Live Fast, Spy Hard: A Spy Thriller (John Sand Book 2) by Max Allan Collins & Matthew V. Clemens

Author:Max Allan Collins & Matthew V. Clemens [Collins, Max Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647349943
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2021-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

Ten

AGENT OF GUILE

Sand made a stop just outside Vegas at a gas station where he washed up and got into a quick change of clothes from the duffel – fresh Ban-Lon, jeans, and sneakers, all in black, which didn’t look that different from his combat garb but at least didn’t smell of blood, sweat and excrement. Smiling at himself in the bathroom mirror, for having just nearly quoted Churchill, he looked presentable enough to risk going straight to his old boss at the new headquarters.

Soon he was on Interstate-15, the new superhighway connecting Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. He drove northeast out of town, putting the city’s glitter in his rearview mirror. By the time the desert surrounded him, Vegas was a dim if insistent glow behind him.

About eleven miles out Sand took an exit, the ramp leading down to a narrow two-lane. He turned right, kicked on the high beams, then followed a blacktop for nearly a mile. His headlights revealed only negatives – no buildings, no plants, not a stray road sign, not even a jackrabbit.

Had he memorized the directions wrong?

Then, through the blackness to his left, he glimpsed a chain link fence, extending down the opposite side of the road past his high beams. He slowed and eventually the fence was interrupted by a gate, yawning open onto a gravel drive.

If this was indeed his destination, Sand was either expected, thanks to the President’s doing, or whoever was in charge of security here figured the installation was so far out in the boondocks that no one would ever find it.

He drove until high-mounted security beams came on – indicating he’d either been seen or had triggered them - illuminating a graveled parking area with just a beat-up pickup truck - in only slightly better shape than Charlie Woolford’s after it got shot up - fronting a sizeable Quonset hut behind which a massive-looking barn loomed, time having stripped most of its red paint off and leaving only gray behind, a structure that looked like it wouldn’t take much of a wolf to huff and puff it down.

The security lighting was bright enough to make silhouettes out of a sea of towering shapes surrounding the Quonset hut. But as Sand climbed from the parked Fairlane, he realized what he was looking at – a sort of junkyard with one theme: aisles of dead, oversized signs, the neon refuse of hotels, casinos, restaurants, and bars in Vegas that had either gone out of business or redesigned their logos. These electric, but unlighted, tombstones constituted a sort of neon graveyard.

Three creaky steps led to a small porch up to the Quonset hut’s door where a sign in the window said, “BY APPOINTMENT ONLY,” with no phone number posted to make that possible. But when Sand tried the door, it was unlocked. He shrugged and went on in.

The interior was an antique shop of sorts, its theme consistent with the neon cemetery outside – Vegas memorabilia, chiefly ancient slot machines

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