pushed Jumbey halfway out the door.
“You got three seconds,” he growled. “One … two…”
“I don’t know!” Jumbey cried again. “I’m just a minnow. A little fish!”
“Good-bye,” the large man said.
He picked Jumbey off the floor and started to throw him out the hatchway.
“Badtown!” Jumbey finally yelled.
He was almost as good as gone—but then he felt the huge man pull him back in again.
“Badtown? What is that?”
“It’s a slum,” Jumbey said, trying mightily to catch his breath. “In Nassau. The whole city is a mess, but people call the worst part of it Badtown.”
“Your hideout is in Badtown?” the large man asked him.
“No,” Jumbey replied, still shaking all over. “Senior crumbs just hang out there sometimes when money is good.”
“Where in Badtown do they hang out?” another of the masked men demanded to know. “It must be a big place.”
Jumbey hesitated again—and the large man pushed him back toward the open door.
Finally Jumbey yelled, “The Tainted Lady.”
“Tainted Lady?” the large man asked. “What is that? A boat?”
“Don’t tell him!” Colonel Cat suddenly bellowed. “He’ll kill us!”
“They’ll kill us!” Jumbey yelled back at him.
He looked up at his would-be executioner.
“The Tainted Lady is a blind pig! A saloon, mon. There’s a hidden room upstairs where the top guys hang out sometimes. That’s all I know.”
* * *
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the floatplane landed in rough water next to an outer island so small it had just a single palm tree on it.
The masked men dragged Jumbey and Cat out of the plane and threw them, still bound in duct tape, onto the tiny beach. Then the masked men sloshed their way back to the airplane and climbed aboard.
Cat started screaming as he and Jumbey fought to rip the tape from their hands and feet. But there was so much of it, it was impossible.
“You can’t leave us here!” Cat yelled. “When the tide comes in, this place will be gone!”
“Climb the tree then,” one of the masked men told him.
“But … but we’re so far out, no one will ever find us!” Jumbey yelled.
The large man yelled back. “Them’s the breaks, mon.”
“But—my plane!” Cat screamed.
The large masked man yelled from the open door. “Oh yeah—thanks! We’ll take good care of it.”
With that, the Arado turned back toward the ocean, and with a burst of smoke and sea spray, took off and flew away.
7
BADTOWN WAS WELL named.
Dominating the southern end of Nassau, just over the hill from some of the most glamorous resorts in the western hemisphere, it was a collection of hovels, tin shacks, drug dens, and cafés that attracted more flies than people. Much of Nassau was a slum; Badtown was its most treacherous part. When cruise ships docking here warned their passengers to exercise caution while walking in the outlying neighborhoods at night, Badtown was the place they were talking about.
A canal connected this place to the sea. It was the conduit through which much of Badtown’s criminal activity flowed. Pot. Crack. Meth. Jewels. Guns. Just about anything and everything was for sale to adventurous tourists and addicted locals, if the price was right.
The busy season for Badtown’s drug trade was approaching. American college students on Spring Break would soon besiege the islands, and this meant dozens of pounds of coke and hundreds of pounds of pot could be sold in just one week.
These days, the people moving all these drugs around were, more often than not, the most feared, if most secretive pirate gang in the islands: the Muy Capaz.
* * *
OF THE TWO dozen bars in Badtown, most were little more than shacks with mud roofs. But one stood out, because it was made not of metal, but of stone.
It was as old as anything could be in this part of the Bahamas. Built more than two hundred years before by the British Army to house prostitutes close to one of its many forts, it was known then, as now, as the Tainted Lady.
The bar inside was as rundown as the building itself. Made of rotting wood from a nineteenth-century schooner, it was bordered by three shelves of bootleg liquor. There were a few tables, a few chairs and that was it. Cigarette smoke, pot smoke, spilled beer and blood combined to give the place a unique aroma. It was always dark inside, no matter what the time of day.
Just off the bar was a small room whose door was hidden behind a false wood panel. Few people knew the room existed. Inside it tonight were four members of