Blood Rites. Don Pendleton

had always wondered why the county named its largest shopping mall after a fish, until somebody told him it was named after a football team. That pacified him for a while, until he learned the team had no connection to the mall, which irritated him again.

      Screw it.

      The only thing he cared about right now was meeting Roger Dessalines and picking up the bag he was supposed to deliver, with twelve kilos of pure cocaine inside. Dessalines was running late, some twenty minutes now, and that was cause for worry, but Raimonde was trying not to let it make him crazy. Bad things happened when he tipped over the edge, as anyone who knew him could attest.

      At least, the ones who were still alive.

      Bertin muttered something under his breath, and Raimonde felt his cheeks heating up. “What was that?”

      “I said why don’t he call, if he’s gonna be late?”

      “You can ask him, if he ever shows up.”

      “Man, we’ve been sitting here forever. It ain’t good, you know?”

      Raimonde knew. Deals like this one were meant to go swiftly and smoothly, no waiting around. Every minute they spent in the mall’s parking lot, baking under the sun in their Lexus, raised their level of risk. Mall security circled the property every half hour or so, and they might call police if they figured Raimonde and Bertin looked suspicious. Police meant questions and possibly a search that would reveal their weapons and the gym bag filled with cash.

      Bad news, but that wasn’t the worst.

      They were in posse territory. In Raimonde’s opinion this was a stupid place for a handoff, but he hadn’t been consulted. Never was, in fact. Just got his orders and obeyed them like a soldier should. But sitting still for any length of time in posse territory was an invitation to disaster.

      “Where is he?” Bertin grumbled, not quite whining.

      “I told you—”

      “Shit! Look there! You see ’em?”

      Raimonde followed Bertin’s pointing finger and went cold inside, despite the midday heat. A jet-black Lincoln MKT was cruising through the lot, its large grille flashing sunlight like a monster’s toothy smile. The blacked-out windows hid most of its passengers, but Raimonde saw the driver and his shotgun rider plain enough, both of them sporting dreads, the wheelman wearing a crocheted Rasta cap.

      “What are we gonna do?” Bertin demanded.

      “Do our job,” Raimonde informed him, reaching underneath his seat for the machine pistol hidden there. Bertin grunted and reached under his baggy jacket to draw a Glock 18 selective-fire model, digging in a pocket to produce a 33-round magazine and swap it for the pistol’s normal clip.

      “They see us, we’re in shit,” Bertin declared.

      “More likely if we move.”

      “This is Roger’s fault.”

      “The boss said wait,” Raimonde said. “We wait.”

      And so, they did.

      * * *

      “CHECK OUT THE LEXUS,” Shabba Maxwell said.

      “Where?” Tyson Eccles asked from the driver’s seat.

      “Open your eyes.”

      Neville Bucknor chimed in, from the backseat. “I know that bastard at the wheel.”

      Eccles eyed the Lexus as they passed it, thirty yards away and rolling slowly in the Dolphin Mall’s fire lane. They were Haitians, he was almost sure, even without the word from Bucknor.

      “What are we gonna do?” Desmond Salkey asked.

      “Same thing we always do,” Maxwell said. “They’ve got no business on our turf.”

      “You gonna ask the boss?” Eccles said.

      “Ask him what?” Maxwell demanded. “He said deal with any bad boys we find comin’ up in here.”

      “Should shoot ’em dead,” Salkey chipped in.

      “You wanna ask someone,” Maxwell said, “give me the wheel and split.”

      “Ease up, man,” Eccles said. “I’m with you, brother.”

      “No more talking, then. Get out your pieces.”

      Maxwell’s weapon was a Micro-Uzi SMG. His two men in the backseat carried AK-105 Kalashnikov carbines, and Eccles had a twelve-gauge Ithaca 37 Stakeout model shotgun tucked into the map pocket of his driver’s door, ready to go.

      “Okay,” Maxwell told them. “Do this thing!”

      * * *

      “ALL UNITS, CODE 30! We have shots fired at the Dolphin Mall, multiple injuries reported, still in progress.”

      “Acknowledge that,” Corporal Tyrus Jackson told his partner. He was driving their patrol car, letting rookie Rick Lopez handle the radio.

      Lopez snatched up the microphone and answered, “Unit 31 responding. We’re two minutes out.”

      Jackson already had the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor up to sixty-five, rolling toward Northwest 117th Avenue. He’d make a right turn there, if no one slammed into their cruiser, and they’d arrive at the mall shortly.

      “The Dolphin’s massive,” he reminded Lopez. “Call back and find out where the shooting is. With multiples, we got no time to waste.”

      “Roger that.”

      Lopez raised the dispatcher, and the answer came back with a wisp of static. “Southwest parking lot.”

      “Ninety seconds, if we’re lucky,” Lopez said, and cut the link.

      Multiple casualties meant a psycho on a rampage, or some kind of gang activity. Jackson was betting on the gangs, but you could never tell. Miami wasn’t just a melting pot, it was a boiling pot, where races and religions clashed, the rich flaunted their money and the poor wanted a piece of it. In any given year, Miami Metro saw it all, from slaughters in the family to drug burns, hate crimes, even human sacrifice.

      But multiples, with a shooting still in progress, meant his day had gone to shit, barely an hour after roll call.

      “Here we go,” he said, and swung onto the ring road that encircled Dolphin Mall. He heard the gunfire now. Snap, crackle, pop, telling him there were automatic weapons in the mix. Not one, but several, which meant this wasn’t just a random head case run amok.

      “What do we do?” Lopez asked, sounding worried.

      “Same as always,” Jackson answered. “Whatever we can.”

      * * *

      “BABYLON IS COMIN’,” Salkey said, pointing at the police car entering the parking lot.

      “I’m not deaf,” Maxwell reminded him, reloading as he moved to head off the patrol car.

      They’d pinned the Haitians down but hadn’t killed them yet, though Maxwell reckoned one was wounded. He’d seen crimson spatters when they started firing on the Lexus, but their targets both returned fire, peppering the Lincoln MKT before Eccles had swung around behind a bulky pickup truck. They’d have to strip and burn the ride when they were finished here, which pissed him off to no end.

      And now, police.

      Tracking their progress through the parking lot was easy. The siren was wailing, blue and white lights flashing on the roof rack. As they turned into the nearest lane and started toward the Lexus, Maxwell rose before the cruiser, hosing it with Parabellum slugs.

      “Die, Babylon!” he shouted as their windshield imploded, the driver’s face turning red-raw