The Minotaur by Stephen Coonts

Author:Stephen Coonts
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

17

A woman from the garage called at 10 A.M. and said his car was ready: $119.26. Camacho told her he would stop by after work. She hung up before he could even ask what the problem had been.

Dreyfus gave him a ride and dropped him in front of the showroom.

The new cars gleamed shamelessly and flashed their chrome with wanton abandon as he walked by. Light, easy-listening music sounded everywhere. Two salesmen asked if he needed help.

He paid for the repairs at a window where a harried young woman juggled two phones as she pounded numbers into a computer. He surrendered his driver’s license for her scrutiny before she asked. Without even glancing to see if his puss matched the photo, she copied the number onto the check and slid it back at him.

His six-year-old car sat amid twenty or so others of its vintage on a gravel lot out back. Dingy and coated with road grime, it hadn’t seen wax since…not since he gave his son twenty dollars that Saturday two years ago and the kid let the wax dry like paint all over the car before he tried to wipe it off.

Camacho unlocked the door, rolled down the windows and tossed the yellow card dangling from the rearview-mirror bracket onto the floor. The car started readily enough and ran sweetly. He examined the invoice. Diagnostic test. Defective spark plug. Defective lead cable? Ouch—they got him there! Labor. How is it a garage can charge $55 per hour for a mechanic’s time?

About two miles from the garage was a shopping center with a large parking lot, most of which was empty except for light poles and a couple of cars that looked as if they had sat in those spots all winter. One even had two flat tires.

He parked near it and got his jack from the trunk. The rear end went up first. He had an old army blanket in the trunk and spread it under the car so he wouldn’t get too filthy.

With coat and tie on the back seat, flashlight in hand, Luis Camacho slid gingerly under the car. He knew exactly what he was looking for, but it might be hard to spot.

Five minutes later he stood beside the car and scratched his head. If Albright had put a bomb in this thing, where was it?

After a thorough scrutiny of the engine compartment and the trunk cavity, he attacked the door panels and rockers with a Phillips-head screwdriver. How many possible places were there? The backseats? Could he get them loose and look under them? The odds of a bomb being there were small, of course, but there was a chance. Just how big a chance, Camacho didn’t know. Peter Aleksandrovich Chistyakov was not a man to take unnecessary risks. That double-agent discussion yesterday had frightened Camacho, coming as it did from a man who owned an assassin’s pistol and had enough gadgets in his attic to blow up half the cops in Washington.

To assess

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