Knew what she was doing.
Stoke had the passenger door to the Suburban open and was sliding out as he told Harry to call in their position and situation to Armando up the street. Then added, 'Call 911, too.'
He drew his Glock.40-caliber pistol out of the holster on his hip and had it in his hand as he raced toward the Chevy. The shooting had stopped and he could see blood on the driver's-side door.
The blonde looked up, scanning the area. Her eyes fell on Stoke and she automatically raised the machine pistol toward him.
He darted to one side and crouched behind a parked Volvo wagon. He heard the rattle as she fired off eight quick rounds. The tire closest to his head popped and hissed as it lost all pressure.
Stoke sprang up, looking to acquire his target, and sighted in where the woman had been standing. He saw nothing except the newly perforated Chevy and two newly dead men in the front seat. His eyes searching across the street with his pistol, he low-crawled up to the next car.
The street was empty.
He stood and moved quickly until the woman stopped at the corner of a run-down motel office.
Stoke had just started toward the motel when she turned and fired again in his direction, forcing him behind the Chevy and its silent occupants.
Then Harry rolled down the street in the blue Suburban. The brakes screeched and the big SUV came to a sudden stop right next to Stoke.
Harry yelled, 'Jump in, she's headed west.'
Stoke hesitated then decided his foot pursuit had not accomplished much. He kept low as he darted around the front of the Suburban and hopped up into the cab. They were west on the next block, Tenth, he thought, in a couple of seconds.
Harry, panting, said, 'What the hell is goin' on?'
'No idea, but that was no simple business deal.'
Stoke could hear sirens in the distance as they squealed around the corner and saw a new black Dodge Charger roll away.
Harry punched the gas and the lumbering Suburban closed the distance. When they were directly behind the smaller car, a heavily muscled arm popped out the passenger-side window with a machine pistol that Stoke could see was an old MAC-10. Without exposing his head, the man sprayed a dozen rounds. About half of them pinged off the big Suburban, causing Harry to jerk the wheel violently in every conceivable direction.
Stoke groped for the seat belt, hoping to secure himself as the truck swayed, hesitated, then flipped off the street, rolled once, and struck a utility pole. The Suburban came to rest on the passenger side, wheels spinning uselessly in the air. Worse than not wearing his own seat belt, his partner Harry was also unsecured and Stoke saw him become unwedged from the steering wheel and seem to float through the air for a moment before landing directly on top of him.
Not only was everything dark, it was pit-smelly as hell. Don't you wish Harry used Dial? Don't you wish everybody did?
'Harry?'
'Yeah?'
'Could you please remove your left elbow from my right eyeball?'
'Oh. Sorry.'
'Hate to disturb you, my brother. But I have to leave now.'
TWELVE
STOKE SOMEHOW SQUIRMED HIS MASSIVE BULK out from under Harry Brock, who wasn't exactly fighting featherweight division himself, and squeezed delicately out through the shattered windshield. He turned and tried to help Brock exit the vehicle, taking both of Harry's wrists in his hands and pulling. Something was stuck. Seat belt wrapped around his leg?
'Are you hurt?' Stoke asked. Harry had a major gash above both eyes that gave him that bloody horror-movie look, only now the blood looked real.
'Naw, just a little embarrassed about that utility pole, thanks,' Brock said, using both hands to scoop the fresh blood from his eye sockets.
'Yeah, I thought they taught high-speed pursuit where you went to junior college.'
They both turned their heads as Armando in the white Jeep Cherokee screeched to a stop next to the Suburban currently wrapped around the utility pole. The beefy older agent popped out, fear etched on his face, a dead cigar jammed in one corner of his mouth.
'Jesus, are you guys okay?'
Stoke was already running for the idling Jeep. 'Armando, help Brock climb out of that mess and tell someone I'm in pursuit of a late-model black Dodge Charger westbound over the MacArthur Causeway. They gotta be headed that way.'
He didn't wait for a response and was in the Jeep pushing the sketchy 3.7 liter V-6 to its absolute limits right from the start. He felt the top-heavy vehicle tilt as he took a right turn hard. The CIA had bought the car for surveillance, not speed. Stoke felt the Cherokee shudder and tilt again as he took the turn onto the causeway, ignoring traffic signals and other vehicles just like he was racing down the final furlong at Hialeah.
Horns blared and he was aware of hostility from other drivers, but at least he was where he wanted to be.
He leaned forward and searched far ahead, hoping to catch a glimpse of the black Charger with the deadly blonde inside. Star Island whipped by on his right, then Palm Island. The bay was just another detail he had to ignore as he weaved in and out of traffic, almost clipping a lawn service truck packed most likely with illegal Guatemalans.
Laying on the horn to get people's attention, he finally started getting a clear view of the road ahead, the causeway rolling onto the little key that was home to Parrot Jungle. His heart raced as he took the long curve flat out. He saw the Charger. In addition to the blonde, there were three or four guys. They were cool, driving calmly, right at the speed limit.
Stoke gathered enough presence of mind to calm down, blend in behind them, and call in his position to Miami-Dade PD. He reached into his pocket. Empty. He patted his pants, then realized his phone was in the wreckage of the Suburban they'd wasted back at the beach.
His hand slapped his hip, and he was relieved to feel the weight of his pistol still in its holster. He tried to figure out how many rounds he had left and decided he was ready with the extra magazine he had clipped to the other side of his belt, hidden by a loose, unbuttoned Aloha shirt. The Miami Dolphins T-shirt he wore underneath was soaked through with sweat.
He waited as the black car rolled toward the mainland and the city of Miami. This was a good thing. If they got into a chase over there no one knew the streets better than he did. Not after three years of on-and-off patrols and dead-end stakeouts all over this tropical paradise.
Then things changed for the worse.
The driver of the Charger spotted him. Stoke saw the passengers inside all turn around at once, then the car swerved violently across a lane, cutting off a taxi, to take the exit onto Biscayne as the Charger rapidly picked up speed.
He yanked the steering wheel and fell in behind them as they blew through the light at the base of the ramp and swerved south on Biscayne, causing two oncoming cars to squeal to a stop, fishtailing at the green light. Stoke took advantage of the traffic stoppage and rolled through the same light, jerking to one side on Biscayne to avoid a utility worker still yelling and giving the single-finger salute to the Charger speeding south.
As the Charger fast approached a railroad crossing, the big red lights started flashing and the gates started coming down. The driver accelerated, beating the gates and getting airborne as he crossed the elevated tracks.
