SIXTEEN

The Marino Club was filling up quickly by the time Sierra’s taxi pulled up out front. It was a five-storey building with thick, tinted glass walls. The signs out front were all lit up brightly in neon lights and there were several large spotlights on the rooftop directed up into the sky like that of a Hollywood red-carpet event.

“I’m telling you, this right here is the place to be on a Friday night, hombres,” Jose the cabbie said, turning back to his four passengers. “I took my girlfriend here just last week… and she left with another man. But the point is, there’s good music, decent food, the drinks are dirt-cheap and so are the women. Plus it’s a Yakuza-run business, so you’ll find this place free of any … troublemakers or unsavoury characters. Nobody around here has balls big enough to fuck with the Yakuza.”

“Yakuza?” Sierra raised an eyebrow. “Japanese organised crime? Here in Panama?”

“Sure, hombre,” Jose smiled. “Where you been these last few years? Heh, obviously not in Panama, right? The Kojima-gumi Yakuza organisation practically owns one half of this city. And since we’re on the topic, an Italian Mafia family by the name of the Paravinchis owns the other half of the city; that’s if you ignore the area around the entrance to the Panama Canal, which is run by some crazy local ex-military guy. Together their organisations have divided up just about everything between themselves; rumour has it the Paravinchis even have one of their own guys running the mayor’s office. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if President Miguella himself was in bed with them too! Money is power around here, comprende?”

After they had all gotten out of the cab Vincent paid Jose the fare, then they made their way over to the front entrance of the club.

Esteban and Marco quickly found them all a spot near the front of the line, pushing in by chatting up a pair of brunette girls who had already been waiting for a while. The brunettes were twins from the looks of them. Not surprisingly, it was Esteban doing most of the talking; he spoke in his usual animated fashion, pausing every once in a while to try including Marco in the conversation too. Eventually though the line started to move, and once that happened Esteban dropped the brunettes like a pair of burnt out matchsticks.

Sierra moved in front of his friends. Just as he was about to be checked in through the front entrance he suddenly sensed a pair of eyes watching him from somewhere back down the line and his blood turned to ice.

He turned around, one hand slipping instinctively under his coat to reach for his gun. But then he relaxed as he saw that it was actually just a pretty young woman in a cut-off red dress that was eyeing him off. Her big brown eyes flickered, lingering on Sierra as she gave him a flirting look over. Caught off guard, Sierra just stood there dumbly and held her eyes, his heartbeat quickening. That was until Marco, who was standing right behind him, got impatient and pushed him ahead.

After they entered the club, Sierra turned back to his friend, giving him a hard shove in the ribs. “Thanks a lot, you big, dumb idiota!”

“What?” Marco shrugged, completely oblivious to it all. “What the hell is your problem?!”

“Nada,” Sierra mumbled. “Fucking nada!”

***

The five Haitian gunmen were sitting directly across the street from the Marino club in their yellow BMW convertible. Their roof was down now, the windows tinted up and the doors locked. All of them were wearing their identical pale trench coats to conceal their small arsenal of weapons.

Kirby Kosta, the killer with the blond dreadlocks, sat in the middle backseat between two of his colleagues. His eyes were ablaze, his body numb and fearless from excessive cocaine as the stroked the trigger of his P90 submachine gun. He was ready to make his move the moment he saw his targets; all five of them were. They watched on, their eyes like those of hawks circling their prey.

The two men either side of Kosta were armed with military-issue pump-action shotguns. The man in the front passenger seat was carrying an MP-5 automatic submachine gun. And the driver, the big sadist of a man with a wreath of barbed-wire crowned upon his head, was sporting an AK-47 assault rifle.

“Death be in the air tonight,” Kosta flashed a smile to their driver. “You be feeling it, Toto?”

“You bet your arse I be feeling it, Kirby,” the thug named Toto grunted. “And just so you all be knowing, the Kojima woman is mine. If any of you arseholes touch her, I’m going to fuck you up in her place!”

“Why do you always have to be the one to kill the women, Toto?” one of others asked him. “You have a fetish for it or something? You don’t even fuck them first, like Jackal does.”

“I be loving it when they scream, right before their end,” Toto said. “My wife be loving it too, when I get home later.”

The entire car filled with a drug-fuelled explosion of laughter.

“Okay everyone, get ready, the rest of these kochon yo be arriving anytime now,” Kosta said once the laughter had finally died. “When that happens, things are gonna be getting messy real quick.”