Nick Stone: The King of Swords

'So what do we do if we're…outnumbered?'

'Run.'

'Run?'

'Run.'

'Right.'

They went downstairs to the tunnel entrance, Jenny grinning wickedly behind the dumbass security guard as he timidly took each step like he was negotiating a steep rocky hill on his way to his own execution.

'I'll open the door; you go out first,' she said. 'Approach slowly.'

She handed him the tranquillizer gun and then unlocked and opened the door. He slipped off the safety catch and stepped outside.

They heard the cries of the monkeys-snarls, growls, whoops and roars, guttural and fierce; territories and young ones being protected-all underpinned by the snap and crack of branches being jumped from and to, the dense timpani of leaves and bushes being crashed through. And then there was the smell of the place: the animals, acrid and heady; ammonia; fresh manure and wet hay mixed in with the jungle's humid earthiness, its blossomings and decay, things ripening, things growing, things going back into the soil.

Larry approached on tiptoe, coming in from the side as instructed. The vet shone a torch on the ape, which lay some twenty feet away, still not moving. As he got closer he saw that the beast's fur had a slight metallic green tinge to it, as if there were sequins strewn across its body.

He heard it make a sound. He stopped and listened more closely, because it had only been the faintest of noises, something that could quite easily have come from elsewhere. Then he heard it again. It was faint and painful breathing, a low moan, barely audible over the sing-song of the dawn birds now coming from the nearby trees.

'I think it's alive,' he whispered to the vet. 'Sounds hurt. Bring the light in closer.'

He stood where he was with the tranquillizer gun pointed at the prostrate animal's side, his finger on the trigger. The vet approached. The animal's moaning got a little louder as the light on it grew brighter. It didn't sound like breathing now, pained or otherwise. It was more of a whining drone, which reminded Larry of the time he'd once trapped a hornet under a whisky glass. The thing had attacked the glass with everything it had, trying to get out, flying at it, butting it, stinging it, getting angrier and angrier with every failed attempt until it had died of exhaustion.

The vet came in closer. Larry didn't move. His hands were getting wet holding the gun.

'What-the-HELL!' the vet shouted.

The ape woke up. It raised its head off the ground.

They stepped back. The noise grew louder, a kind of high-pitched hum came out of its mouth. Then, suddenly, with a speed belying its bulk, the animal sprang to its feet and rushed at them.

Larry pushed the vet away and heard her scream. The light was gone. He fired his gun. The dart must have missed because the animal kept coming straight at him with a hideous dull whistling scream, like the noise of a lathe cutting through sheet metal, amplified to an excruciatingly sharp pitch.

Larry went for his pistol, but before he could get his hand to it he was hit everywhere and from every angle by a blizzard of small hard pellets. They smashed into his hands, ears, neck, legs, arms, chest. They stung exposed flesh. They got up his nostrils and down his earholes. He opened his mouth and screamed. They shot down his throat and massed on his tongue and bounced around the inside of his cheeks.

He fell on the grass, spitting, coughing and retching, confused and giddy, still expecting to be trampled and mauled by the ape, wondering where it was and what was taking it so long.

Jenny rushed back to the control room and dialled 911. She was immediately put on hold. She looked out of the window at the security guard still spluttering his guts out on the floor. She felt sorry for him. He hadn't realized what he was looking at until it was too late.

When the operator took her call Jenny asked for two ambulances-one for the security guard who'd swallowed a mouthful of blowflies and the other for the body of the dead man those same flies had been feasting on before the guard had disturbed them.

'Who said this was murder?' Detective Sergeant Max Mingus asked his partner, Joe Liston, as they pulled up outside the entrance to Primate Park in Joe's green '75 Buick convertible.

'No one,' Joe replied.

'So what we doin' here?'

'Our J-O-B,' Joe said. They'd been driving to Miami Task Force headquarters when the dispatcher's call had come through. Primate Park was on the way. Max hadn't heard any of it because he'd been fast asleep, face pancaked against the window. Joe had filled him in along the way. 'We'll just keep the turf warm till the right people show up. What've we gotta rush off to? Three feet of paperwork and a bad hangover? You in some kind of hurry to get to that?'

'Good point,' Max replied. The pair were feeling the election-night drinks they'd had at the Evening Coconut the night before. The Coco-as they called it-was a downtown bar close not only to their HQ but in the heart of the Miami business community. Plainclothes cops interfaced with the after hours white-collar crowd who worked in the nearby banks, law firms, publishers, ad agencies and real estate brokers. They'd buy cops drinks and plug them for war stories, listening awed and wide-eyed like deranged children to tales of shoot-outs, serial killers and gruesome mutilations. Many an affair had started there, overworked, stressed-out execs with no lives outside their careers, finding soul mates in overworked, stressed-out cops with no lives outside their jobs-or vocations, as some called their work, because the money wasn't shit for the risks they took. And the bar was also great for picking up extra employment, anything from basic building security to consultancy to private investigations. Max and Joe didn't go there that often, and when they did it was strictly to drink. They didn't like talking about their jobs with strangers and therefore, between them, emanated such hostility that civilians stayed well away.

The cheers when Reagan's victory was announced on the bar's four TVs had been as deafening as the chorus of insults and boos hurled at the screens when Carter had appeared, conceding defeat with tears in his eyes. Joe had felt deeply uneasy. A lifelong registered Democrat, he'd liked and admired Jimmy Carter. He'd considered him honest and decent, and, above all, a man of principle. But every other cop in town hated Carter because of the Mariel Boatlift fiasco. Thanks to him, they said, being a cop in Miami now was a nightmare.

From 15 April until 31 October, Fidel Castro had expelled 125,000 people from Cuba to the US in flotillas of leaking boats. Although many of the refugees were dissidents with their families, Castro took the opportunity to-in his words-'flush Cuba's toilets on America'. He'd emptied his country's streets of all winos, beggars, prostitutes and cripples, purged its prisons and mental hospitals of their most vicious and violent inmates and sent them over as well. In those six months, crime in Miami had rocketed. Homicides, armed robberies, home invasions and rapes were all way up and the cops couldn't handle it. Already under-staffed and underfunded, they'd been caught completely off-guard. They'd never come face to face with this new breed of criminal-Third World poor, First World envious; nothing to lose, everything to gain; violence coming to them without thought or remorse.

Then, to make matters much worse, on 17 May Miami had been torn apart by the worst race riot since Watts. The previous December Arthur McDuffie, an unarmed black man who'd been doing stunts on his motorcycle in the early hours of the morning, had been beaten into a coma by four white officers after a high-speed chase. The officers had tried to cover up the beating by claiming it was an accident. McDuffie later died from his injuries and the officers went on trial. Despite fairly conclusive evidence of their guilt, they were acquitted by an all-white jury. The city had exploded, as its black community had decided to vent an anger stoked by years of resentment against police harassment and injustice.