47. Not exactly the kind of weapon that Walter could order for you down at the General Store.
 

I blew out a breath. At least I knew why the ATF was here. If someone was running AK-47s through Sinful it could only be one small piece of a much larger puzzle. They’d probably had different areas down the coastline under surveillance for a while, trying to connect all the dots. It was no wonder they came running when they heard someone had opened fire on a deputy. They were afraid what Carter had done jeopardized who knew how many months or even years of planning.

My phone vibrated and I pulled it out and checked the display.

ATF on grounds. Hide!

Chapter Thirteen

Hide? A second later, I heard a car engine. I sprang for the door and shoved it down just as headlights swept across it. Where the hell was I supposed to hide when I was locked inside with the very thing they were coming to see? I scanned the unit with my flashlight, trying to locate anything to hide behind, but the only thing in there was the boat. Desperate for an out, I pointed my flashlight to the ceiling and saw big steel rafters.

It wasn’t optimal, but it was all I had. I threw on my backpack and jumped onto the trailer, crawling up to the top of the spotlight frame on top of the boat. Carefully, I put my feet underneath me and reached for the rafters above. My shoulders and biceps strained with the effort, but I managed to pull myself onto the rafter just as the door to the unit flew up.

“You were supposed to lock it,” Riker complained.

I pulled my legs straight and lay flat along the length of the rafter, praying that they didn’t shine a light up. The rafter was wide enough for me to easily balance on top of it, but not wide enough to totally hide my body.
 

“I did lock it,” Mitchell said.

“Then why wasn’t it locked? Jesus, why don’t you just park it at the curb and put a sign on it so the smugglers can pick it up?”

“You act like this is relevant. Who else is going to shoot a military rifle at a local cop but our guys?”

“Maybe I think it’s a stupid thing to do,” Riker said, “calling attention to yourself that way.”

“If the cop saw something important, then taking him out wouldn’t be stupid on their part at all.”

“Maybe not, but a lot of good it does us if he can’t remember what he saw.”

“Can’t remember, or won’t tell us,” Mitchell said.

“I don’t know. Temporary amnesia is common enough with a concussion, but I find this one to be very inconvenient. Even if Mr. LeBlanc’s memory returns, I seriously doubt he’ll rush to inform us of it. He’s a cop and someone tried to kill him. He’s got more than one reason to want to nail the shooter himself.”

“I guess. What are we doing here, anyway?”

“I wanted to check that ice chest that we confiscated at the last exchange.”
 

Riker headed to the back of the unit. I leaned as far over as I could to try to see what he was doing, wishing that I was lying the other direction. I saw the white top of an ice chest flip open, but I couldn’t twist my head far enough back to see what was in it.

“See,” Riker said. “This is what I’m talking about.”

“What? Looks like the same weapons we confiscated last time.”

“Not even close. The others came from Russian distributors. These are from the Middle East.”

My chest tightened so hard that it almost squeezed the breath out of me. Could Ahmad be moving guns through Sinful? Was that even in the realm of possibility?

“So what?” Mitchell asked. “You think they’re changing suppliers?”

“Maybe. Something happened to cause this slipup. New supplier, new personnel…something.”

“Well, if you got what you came for, can we get out of here? I’m starving.”

“Yeah, let me grab one of these to take back to headquarters.”
 

Riker bent over and rose back up with one of the weapons, and the two of them headed out of the unit. They made it halfway before the whole shebang went to hell in a handbasket. Riker had left their car—a newly issued, non-burro-damaged one—still running and parked directly in front of the unit, the fog lights on. The yellow lights that had reached almost all the way to the back of the unit started to retract.
 

“Someone’s stealing our car!” Mitchell yelled.

Riker set off at a dead run but on his second step, hit a puddle of slimy water dripping from the boat. His right foot shot out from under him and he flung his arms up, trying to maintain his balance. At the same time, he pulled the trigger on the AK-47 and bullets flew past the right side of my head.
 

Involuntarily, I lurched to the left to avoid the spray and dropped straight off the rafter and onto Riker and Mitchell, sending them sprawling onto the floor. I leaped up from the ground, grabbing the AK-47 from Riker’s hand as I went, and gave him a good kick on the back of the head while striking Mitchell with the butt of the gun. It wasn’t hard enough to seriously injure either of them, but it was a good enough blow to make their vision blur.
 

I sprinted out of the unit, as Ida Belle jumped out of Riker’s car. I slammed the door shut behind me, clicking the padlock into place. “The gate!” Ida Belle yelled and pointed. “I jammed it when they came in. We can squeeze through.”

In the dim light, it looked closed to me, but I rushed to it anyway. When I was about ten feet away, I saw the crowbar stuck in between the gate frame and the post. It was vibrating as the gate tried repeatedly to close. “Hurry,” I said. “I don’t think it’s going to hold much longer.”

