“The whole country is a warehouse for coke and pot. From here you go west to New Orleans, east to the Bahamas and Florida. The politicians are owned by the gangs lock, stock, and barrel. They don’t even try to hide it. The cops just play along. Don’t let the dreads and the Marley songs fool you. This place is Haiti with better beaches.”
“So how do you get by?” Wells found himself intrigued.
“These frat boys? They’d pay by credit card if they could. They like a friendly face. And by friendly I mean white.”
“And you keep the locals happy.”
“I take care of the people who take care of me. In and out of this bar. I understand my place in the ecosystem. I don’t have aspirations. And understand, please, that whether it’s white or green, it’s so pure that I can step on it two, three times and still make my customers happy. In fact, I have to, or they’d wind up OD’ing. And trust me, you don’t want to see the inside of a Jamaican hospital, any more than a Jamaican jail.”
Around them the deck was filling up.
“It’s getting busy,” the dealer said. “I appreciate the chance to chat, but I gotta go.”
“How do we prove we’re not cops? Get high with you?”
“I believe you. You’re not cops. But you’re trouble. Whatever you want, it’s trouble.”
The sun touched the edge of the horizon. A long collective sigh went up from the crowd beside them.
“Gonna be a beautiful night,” the dealer said. “Do me a favor. Get lost. I see you and your boy hanging around, I’m gonna talk to my friends. You don’t want that. These dudes, they won’t care even if you do have a badge. They do sick stuff when they’re stoned. Most people get relaxed when they smoke, but these guys, they just dissociate. They won’t even hear you screaming.”
“We’ll be going, then.”
The dealer nodded. Two minutes later, Wells and Gaffan were on the street.
“So? He know where Robinson is?”
“He didn’t say, but I have a feeling he might.”
“And he’ll help us?”
“He doesn’t think so. But we’re gonna change his mind.”
CHAPTER 2
THE SIRENS FROM THE STREET COULDN’T HIDE THE WOMEN SCREAMing from inside the bar, their high voices begging in a language Omar couldn’t understand. What had he done? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He was in a tunnel with death on both ends, and the only way out was the rifle in his hand.
Fakir peeked through the front door, stepped inside, fired a blind burst to keep the troublemakers down. He hefted a grenade, pulled its pin, flipped the handle.
He tossed the grenade high and deep, aiming at the back edge of the bar. It spun end over end and disappeared. The explosion came a half-second later, and the screams a half-second after that, not even words, pure animal keening. Another wave of shooting began outside, the quick snap of pistols against the rattle of AKs. Amir and Hamoud defending their posts. “Time to go in,” Fakir said. “Finish this.”
Omar’s watch read 12:16. They’d walked into the corridor at 12:13. All this had taken just three minutes.
ROBBY PEEKED DOWN FROM the balcony. He could hear again, a little. Outside, an amplified voice shouted in Arabic. The police telling the jihadis to surrender, Robby figured. Good luck with that. The AKs outside were still firing, three-shot bursts, the SOBs conserving their ammo while the ones in here killed everyone who was left. In London the police wouldn’t have wasted any time; they would have mounted up and attacked. But these Bahraini cops would take ten or fifteen minutes. Too long.
Two men stepped into the bar, holding AKs. They were young, as young as he had been when he joined the squaddies. But old enough to step in here and kill. The one who’d come in first was bigger and seemed to be in charge. He stepped behind the bar, fired a burst.
Robby squirmed back, pushed himself to his knees. The two men who’d helped him in sat with their backs to the wall, their feet pressed against the table that was barricading the stairs. “They’re going to kill everyone down there,” Robby said.
“The police are here,” the man closer to Robby said. He had a faint French accent. “We should wait. The ones down there don’t notice us.”
Shouts came from downstairs as the jihadis herded people toward the bar’s back corner, almost directly below the balcony. Robby didn’t know why no one downstairs was fighting back. He supposed people would do anything for a few extra seconds.
“They’re going to put them in the corner, shoot them all,” Robby said. “Then come up here. We’re gonna die, let’s die fighting.”
“You have an idea?” the Frenchman said.
Robby explained.
“
“It’s a start.”
BODIES WERE SLUMPED UNDER chairs, against walls, huddled together behind the bar. At least thirty people were dead. The others couldn’t possibly think Fakir had something different in store for them. Still, they obeyed.
Fakir grabbed a wounded woman by the leg, pulled her from under a table. “Move!” he yelled. She crawled for the corner. Omar could almost smell his bloodlust. Fakir was an animal now, not even an animal.
“Enough, brother. It’s enough.”
“No. All of them.”
Outside, an amplified voice shouted:
A few AK shots stuttered from the street outside. Then a single rifle shot, close and loud, cracked the night. The AK stopped.
“Let us out,” a man in the corner shouted. “It’s over.”
“Quiet—” Fakir yelled.
THE TABLE SMASHED HIS skull wide open.
Omar saw it a quarter-second before it hit, a blocky blur of heavy, round wood, its legs facing up. It caught Fakir’s head with a sick crunch. His neck snapped forward and he collapsed, his bulky body falling sideways like a curtain.
For a moment, the people huddled in the corner didn’t move, as though they, like Omar, did not believe their own eyes. Then a man shouted something in English and ran for the door. And somehow despite his doubts, Omar didn’t hesitate. He turned toward the men and women in the corner and tugged at the AK’s trigger—
Just as Robby Duke, all two hundred pounds of him, landed on him, Robby jumping from the balcony with his arms spread wide, berserk from shrapnel and blood loss and everything he’d seen. He crashed into Omar, smashing him onto the bar’s wooden floor. The AK came loose from Omar’s hand and bounced sideways, firing two shots into the ceiling before the trigger came loose. Omar frothed at the mouth, concussed and barely conscious.
Robby pushed himself to all fours and then his feet and looked over at what was left of Josephine the flight attendant. He very carefully put his boot on Omar’s neck, feeling the bones of Omar’s larynx under his heel.
