Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

“Not for long.”

Linc could see why. The Suzuki had crushed the man’s stomach. The internal injuries had to be extensive.

“Who are you?” Eddie asked him.

The man spit back in French.

Linc looked at Eddie. “Do you know what he’s saying?”

“I don’t speak a word of French. But we’ll find out.” He subtly glanced at his phone. The recording light was on. The gunman babbled for another twenty seconds, then coughed up blood and gurgled out a death sigh.

Traffic was slithering around the carnage, and crowds had started to gather.

“Let’s get out of here,” Eddie said.

“I’d take the guns, but I don’t think I want to explain how we got them if the police stop us.”

“Good point.”

Once they were on their Harleys and heading back toward Montego Bay, they called Eric.

“We got rid of our tail,” Eddie said matter-of-factly. “No casualties on our side.”

“Is everyone accounted for?” Linc asked.

“Mark’s still trying to raise Juan and Max,” Eric said. “Linda and Julia just arrived at the dock. That leaves Hali, MacD, and Mike Trono.”

“Where are they?”

“Still at that bar on the Hip Strip. MacD texted me that they have a situation.”

MacD stood up from his table and staggered backward, knocking into his chair and pitching sideways until Hali Kasim and Mike Trono caught him. Neither of them seemed much better off. Shot glasses littered their table along with three beer bottles. They’d been ordering rounds of whiskey for the last twenty minutes, ever since they’d spotted the guy at the bar sneaking glances at them.

The Waterfront Bar & Grill was filled with tourists from the cruise ship, college students on spring break, and young couples on vacation. Some were watching basketball games and cricket matches on the TVs that festooned the walls of the bar, but most were enjoying the breeze coming in off the ocean, over drinks and burgers, watching the bathing beauties on the beach to one side and the foot traffic on the street to the other.

It wasn’t a place frequented by the locals, so when MacD noticed a solo guy at the bar who seemed to be invested in a West Indies versus England cricket tilt, he assumed the man was a Jamaican there for the television. But during a couple of commercial breaks when the screen went dark, he saw the man watching their table in the screen’s reflection.

The guy was obviously keeping tabs on the three of them, but they had no idea why until they received Eric’s call. If they were targeted for assassination, taking them out inside the bar would be messy, leaving plenty of witnesses and making escape difficult. But if their attackers waited until they stepped outside, they could fire a few shots and get away quickly before anyone even knew what had happened.

Before they received the warning from Eric, they’d decided to have a little fun with the guy, in the event he was setting them up for some kind of scam. Every shot they took was followed by a slug of beer, and they got louder and more obnoxious with every round. But instead of swallowing the whiskey, they’d been spitting it into the half-empty beer bottles, an old barmaid’s trick. The guy must have relayed the news to his buddies by now that their targets were completely sloshed.

r /> What had started out as a lark was now deadly serious.

MacD headed to the bathroom, wobbling his way through the tables. The man at the bar was right in his path. MacD gripped the backs of the barstools as he passed, seemingly to steady himself. When he reached their observer, he misplaced his hand and pushed against the man’s back instead.

The man instinctively whipped his head around at the disturbance. If MacD had been anyone else, the guy at the bar would certainly have yelled at him to watch his step. But since he was trying to keep a low profile, he said nothing.

“’Scuse me, pardner,” MacD slurred. “Ah didn’t mean to knock you over.”

“Mwen pa konprann,” the man replied. Then he added, “No English,” and went back to looking at the TV.

MacD’s eyes went wide like he’d just met a long-lost cousin. He’d heard from Eric that the attackers might be Haitian and the man had said “I don’t understand” in Creole. MacD, who’d grown up in Louisiana, had learned Creole and French from his grandfather, and many Haitians are bilingual. The Haitian and Louisianan versions of Creole have many similarities. MacD decided to catch him off guard.

“My friend,” MacD said in Creole, “you speak my language! Are you from Haiti?”

The guy, who certainly didn’t expect MacD to speak his native tongue, stammered, “I . . . I’m trying to watch the television.”

“You do speak Creole! I’m from the bayous of Louisiana. That practically makes us related.”