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Zack gave both bodies a perfunctory look, then peered across the road at the other dead man. Together he and Wren walked over for a closer look.
This man, also Black and roughly thirty, had caught numerous rounds to his legs, pelvic region, and stomach, but his upper torso and head were intact. His eyes gazed up towards the moon, his right hand outstretched near a Taurus pistol whose slide had locked open, indicating it was out of ammunition.
Zack looked to Wren. “And in back?”
“Three more dead, making a total of six. I don’t know if there were only a half dozen in the attacking force, or if there were more who ran off when their buddies started dropping like fish in the ice at the market.”
Zack shook his head. “Half dozen sounds about right from what I heard from the shoot-out.” He knelt over the body here in the darkened street, then looked up to Wren. “Would have been handy if we could have questioned at least one of these dudes.”
“Tell it to the army. I might have gotten one at the back, but I’m not sure. The rest were killed by the infantry boys.” He smiled. “Or you. Saw you squeezing off a few rounds.”
Zack picked up the dead man’s handgun and examined it. As he thought, it was empty. “Pistols. They all had pistols.”
“Looks like it.”
Looking up at Wren, he said, “Who takes on a military unit armed only with Brazilian-made nine-mils? That’s just stupid.”
Wren knelt down, began going through the man’s pockets. Soon he pulled out a large joint. He smelled it, then shrugged. “He was ready to party once the job was done.”
“Who says they waited? Even through the blood and guts, even through the cordite hanging in the air, I smell weed on all three of these guys.”
To this, Wren blew out a chest of air. “We weren’t dealing with geniuses here, but they still caused a lot of damage.”
“Action beats reaction,” Zack said. But then he asked, “Why didn’t they wait for us to leave?”
“What do you mean?”
“Their plan. It doesn’t make sense. Just open fire on the heavily armed military guys? ‘Hey diddle diddle, right up the middle’? Nobody does it like that.”
Wren looked at the placement of the bodies. “Were they trying to just hit the restaurant from two sides? Overwhelm the outer perimeter and get inside?”
“Might have worked out back; there were fewer defenders, and the alley back there probably gave them more cover than out here.”
Wren nodded. “Aye. Lots of solid cover in back.”
“But here, in front. A hard charge into machine guns is about the dumbest play you could make.” He thought a moment. “Unless they weren’t charging.” Before Wren could speak, Zack said, “Let’s look at something.”
He and Wren went back inside. Cuban police officers eyed them, but no one impeded their movement. These were Hinton’s people, and they would get deferential treatment.
There were bullet holes in the walls to the kitchen. Zack walked to a point in front of the door and looked back. “Whoever hit Anton’s armor got lucky. The round must have come through the wall and hit him in the back.”
Wren’s eyebrows rose. “I saw you. You were right there behind him. Lucky his plate caught it instead of your arse.”
Zack nodded at this, but his focus was on something else. “Let’s check the alley.”
As they went through the kitchen, Zack could see massive splashes of blood on the walls and floor. Wren said, “A couple of cooks got shot. I think they’ll live. Cuba has surprisingly good medical care.”
The body of a Black man lay by a rack of loaves of bread, a black Taurus pistol on the floor ten feet away.
Out back they found two more bodies of Black males near the pickup. The soldiers who had been killed here had already been whisked away.
He lifted the shirt of one of the bloody dead men in the road. Looking him over, he said, “Prison tats. Check the others.”
Together Wren and Hightower looked over all three bodies in the back. Zack said, “They’ve all been to prison. They’re part of some gang.”
Wren spoke softly, a tone of confusion in his voice now. “They weren’t even soldiers.”
“Not at all,” Zack said. “Just some island gangbangers, stoned out of their asses and armed with little handguns.” Then another thought occurred to him. “Why would drugged-up assassins go after a guy with a fifteen-person detail? Why would the people targeting Hinton send a bunch of drugged-up shitheads? It doesn’t make any sense.”
