Presidential Deal Read Online Free Page A

out the six-foot length of anchor chain they’d adapted for their uses, handed one hooked end to Luis, who wrapped it around the door grating. At the same time, Ray bent to loop the other hook around the Suburban’s heavy-duty hitch. He gave Zito the high sign and the Suburban lunged forward, jouncing down over the curb. There was an awful screech of metal on metal, the sound of a thousand metal comb fingers across glass, and then the heavy steel doors burst out of their concrete casing and crashed to the sidewalk.
    Ray heard an alarm bell clanging as the clatter died away, but he doubted the sound could carry to anyone who gave a shit. For that matter, he was fairly certain the place had a direct-wire alarm as well, but that didn’t concern him, either. Inside was what he needed. Short of nuclear response, nothing was going to keep him from it now.
    Before the concrete dust had drifted from the ragged opening where the doors had once been, the three of them were inside, Luis wielding the twelve-pound sledge on the display cases they’d scouted earlier in the day, Ray and Zito right after him, lugging the heavy pry bars they’d need for the steel-barred racks. Emergency lights atop the alarms had popped on, illuminating the place in a garish, otherworldly fashion. Mostly they made it that much easier to work.
    There was the sound of shattering glass, of shrieking, splintering wood. Zito out with one canvas sack of goods to toss in the back of the Suburban, Luis close on his heels, Ray already busy with the bar of the second rack.
    By the time Ray had finally popped the retaining bolt free, the other two were back to help him load, everything going about as well as he could hope. He motioned Luis out the door and led Zito toward the prize of the night, an antitank rocket launcher that the owner had mounted on a pedestal like some god of gun shops. It wasn’t on the order list, but what the hell, if the people they were working for tonight didn’t want it,
someone
would pay good money for it.
    The stand had been bolted to the pedestal, but it hardly mattered. Four blows with the twelve-pound sledge, the thing was free and slung across big Zito’s shoulders, Ray fast on his heels, dragging the heavy box of shells through the debris.
    Zito dumped the launcher into the back of the Suburban, then turned to help Ray heave the wooden box in after. Luis was behind the wheel now, moving them away from the curb before Ray and Zito had slammed their doors. They were at the end of the block in seconds, two more quick turns onto Biscayne, half a mile to the entrance ramp of I-95, and joined with the light but never-ending Miami traffic, like the Chinese that could line up and march forever into the ocean, Ray thought, checking his watch again, total elapsed time, from gates on the sidewalk to rolling down the highway, less than five minutes. Assuming the shop had been wired, assuming best-case response, the cops wouldn’t be arriving on the scene for another minute or so.
    Five minutes’ work, twenty-five thousand dollars
, Ray thought. He settled back in the plush leather seat, allowed himself a smile. “You know where you’re going, Luis?” he asked.
    “Man,” Luis said in his whiny voice, “why you keep asking shit like that?”
    “Just the way my mind works,” Ray said evenly. “The way it does.”
    ***
    They’d scheduledthe drop for a warehouse district near Tamiami Airport, a noncommercial field far to the south and west of the city. Ray favored it as a place to do business, partly because it offered his customers a ready way to move or store whatever goods he was delivering, partly because he knew a dozen ways in and out of the canal- and lake-encircled place, and partly because it was remote and otherworldly, to his city-bred tastes, anyway.
    He could pick out a spot, give someone a route in, he’d take another, and know of three or four more out, in case of emergency. He’d get there early, post Zito and Luis