He found it hard to believe the motel even employed maids, until he saw a strapping Hispanic woman with long black hair pull a toilet brush and cleanser off her cart before entering a room a few doors down. I wonder if she’ll look behind the nightstand.
Though not many crow miles separated San Francisco from Merced, the climates were radically different. The temperature in the San Joaquin Valley had already risen to nearly ninety degrees. To appear less conspicuous, Max had ditched the windbreaker for a sport jacket and button-down shirt worn over his plate carrier. The spare magazines for his pistols were now in a pouch at his belt for quick access.
He rounded a corner and entered the breezeway at the middle of the building, searching for a soda vending machine, which he spied at the far end. This side of the motel fronted a pool filled with two feet of stagnant green water. Leaves and litter floated on the surface, and some drunken soul had tossed a few pool chairs into the soup as well. Past that spread the rear parking lot, where a few battered junkers sat amongst burgeoning weeds sprouting through fissured asphalt, their stolen Mitsubishi the newest vehicle in sight. I take it back. This isn’t fantasy; it’s post-apocalypse. He couldn’t wait to put this shithole behind him and get on with his mission plan.
“Well, holy sheep shit,” Max muttered, a satisfied smile blooming on his face when he saw diet Mountain Dew in the soda selection. The machine even appeared to be in working order. Wonders never cease. He purchased a sixteen-ounce bottle for the highwayman’s price of three bucks. The robbery didn’t bother him, rather a cost he gladly paid for his drink of choice.
All was not right with the world, far from it, but he couldn’t help thinking that things were looking up as he cracked the bottle open and drank. The carbonation hit him in the throat, the brief and familiar burn further improving his mood.
He considered present circumstances as he returned to the room, starting with their stolen car. During the drive over the steep grades in the coastal range, Leet had complained about the Mitsubishi’s lack of power, equating the small engine to four mice running on a treadmill. Weak, but it’ll get us where we need to be. It was also a nondescript vehicle, Joe Average economy transportation, and Max knew the police wouldn’t be actively searching for it. Still, I should swap plates with another car before we leave. Shouldn’t be hard. Max had seen nothing of the motel’s other few guests. Probably sleeping off their hangovers.
Rounding the corner from the breezeway back onto the walkway, he again saw the maid at her cart, got a closer look at her this time. Amazon. Her appearance put him on alert—six-feet tall with tree-trunk legs that ended in thick, chiseled calves. Gym-sculpted biceps and delts swelled the short sleeves of her pinstriped uniform. Her ass might have been naturally big, but a few thousand squats had expanded it to titanic proportions. Her muscle didn’t fit her line of work. Max assumed that illegals held most of the menial jobs in the area, and they weren’t the sort of people with the time or money to pursue bodybuilding as a serious endeavor.
She returned to the room, shoving a vacuum cleaner before her. With her out of the way, Max spied another maid cart parked before a room down the walkway. Shit! He dropped his soda and took off running even as he considered his next move. The bodybuilder would certainly be in on the ambush. He thought of taking her out immediately, yet did not, opting to sprint past the room where she pretended to work. Leet needed his help now. He would just have to watch his back.
The door stood ajar a few inches. An angry male voice spoke in a foreign language, Hebrew again, only it wasn’t Daniel. Max barged in, gun in hand, saw Leet and the Farbers backed up to the bathroom door with their arms raised, the briefcase still in Daniel’s hand. A bleach-blond maid held a gun on them. She spun and fired her silenced pistol at Max, who ran for the far bed and jumped. He hit the mattress, bounced, and rolled off the other side, gained his feet as the maid’s second shot barely missed him, the stray bullet shattering the picture window behind the curtains.
As he’d hoped, his abrupt entrance allowed Leet to swing into action. With no time to draw her weapon, she went for the most obvious target, grabbing the maid by her long blond hair. An instant later she stood dumbfounded, holding a blond wig in her hand, revealing a shaved bald head with black stubble.
The move startled the cross-dressing maid long enough for Max to close the remaining distance. He cracked the man across the face with his pistol, knocking him to the floor.
