Nexus

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  “I wasn’t going to leave him trussed,” Max grumbled.

  “Good to hear. That should do it, then.”

  Max handed him a roll of cash as he went to depart. “Is five thousand enough?”

  Coddington shrugged. “Sure, but I would have taken three.”

  “Well, you know I’m a big tipper. And I still owe you one.”

  “Just remember I was never here and be thankful you didn’t catch me on the golf course. I’m going to go home now and take a very long shower.”

  “I’ll show you out.”

  The black bum watched Max seal Coddington in his car and send him off. “Thought that was your ride, chief.”

  “I lied. Mine’s over there.” He pointed to the covered Road Runner. “Where’s your buddy?”

  “Went to get more wine; you takin’ your sweet-ass time and we thirsty. What kinda satanic bullshit you do in there, slaughter a pig?”

  Max ignored the question. “See anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Nah, ain’t seen shit.”

  He nodded. “Good. I need you guys to stay on watch for a while longer.” He peeled off two more hundreds and handed them over. “Sure your friend didn’t dip on you?”

  “He’ll be back.”

  “I need some water.”

  The bum shrugged. “They’s a fountain in the breezeway, cleaner than the tap. I know the last muthafucka got kicked out that room gaffled all the copper. I coulda used that.”

  “And I could have used the water. But thanks for the info.”

  After filling their water bottles and his hydration pack from the fountain, Max returned to find Shai sitting on Leet’s lap. They spoke softly, just above a whisper, while Daniel breathed laboriously in his sleep. Max checked the time: 1915.

  “We need to leave by 2030.” Max had booked their flight from Jean Airport, about thirty miles south of Vegas. The jet company leveled a hefty surcharge on him for flying out of the tiny facility, which catered mostly to single-engine prop planes and ultralights, claiming the runway barely met their minimum length requirement. Since it was the only field near Vegas unlikely to be surveilled by their pursuers, he didn’t mind paying extra.

  “Okay. How far to the airport?” Leet asked.

  “If nothing goes wrong, only half an hour or so.”

  “And what could possibly go wrong?” She gave an exasperated smile that bordered on hysterical.

  “Let’s not worry about that now. You two try to get some rest; I’ll hold down the fort.”

  “Thanks! This chair is a regular lazy boy.” She shifted her weight in the rusty folding chair, miming the act of getting comfortable.

  You can sleep on the bed next to Daniel, I suppose. The blood is almost dry.

  Father Time rode a tortoise as the minutes crept by. Leet and Shai managed about an hour of sleep before Max awakened them. Stirring Daniel from his coma of sedatives proved more difficult. They got him up and moving, but he was dizzy and not exactly coherent, though he certainly felt pain, judging from his grunts and groans.

  “Should we give him an oxy?” Leet asked as they fitted him with the arm sling.

  “Not yet, he’s still off in la-la land. Wait till we get on the plane. I’ll go get the car.”

  When Max got outside bum number two had returned. “How we lookin’?”

  “Ain’t seen shit,” the black bum answered. “’Cept for another BMW cruised through a few minutes ago.”

  “Pimp? One of the local dealers?”

  “Prob’ly,” said the white bum, who now sipped wine the color of antifreeze from a clear bottle.

  Or someone else who didn’t know the place is welfare, maybe looking for a room to cheat on his wife. “Thanks, guys, you’ve been helpful. Anyone asks, you never saw me.” He gave them another two hundred dollars of Swift’s money. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  They’d vacated their lawn chairs by the time Max pulled the Road Runner up before the room. He predicted they would be broke again by morning at the latest. Or dead, depending on what drugs they buy.

  Getting Daniel into the back seat on the passenger side proved a trial that ate up valuable time, but Max couldn’t have him riding on the front bench beside him as he drove. Like everything else on the Road Runner, the lap belts were vintage, with no shoulder harness to keep Daniel from flopping over onto Max.

  Leet slipped into the seat behind Max with Daniel’s briefcase at her feet. “Shai, you’ll have to keep your father sitting up straight and pull him down if I tell you to duck. Got that?”

