The Holocaust Engine, page 6
“Other than the airport?” I asked, watchin’ him gently spin the twin combination dials on his case.
He caught me lookin’ and quickly grabbed my name tag hangin’ from my rear-view mirror. “Olivey? I thought your name was Max.”
“I didn’t pick it. My parents gave me the name. Since you’re payin’ the bills, you can call me what you want. Max usually works fine.”
“And your accent? Jamaican? Haitian?”
“I am at home on the islands,” I answered, soakin’ each word in as much Bob Marley as I could muster.
My shirt sleeve had slid up a bit, revealin’ my faded tattoo with a bold KC in the center of an ill-drawn outline of the state of Missouri.
“Really?” he asked. “I hear something different. Not quite island. Something a bit more domestic.”
“Island or American, I can be who you want. That’s the kind of family I am.”
US 1 to Roosevelt was busier than usual. In front of me, the brake lights on a delivery truck blinked twice and I pulled around it, straddlin’ the centerline to slip between the truck and an oncoming stream of vehicles. Blarin’ horns from northbound travelers greeted me, and my tires squealed in protest as I tucked back in behind a camper-trailer.
The turn toward the airport was even worse, with a log-jam at Flagler and cars fillin’ all four lanes. The highway was clogged with cars in both directions, and a pair of police cars were blockin’ Flagler, sending everyone east or north.
“What’s going on?” the man asked, leanin’ out of the passenger window.
“Must be a wreck,” I guessed. “Something big that they can’t clear out. Cops got the strip all closed off after last night. I’ve steered clear of that mess for the last two days. I don’t know what this is.”
“It’s nothing good,” he said, kinda slow and serious. The man clutched his briefcase to his chest. “Do the local police do many checkpoints down here?”
“The police wouldn’t snarl traffic like this. It’s bad to slow down the tourists when they’re spendin’ money. Cars don’t match our pedestrian lifestyle. It throws off the vibe.”
“Isn’t this the only road onto the island?”
“All roads lead somewhere. It just depends on where you want to go.”
“My plane leaves Miami at 9 PM. Can you drive me there?”
“It’s three and a half hours by car. This traffic’ll change that a bit.”
“There’s an extra five hundred if we make it by 7 PM. I can get a drink before my flight leaves.”
Time waits for no man. Neither do I, and now I was bein’ paid by the minute, not the mile. I cut hard to the right and pulled across the front lawn of Miss Terri Mondragaon. I made a mental note to fix her grass when I finished this job. I whipped up Eagle Avenue toward the residence of one Carolina Rockport. She’d installed automatic front and back gates when her husband bought an RV. When he ran off with Dulce from the Cabana, she needed help with a few arrangements. I ain’t nothin’ but a deal-maker, so when the deal was done, the widow Rockport gave me an opener for both gates—not Max’s only secret shortcut through town. I had a dozen of them by now, and with a quick tap of the blue garage door opener on my visor, I had a straight shot between the houses onto Duck Avenue and back on the road to Miami.
More police were showin’ up, lights flashin’ like it was a parade or something.
The man leaned forward, slidin’ a pair of fresh hundreds into my cup holder. “Let’s change things a bit. Keep us off the radar. Tell you what, if I can enjoy my last hours in the Keys without seeing anyone too ‘official,’ I’ll leave you an even thousand dollars.”
See, everyone has a price—either a thing they want, or a way they want their things. You just have to dig a bit to get them to strike a bargain. Ahead of me, the swath of red brake lights on US 1 gave little hope of gettin’ to the mainland too quickly. Whatever it was, it seemed to have started in KW and was sendin’ everyone north—probably stoppin’ to gawk at a dead seagull or some poor traveler changin’ a flat.
I made it to Miami just shy of 7 PM. The man had gone silent for the entire trip, his eyes watchin’ the blue water, then his watch, then back to the water—like he was tryin’ to lose himself in the ocean but didn’t want to be tardy about it.
