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•••
Court slid down the red-white-and-blue Cuban flag, the four-inch blade of his knife slicing the thick canvas as he descended, his left arm wrapped around the flag’s edge and then back through the expanding slit his knife created along the way to keep him from falling backwards to his death.
It took only fifteen seconds to reach the bottom of the thick fabric, and from here he dropped the last four feet or so, landing hard on the concrete but rolling into a ball to blunt his impact.
People stood on the quay, most cowering low because of the gunfight that had been raging above them and the other in the container terminal a couple hundred yards away, but everyone there saw him plainly.
He rose back to his feet and looked around for a few seconds. Sliding his knife back into a hilt inside his waistband, he began running with a little limp, just a few yards to the water’s edge.
Gunfire from above and behind him told him that the cops up there weren’t happy about his impending escape, but they didn’t hit him. Instead, at a limping run, he passed by a dead Cuban in a yellow shirt, then dove, headfirst, into the harbor.
•••
Jim Pace lay on his back in the crawl space, listening to all the hustle and bustle below him while he took off a sock and tied it around his calf. He realized his gunshot wasn’t that bad, as gunshots went, anyway, so now his main concern was that some cop was going to poke up a ceiling tile in the apartment where the shoot-out had taken place, and then simply shine a light around, finding a hidden gringo in the process.
He sent a series of texts to Travers to let him know his predicament, and then he just lay there waiting. After thirty minutes, the voices below and the movement on the catwalk died down and, a half hour after that, he heard no noise at all.
He climbed out of the crawl space and into a vacant storage area lined with shelves around noon, well over an hour after he last heard a noise. Here the open elevator shaft was only partially boarded up, so he climbed under the uneven wooden slats, then began scaling down into the abyss.
Five minutes later he’d skirted by the cops down in the artisans’ market and stepped out onto the street and into the back of a Ford van.
Joe Takahashi was behind the wheel, wearing a ball cap and big cheap sunglasses.
“You okay, boss?” he said as he drove away, past police cars all around.
“I’m too old for this shit, Hash.”
Takahashi laughed and concentrated on getting the hell out of the area.
FIFTY-THREE
Zack Hightower escorted Anton Hinton out of the cafeteria after a business lunch with several top engineers at Hinton Labs. It had been a normal meeting, as near as Zack could tell, except for the fact that Wren had not shown up. Anton made a comment about this, asking if anyone at the table knew where his chief operating officer was, but none of the engineers had seen him all morning.
Hinton pulled out his phone, looked down at it for a moment, then sent a text. Zack watched his face while he looked at his phone, and he saw the normally calm man’s features tighten up. He bit his lower lip; Zack registered the small man’s chest rising and falling more dramatically, as if he was breathing heavier.
Something was going on, this much was clear.
Hightower knew it was his job to speak up. “Anton? Anything I need to know about?”
Hinton’s eyes shot up and locked on Hightower’s. They were intense, perhaps even a little mistrustful. After a moment he just said, “No. Everything is just fine.”
No one else at the table seemed to notice the man’s obvious distress, but Zack had been a player in the industry of causing people distress his entire adult life, so he had the tools to identify mental tension in others.
Just a minute after his fish and rice was put down at the table in front of him, Hinton stood and said he needed to get back upstairs for a teleconference with his lab in Switzerland.
Zack followed close behind him him to the elevator. Once inside, Zack sent them to the top-floor executive suites, and as soon as the doors opened he saw Gareth Wren standing there in a white polo, his pistol riding on his hip and a concerned look on his face.
Hinton apparently saw it, too. “What is it?”
“Something’s happening downtown.”
Zack began ushering Hinton out of the elevator and into his office, where he kept his AK-47. As they moved he said, “What is it?”
Wren clarified. “No threat, Zack. This is something else. I need to talk to the boss alone a moment.”
Zack waited in the lobby of Hinton’s office with two former Black Wasps and Kimmie Lin while Wren and Hinton went inside.
The conversation was just a few minutes in duration, and when it was over, Zack was surprised by what Wren called out to the room as he opened the door. “Hightower, have you got a moment?”