  “Yes,” he said, the word barely the tweet of a baby bird.

  “Be big on the inside, Shai,” Max said over his shoulder. “You can do it.”

  “Okay.” All big, earnest eyes, the kid took his duty seriously.

  Max adjusted the rearview mirror. “And I have a surprise for you, Special Agent Leet. You’ll find a Saint in my pack with a couple of magazines. I’ve got two more for you.” He unbuttoned his shirt, removed them from the plate carrier, and passed them back.

  “Bitchin’.” Leet chambered a round.

  One last thing… Max turned the tuning knob on the radio, cutting off some drugstore cowboy droning over a lost love, or maybe a spilled beer. “Shut the fuck up,” he muttered. A couple of moments later Led Zeppelin ruled the airwaves, working through the mellow opening bars of “What Is and What Should Never Be.”

  Kind of sums up this mission. Max drove through the lot toward Fremont at a leisurely pace.

  CHAPTER 12

  Headed westbound on Charleston to pick up southbound I-15, Max cruised at the speed limit, squinting through sunglasses into the final rays of brilliant daylight.

  “How we lookin’ back there?” he asked Leet, who sat swiveled to one side on the rear bench as she watched their back.

  “A couple of cars have been following since we turned. Blue Toyota compact, gold BMW.”

  BMW? Checking the side mirror, he saw the sedan trailing them several car lengths back in the same lane, no cars between them. I should have asked those bums what color it was. “Keep an eye on that beamer.”

  “Really? Looks like a drug dealer. Blacked out windows, chrome wheels.”

  It may have belonged to anyone, as BMWs were pretty common in Vegas, but the coincidence needled Max. He still had hope the car posed only an innocuous presence. He could easily outrun a government Suburban or Crown Vic in the Road Runner, but a BMW could match their top speed and accelerate faster.

  “Just watch it.” Max scanned the road ahead.

  Leet twisted around in her seat. “On it.”

  “I’m gonna take a little detour; see if they follow.”

  He pulled into the left lane and slowed to make the turn onto 8th St. No traffic light at the intersection, but a steady line of oncoming cars held him there. And sure enough, the gold BMW followed, pulling up about fifteen feet from their rear bumper. The driver of the car behind it blew his horn, none too subtly urging the beamer to move forward, closer to the Road Runner, but it didn’t happen.

  “Can you make out the driver?” Max asked.

  “No way, that windshield is tinted way past the legal limit. I hope you’ve got him in your mirror. I don’t want to look back for too long.”

  “I’ve got him, just sit tight for now.” Max flipped his attention from the mirror to the oncoming traffic, back to the mirror, back to the traffic. The BMW crept no closer. It’s got to be after us. Why else sit so far back?

  A break of about three seconds separated the current wave of oncoming cars from the next, which consisted of only a few vehicles. The driver of the car behind the BMW laid on his horn again.

  Max punched the gas and turned hard left, fishtailing through the intersection in a crescendo of blowing horns and shrieking tires. Free of the beamer for the moment, he roared down the quiet residential street, doing sixty as he approached a gentle turn marked 25 mph.

  �
��They just turned to follow,” Leet said when he entered the turn.

  Max floored the gas coming out of the turn, nearly raked an oncoming car. At the end of the street, he made another hard, tire-burning left, then a quick right, hoping the dogleg move would throw them off.

  Shit, which way? The next left ran straight for quite some distance before terminating at an east-west road that crossed Las Vegas Boulevard, the famous Vegas Strip. Continuing straight would bring him to the north end of the Strip proper. Yeah.

  Another quandary loomed as he shot toward the northern Strip at seventy mph. Right would take them back toward the Charleston and the onramp for I-15; left would put them on the Strip headed straight for the busy hotel and casino district, likely choked with traffic even on a Sunday night. Max generally avoided the Strip with its mobs of gawking tourists. Not being a gambler or a fan of the nightlife, he rarely had reason to go there. But he figured a left turn would serve him better, since they knew his general location, and they might have another chase car waiting for them by the 15 onramp.

