Our Only Hope

This is Chapter Seven of a book. The characters and situations will be more understandable if the previous chapters have been read. Because it is a book, some of the chapters are more exciting than others, and some situations do not complete until the next chapter. I could have run this through my regular publisher and made a couple hundred dollars, but I am posting it instead because many more people read my posts than buy my books.

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WARNING! All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.

All characters involved in sexual activity in this story are over the age of 18. If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.

Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2019 by The Technician.

Individual readers may archive and/or print single copies of this story for personal, non-commercial use. Production of multiple copies of this story on paper, disk, or other fixed format is expressly forbidden.

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Chapter Seven

The Blue Deuce

It was almost four in the morning before I got out of Davenport after making sure that Wyatt Monty was securely strapped into one of the seats of a small business jet owned by one of Master Randolph's companies. Once the pilot and I were both satisfied Wyatt would be a peaceful passenger for the many hours that it would take to get to The Society's private island prison, the pilot reached into a large pocket on the side of his jacket and pulled out a thick manila envelope. "Mister Burroughs said you would be needing this for expenses," he said as he handed it to me. "The bills are not new and not in numerical sequence," he added, "but they have been thoroughly laundered."

I must have looked confused because he quickly said, "Literally laundered... they have been dry cleaned, washed in detergent, and freshly pressed." Not waiting for my question of why, he explained, "Almost all high denomination money in this country has traces of cocaine or other drugs on it. There's no danger, except from some cop who is looking for a reason to run you in or take your money. Then they do a field test on your cash and surprise, surprise, they find you are carrying 'drug money,' which they can confiscate and/or use as a reason to arrest you."

"Tell Master Randolph thank you for his thoroughness," I replied.

"Don't mix it with your regular cash," he said quickly. "Cocaine dust transfers easily."

"I will remember that." I said. Then I asked, "Anything else?"

"There are also two messages," the pilot said. "Message one: 'Get these bastards- especially the traitor.' Message two: 'I expect to see the eighty-thousand on your expense account against your expenses.'"

"Tell him I will do my best... for both," I said as I turned to go back to my Jeep. I waited until the jet was in the air before leaving the airport and starting my trek to Los Angeles.

It is one thousand, eight hundred, forty eight miles from Davenport, Iowa, to Los Angeles, California... at least, that's what my map program told me. It also said that it would take twenty-seven hours, which doesn't count eating, sleeping, or taking other necessary bio-breaks.

When I am totally on my own for weeks at a time- which occasionally happens for personal or business reasons- I tend to revert to my natural sleep rhythm of awake four hours, asleep two. When force-driving long distances, that becomes awake three hours, asleep one. I can do that because I can fall asleep almost instantly anywhere, anytime.

I possibly could have done the whole twenty-seven hours in one giant, caffeine-fueled step, but I would be too zombified to be effective for much on the other end. So I decided to three-one it to Las Vegas, rest up there, change vehicles and identities, and then make the four-hour jump to LA.

Having been in Vegas many times, I knew several good hotels at reasonable rates- for Las Vegas- that had good beds and excellent wifi. I would need the bed to catch up on sleep and be my best for whatever was happening in LA. I would need the wifi to make full use of my techno-nerds Boris and Natasha, who were probably getting less sleep than me as they searched for anything they could find out about

The Blue Deuce

and Wyatt's brothers, Walter, Weston, and Woody.

As I was driving, Boris would occasionally update me on important things they had found, which wasn't much. His voice sounded tinny and almost insect-like in my bluetooth earpiece as I drove down the road. I was past Salt Lake City and heading for Vegas when he finally started talking about

The Blue Deuce

. According to him, it appeared to be a legitimate exotic club catering to the BDSM community. He rated their data and system security as "damn good," meaning neither he, nor Natasha, could hack into it.

His voice took on some excitement as he described the club's four-level membership system which was openly advertised on their website. The first level, called "First Floor," was public with performances and displays by members and by paid professionals. The second level, "Second Floor," was semi-private. Again there were performances and displays, but you had to be a verified member to join that level and had to be a member or guest of a member to attend anything going on there. "Third Floor" was all private, invitation-only rooms. And "Fourth Floor" was... ... Boris had no idea what Fourth Floor was.

He actually used those exact words. "I assume the levels correspond to different floors in the building the Club is in," Boris said in disgust, "but I have no idea what in the hell Fourth Floor membership is." It really irritated him when there was something that was truly hidden from his investigative talents.

"So," I said, "the Fourth Floor must be a super secret, invitation-only portion of the Club. I'll just have to figure out a way to sneak up there from the Third Floor."

"I would love to see that," Natasha said with a laugh.

"Why?" I asked, trying to hide any anger or frustration in my voice.

"Because, W," Boris said firmly, "there are only three floors to the building that

The Blue Deuce

is in."

"Oh?" I said. I didn't bother trying to hide my surprise. "I'm almost at motel one," I said flatly. "I'll check with you by wire in a few hours."