“Look out!” Leet shouted as she dropped atop the dazed man to disarm him.
Before Max had turned halfway around, a speeding locomotive with a prow of shining black hair crashed into him, drove him back and down. Daniel and Shai barely avoided them as they fell grappling to the floor. The maid came out on top and seized his right wrist in a hold, bending it backward in an attempt to disarm him. Leet and the other operator fought on the floor next to them.
Max noticed Shai fleeing the room, Daniel no doubt ahead of him. Not good.
With his Glock pointed in the general direction of the Amazon’s face, Max jerked the trigger beneath the excruciating pressure she applied. Though the shot cleanly missed, the explosion of burning powder from the silencer caught some of her face. She cried out, blinded in one eye, and released her hold on Max’s wrist. It was the only break he needed.
He bashed her in the head with the pistol’s silencer. The heavy blow sent her rolling to the side, freeing his body. They sprang to their feet almost simultaneously. The maid leveled a spinning kick at his head that he narrowly ducked. He put a bullet into her, center mass, which knocked her backward onto the bed, gasping. Her body armor had stopped the round dead.
Behind him Leet’s stun gun popped, unleashing half a million volts into her adversary.
Meanwhile, Max’s foe attempted to roll off the bed and run for the door. No way. With the quickness of a striking cobra, he grabbed her flailing right ankle with his left hand, then brought his forearm down atop her knee and pushed with tremendous force. Her screaming drowned out the muffled crunch of her knee bending in the wrong direction.
“You like martial arts, do you?” Max grunted the words with a hint of callous amusement.
He battered her head once more with the Glock, then put his weight behind a perfect left-handed punch that shattered her lantern jaw like a Ming vase beneath a sledgehammer. Blood flew as a jagged shard of her mandible punched through skin. The blow amazed even Max, who hadn’t been expecting to break such a monolithic piece of bone, large and calcified from steroid abuse. He shook his throbbing left hand, the knuckles already starting to bruise. Well worth it.
Another pop from the stun gun drew his attention back to Leet, who had her situation under control, the crossdresser writhing on the carpet as she knelt over him. His gun lay out of reach by the bathroom door.
“Hit him again,” Max said. “It’s time we sent a message.”
“My pleasure.” She jabbed the stun gun under his dress and shocked him, held it tightly against his balls for a couple of seconds.
“Is that the Vienna Boys Choir I hear?”
“No, more like a Mossad agent, I’d say.”
Max shook his head as he regarded the bald man. “Sloppy, very sloppy. I thought you guys were better than this.”
The man grinned through a mouthful of blood, then spat some on the carpet. “We will capture the traitor Farber and bring him to trial,” he said with a faint Israeli accent.
“Correction, your fellow operatives will try to capture Farber. But lucky for you assholes, you two are finished.” He turned to Leet. “Find Daniel and Shai and meet me at the car.”
“What about these two?”
“They’ll be taken care of.”
“Just be quick about it.” She grabbed her purse and bag and hastily departed.
Max knelt next to the bald man. “So how many more of you are there?”
“Enough. We will seize what we seek and murder those who stand in our way.”
/> Max nodded. “Okay, then. Be sure to tell your friends all about me.” He grabbed him by the shoulder and flipped him face down. Then, drawing the Ka-Bar from the sheath at the small of his back, he deftly slashed the back of the bald man’s leg just above the knee, severing the hamstring. The slaughterhouse pig squeal that followed left Max’s ears ringing, but he finished the job and severed the other hamstring. True to his word, neither operative would be chasing them again.
After returning his weapons to their respective holsters, Max grabbed his pack and headed for the door. On the bed, the muscular maid moaned softly through her shattered jaw. “Use a gun next time, sweetheart. Rhonda Rousey, you ain’t.” Good thing. Had she gone the pistol route, she could have shot him in the head the instant she entered the room.