  Go with the herd.

  Ramming the Hurst shifter down into third, he jammed the wheel hard left and crossed northbound traffic, engine pounding. Horns heralded his arrival on the Strip. He entered the sparse traffic of the southbound lanes and charged on.

  “We lost them!” Leet announced. “They went straight after you made that dogleg.”

  Max slowed to just above the limit. “Good, that’s a big neighborhood back there, might keep ’em busy for a while.” Had he known that neighborhood better he would have tried to lose them in the warren of streets. Good thing they don’t know that I don’t know. He smirked at his artful dodging yet wiped it off just as fast. Don’t get complacent; they’ll figure it out soon enough.

  He decided to take Sahara Avenue, which would bring them to the next onramp for the interstate. Hopefully the scum in the beamer wouldn’t puzzle out his move until he was long gone.

  In the meantime he kept his speed down as he cruised past the porn shops, strip clubs, motels, and wedding chapels lining the north Strip. Getting the cops on their ass was the last thing they needed. The bullet-scarred Road Runner attracted enough attention by merely existing.

  Their luck expired in less than a mile, when a black Suburban shot onto the road from a parking lot, its presence obscured until the last instant by a large sign for a tattoo parlor. Max barely caught sight of the gleaming grill in his peripheral vision as the huge SUV made straight for the Road Runner, intent on t-boning them into submission.

  Max stomped the gas, rocketed forward, and rear-ended the compact car in front of them, sending it spinning toward the sidewalk on squalling tires. He bit his tongue on impact, tasted blood. Their nemesis narrowly missed the rear fender and charged on across the Strip, bouncing over the grass median into the northbound lanes.

  With the compact out of his way, Max dropped a gear and charged on, back up to seventy through a maze of cars creeping along at forty. He shot into a gap between a car and a tour bus that quickly narrowed as the bus changed lanes. Sparks flew when he raked the front corner of the bus, making good his escape just before the gap closed, losing his passenger side mirror in the process. He dodged through traffic and then took to a clear section of median strip to pass more cars.

  “They’re still back there!” Leet said.

  “Yeah, I gathered that.” He swung back onto pavement, glanced in the remaining side mirror, and saw the Suburban hop the clear sector of median to join southbound traffic once again. Leet had Shai and Daniel lying flat on the bench now. Bits of glass fell away behind them when she shattered the rear window with the Saint, preparing to open up on their pursuers.

  That Suburban had something extra under the hood, for it had gained on them by the time they passed the Space Needle at the Stratosphere Hotel. The silent Saint softly chattered as Leet initiated hostilities at a distance of perhaps sixty feet. Max rapidly approached the Sahara Avenue intersection. Dismayed he noted the line of cars queued up in the right lane to make the turn. Several stretch limos sitting in the mix might have carried some entertainer and his entourage.

  Max slowed to hang the right, planning to cut around the cars, but other cars ahead of him likewise barred the way. The light turned green. The oncoming traffic opened up, so he banged a left instead of a right and cut across the northbound lanes. A tentative plan took root in his brain.

  He made it cleanly through the intersection, pleased to see the Suburban falling behind as its driver slowed to weave and crawl through the lines of angry motorists. Like the Strip, this section of Sahara ran five lanes in both directions. Flying past a couple of cars in sparse traffic, Max hung a right onto Paradise just as the gold BMW plowed into the intersection from the north side in an attempt to ram him, flying right past the Road Runner before slowing. Its driver had made a crucial mistake, the hunter now hunted.

  Max barreled toward them, positioning the Road Runner to perform a PIT maneuver.

  A Vector submachine gun appeared at the rear window behind the driver. It opened up on them in a flash of pulsing fire that cracked the windshield even further, obscuring his vision. Max ducked behind the dashboard as he swerved, the car fishtailing slightly as he regained control. He thought of drawing his pistol, then realized the folly of driving at these speeds while shooting at the same time. Forced to evade the firepower in the BMW, he revved up and passed some slow-moving vehicles traveling in the center lane. Their pursuers passed the center-lane cars on the right and wound up trailing the Road Runner, once again becoming the predators.

