Bayou Pirates Page 9

  “I don’t know anything about your government,” the Haitian man said with a dismissive shrug. “But they sunk our ship, the one we were supposed to take here. And they basically kicked us off the island. This is all we have left.”

  The gangbanger’s jaw was practically on the ground now as he looked back around at Nina and the others, his arms spread wide in disbelief.

  “I… I just… I don’t,” he stammered, pressing his palm to his forehead as if warding off a headache. “I just don’t know what to do with this.” He looked back up at the Haitians, shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry,” the other man said with a nervous smile, taking a step back toward the ship. “Let us retrieve the rest of the crates for you, and then we will be on our way. We are regrouping elsewhere and will be back in touch when we have more for you.”

  “Back in touch,” the gangbanger repeated, gawking at them. “You can’t be serious.”

  The Haitian laughed nervously and just scampered back on the ship with his guys.

  “Okay, now you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on,” Nina whispered in Buck’s ear, standing on her tiptoes to reach him.

  “Dude,” Buck said, shaking his head. “That was bad. That was bad, right?” He was talking to the other gangbanger, the one who had conversed with the Haitians.

  “Williams and Beck are gonna kill us,” he hissed. “They’re gonna kill all of us when they hear about this.”

  Okay, now Nina really wished that she had talked to the FBI sooner.

  “Uh, Josh, we didn’t do anything,” Buck pointed out. “We just came to pick up the stuff.”

  “And we’re coming back with a third of what we’re supposed to have,” the gangbanger, Josh, hissed back, pointing both arms wildly at the single crate for emphasis.

  “Is it even the right batch?” one of the other guys asked.

  “Huh?” Nina asked, looking around at them. “Somebody had better tell me what’s going on right now because I’m not getting killed over some crap that I don’t even understand.”

  “It’s this new drug from Haiti,” Buck explained quickly. “The first shipment came in last week, and now we’re supposed to be getting the second. But the version they give us is supposed to work better than the one they have back in Haiti.”

  “‘Work better?’” Nina repeated. “What does ‘work better’ mean?”

  Buck and the other gangbangers exchanged a worried look.

  “There’s a pretty high mortality rate,” he finally admitted, looking away from her.

  Nina blinked at him.

  “Mortality rate?” she repeated. “I still don’t get it. Is it easy to OD or something?”

  “Something like that,” Josh smirked. “Just trust us when we say that we don’t want that happening with our customers. The police would be on us in a week if we got the wrong version of this stuff.”

  Nina’s eyes widened. She needed to get in contact with her supervisor about this, fast, and find out whatever this other agency was that worked the case in Haiti.

  “So, we need to make sure that this is what we ordered,” Nina said, pointing at the crate’s contents.

  This was her moment. She took another step toward the thing and peered over the side at its contents. There it was, in tiny little bags within the larger bags. It was some kind of clear, light gray gel. She’d never seen any drug like it before. It looked more like some kind of putty a kid would find at a toy store.

  There was nothing else inside. Just a bunch of packets of coke, heroin, and that gel thing, whatever it was. Weird.

  Josh looked nervously back at the ship as the three Haitian men began to unload the rest of the crates, oblivious to their conversation. Nina was pretty sure the other two didn’t speak English since they hadn’t been engaged in the previous conversation at all.

  “Well?” she asked, giving Josh a pointed look. “I told you, I’m not getting killed for this crap.”

  “Okay, okay,” Josh said, shaking his head and looking down at the ground. She could practically see his mind racing as he sorted through their options. “We’re going to have to get them to test it out. Daryl did that last time.”

  Buck was suddenly ashen-faced, and looking around, Nina realized that the other guys were, too.

  “But what does that mean?” she asked, emphasizing the last word. “You said something about that before. I don’t get it.”

  “Somebody’s gonna have to take it,” Josh said, staring down at the crate with a defeated look on his face.

  Nina noticed that the other guys were looking at her now.

  “Hey, don’t even think about it,” she said, holding her hands up in the air as her pulse quickened. “I don’t take any of this stuff. Buck knows that, right, Buck?”

  She looked back at him in alarm.

  “Look, guys, she just got here. It wouldn’t be fair,” he complained. “I didn’t bring her here for this. And she’s right. She doesn’t even smoke weed.”

  “Nobody takes this drug willingly,” one of the other guys pointed out.

  Now Nina was even more confused.

  “Huh?” she asked, shaking her head while keeping her arms up in the air. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s, you know, for another kind of market,” Buck said, nodding to her knowingly.

  Nina thought her stomach might drop out of her as it churned.

  “Oh,” she said, her shoulders slumping as she lowered her hands. “That. I get it.”

  She sure did. It was a new date rape drug. That wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she wished for something interesting to turn up. She thought she might throw up.

  All of a sudden, she was very aware of the fact that she was the only woman in the group.

  “Look, I’m not taking that crap,” she said, pointing vigorously at the drug and stepping far away from it again. She moved her hand to her side, where her gun was hidden.