Right before we took the loop into the airport, he said, “Max, what if I told you that I had a friend who was a health worker? What if I told you that this friend was supposed to check out one person to see if they had this really bad disease, but when he started seeing who they might have had contact with, he found out that it wasn’t one person anymore. It was over thirty.”
“I’d say your friend had a mighty big job ahead of him.”
His head slumped like he was in court and just got the guilty verdict.
I pulled up to his gate, pissin’ off two cabbies when I slipped between them. They yelled about the lack of a taxi stamp on my car. I told them I was sorry, just droppin’ off a friend at the airport. One runs off to call security, but my friend was already out of the car.
He shut the door and leaned back in, ten hundred-dollar bills held tight between his fingers.
“Why don’t you stay away from Key West for a while?” he asked. “This’ll set you up nicely, maybe for a week or so?”
“I gotta do what I do,” I answered, still workin’ the island accent, while slippin’ the cash into my shirt pocket.
“There’s nothing in Key West that is worth your life, is there?”
“My friend, I figure my life is all I got.”
“Ever thought of moving back to Kansas City?”
“These wheels belong back in Key West.”
He nodded funny. “Take care of yourself, Max. The world needs people who know how to handle themselves.”
Then he turned toward the terminal entrance, slippin’ by two security guards who were comin’ my way. I waved at them as I pulled away from the curb, earnin’ a loud honk from the bus behind me.
“The world needs a lot of shit.”
Kansas City was a bit humid this time of year, and Delilah did not particularly like surprises. I folded the bills and added them to my pocket, and took the exit back for US 1 to the Keys. I tapped the CD player on my console and pulled up a new track: Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.
It wasn’t Bob Marley, but this cat had some weird stuff goin’ on in his head.
Hero Play
Old Town, Key West
May 10
We’re two weeks into this thing and we’ve already made a hundred wrong moves. We’re even running out of rope to hang ourselves. A few more bad calls and we’re done.
This afternoon, I sat on the roof of the Crown Plaza Hotel, tucked away in the sixth floor bar, which gave me a view of nearly five miles in every direction—normally an uninterrupted view of paradise, but my paradise was now surrounded by naval vessels. I had borrowed some binoculars from one of the surveillance vans, and I could see well enough to read the street signs up and down Duval Street. Out in the harbor, I counted a dozen or so twinkling lights—fishing boats and yachts bobbing in the dark water. I wondered how many of them were still alive. For all I knew, they were floating listlessly in the open sea, waiting until the waves pushed them ashore or the winds carried them out to the deep blue.
Looking back at the island, I saw three separate columns of smoke from last night’s fires, and plenty of people. They were back on the street today—lost, confused, their faces covered with towels or bandanas, each one staking claim to a different bit of the soul of a man who, just three weeks ago, had all the answers.
The palm trees that once glowed from the sunrise fluttered in a gusting wind that carried the smoke over the waiting gunships. It reminded me of a child’s birthday cake just blown out, and I repeated the same wish I’d made every day since Elizabeth died: Just get me through one more day.
The police radio brought me back to the task at hand. “Officer down... 525 Duval Street, inside the old candy store. You’d, uh, better hurry. Send help. You hearing me out there? We’re doing everything we can, but he ain’t looking good.”
The radio clicked off, as it had done every ten minutes for the past hour. The transmissions were coming faster now, more desperate. The radio had belonged to Key West Patrol Officer Boston Sidula, before he disappeared from a checkpoint near the Lighthouse around midnight. Two rescue operations had come up empty, but this marked the first time they’d given us an address.
Matthias Wisdom, my oldest friend, rested beside me, perched atop a mahogany table designed for moonlit parties, now co-opted into a sniper’s nest. His full title had a bunch of Army in it, plus a few formal tags to signify all the medals Uncle Sam had given him. To me, he was just Wisdom.
As he scanned the tops of the buildings, he looked relaxed, maybe even content. If anything shocked Wisdom, he’d never say it, and if I asked, he’d tell me he’d seen worse. Afghanistan? Maybe. Africa? Possibly. But not the same—nothing like this in America. Through a Leupold scope, he watched my city slowly smolder while everyone in the world looked on and no one bothered to help. All the while, his right index finger rested above the trigger on a Winchester rifle.
