“I’m going to wiggle back out now,” said Coleman.
“Hope it works out for you.”
A grunting sound. Then Coleman thudded to the ground outside. “Ow.”
Felicia got up and brushed off. “We probably need to get moving.”
“What was that?” asked Scooter.
“What was what?” said Serge.
“Thought I heard voices.”
“I hear them, too,” said Savage. “Does Coleman talk to himself?”
“Yes,” said Serge. “But it’s the language of children raised in the forest by animals.”
From the rear of the warehouse: three knocks on a metal wall.
From the front: “Who left the door open?”
“Shit.” Felicia spun. “The back door! Hurry!”
They raced outside. Serge quietly eased the exit shut, just as the first backlit silhouettes slid the front doors the rest of the way open for a motorcade of white vans.
Felicia crouched behind the Plymouth. She looked up at the ventilation fan. Voices again: “We don’t have all day. Get busy with those crates.”
“The planes are waiting. It’s a tight window.”
Serge whispered sideways. “Recognize them?”
“The first sounds like Victor,” said Felicia. “The second’s familiar, but I can’t place it… Where are you going?”
“Follow me.” Serge crawled on hands and knees to the corner of the building. He flattened himself and peeked around the side.
“See anything?” Felicia slithered forward in the dirt for her own look.
“No, just the back end of a white van… Get down!”
“What is it?”
A trail of dust coming up the gravel road. Five black SUVs. Serge aimed a small digital camera. Click, click, click. The dark vehicles pulled around the front of the warehouse and disappeared. From the ventilation fan: the sound of car doors slamming.
“You’re late!..”
“I know the second voice now,” said Felicia. “It’s that Lugar character. His Miami station must be the one supplying Evangelista.”
“I’m new to this business, but I think this is a good time to split.”
“Unless we want to follow them…”
Building 25
A dozen tables pushed together. Agents breaking stuff open with pliers and hammers and razor blades.
“Where’s Bamberg?” asked Oxnart.
The sound of a car outside. “There he is now,” said an agent twisting the head off a dashboard hula girl.
Bamberg came through the door and dumped a box on an empty table.
“That the last of it?” said Oxnart.
“Except for what Lugar got to first.”
Another agent cracked open a snow globe with a leaping dolphin. “What are we looking for anyway?”
“Maps, account numbers, microfilm. Who knows?” said the station chief. “Just keep looking.”
An ashtray shattered. “But we’re running out of time.”
Oxnart checked his watch. “Damn. We’re just going to have to pack it up and take it with us in the vehicles…”
Meanwhile:
“Step on it!” said Felicia. “You’re going to lose them!”
“I’m doing my best,” said Serge.
“How hard can it be to follow five black SUVs?”
Serge leaned over the steering wheel. “Except we’re in Miami.”
“So?”
“Miami drivers are a breed unto their own. Always distracted.” He uncapped a coffee thermos and chugged. “Quick on the gas and the horn. No separation between vehicles, every lane change a new adventure. The worst of both worlds: They race around as if they are really good, but they’re really bad, like if you taught a driver’s-ed class with NASCAR films.” He watched the first few droplets hit the windshield. “Oh, and worst of all, most of them have never seen snow.”
“But it’s not snow,” said Felicia. “It’s rain. And just a tiny shower.”
“That’s right.” Serge hit the wipers and took another slug from the thermos. “Rain is the last thing you want when you’re chasing someone in Miami. They drive shitty enough as it is, but on top of that, snow is a foreign concept, which means they never got the crash course in traction judgment for when pavement slickness turns less than ideal. And because of the land-sea temperature differential, Florida has regular afternoon rain showers. Nothing big, over in a jiff. But minutes later, all major intersections in Miami-Dade are clogged with debris from spectacular smash-ups. In Northern states, snow teaches drivers real fast about the Newtonian physics of large moving objects. I haven’t seen snow either, but I drink coffee, so the calculus of tire-grip ratio is intuitive to my body. It feels like mild electricity. Sometimes it’s pleasant, but mostly I’m ambivalent. Then you’re chasing someone in the rain through Miami, and your pursuit becomes this harrowing slalom through wrecked traffic like a disaster movie where everyone’s fleeing the city from an alien invasion, or a ridiculous change in weather that the scientist played by Dennis Quaid warned about but nobody paid attention.” Serge held the mouth of the thermos to his mouth. “Empty. Fuck it-”
Felicia grabbed the dashboard. “Serge!”
He slammed the brakes with both feet. Then deftly tapped the gas, steering into the skid and narrowly threading the intersection.
The centrifugal force threw Felicia against the passenger door. “Did you see that moron slide into the bus stop? He almost got us killed!”
Serge floored it and stuck his head out the window. “See some snow, motherfucker!”
They continued south as the sun began baking rain off the streets with a familiar smell. Serge skidded through another accident-littered intersection, head out the window again. “Traction, pussy!”
“Serge, pay attention.”
“To what?”
Bam.
Slightly crumpled hood. Radiator steam. Felicia glared at Serge.
“Hey, he stopped short. This is what I’m talking about.”
“Thanks.” She stared out the window. “You lost them.”
“Not yet,” said Serge. “Back at the warehouse they mentioned airplanes, and from where we are, that narrows it considerably.”
Felicia pointed at increased steam blowing over the windshield. “But our car.”
“Just a paint scratch.” Serge threw it in reverse and looked over his shoulder. “Miami residents don’t know how to drive after accidents…”
A rotund man in a custom Tommy Bahama shirt gazed skyward from the runway. A Coast Guard rescue helicopter took off for a rescue. Another idiot trying to cross the sixty miles to Bimini in a single-engine fishing boat.
A damaged Plymouth sat outside a fence with the hood up. Serge refilled the radiator with a gallon jug. Coleman, Scooter, and Ted lay on their backs in the weeds, passing a joint and staring at clouds.
“Far out.”
Felicia stood next to Serge with binoculars, panning the Opa-locka Airport. “There’s Evangelista and the white vans. But I don’t see Lugar’s guys or their vehicles.”
“Don’t look now,” said Serge. He grabbed her for a deep, hard kiss as five black SUVs raced by and sped across the tarmac.
She pushed him away and raised the binoculars again. “A plane’s landing.”
“Lugar’s crew must have gotten tied up in traffic, too,” said Serge. “Told you we’d make it in time to see the shipment depart.”
Felicia watched the Beechcraft taxi to a stop and the stairs flip down. Men from the vans went to the plane. Doors opened on the SUVs.
“That’s weird,” said Felicia.
“What’s going on?”
She handed him the binoculars. “Take a look.”
“That is weird,” said Serge. “They’re un loading the plane. And they’re putting the crates back in the same SUVs.”
Felicia grabbed the binocular’s back. “Those aren’t the same SUVs.”
“Of course they are.”
She shook her head. “The others didn’t have the same window tinting. And I don’t see Lugar anywhere.”
“Tinting?” Serge clicked away with his digital camera. “Nobody’s eyesight is that good from this range.”
“Mine is and… wait, someone’s got a briefcase. He’s handing it to Evangelista.” She adjusted the focus. “I know that guy. It’s Oxnart, from the other CIA station.”
“I remember him from Building Twenty-five,” said Serge. “Lugar’s rival.”