Max knew why she hadn’t. She had something to prove. He remembered the type from the CIA: cowboys who valued their vanity over their objectives, always utilizing their strongest skills in a fight as opposed to the method most appropriate for the situation. The most dangerous kind to work with. He doubted the bald man with the severed hamstrings would consider partnering with the bodybuilder again, if either ever returned to work.
The Mossad’s misfortunes put him in a fine mood once more, until he noticed his spilled bottle of diet Dew lying on the walkway. “There’s always a catch.”
He found Leet and their charges awaiting him in the downstairs breezeway. “You men all right?”
“Fine,” Daniel said, clearly shaken. Max wondered what the drag queen operative had said to him. Not enough to make him give up that case.
“How about you, big guy?”
“I lost Bao,” Shai said, staring at the floor in dejection.
“Bao?”
“His stuffed rabbit,” Leet said. “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll find you another as soon as we can.”
Where other children might have protested and thrown a tantrum, Shai merely nodded in melancholy resignation.
“We have another problem,” Leet said. “The maids disabled our car, cut every wire in the engine compartment.”
“So much for the four mice. Let’s find another ride.” Do it fast. More of them might arrive at any time.
Max led them out of the breezeway and past the sagging fence surrounding the cement pond. A quick scan of the lot revealed only the same broken-down heaps he’d seen when buying his soda. “Down there,” Leet said, already striding toward the far end of the building.
“Nice catch,” Max said when he spotted what she had in mind: a snot-green Plymouth Roadrunner trimmed in black. The owner had kept it close to factory original. No hotrod modifications, it was pretty beat up, paint faded by the searing California sun, with portions of the lower body rusted through. Though no expert on classic cars, Max pegged it for late 60s vintage. The number 383 was painted beside the hood vents. They don’t make engines that big anymore.
“Let’s hope it runs better than it looks,” Max muttered. The owner likely resided behind the nearest door, passed out in a drug coma if luck was with them. “I’ll get us inside.” He made for the small window behind the driver’s seat, ready to smash it so he could pull the door lock knob.
“No, let me,” Leet said, pulling from her purse an object resembling a twelve-inch steel ruler. “Old cars are a cinch.”
True to her claim, she slim-jimmed the Road Runner in under ten seconds. They quickly ushered Daniel and Shai into the back seat. Leet got behind the wheel and began hotwiring while Max grabbed shotgun.
Leet’s prowess at car theft astounded him; she actually carried a small hotwiring kit in her purse. The 383 roared into fiery life less than a minute later, generating enough racket through dual glasspack mufflers to notify the owner if he was in earshot. She put it in first gear and slowly pulled away, navigating around the Larrimor Motel.
“How the hell did you do that so fast?” Max asked, feeling somewhat jealous. Not bad for a Fed. I’d still be searching for the right wires.
“Would you believe I used to repo cars on my summer breaks during college?” She gunned the engine and plowed through the weedy lot toward Route 99.
Max laughed. “I would now.”
“One of our customers dealt in classic cars. Damn, I loved those jobs.”
“It shows.” He switched on the radar detector on the dashboard, anticipating a need for it very soon.
“We even have a full tank of gas.”
“Great. I wonder how many yards she gets per gallon.”
“Not many. But there are slower ways to get to Vegas. Hang on, kids.” Barely slowing to check traffic, she floored the gas and fishtailed onto the vacant highway in a cloud of rubber smoke.
Max pictured Daniel in the back seat, fingernails digging into the armrest as he hung on for dear life. Yet over the hammering engine he heard Shai hollering like a kid on a roller coaster. Good, he needs that.
As they hurtled down the road at ninety miles per hour, Max glanced into the side mirror. A white panel van pulled into the motel lot, now nearly a mile behind them. And that we don’t need. Of course, the van might have belonged to just anybody. Yeah, and I fly a broom at night. “Faster. I’ll mind the radar detector.”
Leet hesitated, glanced over at him, and realized he must have seen something. A bit shaky, she dropped her foot a little further.
Shai laughed and hooted uproariously in the back seat.
