Of course, he would have to show a little style along the way. A little steel and muscle, if it came to that.

And LeRoy Withers knew that he was equal to the task.

A sharp knock sounded on the office door. Beside him, LeRoy's man slid a hand inside his velvet jacket, finding iron beneath his arm. Satisfied, Withers kicked back in his swivel chair.

"In!"

The door swung open to admit a tall white dude, decked out in sharp expensive threads, aviator's shades and carrying a briefcase.

LeRoy grinned.

And the grin became a beaming smile as he thought about exactly what the white man would have inside that briefcase, bagged and ready for him. "Snow" in the middle of summer, damned right.

"What is it, my man?"

"It's business," the stranger replied, unsmiling, and Withers reflected once again that whites seemed not to have a sense of humor.

The new arrival placed his case on top of Withers's desk, then glanced around, found LeRoy's backup watching from the open office doorway with his hand braced on a hip, six inches from gun leather.

"You got what I need, man?" LeRoy asked him.

And LeRoy noticed for the first time since the dude entered the office, he smiled — a chilling, icy grimace,

"Right here," he replied.

The briefcase latches sounded like explosive charges shattering the stillness of the room. The lid was up, the dude was reaching inside — and LeRoy craned his neck, anxious for a look at the cocaine that he had bargained for by phone but had not sampled yet.

Perhaps a couple of snorts, just to make certain it was good enough for his high-priced clientele.

But no white powder, no plastic bag emerged from the briefcase. Instead, the man was brandishing a long silver handgun, looking better than a foot long as it hung there, a yard from LeRoy's face. He gaped at it for what seemed like a lifetime, but in fact mere seconds passed before the still life burst into explosive action.

The tall stranger swiveled, reaching out with his blaster and almost touching the muzzle to the nearest gunner's cheek before he pulled the trigger. A thunderous explosion echoed through the Club Uhuru, and the gunner's face and head disintegrated, dispatching tiny fragments all over the room. His headless body tumbled backward, hitting the floor with a resounding thud.

Beyond the door, LeRoy's other backup gun was already digging for hardware, backpedaling and looking for cover. The cannon roared again, lifting him off his feet, the force of one heavy round impacting on his chest, hurling him back several yards. He touched down by the empty bar with a single twitch before he came to final rest.

LeRoy was wearing a pistol in his belt, with another in the desk drawer for emergencies like this. Except there had never been such an incident, and in the panic of the moment he could think of only one thing.

Survival.

Clearly, drawing down on this bad-ass dude was certain suicide. And Withers was not feeling suicidal. Not in the least.

The cannon's muzzle was directly in his face now, looking larger than an oil drum at point-blank range. Withers half imagined he could crawl inside it if he tried, and hide there from the man who plainly meant to kill him.

But the gunner did not fire. Instead he fished around inside a pocket of his flashy jacket, coming out with something small and silver, which he dropped in the middle of LeRoy's cluttered desk top.

"Spread the word," the man growled, his voice graveyard cold. "I'm back. Somebody knows why."

And LeRoy watched him retreat out of there with the satchel — LeRoy's goddamned satchel full of twenties and fifties — the blaster never wavering off its kill zone as he cleared the doorway, backing right across the club room on his way to the exit.

Withers kept his eyes riveted on that pistol until the dude was out of there and clear. He made no move to follow, never seriously considering going after him and trying to retrieve the cash.

LeRoy glanced around at the wasted bodies of his soldiers, then down at the spreading moisture in the crotch of his own maroon slacks.

Some damn fine mess, yeah. Hell! But he was alive, still kicking, and now his job would be to stay that way. His hand was shaking as he reached for the telephone and started dialing.

Spreading the word.

The ten-year-old Cadillac cruised slowly eastward along Eighth Avenue. The driver kept a careful eye on other motorists and the flow of erratic pedestrians around him, while his three companions took in every detail of the boulevard.

Eighth Avenue.

The locals called it Calle Ocho, and it ran right through the heart of Miami's Little Havana district. It was the artery that fed the Cuban community's pulsing heart, alive with color, sound and movement.

The Cadillac rolled slowly down the avenue, the four occupants inspecting sidewalks jammed with cigar-chomping men in their crisp guayaberas— the white cotton shirts of the tropics — and women in bright-colored skirts and blouses. The street was lined with shops and family businesses: boutiques and factories where underpaid employees rolled cigars by hand; sidewalk counters selling aromatic Cuban coffee and churros, long spirals of deep-fried sweet dough.

They passed the Bay of Pigs monument, standing tall and proud in Cuban Memorial Plaza, and one of the men in the back seat crossed himself, muttering a hasty benediction. In the front seat, riding shotgun, his companion merely frowned and looked away.

It was so long ago, so many years and wasted lives, but still the memory was sharp, painful. He wondered if it ever would recede, give up its power to bring a lump into his throat.

Someday, perhaps. When all the debts were canceled out, repaid in full.

Someday.

But not this day.

They turned off Calle Ocho into a residential side street, rolling along past neatly kept houses, many of them with shrines on the lawns, devoted to Saint Lazarus.

Only a parable now to the Catholic church, Lazarus was a living hero to the exiles for his ability to persevere through poverty and pain. They saw themselves in Lazarus — and shared the hope that broken lives might one day be revived in Cuba libre. Saint Lazarus was the living symbol of rebirth, of the human spirit's stubborn refusal to stay down.

A few more blocks, the houses smaller now, devoid of shrines, still neat but no longer picturesque. Beside the driver, Toro scanned the houses, searching for a number, finally picking out the one he sought.

A curt instruction to the driver, and they cruised past the target house, not even slowing. Nothing in their posture would have told a watcher that the men were hunting, and that they had found their prey upon this quiet street.

The driver took a right at the next intersection, parking out of sight and killing the engine. They unloaded, Toro taking time to readjust the pistol in his waistband, waiting for the others to form a tight semicircle at the curb. The four men were alert, trying to watch every direction at once, as if expecting an ambush on this placid residential boulevard.

In recent years the Cuban community had become fragmented, different factions violently at odds. Little Havana had assumed the atmosphere of a city under siege — but from within. There was no enemy outside the gates; the city's people had engaged each other in a silent — sometimes deadly — war of ideologies.

And on the surface everything was unity, a people joined unanimously in their opposition to Castro and his regime in Cuba. But beneath the calm exterior, guerrillas schemed and turned on each other more than on the common enemy. They dealt in secrets, drugs and death, each splinter movement striving to become the voice of a people in exile.