I was actually approaching a somewhat run down Motel Six in a less desirable part of town where I checked in using the same identity that I had used in Davenport. I paid for a month and said that I would be in and out a lot so they shouldn't worry if I was not in my room for several days at a time. I then sanitized my keys, IDs, credit cards, and driver's license. Once I was sure they bore no fingerprints or DNA, I left them in the little safe in the hotel room.

With my Davenport identity safely locked up for possible future use, I was ready to go. I had stopped at a long-term storage place out by the air base and put any un-needed equipment and armaments into storage. What I needed, I could carry with me in my suitcase and not draw attention to myself.

From the motel, I took an Uber to the Strip. From there, I caught a cab to the Boulder Station Casino, and finally a Lyft to a friend's business on the edge of town.

Bernard was a special friend who- for an appropriate amount of money- would use his special talents and connections to arrange a different vehicle... and a different identity... for me to use while I was in LA. He was not cheap. It was going to take a significant bite out of the eighty-thousand in expense money in addition to several large, behind-the-scenes money transfers, but the vehicle was impressive and the ID was Witness Protection quality. It would stand up to any background check I might run into, up to and including Homeland Security. Two hours later, I finally checked in at my hotel.

I used my encrypted virtual private network to check for messages. There were at least a dozen of them... all from Boris and all marked extremely urgent. I opened the first one and it said, "Stop the Jeep. Get out! Run!"

A quick check through the remaining messages showed them getting more and more urgent finally switching over to "W? Are you there? Are you still alive?"

I replied to the last message with "What the hell is going on?"

"Someone hacked your Jeep," Boris replied. "I got a burst from my safety program that tipped me that someone was trying to take over control of your brakes. Then I got booted off the system as they took over everything. I was able to reconnect about an hour ago, for just an instant but then everything switched off... and I mean everything! When I heard the news stories, I thought I'd killed you."

"Why would you think that?" I asked.

"Turn on your TV," was the response.

I turned on the set in the room and the first local station that came up was doing a live feed from a familiar-looking run-down Motel Six. The anchorette was standing with the police cars and fire trucks in the background and saying, "It would appear that the owner had just gotten into the vehicle..." She looked at her watch. "... thirty-four minutes ago, when the explosion occurred. He was killed instantly by the force of the explosion which was powerful enough to blow windows out of most of the rooms in the motel, injuring twenty-three others."

"We knew the identity I used to get Wyatt was probably compromised," I typed, "and they probably had the Jeep on surveillance videos. Sounds like the bomb installer did something wrong."

"No," Boris said, "I did. I forced a reset to regain access to the Jeep's computer. That must have over-ridden whatever it was that they were using as a detonator. I killed a man."

"Are you sure what you did was an hour ago?" I asked.

"Of course," Boris replied. Even texting back and forth, I could sense that he was insulted that I had questioned his time line.

"According to the TV, the explosion occurred only a little over one half-hour ago," I said. "You didn't do it. They probably knew you were connected in some fashion and shut it all down an hour ago to keep you from discovering anything when they planted the bomb."

I paused for a long moment as I raced through the events of the afternoon in my mind. "I left the keys in the room safe," I typed. "Those safes have a master key that overrides the combination. Someone was probably working with the motel cleaning staff boosting cars from unsuspecting tourists or construction workers in town to work on the stadium. They just picked the wrong damn car to boost."

A new person entered the conversation. The identifier said "NAT:" so I assumed it was Natasha. She said, "They've identified the body from your Davenport IDs. They think you're dead. We need to make the most of that."

"Work behind the scenes," I typed, "and make sure that the body is buried locally. After the dust settles we can reach out to the family so they know what happened. Nobody deserves to die like that."

I found myself shaking in anger. Collateral damage sometimes happens. I try to avoid it if at all possible, but my anger wasn't because of the accidental death of a bystander in my truck. For that matter, the dead man wasn't exactly a bystander. He died in my place because he was trying to steal my truck. I didn't like that it had happened, but in a way, it was a risk of his occupation. His death bothered me, but it was the blast itself that angered me. It was a much larger explosion than was needed just to kill me. Either they were very incompetent or they didn't care who else got hurt. If they were able to override Boris and keep him shut out, they were not incompetent. So they just didn't care. And that made me very, very angry with them.

"New video," Boris typed and a video appeared on my screen. The video contained the familiar baseball-looking scoreboard at the bottom. It was still beneath Mistress Tenesha, Master Tyrone's wife and a member of the inner circle, but her torment had changed. She was now strung up tightly in a naked 'X' in the middle of what looked like a nightmarish modern art sculpture intended to depict the earth or some other planet. The globe seemed to have been sliced into a dozen or so flat sections which, overall, formed a sphere around her body with at least a hundred jagged slices of metal aimed toward her like inverted mountain peaks pointing toward the middle of the giant globe.

The individual slices of the globe must have been charged with high voltage, because every few moments as the globe rotated, a blue arc would jump from one of the peaks to her skin. When that happened, the blue-white flash of light would reflect off the sheen of perspiration covering her black skin. From the tension in her body between strikes, it appeared that she thought she could keep from being shocked by holding her body totally tight and as far away from all of the peaks as possible.

