American Tropic - By Thomas Sanchez Page 0,61
a SWAT team storms in from the hallway. The muscular men are protected by heavy body armor; antiballistic helmets are clamped tight over their heads; strapped around their waists are belts of bullets and grenades. Gripped in their gloved hands are submachine guns. They aim at the legless vet in the wheelchair.
The vet raises his arms and flaps them in the air. His mocking voice shouts at the armored men: “I’ll never be airborne again! You gonna napalm me too? You gonna drown me in oil? Bring it on! I’m ready to rock and roll! You chickenshit killers! You won’t get him, you know! Bizango is too smart for you! You dumb bastards only know how to kill. Bizango knows who to kill!”
Light shines out in the night from an open-sided canvas party tent set up on the earth-scraped construction site of Neptune Bay Resort. Inside the tent, a band of musicians dressed as bare-chested mermen play a bouncy Caribbean tune. Cocktail waitresses in fishnet mermaid costumes circulate through the well-dressed crowd with trays of tropical cocktails and exotic appetizers. At the center of the crowd, Big Conch holds court. He is outfitted as Neptune, god of the sea, wearing a toga and leather sandals; a gold plastic crown circles the top of his long white wig. He grips in one hand a pitchfork, its handle and three sharp steel prongs painted silver to represent Neptune’s trident spear. He pumps the trident in the air. “Silence!” The band of mermen cease their music; the cocktail waitresses stop and balance their service trays on their bare shoulders.
Big steps to a table covered by a cloth canopy. “It’s been a vicious four-year fight. I’ve had countless work stoppages and spent a fortune on attorneys. I was opposed by every environmental group. Today, the government approved Neptune Bay Resort. Free enterprise prevailed!” The crowd hoots their approval. Big puts down his trident and pops a bottle of champagne. He sloshes the bubbly liquid into a plastic silver chalice and raises it high. “Neptune Bay will stand forever as a monument to my dearly departed partners, Dandy Randy and Bill Warren. Damn, I miss those boys; I wish they were here to share this slam-dunk victory.” He grabs the edge of the cloth canopy covering the table. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present the most ambitious development ever built in the Florida Keys, a world-class resort that will put thousands to work and fatten our tax rolls with the fruit of hardworking capitalism, the fabulous Neptune Bay!” He whips off the cloth canopy. The crowd applauds at a fiberglass scale-model display of the vast complex. Big raises his silver chalice triumphantly in the air. “Construction of Neptune Bay resumes tomorrow. I will—”
His words are cut off by the roar of a boat engine. Everyone looks out from the open-sided party tent at the concrete pier jutting into the ocean. At the end of the pier is Big’s powerboat, with its engine roaring. Big grabs his steel-pronged trident and runs out onto the pier to his boat. No one is in the boat; its two-hundred-horsepower engine idles with a turbo-fueled growl, and exhaust steams from beneath its chrome spoiler back fin. On the boat’s sleek hull the name Big Conch is spray-painted over by a slashed red X.
Big jumps into the boat and turns off the engine. An eerie whistle breaks the sudden silence. Big looks across the water. There is no one in the darkness. Big raises the trident spear gripped in his hand and shakes it angrily. “Whoever you are—I will get you! I will cut off your head and piss down your neck and have you tell me it’s raining!”
A massive redbrick fort built during the Civil War dominates the entrance to Key West Harbor on a spit of land hooked out into the Atlantic Ocean. The fort’s towering walls are surrounded at their base on three sides by a deep water-filled moat. The fort’s one open entrance is guarded by two large iron-barrel cannons. Police cars speed up to the entrance, skidding to a stop. The Chief and his policemen, outfitted in riot gear and bulletproof vests and carrying heavy automatic weapons, jump from the cars and run into the fort. They race to the end of an arched brick corridor where Moxel stands waiting, with his rifle at the ready. The Chief catches his breath, looks behind Moxel at a six-foot hole opened up in a brick wall, and huffs. “So