  The BMW gained on them, the driver rallying so his gunmen could shoot out the Road Runner’s tires.

  “They’re coming up on the side!” Max shouted.

  As the BMW pulled abreast, Leet leaned across Daniel and Shai and sprayed the car with lead. The beamer broke off and dropped back. Leet resumed her position in the rear window, still firing.

  “It’s fucking bulletproof!” she shouted. “I think I got the guy in the back.”

  She fired again, a full-auto burst that emptied the magazine. Max saw the bullets spark on the windshield as they ricocheted away. Not good. And the tires are probably solid rubber. Otherwise, why go bulletproof without going all the way? The Suburban now trailed the beamer by a few car lengths, quickly gaining ground.

  They sped flat out down Paradise, three dead-straight southbound lanes. The Road Runner lived up to its name as Max stomped on the gas pedal. Though he could barely see through the trashed windshield, he quickly brought her up over eighty, wind buffeting his face as he peered out the window to navigate. Leet continued firing bursts at gunmen in the following vehicles, who responded in kind, submachine guns extending and retracting from passenger windows.

  “Gotcha motherfucker!” Leet yelled.

  Both vehicles still followed, but the beamer no longer spat fire from the shotgun side. The golden car dropped back to let the Suburban lead the chase. Max noticed the big SUV taking evasive maneuvers to avoid her shots and wondered if it was likewise bulletproof. Knowing the government, probably not.

  “What mag are you on?” Max shouted.

  “Third.” She fired another burst.

  Shit! She would soon exhaust the ammo, reducing their defense to a semi-auto pistol. That’s what they want. Max gained some ground on the Suburban as he weaved around slow-moving cars.

  Leet aimed for the Suburban—and punched through dead center of the windshield. The black behemoth swerved, its driver possibly hit, but straightened out within moments. It had lost valuable ground, nevertheless.

  “Tires!” Max roared.

  They thundered through a green-lighted intersection. An elevated monorail now ran overhead, its concrete support posts sunk into the median. Aware they would soon reach his turnoff at this speed, Max briefly considered cutting across the Wynn Golf Club, which occupied the block to his right. No way, not in this car. He stuck to his original plan. Leet’s shots ca
me more sporadically, carefully placed and growing louder as the suppressor began to wear out, yet barely audible over the hammering of the 383.

  Both pursuit cars dropped out of effective range as Max approached the intersection for Sands Avenue. Opting to avoid the light, he followed the monorail into the Sands Avenue Station, roaring across the lot at sixty mph. Frightened pedestrians scattered from the Road Runner’s path.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Leet gasped as Max swerved out onto Sands. “He ran down two pedestrians!”

  “And you’re surprised?” Still learning. Little surprised Max any longer, particularly the CIA’s penchant for running over those who stood in their way. Just imagine what they’ll do to us.

  Their pursuers ran a couple hundred feet behind as he followed the monorail left onto Koval, then right onto a narrow street running between Harrah’s and the Venetian. The monorail cut south; Max continued due west toward the Strip, hoping he could make it through the obstacles ahead. He hadn’t traveled these backstreets in years. God knows what they’ve built in the meantime.

  He drove beneath a Harrah’s sign spanning the street. The road turned right after that, toward the Venetian’s porte-cochere and valet parking stand. Fuck! Seeing nothing but red taillights in that direction, he continued straight, floored it, and crashed through a chain-link fence into an alley running between a McDonald’s and another building. By his calculations the Strip lay dead ahead, right past a grouping of outdoor tables where fast-food lovers feasted on their favorite poison.

  Forced to a crawl, Max laid on the horn as he approached the diners. Just past the tables, vehicles passed on the beckoning Strip. Several patrons heeded his honked warning, grabbed their burgers, and hauled ass, shocked to see a shredded muscle car approaching down an alley closed to traffic. But there’s always one. Two in this case: a fat man in a ten-gallon hat with an equally fat wife, who stood at their table gesticulating in anger, signaling Max to reverse his illegal course.