The only sounds to be heard were lawn sprinklers feebly attempting to compensate for the summer heat and the occasional child playing in the distance. The clear and quiet suburban Miami street was a rare blessing in the tacky seaside paradise, and the scene was filled with mid-afternoon Florida sun drifting through serenely swaying palm trees, scattering on the suburban asphalt and reflecting off of plastic pink garden flamingos and uncut grass.
Tranquility is inherently fleeting, however, and the calm silence was quickly interrupted by a black Charger zooming down the road at unholy speeds followed closely by a barreling cherry red sedan whose passengers were firing away at the vehicle ahead of them with a variety of automatic weapons. The Charger was driven by a nervous-looking middle-aged man in a Tommy Bahama shirt and jet-black sunglasses. His left hand was on the wheel, and his right held a secure grip on the belt looped around the waist of the thin woman situated half-in and half-out of the passenger side window, a woman evidently far too preoccupied with unloading her semi-automatic pistol on the following car to concern herself with seat belts and the like. Her left elbow rested on the car door, the right was extended and firing away, and her face showed an expression of pure enjoyment.
In the back of the Charger sat a fit man in a tan Armani suit and aviator sunglasses on his cell phone. He showed nothing more than agitation at the noise and had one hand plugging an ear and the other holding the phone close.
"You told me these were your guys, Marcello!" he said, his aggravation evident in his voice. "How do you expect me to get you out of this mess if you send me on a friendly mission into a damned lion's den?"
The woman in the front seat entered the car, dropped the empty gun in the floorboard, picked up another out of a black duffel bag, and returned to her position and her firing.
"What? That's a bad excuse, Marcello," he said, tapping his female friend on the leg and motioning for her to stop shooting and take a seat. "Well, if that's how it's gonna be, Marcello, that's how it's gonna be." He shook his head at the man on the other line, and hung up. "Guess that's it, then," he said, frowning "Thanks for wasting our time, jackass...". The man in the front looked up into the rear view mirror at his friend.
"That's it?"
"Yeah, Sam. Turns out Marcello Suslov's more concerned with helping his crime syndicate friends than with getting help from us. Well, after all this," he said, gesturing to the car close behind them, "it's either that or he never wanted our help in the first place. Hey, Fi, where's the, uh.."
The woman smiled, rolled her window up, and pulled a detonator out of her bag.
"That's it," said the man in the suit, smiling.
"The hell's that for?" asked the man in the front seat, lifting his sunglasses and glancing down and to the right at the detonator.
"What do you think?" asked the woman, pressing down hard on the trigger. The car following the three promptly exploded. The man driving jumped and yelled at the noise. The woman laughed, and the man in the back smiled. "Why didn't you two do that in the first place?" asked the driver, grimacing has he pulled a sharp right turn, trying to figure out the fastest route to get as far away from the scene of the incident as possible.
"I wanted to have confirmation first," said the man in the back, waving his cell phone. "Now that they're taken care of, I think it's time we discussed this little problem with Marcello face-to-face."
"Fine, Mikey. Whatever you say," said the man in the front, frowning and lowering his sunglasses back into their place. "Just don't pull that crap again, or I'll drive this friggin' Charger right over a damn cliff."