Dust Up: A Thriller (31 page)

“Let me talk to her. Maybe we have enough there we don’t need to do anything else. And Doyle … I know this isn’t your fight. Thanks for what you have done.”

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

Elena took the phone into the kitchen. As Toma followed, I asked to borrow his phone once more.

He nodded and handed it over without hesitation.

I tried calling Nola. The first time the call didn’t even go through. The second try took forever—lots of clicking and hissing. It crossed my mind that maybe the line was tapped, but more likely it was just a bad international connection. When I finally connected, it went straight to voice mail. I took small comfort knowing that the four men I was most afraid might come for her were being held on a boat here in Haiti—and at least one of them was dead. But I still felt the fear and frustration of not being able to reach her.

“Fuck!” I muttered, just as Elena and Toma walked in from the kitchen.

Elena scowled and tutted.

“Sorry,” I said.

Toma smirked. “She talked to Regi, and she talked to Marcel,” he said, looking down at his aunt.

She nodded. “We do it.”

77

When we drove up the alley behind his restaurant, Marcel was loading the back of a battered van with sixty-pound sacks stenciled
CORNMEAL
, with the Stoma-Grow logo beneath it. He looked worried but determined. He gave me a curt nod, like he knew that what we were doing was important but he wasn’t crazy about it.

When Elena got out of the Jeep, she went to him and they hugged. Then he cupped her face and kissed her. It dawned on me then that their relationship was more than just professional.

It might not have been news to Toma, although he didn’t seem too concerned one way or another. Marcel gave him a nod a few degrees colder than the one he gave me, no doubt because of the past worry Toma had put his aunt through.

“We leave in two hours,” Marcel said. “If we doing this thing, you need to go now.”

I nodded.

Toma spoke briefly to Marcel. The big man listened and nodded, then he ducked back into the restaurant, returning moments later with a coil of rope, a crowbar, and a small rolled-up rug. The rug was a runner of some kind, long and narrow. It was filthy, and I could smell the mustiness coming off it.

Toma nodded and said,
“Trè
byen,”
taking them from him and putting them in the back of the Jeep. As I turned to follow him, Marcel put his massive hand on my shoulder and pulled me close.

“I don’t like that thug,” he said, tilting his head at Toma. “But Elena loves him. Bring him back safe.”

*   *   *

I drove, and Toma directed me across the city and toward the docks. I’d been back and forth through Cap-Haïtien enough times that I was starting to get my bearings. The city and the landscape around it seemed to be shrinking from sheer familiarity. Or maybe it was the fact that the streets were all but deserted.

There were a few fires lingering here and there and police cars speeding back and forth, but it was almost midnight, and things were settling down.

As we approached the water, I could see the cranes on the ships and the docks rising above the buildings. I looked back at the hills looming behind us, south toward Gaden and Saint Benezet, north toward Labadie and Labadee and Archie Pearce’s megayacht out in the water.

An hour and a half had passed since I’d told Pearce about Bourden’s plan. It would take him some time to determine where the Soyagene-X was located, to put together a plan to intercept it. But he would act fast. In all likelihood, some of his men were already headed to the same place we were.

I drove faster, swerving around a darkened corner on two wheels.

Toma touched my arm. “Slow down,” he said quietly. I thought for a moment my driving had made him nervous, but he pointed down the block toward a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. “That’s it.”

I pulled over and killed the lights.

It was across the street from the dockyard, the gate facing the docks. Inside the fence was a small warehouse, a concrete yard, and two white guys with rifles.

Toma whispered in my ear, “Park over there,” pointing at a side street that doglegged from the one we were on and ran behind the warehouse property, uphill from it.

I rolled slowly forward, turned left, then right. When Toma nodded, I put it in reverse and backed right up to the fence.

He leaned his head close to mine and whispered, “The guards weren’t here before.”

That wasn’t his fault, but I was still annoyed. He might have seen it on my face. He shrugged in response.

We got out silently and walked up to the fence. It circled the entire property. The tiny building stood between us and the front gate, effectively hiding us from the guards patrolling it.