“They’re waiting for you,” he said. “You know that, right?”
I lowered the binoculars. “Of course, they’re waiting for us. That’s why we have to go. It’s time to take the fight to them.”
“You sure you’re up for this?”
“You gonna suggest someone else?” I knew what he meant.
Chief Williams had been gone since the beginning. Everyone hoped he’d show up, but he was last seen by his wife, taking off on his typical pre-dawn jog on the beach. No Chief meant the job fell to the next ranking officers. Captain Angelo, the veteran SWAT Commander who had me on seniority by a few years, would have been a fine choice, but he’d been killed in a car crash during the first week.
Wisdom leaned closer to me. “You might want to bring more people... just to be safe.”
Safe? Nothing had been safe since the bridge blew. “I don’t think safe is the goal anymore.”
He shook his head. “So, that’s your play? Suicide? Race in, become a victim, let them raise a toast to your heroic sacrifice, maybe even a statue if this ever ends? I could just plug you myself, save some bullets, and maybe save those boys from getting killed on your hero trip.”
“Just make sure you know how that rifle works.”
“I’ve never held a gun I couldn’t shoot, even if there’s a trident symbol on the stock. How’d you get some squids to give up a gun?”
“We found it in a duffle bag next to two dead naval boys.” That was a partial truth.
“Then they won’t mind that I’m borrowing it.”
“They were beaten unrecognizable,” I countered, hoping to get a rise from him. “Left behind a dumpster. We’d need prints or dental records.”
The same day they blew Highway 1, a naval speedboat anchored down eighty meters off Higgs beach. We never got the why, since no one from command was talking to us at that point, but I figured they had come too close to the civilians. You touch the perimeter and you’re inside the perimeter. Right? Isn’t that why we’re all being left to die? Because of the killer disease of Key West? If they had just radioed, we would have met them on shore and brought them in behind our barricades. They might even still be alive.
“Doesn’t make the gun any less sweet,” Wisdom said. “Not sure if it’s zeroed, so the first shot or so is gonna be iffy. Then I’ll tighten it up.”
“I need the scope more than the trigger.”
“The scope and the trigger go hand in hand.”
“I’ve got a job to do. You do yours.”
“I’m on vacation, remember, Mon Capitan?” The title fell flat from his lips, hitting like a curse rather than the rank upon my badge. “So, technically, I don’t have a job to do... sir.”
“Right now, we’ve got the element of surprise.”
Wisdom sat up and slung the rifle over his shoulder. “I can cover the outside, but only the outdoor seating area and the front door. I can’t cover you inside.”
“Probably wouldn’t matter. Once we’re inside, it will be over quick... one way or the other.”
I handed Wisdom a Motorola radio, tuned to channel 36 to match the one clipped to my belt. “Stay in touch.”
I left him in the staircase for the fifth floor. He was going to go lower to try and get a better view into the bar. I returned to our makeshift base at the Monroe County Courthouse. I’d changed out of my uniform—couldn’t have gotten twenty feet in uniform without somebody grabbing onto me and begging for help. It’s insane. Two weeks and ‘under cover’ means something totally different.
The few officers still operational and not assigned to a post waited for me in a break room just inside the rear loading dock. They sat around a table covered in maps and supplies. Someone had even found a dog-eared copy of the Key West Yellow Pages to hold down one corner of the map. On the wall behind them hung a grease board filled with the names of those we’d lost. It was almost full.
I scanned the list quickly, noticing two names had been added since I left. “Any word on Daniels or Rison? Has Wardell checked in from Fort Trumbo.”
“Wardell and Rison are headed back,” answered Officer Anthony Bremer, a tan and toned patrol officer more accustomed to beachfront foot patrols than raids. “Daniels is still working her way home, so everyone has checked in except Sidula.”