  “She’s right, guys. It’s not fair,” Buck said. “It should be one of us.”

  “None of us are gonna take it!” another one of the guys cried. “Why should she get off easy just because she’s a woman?”

  “You wanna ask that again?” Nina asked, stepping toward him threateningly and narrowing her eyes at him, her hand still at her side.

  “What’d you guys do last time?” another guy asked, ignoring her.

  “Well, Williams made one of the Haitians take it,” Josh admitted, casting another glance over at the three men. They were unloading the last of the ten crates now.

  “Well, why don’t we just do that?” Nina asked, shaking her head to show her lack of comprehension. This answer seemed obvious to her.

  Josh and Buck exchanged a worried look.

  “These guys are serious, Nina,” Buck told her, his eyes heavy. “I don’t know if we want to mess with them like that. Not without Williams or Beck here to back us up.”

  “Williams and Beck are just guys like the rest of us,” Nina shrugged. “We’ve all got guns, so let’s use them.”

  The other guys all looked wary of this idea. But it was better than one of their own having to take that crap and maybe die, or worse.

  “Okay,” Josh said, though his tone was laced with uncertainty. “We’ll give it a shot.”

  The Haitian men were crossing back over to them then.

  “That’s it,” the same one who had spoken before said nervously, hanging back further away from the Americans than he had before. “We’re sorry again for the mix-up.”

  “Mix-up?” Josh repeated. “This isn’t just a mix-up, man. This is our lives here. You owe us twenty more crates, and you’re going to have to give us a timeline for delivery.”

  “I’m sorry, we just don’t know,” the man said with a nervous laugh, taking several steps back toward the ship. “Our people will be in touch with your people, like I said. Goodbye!”

  He and the other two Haitian men made as if to head back up into the ship, but Josh pulled out his gun
and trained it on them.

  “Wait,” he called out, and Nina noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.

  The Haitian men all froze and turned around slowly, but not before they’d grabbed their own guns from their sides.

  Nina cursed internally. This was not how she wanted this to go. She just needed to witness something that gave her enough information to testify on the nature of this drug before a judge, and she was golden. But that wouldn’t work if she got herself shot and killed before she ever made it to the witness stand.

  “W-What do you want?” the English-speaking Haitian man asked, his gun trained straight back at the other man’s, and Nina realized by the sound of his voice that he was just as nervous as Josh was. “I told you, we have nothing to give you right now. You’ll know when we do.”

  “I want something I can give my bosses that proves that much,” Josh shot back, his voice somehow sturdier now, more self-assured.

  “I… I do not know what to say to you,” the Haitian man stammered back.

  Nina could see the barrel of his gun trembling in the air now. She wondered briefly why everyone in this scenario was so skeeved out. It must be something about this drug, making everyone on the edge of their nerves. And her gang’s leaders weren’t there, and it didn’t seem like the Haitian cartel leaders were, either. That left the rank and file of both groups to duke it out for themselves.

  Typical cowardice from the higher-ups. Nina had seen it time and time again. They wanted to get their hands dirty as little as possible, and if there were casualties, they almost always came from the rank and file. Same with the arrests. The real head honchos almost never ended up in a cell, though Nina was looking to change all that.

  “Well, you’re going to have to figure it out,” Josh growled. “Fast.”

  “How about one of you stays back here with us,” Buck suggested, stepping forward, though not too close to the two men holding firearms. “For insurance. You’ll be well taken care of as long as things go as you say they will.”

  The Haitian man burst out laughing, lowering his gun as he did so, and then he said something in what Nina thought must be French to the other two. Then all three of them were laughing.

  Josh and Buck exchanged a nervous look.

  “What?” Josh asked, turning his attention back to the Haitians. “What’s so funny? I like that idea. Let’s just keep one of you.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” the man offered, wiping a tear of laughter out of the corner of one eye. “But it will do you no good. No one in the cartel cares about what happens to us. Why do you think Solomon sent us here instead of coming himself?”

  “S-Solomon,” Josh stammered. “He might come here himself?”

  “Who’s Solomon?” Nina hissed in Buck’s ear, taking a step forward in order to reach him.

  “Head of their cartel,” Buck whispered back, leaning down low to talk to her as Josh and the Haitian men continued their stare-down, the rest of our guys nervously lingering in the background with their hands clasped around the hilts of their guns at their sides. “Nobody’s ever actually met him. The way they talk about him, it’s like he’s some kind of legend or something.”

  Nina arched an eyebrow at him.

  “That’s… kind of weird,” she remarked.

  Buck shrugged.

  “I don’t make the rules,” he muttered.

  “He might,” the Haitian man confirmed with a nod, exchanging a wary look with his compatriots. “A lot of things might happen. As I told you, things are… what is the word… shifting right now.”

  “Yeah, we’re going to need to keep one of you here,” Josh said, determined now. “If only so we can turn you over to our own bosses, so you can deliver this news to them yourselves. That might be enough to save our skins.”