Toma had said that the fence was serious but the building itself was flimsy, and that appeared to be the case. It was constructed entirely of corrugated metal.

The fence was ground level where we were standing, but there was a four-foot drop on the inside, so although the fence was eight feet tall, it was a twelve-foot drop on the other side. There was a narrow space maybe two feet wide between the back of the shed and the wall beneath the fence.

Toma pointed out the newly repaired rear corner of the shed, where he and Toussaint had broken in before.

I didn’t like it. Not a bit. I didn’t even know if the Soyagene-X was still in there, although in that sense the armed guards were an encouraging sign.

“Okay,” I whispered to Toma. “You need to go out front and cause a diversion while I break in.”

“You kidding me?” He shook his head. “Those guys have guns. Why don’t we just shoot them?”

To be honest, the thought had crossed my mind. The rifle was still in the Jeep. Shoot them both, then go in and take it.

Of course, that would be cold-blooded murder.

“No.” I shook my head. “Either you cause a diversion and I break in, or I cause a diversion and you break in.” There was always a chance it could come to shooting anyway.

He let out a soft, exasperated growl. “What kind of diversion?”

78

I thought for a second. “Pretend you’re drunk and you want to fight them. They’re professionals, so they won’t shoot.” I hoped. “Walk up and taunt them, loud. Then give the fence a good long shake, make a lot of noise for a few seconds at least. While you’re making noise, I’ll pull open the back of the shed.”

He thought about it for a moment, thinking about the steps, then nodding to himself. “That might work. Then what?”

“Keep going, circle around the block and come back here. I’ll pass the bags of soy up to you, just like we planned. Then be sure you’re ready to get the hell out of here.”

Standing on the back of the Jeep and keeping our heads down low, we gently unfurled the rug over the barbed wire at the top of the fence. The damp, mildewy smell immediately tickled my nose. I tied the rope to the bumper and draped it over the fence, across the rug.

I gave Toma a nod, and he trotted off around the corner. A few seconds later, I heard him start to sing in a convincingly drunken voice. I smiled and shook my head. Making sure the crowbar and flashlight were secured in the back my waistband, I slowly climbed up onto the fence and used the rope to lower myself down on the other side. I wasn’t silent, but I was pretty damn quiet.

The space behind the shed was a pool of depthless black. My foot came down on something soft that screeched and scurried away.

I paused and listened. I could hear Toma, still singing as he rounded the corner, coming closer again.

The guards were speaking to each other in hushed tones. One of them laughed.

As Toma’s voice grew louder, I placed the tip of the crowbar under the edge of the newly repaired section of corrugated metal. As soon as I heard Toma yelling and the fence rattling, I popped out two nails across the top, then slid the crowbar down, popping the four nails down the side.

It easily opened enough for me to slip inside. I put my hand over my flashlight and turned it on, letting just enough light filter through so I could see. There were three sets of shelves. Two of them were mostly filled with boxes. The third held a large bundle of five-pound white paper bags wrapped in heavy-duty plastic. I shone the flashlight on it from different angles until I found the stamps on the bottoms of the paper bags. GES-5322x. Soyagene-X.

I wrestled the bundle off the shelf. It was a dozen five-pound bags. Sixty pounds. Manageable but unwieldy. I placed it on the floor and pushed it out through the hole in the back. Then I poked out my head and listened.

I could hear Toma singing again, his voice fading as he continued on his way.

One of the guards called out after him, “Yeah, go on! Get out of here, you crazy drunk voodoo devil!” He had a thick accent that sounded Australian at first. Then I pegged it as South African.

The other one laughed weakly, then muttered, “This fucking place gives me the creeps.”

I squeezed out and pulled the bundle of soy farther around the back. As I waited for Toma to return, I tore open the plastic outer wrap.

I heard Toma’s footsteps approaching. A second later, he was standing on the back of the Jeep, looking over the top of the fence.