Ida Belle ran up and sidled through the gap. I tossed my backpack through, then slid through the opening. A second after I made it through, the crowbar popped off and clanged onto the pavement. Gunshots rang out and I heard bullets hitting metal. I reached back between the wrought iron spikes and grabbed the crowbar.

“They’re shooting their way out,” I said. “Haul ass!”

We sprinted across the parking lot and into the woods, taking the direct route to the Jeep. I took a half second to mentally praise myself for choosing long sleeves before pulling out my cell phone and pressing speed dial for Gertie. Ida Belle ran ahead of me with the flashlight, trying to pick a path through the dense foliage. I stayed on her tail, trying to run and clutch the phone to my head at the same time, which is much harder than it sounds when giant branches are slapping you in the face every few seconds.

The phone went to voice mail and I cursed.
 

“Emergency evacuation!” I yelled before disconnecting, then prayed the message would go through.

We burst through the brush and tumbled into the ditch, both of us rolling into the muddy water at the bottom before springing up the other side. We popped out of the ditch right next to the Jeep and Gertie screamed.
 

“Jesus Christ!” she yelled. “You scared the crap out of me. And where the heck did you get the assault rifle?”

Ida Belle ran for the passenger’s side door and I dived over the side of the Jeep and into the backseat. “Go! Go! Go!” I shouted.

Gertie started the Jeep and floored it, the back tires spinning on the gravel road as she shot out onto the main road. “I called and texted when that car went by. Sent at least three to both you and Ida Belle, but I never heard a thing. I thought maybe there was another turnoff we didn’t know about and it was just a resident, and then you two materialize next to the Jeep like ghosts.”

“That car belonged to Riker and Mitchell.”

“Crap!” Gertie stomped harder on the accelerator.

“I called but the phone went to voice mail.”

“Did Riker and Mitchell see you?” Gertie asked.

“You could say that,” I said. “Just get us back to Sinful and I’ll tell you all about it.”

 
She spun the wheel to the right and rounded a corner, then slammed on the brakes. “That might not be as easy as it sounds.”

I leaned forward to peer out the windshield and saw Big and Little’s Hulk of a bodyguard, Mannie, standing in the middle of the road with a shotgun pointed right at us.
 

He shifted the shotgun to one hand and held up a spotlight with the other. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with me,” he said.

“What about my car?” Gertie asked.

He motioned his head to the side and a man jumped out of the black sedan behind him. “Your vehicle will be taken care of. If you’ll come this way.” He motioned to me. “And honey, you’re going to want to put that baby down really slow-like.”

I held my empty hand up and slowly lowered the AK-47 onto the seat. We all climbed out of the Jeep and made our way over to the Cadillac, where Mannie took our weapons and ordered us into the backseat.

“This is it,” Gertie whispered as we climbed in. “They’re going to kill us all and a blow-up doll is wearing my best underwear.”

Mannie climbed into the driver’s seat and locked the doors. He looked back at us. “Just in case any of you get the idea that I can’t drive and shoot you at the same time, I’m going to go ahead and assure you that I can. They don’t call me backhanded Mannie for nothing.”

He turned the car around and shot off down the road. I glanced back and saw the Jeep pull in behind us. “Where are you taking us?” I asked. If they were going to kill us, I saw no reason to sit silently awaiting my fate.

“To see the bosses.”

Even though I knew the answer before he said it, my pulse spiked. We would have been safer with Riker and Mitchell than Big and Little Hebert. I frowned. Or maybe not. Riker would have cuffed us and sent us straight to New Orleans where the ATF would have done a serious background check on all three of us. I wasn’t sure how well my cover would stand up to a federal search, especially from the ATF, since I’d worked with them in the past.
 

Gertie, who was sitting in the middle, sighed. “If I’m not back in jail by morning, Myrtle is going to be in trouble.”

Ida Belle and I exchanged glances. Apparently, Gertie thought we were on our way to tea and crumpets. “All Myrtle has to do is lie,” Ida Belle said, “and she’s a pro at it. She didn’t see or hear anything. It’s not the dispatcher’s job to keep up with prisoners. That Officer Crawford is going to catch it for this one.”

“Excuse me,” Mannie said, “am I understanding you correctly—that you broke out of jail?”

“Not all of us,” Ida Belle said and pointed to Gertie. “Just her.”

“She’s a wily one,” I said.

Mannie stared at us in the rearview mirror, his expression a mixture of disbelief and confusion. “I’ll just let Big and Little sort this out.”

“I wish someone would,” I said, feeling slightly better about things now that I’d thought them through. Big and Little were businessmen with a vested interest in staying out of prison and keeping business up and running. So we’d trespassed on their property and taken a peek at an ATF asset. Killing us would be the most foolish solution to a problem that wasn’t really affecting them, outside of the loss of a floodlight.