CHAPTER 10
They sat in a diner at a truck stop about twenty miles from Vegas, each silently relishing the air conditioning and the food just set before them. “Doesn’t look bad,” Max commented. “I’m hungry enough to eat a steak from a truck stop.”
“Eh, mine could look better.” Leet sat across the table, next to Shai. “I thought truckers were known for demanding good food.” She picked critically at her grilled chicken salad, the lettuce a bit brown and wilted.
“I don’t think many truckers go for the grilled chicken salad.” Max cut into his steak, pleased to find it rare as he’d requested. “But who knows? Seems everyone is a health nut these days.”
“Or so they claim. And how is yours, darling?” she asked Shai, who gave her a thumbs up as he chewed on a cheeseburger.
“We don’t eat like this at home.” Daniel had opted for a double cheeseburger with bacon and a shitload of other toppings. “I have missed America, despite this ordeal.”
“You’ll be enjoying it more very soon,” Max said. God willing.
They’d had it pretty easy since leaving the motel—no one else tried to assassinate them, anyway—yet their trek had been fraught with minor inconveniences, starting with the Road Runner. Its original owner must have lived in a cooler climate or appreciated roasting in his car, for he’d neglected the option of air conditioning, leaving the foursome with only open windows to combat the ninety-five-degree temperature. At least it’s a dry heat, kind of like riding in a convection oven.
Fortunately, the breeze blasting through the windows had somewhat drowned out the noise on the radio, country music, Daniel and Shai’s preferred genre, though it wasn’t Max’s first choice in music. Guess it beats what passes for pop music these days. Their tastes didn’t surprise him, however. Many foreigners still envisioned the US as a cowboy culture, having been raised on Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. Daniel knew better after spending many years studying in the US, but some men were romantics at heart, Max supposed. Why can’t he dream of being a rock star instead of a cowboy?
Max had already filled the Road Runner with fuel and octane boost, which the owner had been nice enough to leave under the driver’s seat. Now he filled himself in earnest, though he remained diligently on the job, watching cars through the plate glass windows up front and observing patrons as they entered. They might have given all of their numerous pursuers the slip, but he sure as hell wasn’t counting on it. Leet faced and observed the rear of the lot, where they’d parked the car out of sight between two disconnected trailers. They sat close
to the short hallway leading to the rear exit, just in case.
Max hadn’t finished half of his steak when he saw them, three younger men walking across the lot from an SUV. Silver Suburban or Durango, he couldn’t tell from this distance. But the men were obvious enough. Decked out in slacks and sport jackets sans ties, they looked like a trio of young professional coworkers on a road trip to Vegas, ready and eager to sample the delights of sin city. At least that was the impression they meant to convey, enough to fool the average person. As they crossed the parking lot, their friendly smiles couldn’t mask the tension in their gaits. Even though two sported relatively long hair and the other a cropped beard, to Max’s experienced eye, they wore sandwich boards spray painted with big red letters reading GOVERNMENT.
What the screamin’ fuck? How the hell do they keep finding us? A microchip tracking device came to mind, perhaps secreted in the liner of Farber’s briefcase. It would explain how both Mossad and US agents tracked them. But the Chinese too? Did they just get lucky?
He highly doubted it yet hadn’t the time to consider it now. “Three agents outside, headed our way,” Max muttered to Leet.
“Agency?”
“Or Bureau. How’s the car look?”
“Haven’t seen anyone.”
“Good. Let’s move.” Max tossed sixty bucks on the table and stood. “Quick, follow me.”
The Farbers knew the drill. Daniel gulped, and not on his double cheeseburger, but asked no questions. He dropped his food and grabbed his case from beneath the table.
“We have to go, Shai.” Leet rose and took his hand to lead him. Max had noticed him clinging to her for most of the day, perhaps as a replacement for his lost rabbit.
Max took one last glimpse through the front windows. The agents had almost reached the door. He led his group to the rear exit and opened the steel door a crack to peer outside. No one blocked access to the car. No one you can see. But he would worry about that when and if he saw them. He drew his pistol, then took off for the car at an easy jog so the Farbers could keep up.
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