Red Stripes by Matt Hilton Page B

tattoos were adopted by all the men and women in our tactical team as a reminder of our days with Arrowsake. There were very few of us left alive these days.
    “This man described my tattoo to you?”
    “Yes. I had the impression he’d had a very good look at yours.”
    The stirring in my gut became a flutter as a trickle of adrenaline went through me.
    Recently somebody did get an eyeful of my tattoo. The sharp edge of my right forearm was wedged tightly against his throat at the time while I rammed a machete into his guts and pinned him to a doorjamb. Unless there was something about that zombie folklore from the West Indies, I doubted that Hector Latore Wallace—whose name I only learned weeks after his death—was wandering around Tampa asking questions about me. Then again, there’d been another who’d quickly fled the scene after his leader was killed, and who might have got a good look at my ink.
    “This man,” I asked, already suspecting the answer, “was he a black man?”
    “Yes, but with skin more the color of café au lait , and the hair was like that reggae singer . . . you know . . . Bob Marley?” Marley rhymed with au lait the way in which she intoned the name.
    “Dreadlocks,” I confirmed.
    Jolie nodded in agreement. “You know this man?”
    “I know his type,” I said.
    In truth, I’d had a few run-ins with guys who favored the Rastafarian look. A few years ago, back in Manchester, England, I’d bumped heads with some of the Yardie Posse—Jamaican gangsters—who sported dreads and wouldn’t think twice before sticking a knife in your heart. But then, more recent than that, there was Hector and his Rude Boy crew.
    Perhaps ordering Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee had been a portent of things to come. I thought I was done with what had happened down in the Caribbean a few weeks earlier, but it seemed Jamaica wasn’t yet done with me.
    “I didn’t tell him your name, I only confirmed it from a friend after this man asked me about you. But, Joe”—she cast a nervous glance across the street to where my Audi A8 was parked—“I think he will return asking about you again.”
    I picked up my mug of coffee and held it out to her.
    “Can you make this to go, Jolie?”
    “Ah, such a waste,” she said, and placed a soft hand on my wrist to press the cup back down to its rightful place at her table.
    “I wouldn’t have this man return here. I have a feeling he won’t be as amiable next time, especially now that he might demand to know more about me from you.”
    “I would not tell him.” Her eyes flashed with Gallic spirit. “I know he is not a good man, and no good comes of him asking about you. But, it’s like I said earlier; you are a good customer and I also believe a good man.”
    Her sentiment was well-meaning, but I doubted that the mystery Jamaican would see things the same way. Perhaps if Jolie had witnessed what went down in Jamaica a few weeks ago it might alter her perspective of me too.
    T hree lazy men were about to die and didn’t know it.
    They were lazy because they had allowed their guard to slip, and it wasn’t something that any sentry should ever do. They were so lax in their security that they had broken formation, and had all come together in one place to smoke and to complain about the long, uneventful night. That had allowed me to slip in through a gap in their defenses and I was now within the inner cordon. Even when one of them bothered to check the approaches to the compound, he was looking in the wrong direction. To think that I had things too easy would be to make the same mistake that they had, so I had to stay on my game and not allow tardiness to slip in. Otherwise four lazy men would end up dead.
    The guards were talking and griping in low throaty voices that still carried to my ears, but though I understood a spattering of languages, Jamaican patois wasn’t one of them. It would have made my job easier if they were conversing in English, but this