Maybe that was how it worked. Maybe the voltage was always the same and whenever she relaxed slightly, her body would sag just enough to get close to one of the mountains. Then with a loud snapping "Zap!" a high-voltage arc would jump to whichever portion of her body had gotten too close. As she screamed and thrashed from the pain, additional zaps from different mountains would strike other parts of her body until she was finally able to hold still and hold all parts of her body a sufficient distance from the steel stalactites.

Maybe it worked that way... or maybe she was just supposed to think that was how it worked as she lewdly exposed her taut body trying vainly to stave off the pain of the miniature lightning strikes. Despite my rising anger, I had to admire whoever had designed this particular instrument of pain. I knew several Masters- and their pain slut slaves- who would love this terrible machine. The fact that the Monty brothers were posting a video of its use, however, meant that they were trying to increase pressure on the Shadow Council.

Below the video, the scoreboard now had three "innings" filled in. The W team had two runs listed- one for Master Dominic and one for little brother, Wyatt. The M team- the home team- the Monty Brothers- had one run, but that run was tallied in the third inning with a large number one that covered the zero in the W team's score and even spilled out into the image area. In the remaining squares for the M team, the words, "Game Over!" were flashing.

Beneath the scoreboard was a white caption area which read, "W is dead. We have no hope."

"Just got a message from Master Bouchard," Boris typed. "He is still getting the texts intended for the Shadow Council. The ransom is now five million US for each hostage. They didn't give a deadline, but they included the video of Mistress Tenesha and promised more like it as time passes."

"OK," I typed back. "I guess my next step is to get to LA and scope out

The Blue Deuce.

"

***

If you leave Las Vegas at exactly 11:45 in the morning... and it is not a weekend or a holiday... and there are no accidents or other delays... you can get to LA in four hours. Just about any other time of the day, or if there is even the slightest delay, you will be on that god-awful stretch of road for six to ten hours. I lucked out and arrived at my hotel at 3:30, beating the GPS time by fifteen minutes. Hopefully that small victory was a portend of larger victories to come.

As I held out my keys to the valet, I said as firmly as I could, "This looks like a restored '69 Mustang. The body is... but inside it is a modern Tesla power system. Do you know what that means?"

He looked at me rather blankly and I continued, perhaps a little more harshly that I had intended, "That means it accelerates like an electric race car because it is one, and..." I dropped the keys into his waiting hand. "... it costs more than your life insurance policies are worth." I gave him my best glare and finished with, "Now, do you understand?"

His eyes opened wide and he stammered out, "Yes, sir. I understand. I will dive it very carefully and I will park it in the VIP area with the wide parking places."

I smiled at him and handed him two twenties. "I appreciate that," I said, trying to sound sincere.

In a way I was sincere. I really didn't want anything to happen to that car. Assuming I was alive after all this was over, I was hoping to do a transfer purchase and add it to my personal collection. An electric muscle car is practically unique and I didn't want some punk smashing it against the back wall of a parking deck because he didn't expect it to accelerate to 60 mph in less than twenty feet. But I wasn't truly letting my personal wants and feelings interfere with the task at hand... at least not very much. I was mostly trying to make sure that the valet remembered me and remembered my face so he could describe the scary, powerful, rich man with the strange, expensive car to anyone who asked about me.

***

One of the advantages of working without a plan, or at least with a minimal plan, was that you can more easily take advantage of opportunities as they arise. The totality of my plan was to get to LA, find

The Blue Deuce

, and hopefully be led to one or more of the Monty brothers. The Deuce had a website which gave good directions, etc, but I needed more of an in if I were to find out anything rapidly. And then, right after I checked into my room, an opportunity presented itself like a sign burning in the night sky.

Actually, it was a sign burning in the night sky. I had chosen this hotel because of its proximity to the club, but I hadn't expected to see a giant, revolving, blue deuce of clubs hanging in the night sky about three blocks from my hotel window. I waited a respectable period of time and walked back down to the desk.

"Pardon me," I said as I approached the desk, "but I noticed a giant rotating sign from the balcony of my room that looks like a blue two of clubs. What is that?"

"Oh," the desk clerk said, quickly sizing me up, "that is

The Blue Deuce.

It is a rather exclusive exotic club... if you are into that sort of thing."

"You mean a strip club?" I replied.

"Well," he answered, still speaking carefully, "it is more than that. It caters to men- and women- with exotic tastes... kinky... expensive... exotic tastes."

"I'm both, sometimes," I said, trying to sound more interested. "Is it private? Or could I drop by to check it out?"

"It's not exactly private," he answered, "but it helps if you have an invitation."

I made a fifty appear in my left hand. "Could you arrange such an invitation?"

He took the bill and said, "Consider it done, Mister..."

"Guthrie," I replied, "Harold Guthrie, owner of Guthrie Tool and Die of Manchester, Ohio. I'm going to be traveling here a lot over the next couple of years and I might find such a diversion... interesting."

Two hours later, I was handing my keys to the valet at

The Blue Deuce

with a warning similar to the one I had given the young man at the hotel. Since I didn't need him to remember me, all I did was make sure he realized that there was a powerful electric car under that classic Mustang exterior.