“The sunset has this kind of alien glow to it from just this spot, ya know”, sighed Max.
“I feel ya man, I miss her too”, Hank consoled. But no words were going to make Max feel better about losing Emily. They weren’t involved at all, but he felt this sort of sisterly connection to her, it was an inexplicable bond that formed in only a few hours of getting to know her, and he was positive that she didn’t feel it.
That didn’t matter to him, he only wanted her company. “Fuck damn it Hank! Where did it go wrong?!” shouted Max. “We had everything planned. It was all so exactly. For fuck sake, she planned it. She should have known it best. FUCK”, Max shouted as he threw his brandy against the mirrored glass of the Bellagio’s walls. Then there they were, two men standing in front of some shattered glass waiting on the third to arrive and shatter some more.
Hank knew that this job was gonna end badly, but this time he wasn’t in the driver’s seat, so he was going to keep quiet until it was absolutely necessary to speak up. That means he’s about to die, or kill. More likely the ladder then the first. In any case he wasn’t in charge now. He had to take the backseat for this one.
A new kid, Max, created the idea for this one that Hank personally wished that he thought up himself. That’s not to say that he was jealous of the new kid, it was just that this is something he had always wanted to do, but had yet to have the materials. He was happy that this was going to get done.
He looked at his watch which read 12:30. That was the meet up time. He was there, so where were the others? Then out of the corner of his eye he saw two huge dust trails trailing behind a dune buggy. One was made by an all black escalade and the other by a turquoise jaguar x-type. He knew the buggy. He knew it well. The driver of that godforsaken hunk of shit was an old army pal, Matt .they served together in Nigeria, a secret operation that only the men who were there knew of. And even they knew the bare minimum. Matt pulled up the long strip of Nevada sand first. He smiled at Hank, showing his sand laden teeth. He removed his vintage aviation style goggles from his eyes, leaving two enormous sand less vacuums on Matt’s cranium, this almost made Hank laugh. As Matt hopped out of his dune buggy, it coughed, sputtered, and died. Matt went over and yelled, “Miserable fucking bug. You are a worthless piece of shit that nobody will ever love or want. You are a filthy filthy whore.” Then just as he kicked it, it came back to life almost immediately. “See there Hank, all she needed was a little encouragement.”
“Nice to see you too Matt. I hope you treat your women better then that”
“It’s one and the same for me ol boy.”
They shook hands, said their codes to each other and just like that, it was like Nigeria all over again. Only this time, the team was two people bigger. Just then the jaguar pulled up. As the door to the car opened Matt said, “I bet you five bucks I nail her before you do. “ Hank said nothing, he just waited to see what emerged from the car.
As each leg grazed the trim of the car on the way down to the desert floor, Hank noticed that there was something beyond just an explosives expert here. There was more charisma, more style, more…..elegance. The high heels hit the dried out earth and made dust clouds of their own. As Hank took all this in, he realized that he had only seen her from waist down. This was bad news for him. He knew that he would hate her immediately. Why? He doesn’t work well with women.
Emily shot the pair a look as if she was out to kill the two of them, and for all they knew, she was.
“Hi. I’m Emily, explosives expert, and you…please stop checking out my legs. Let’s get down to business. Where’s the other one?
“Right behind you. I’m Max. Let’s get down to business.”
Matt and Hank shot quizzical looks at each other, but they were already in for the ride.
Max folded out a collapsible table and laid the blueprints across the smooth surface. He announced loudly and confidently, “this is our plan. We are here because something was taken from us. We each want that back. Luckily I was able to contact each of you so that we may combine out interests and convert them in to one smooth ass plan. Let’s each steak our claim right here and right now. Me, I want to get the technology that was stolen from me. I invented and patented a grappling hook that was stolen by Goodman inc. I want it back and I want it now. Lets start with you there goggles. What do you want?”
“uh…I was bored. I was tired of the shit on television, and decided that it was time for more action. But wait a second…..you planned this whole job so we can get a lawn dart on a string?”
“It’s much more advanced than that. It had to pull you up too. Never before has there been this kind of technology.”
“this cheeky asshole right here is gonna try to send us to our deaths so that he can be like bloody batman! That’s fucked! But im surprisingly attracted to the idea. “
“Its not like batman at all….but im glad that you’re in . Emily welcome aboard. As the explosives expert you have much to bring to the table. Let’s hear what you get in return for this.”