Lieutenant Travis Buckley sat beside him, a veteran patrol officer smarter than he looked but dumber than he thought. “Cap’n, how do we know Boston’s not already dead? They’ve already killed them Navy guys. Just napalm the place. Burn it to the ground. There’s no use in wasting more folks to save that one. Pull a drive-by, spread enough bullets across the front of that place to make sure no one messes with us again—just exact some biblical vengeance and be on our way.”
“How does that save Boston?” asked Bremer.
Buckley pulled away from the table. “That ain’t our officer down there. It’s just a police radio in the hands of some lunatic.”
“Our officer? His name is Boston Sidula,” said Bremer.
“Was... you mean? Boston Sidula, past tense. Now he’s just the cheese that’s gonna get us wiped out. I say we skip tripping the spring and go right to destroying the trap.”
Officer Pavel Llepicka, our horse-riding New York transplant, complete with the accent and the attitude, leaned onto the table with the same paternal look he used on his seven children at home. His riding boots thumped beneath the table. “We take care of our own—no exceptions—and we ain’t leaving nobody behind.”
Bremer stood up. “We have to know, one way or the other. I can’t stand to listen to this shit on the radio anymore.”
“And if we walk into a trap?” asked Buckley.
I stepped up to the table. “The people on this island—the survivors, everybody shuddered up in their houses—they need to see us save him. If we can’t, then they need to see us try. It’ll do them good to see us run code one more time.” I was never as eloquent as I wanted, but they understood, and the mood shifted from the if to the how.
“Why aren’t we using one of the armored personnel carriers?” asked Buckley.
“This is an officer rescue,” I answered, “not a raid. They want squads and an ambulance, so we’re going to give that to them. I want two marked units, Buckley and Bremer in one, Llepicka in the second with Santiago and Koz. I want close movements, nothing more than a bumper between you, followed by me in the ambulance with Plunkett.
“Once we pull up in our white chariot, our focus is on getting inside and securing Sidula. Anything outside belongs to our overwatch.”
“What’s overwatch?” asked Buckley.
I pointed to the Crown Plaza on the map. “You’ll know him if negotiations break down.”
Bremer said, “Won’t we need paramedics? Real ones, for the injured?”
I nodded. “Once it’s secured, we can call for Fred and Tommy.”
“And Boston?”
“He’s a hero, same as us,” I answered.
The door behind me creaked as Ryan Plunkett joined us, still wearing the vest below his paramedic outfit. The former FSU linebacker and Army medic held up the keys to our ride. “Your chariot is here, Captain. A clean ambulance.”
Ryan remained as steady as anybody on the force. If anyone could take a surprise, it would be him.
[23-second delay, inaudible background conversation]
Where was I?
Okay, we had emptied the weapons locker at the police station a few days after the initial chaos, exhausting the police armory. It seemed like a good gamble at the time, but some of the best ones never came back. The same can be said for the officers. While some, like Wisdom, had been more creative in acquiring some firepower, we were down to stealing Saturday Night Specials from the evidence locker, and we were way too loose with the ammo. I used to palm a handful of .40 cal bullets every time I qualified with my Glock, and my desk drawer littered with slugs is the only reason I still had three full clips. As a backup, tucked into a vest holster, I now used a tiny single-stack Glock that I’d bought from a dock owner two years ago, after a drunken tour boat captain crashed his boat into the dock.
We checked weapons and load-outs one last time, and stuffed extra magazines into cargo pouches of the medic suits, or filled any free space on our vests and belts. I tucked a handful of .40s into my back pocket, just in case; the gun battle with the shooter on Frances had lasted half the night, and I was not looking to run dry. Llepicka slipped a pair of flash-bangs into a pouch on his tactical vest.
I grabbed the passenger side door of the ambulance and watched the others tuck into their squads behind us. Before we rolled out, I ducked around to the driver’s side of the ambulance and told Plunkett to move over. “Slight change of plans,” was my only explanation as I slid behind the wheel.
We pulled slowly out of the garage, more like causal tourists than emergency responders. I wanted to put some distance between us and our little base before I fired up the lights and sirens.