  Nina hoped that this was accurate. Otherwise, her stint undercover was going to come to an abrupt end, one way or another. She’d never met Daryl Williams or Clifton Beck personally, but she knew enough about them to know that she didn’t want to, not unless she was arresting them, anyway. If you had to talk to one of those guys, chances were you were about to pay for some arbitrary mistake they took offense to.

  “I… I don’t know about that,” the Haitian man said, looking back at his friends as if trying to decide which one he was willing to sacrifice to us. Nice.

  “Answer us this, then,” Josh challenged, gesturing at the crate with the barrel of his gun. “Is this the same batch we were promised? The one with the lower death rate?”

  Death rate. This was all so strange. Nina knew she had to get out of here and get back in contact with the FBI, fast. Whatever was going on here, it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill drug bust anymore. That was for sure.

  “Yes,” the Haitian man quickly said, as if he had already anticipated this question. “It is. We would not risk giving you the worse version. This is why we have so few crates for you. We lost the ones we were supposed to give you, so we only have what we already produce for the next shipment. If we want to give you the worse version, we give you thirty crates of it.”

  Josh considered this for a moment, narrowing his eyes at the Haitian men. Then he slowly nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, seeming to accept this explanation. “But you’re going to have to prove it. Just like the last time.”

  He gave the Haitian man a knowing look, and Nina got the impression that he had been there last time, too, when Williams had forced one of the Haitian gangbangers to ingest this strange new drug.

  “I’m sorry, my friend, that’s not going to happen,” the Haitian man said, his jaw set firmly now.

  One of the other men behind him said something to him in French that Nina thought sounded like a question. The first man barked something back, and then the other two reacted strongly and started yelling at Josh, though none of the Americans had any idea what they were saying.

  “What? What is it?” Josh asked, looking around wildly at the other men with a slightly panicked expression on his face. “What are they yelling about?”

  “You can’t seriously expect us to just take that stuff like it’s nothing,” the Haitian man said, almost imploringly, as he cast a wary look in the direction of the crates stacked on the ground.

  “If the death rate’s so low, why not?” Buck asked with a shrug.

  “You can’t test us that way!” the Haitian man cried. “If it’s that simple, take it yourselves, then.”

  “The difference is that we don’t know if you’re telling the truth,” Josh explained.

  “We are telling the truth!” the Haitian man exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air in exasperation. “But at five percent, it still isn’t worth it! And even if we didn’t die, you could still harm us without our knowing, drag us away with you while we can’t resist.”

  Nina felt sick to her stomach again. This must be some strong drug.

  “Only one of you has to take it,” Josh barked. “So offer one of your guys up now, or there’ll be worse coming.”

  He brandished his gun in the Haitian men’s direction again, and they all trained their weapons on the Americans in response.

  “That will not be happening,” the Haitian man said coolly.

  “Why not?” Josh challenged. His tone was harsh. “You did it last time. What’s changed if not the drug?”

  “What’s changed is that we are in charge of this mission, not our bosses,” the Haitian man spat back. “And we will not be offering up any of our own for sacrifice just to please you.”

  Josh’s expression softened slightly at this, and Nina could tell that he respected this answer, for the same reason that he and the other Americans had decided not to make her take the drug. They may have been gangbangers, but there was some loyalty within their ranks. That was one thing that had surprised her during her time undercover.

  Josh shook his head as if to clear it, and his expression hardened again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he shot back at them. “One of you’s going
to take it. So you better decide. Now!”

  He practically screamed the last word, and the Haitian man visibly recoiled, though he kept his gun leveled at Josh.

  “And if we’re one of the five percent?” he asked. “What will you do then?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, alright?” Josh snarled back at him.

  The Haitian man seemed to think about this for a moment, but then he shook his head.

  “No,” he said simply.

  “Then we’ll have to make you,” Josh said.

  And with that, the sound of gunfire filled the area. Nina instinctively ducked down low to the ground, pulling out her own gun as she did so. But not before she discreetly pressed a button on her phone when she knew no one was looking, alerting the FBI that she was in grave danger, but instructing them to hold back for now.

  They would latch on to her location and wait for her signal. If it didn’t come within a reasonable amount of time, they would come to get her. But not before. If there was a way out of this mess without blowing her cover, she was going to take it.

  Nina looked up to see that one of the Haitian men and two of their own were already on the ground, bleeding out. Short-range fire tended to have that effect.

  She got into a crouch and pressed forward, hanging low to the ground and hidden in the tall grass. It was lucky it was still pretty dark outside, though the sun had started to peek out across the water.

  She peeked around some grass to see that Josh, Buck, and the two remaining Haitian men were engaged in a virtual standoff. The rest were either wounded or hanging back from the action like she was.

  Loyalty only got you so far in gang life. They’d look out for each other in less dangerous situations, but most of these guys wouldn’t risk their necks for each other when push came to shove.

  Josh shot at the Haitian men again, but they returned fire. The Haitian man who had been speaking to them in English was hit in the shoulder, while Josh suffered a wound to the abdomen, though he stayed standing.