“I want the money. Plain and simple. And a drink. Can I get that?”
Hank takes out his binoculars, unscrews the two eye pieces and hands them to Emily. “one sides gin, the other whiskey.”
“thanks midnight cowboy.” She says as she hands the binoculars back. “What do you get out of this?”
“Satisfaction. I want my name to go clean. If this is done right I’ll be able to do that.”
“Excellent” says Max, “Now that we all know each other well enough to call each other nicknames, we can get down to the nitty gritty. So here’s the plan. …”
They talked deep into the afternoon until the sun set on them. There was nothing in that desert. Nothing and them. It was the perfect spot to start. So they did. From that moment on the job was on, it was always on, but now they had the affirmation that they all needed.
It was starting. Emily and Max were in place, and the fact that neither of them could see Hank or Matt meant that they were in place too. Max, never being one for silence started to talk to Emily, which gave him the confidence he needed for this job.
“So how did you wind up getting into a shit storm like this?”
“Let’s not talk.”
“Well aren’t you the friendly sort. Tell you what, I’ll talk, you listen and that’ll work out just fine for me.”
Emily nodded.
“ See, I want my tool back. I want it back now. I’ve always had this problem though. I tend to get irrationally angry when things are done against me. I mean there’s a natural element of anger one is expected to adopt when he, or she, is wronged, but I get really really pissed. For instance I once threw a bellhop through a glass table just because he decided not to bring me back change. “
Emily said nothing.
“The way I figure it, he took money out of my hand. I gave him a chance to redeem himself because I’m a fair person, but all he could say is sorry, and that’s not really an explanation. So here I am, talking to a stature of a woman, might as well be the Venus de Milo, waiting for the first step. When all this goes downs, I’ll be ready. At the end though, I’ll need to take care of some side shit you know?”
“What kind of side shit?
“Oh, look who joined the party. It’s nothing that you are involved in.”
“What kind of side shit?” she coldly repeated.
“I’m a man of first impressions and no second chances, so I’m not chancing any of this. I’ve taken it upon myself to go the extra mile to really fuck these guys over. All you need to do is get out of there at exactly 2:03. No matter what alright?”
“What about the other two?”
“They got the same message earlier”
“When?”
“It doesn’t matter when, just get your pretty ass out of that building by 2:03 alright?”
“Sure.”
As Max continued talking to her, she couldn’t help but notice the subtle way he had hit on her. He had called her the Venus de Milo. As an art lover, Emily couldn’t help but wince, which was her way of smiling.
She unraveled the cords to the already laid out charges that Max had her place 4 hours ago. The detonator was in her hand and her finger was feeling twitchy.
***
Emily was a very complicated person. There were two parts of her that could not be spotted by anyone unless they were constantly monitoring each other, which is exactly what happened before her first heartbreak. She was living with her boyfriend Joey and she was a cold as she ever was. She thought that he was the only one to truly understand her, so she grew particularly attached to him, though she’d never tell. The only time that she ever really opened up to him was when she found out that he had cheated on her. In that same day she placed the picture she had drawn of him in his car. She liked to draw. She thought that this was the oddest part about her. While she had a passion to destroy, she had an equal passion to create.
Strapped to the back of the framed drawing was just a little over two pounds of C4 explosive. She almost waited until he drove out of the driveway to hit the button. Almost.
***
In the distance, a motorcade of close to 14 cars, led by a dune buggy, sped past a small town neatly causing enough wind to start a storm. “Matt is ape shit insane”, thought Hank. One of the scariest thing’s Hank had ever seen was the devilish grin on Matt’s face as he floored the foot shaped pedal on the piece of shit bug.
Matt thought that Hank was too uptight. He wouldn’t even emote anything. The truth was Matt was so far from insane that it made him go crazy. Matt could process a million situations in half a second, and that scared him so much that he was forced to take himself to an institution. He ran an underground black market at the “happy house”, from which he profited with a total of fourteen rubebrbands, three band aids, and one SS Bouncing Betty mine. Matt was standing just a little too close to the mine when the nurse triggered it, and as a result he lost a little of his hearing. He had only set it as a joke, and on one else really got it. He decided to read lips and never tell anyone because it would mess with his career. So he donned a british accent to mask the fact that he had bit off a bit of his tongue in that same blast.
