LITMIR.BIZ

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binocs, he saw all the armed men gathered on the stone fort’s dock, waving at the convoy. He also saw the cannon barrels sticking out from the battlements. No way was he going to try to motor Tempest past them. He had avoided a boarding party so far, and that’s how he wanted to keep it. There were no patrol boats in sight, no one to challenge his entering the harbor. That much confidence in their command of the sea made Tom conclude that no one had dared to challenge the Matachìn for a very long time. The other boats under way in the harbor were all moving the same direction he was, but they were more than a thousand yards in front of him, swinging in one by one to join the happy parade following the pirate fleet.

      Tom motored closer to the peninsula’s shore, looking for a place to tie up as close to the harbor entrance as possible. If everything went right for him and wrong for Veracruz, getting out was going to be a hell of a lot harder than getting in.

      He swung in alongside a ruined freighter dock that jutted into the bay. Pools of light thrown by mercury vapor lamps on stanchions revealed clusters of small boats moored to the inside of the pier. They were a mixture of predark, motor and sail pleasure craft converted to commercial use. And there were shit-hammered fishing boats with peeling-paint, plywood cabins. The boats that couldn’t find mooring space were rafted gunwhale to gunwhale.

      Poking ahead cautiously, Tom could see there was no free dock space, so he had to raft up, too. He tossed out his fenders and pulled in beside a shabby fishing boat, then made Tempest fast to its bow and stern cleats.

      There was no one aboard the fishing boat; no one on any of the boats that he could see.

      Tom shouldered his pack and jumped onto the fishing boat. There wasn’t any C-4 in the bag. If he got caught with the blasters, he figured it was no big deal. But if he got caught with high explosives, his captors would want to know what he intended to do with them, and if there was more.

      The four-pane woodframe windows in the side of the homemade cabin looked like they had been salvaged from a house. There were sun-faded girly pics stuck to the insides, facing out, so the crew could see them and be inspired. On the far side of the fishing boat a steel ladder was affixed to the pier. He climbed the last few rungs cautiously, poking his head up to take in the terrain.

      The dock area looked as deserted as the boats, except for the rats scampering at the edges of the shadows. In front of him was a wrecked cinder-block warehouse, three stories high. The metal roof had partially caved in, the near wall had collapsed. Someone had started scavenging the fallen blocks, which were stacked on wooden pallets.

      When Tom stepped onto the dock, it seemed to move under him. He was still trying to get his land legs when someone shouted at him from the darkness inside the warehouse. Tom saw a pinpoint of light, a tiny red-hot coal. He tugged the brim of his hat down to further hide his face.

      A short, stout man in a straw cowboy hat and red sash stepped into view, puffing on a thin black cigar. He held a sawed-off, bluesteel 12-gauge in the crook of his left arm. It was hammerless with a full rear stock and a leather shoulder sling. In the hard light from the mercury lamp Tom could see food stains on the front of the guy’s white dress shirt; they were bright orange, like chili sauce.

      The sound of the hullabaloo surrounding the pirates’ arrival drifted over them. As it did so, the guard’s round, brown face twisted into a scowl. He was not a happy camper. He was missing all the fun. Tom caught a whiff of the burning tobacco and it reminded him how long it’d been since he’d had a decent smoke.

      The guard addressed him in a guttural growl.

      Tom couldn’t make heads or tails of what the guy said; the accent was so thick he couldn’t even be sure it was in Spanish. His command of that language came from memorizing an old college textbook he’d rescued from a bonfire in the Linas. He had mastered all the grammar and vocabulary, but he had no practical speaking or listening experience.

       “Buenas noches,” Tom said, turning slightly to the side so the guard couldn’t see him drop his right hand under the poncho. The trader had a choice to make: to either pull out the little leather pouch full of gold teeth and pay the man whatever he wanted to go away, or to reach for the grip of his silenced submachine gun and make him go away forever.

      The guard looked both puzzled and irritated, as though he hadn’t understood a word of what Tom had said. His scowl deepened as he took a step forward.

       “Buenas no-ches,” Tom repeated carefully. When that still didn’t work, in desperation he tried a variation, “Buenass nah-ches.”

      The whole language thing wasn’t going as smoothly as he’d expected.

      Advancing on him with the double-barrel at waist height, his close-set, little black eyes narrowed to slits, the guard barked a command, “¡Manos al cielo!”

      It took a full fifteen seconds for Tom’s brain to convert the Spanish into English. “Hands in the air!”

       “Seguro,” Tom managed to say at last, but it was too late. The scattergun barrels were aiming up at his chin. It was do or die time.

      With fluid, blinding speed, the trader back-foot pivoted to avoid the double barrel and simultaneously fired the stubby MP-5 SD-1 in a triburst out the open side of the poncho. The staccato thwacks of the jacketed slugs slapping into the middle of the guard’s chest were louder than the gunshot reports. The guard didn’t get off a shot. Eyes squeezed shut, teeth bared and clenched, he dropped as though his strings had been cut, first to his knees, the heavy flesh of his cheeks shuddering from the impact, then onto his face on the dock.

      There were no exit holes out his back. The subsonic rounds lacked the power for through-and-through. Tom grabbed a lifeless arm and turned the man over. There were three small holes in the center of a smudge of burned gunpowder on the white shirtfront. A glistening crimson stain was rapidly spreading out from the entry wounds; before it reached the breast pocket, Tom rescued four of the little cigars.

      Working quickly, he removed the shoulder sling from the dropped scattergun. He grabbed a couple of concrete blocks from the nearest pallet and looped the sling through them. He then used the strap to attach the blocks to the dead man’s ankles. Seconds later, he rolled the still-warm body off the pier. It splashed into the water between moored boats and immediately sank out of sight. Tom tossed the 12-gauge in, too. He sailed the guard’s straw cowboy hat into the darkness inside the wrecked warehouse.

      So much for the welcoming committee.

      He took one last look back at Tempest, then headed away from the water at a fast clip, in search of a road that would lead west to the power plant. He needed to get a close-up look at the defenses, if any, and at the site’s structural features so he could parcel out and position the stash of C-4 for maximum destruction.

      When he reached the main road, he glanced in either direction. There was still no one in sight. If the parallel rows of tidal-wave-damaged warehouses in the port area were deserted, the festivities in Veracruz had shifted into high gear: horn-tooting, wild music, cheering. Tom turned left, heading toward the power station and the city. He’d traveled about a quarter mile down the middle of the road when he heard a horn honking from behind and the loud backfiring of an unmuffled engine. He half turned and saw a pair of dim yellow headlights bearing down on him fast. It was too late to break for cover. Bracing his feet to stand and fight, he reached under the poncho and took hold of the H&K.

      The full-size, beat-to-shit Ford pickup screeched to a halt beside him. The left fender and door were different colors, and both were different colors than the body. The front bumper was held on with baling wire; the hood and sides dented; and the exhaust pipe belched clouds of black oil smoke. There were three well-fed, smiling men in the cab’s bench seat. They appeared to be unarmed, and they weren’t in uniform. They looked like ordinary guys, but they were more than a little drunk.

      The driver leaned an arm out his open window, gestured toward the city and over the engine’s thunderous racket said, “¿Fiesta?”

      Eyewatering joy juice fumes hit Tom in the face. Given what had happened the last time he tried his Spanish, holding his tongue and pretending to be

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