Operation Sea Ghost by Mack Maloney

Author:Mack Maloney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780765365231
Publisher: Forge
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

17

THERE WAS A bad part of town in Monte Carlo.

It was tucked into a corner near the east end of the city; a single block lost in the shadows of the tallest luxury buildings.

The block was comprised of a few elderly apartment buildings, a handful of open-air cafés and what passed for a variety store in this part of the world. An alley snaked through the small neighborhood and down this alley, after a few twists and turns, was a tiny hostel.

It had seven minuscule rooms, stacked one on top of another. Batman and Twitch were now occupying the top floor.

They had no money and they’d exhausted every way they knew of to get any. Their debit card simply did not work. Nor could they figure out how to successfully make a phone call.

They were able to rent the room in the formerly sold-out boarding house only because they convinced the owner they were expecting funds to be wired to them soon and would pay him twice the going rate once they arrived. Because the proprietor was missing three fingers on his left hand, Batman and Twitch purposely exposed their prostheses while spinning him this tale. He rented them the room for nothing up front.

So they had a roof, albeit leaky, over their heads. And they had a place to sleep, though it was basically two rollouts on a cracked tile floor with folded towels as pillows.

They’d also eaten a little by walking through the Sun Casino, again prostheses in full view, and openly stealing bits of food from the buffets.

But there was no getting away from it.

They were the poorest two people in Monte Carlo.

* * *

THEY’D MOVED INTO the room shortly before midnight, five hours after being thrown out of the Grand Maison.

The next morning was the day before the start of the Grand Prix, and as bad and rundown as their hotel room was—its previous occupant had been arrested for counting cards, creating the vacancy—it actually had a fairly good view of Avenue des Beaux-Arts. Had they wanted it, they would have had an excellent seat for the race. But this had zero interest for Batman. He was still trying to figure a way out of their bizarre situation. Watching multimillion-dollar cars go flashing by their flophouse at 180 mph was the last thing he wanted to do.

The noise of these race cars revving their engines for practice laps roused him after only a few hours of restless sleep. In those first few uncertain moments upon waking, reality hit him like a ton of bricks. They’d arrived in Monte Carlo in first class, were given everything imaginable—the best booze, the best drugs, the best girls, ultraplatinum accommodations—and then suddenly, they’d been turned into nonpersons, virtual untouchables. Just when they should have been on top of their game trying to locate the Z-box, they’d been completely marginalized—and probably robbed.

Whoever was screwing with them was an expert at it.

* * *

FOR BETA SQUAD, the worm began to turn just after Batman woke up.

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