I held up a bag of soyflour, and he nodded, wiggling his fingers like he was ready to catch. I heaved the bag into the air, a smooth arc that crested perfectly over the top of the fence. He caught it easily and put it down in the back of the Jeep. As soon as he straightened up, I threw another one, then another. The first six went quickly and flawlessly. We were working up a sweat, and the cool breeze felt nice coming off the water. But my arms were starting to feel it, and I guess Toma’s were too. Number seven had a slight wobble, and Toma bobbled it slightly before securing it.

Our eyes met, and we were more deliberate after that. I removed the rest of the bags from the plastic and started throwing them. Everything went fine until number eleven. The throw was wobbly, but I will forever insist it was catchable. Toma bobbled it badly between his hands, chasing it sideways, away from the rug. He got a grip on it, but only after it snagged on the barbed wire on top of the fence.

Before I could say anything, he yanked it free. The bag tore completely open, releasing a cascade of white powder that coated me from head to toe and billowed out in a cloud around my feet.

I exhaled sharply through my nose and spat in case any of it had gotten in my mouth. The breeze picked up, mercifully clearing the air before I inhaled any of it. I swallowed my annoyance and grabbed the last pack, but as the cloud of white powder slid away on the breeze, so did the plastic overwrap. It skidded along the pavement with a surprisingly loud scraping sound.

Without thinking, I lunged after it, stepping out from behind the cover of the building. I grabbed the plastic and was just turning around when I heard a thick Afrikaner accent say, “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you?”

I froze. Covered from head to toe in white powder, holding the last bag of Soyagene-X in one hand and the plastic wrap in the other.

His rifle was pointed right at my midsection. In the darkness, his eyes looked afraid. I realized he was afraid of me.

“Fuck sake, Jerry, get over here,” he said, panic in his voice. “We’ve got a fucking situation.”

“Jesus, I hate this fucking place,” replied a different voice with the same accent from the other side of the warehouse. “What is it now?”

I didn’t know how I was going to get out of this, but I knew it would be easier to escape one of them than two, and that window that was rapidly closing.

I still couldn’t see Jerry, but over the first guy’s shoulder, I could see the street on the other side of the front gate. I heard engines roaring, two of them, and saw headlights approaching from the side.

I knew it was Pearce’s men, coming for the same thing we were after. More than one window was closing.

The guy in front of me turned his head just a bit and called out, “Just get the fuck over here.”

I threw the Soyagene at him, straight at his head. It was a good throw too. I even managed to put a spiral on it. As soon as it left my hand, I dove back behind the warehouse.

I heard a strangled cry and a burst of automatic fire.

As my fingers wrapped around the rope dangling from the top of the fence, I looked back and saw a huge cloud of white powder right where I’d been standing.

I started scrambling up the rope as Jerry’s voice said, “What the fuck, Simon?”

Simon said, “He fucking vanished, like some kind of ghost.”

And then vanish I did.

There was a roar of engines and a loud crash behind me as Pearce’s men barreled through the front gates.

Almost simultaneously, another engine roared in front of me.

I was at the top of the fence—one hand grabbing the rug and the other wrapped around the rope—when the rope jerked forward, and so did I. Luckily, the rug came with us.

Even as I flew through the air, not quite understanding what the hell was going on, part of me hoped Jerry and Simon could see me—white as a ghost, flying across the sky. Hell, I was riding a magic carpet. That would give them something to think about for quite some time.

But then it was time to think about me.

After the initial violent jerk, there was a brief moment of tranquility at the top of my trajectory. Then I started coming down.

The Jeep was tearing ass down the darkened street, pulling me along like a kite. The street was coming up fast, and so was the end of the block. Toma was going to have to turn, one way or the other. In a split second, I was trying to calculate if I would hit the ground first or go into the turn still airborne. Would I splatter against the street or against one of the buildings that crowded either side of it?

I held on tight to the rug, knowing it was my only protection. Maybe in the back of my mind I hoped it actually would start to fly. If ever there was a time for a rug to reveal its powers, that would have been it.

Then I saw twin flashes of red—the Jeep’s brake lights—and I said, “Oh shit.”