NEW YORK

Pay and Chase fly to New York to kill a violent thug who had shot Chase, shot and tortured Pay and kidnapped their teammate Brooke, intending to turn her into a sex toy. During the search they discover a brutal human trafficking ring.

Here’s the opening scene.

           Three separate, vicious, twisting jolts left Pay’s stomach hanging in a place it didn’t belong. His inner ear balance fluids screamed May Day! May Day! And his heart hammered like it did when a bad guy aimed a 45 at him and pulled the trigger.

After a fourth violent bounce, the left wing smacked the tarmac a glancing, spark filled blow and the B777-300 slammed to the runway. The 200+ souls on the plane released their held breath and looked for someplace to wipe their dripping palms. Small grins of relief began to appear, as agnostics and atheists began looking around guiltily, hoping no one had caught them praying.

Everyone was damned glad to have successfully made it to the ground. Two long, long minutes earlier, the pilot had announced, “We’ve been given clearance for a direct, high speed approach to JFK. We will be landing in the middle of a massive lightning storm. Every alternative airport we have enough fuel to reach has been closed by the same storm. JFK is our only option. In the seat back pocket there is a brochure showing safety precautions for turbulent conditions. Tighten your seat belts extra tight. Find the brochure. Read it. Determine where your two closest emergency exits are. Then assume the rough landing position. This could get very rough.”

Pay swallowed, wipe his palms on his black jeans and tapped Chase on the shoulder. “God, I’m glad that’s over. It felt like we were riding an out of control six hundred thousand pound pogo stick.”

“Last time my stomach flipped like that was on the ‘Tower of Terror’ at Disneyworld. Let’s see if I can get us a jump start on getting the hell off this thing.” Chase raised a giant black hand toward the ceiling and waved it gently. The trim, mid-forties flight attendant caught his wave, nodded, gave him a smile and waited until he and Pay had stepped into the aisle to announce it was safe for the passengers to release their seat belts.

“Jeez Chase, does everyone give you special treatment?” Pay rubbed his head where it bumped the ceiling when he stood up.

“Six hours on a plane.” Chase stood, hunched over, massaging the tender flesh around the edge of the almost healed gunshot wound in his shoulder. “These lay flat, first class seats are nice, but at six-ten, they are almost a foot too short.” Until he retired, most of Chase’s flying had been in customized NBA jets.

           “Thank God for the dividers between the seats in First Class. Means I don’t have to keep pushing the guy sitting next to me’s elbow outta my ribs.” At six-foot-five and around two hundred and eighty pounds, depending on when he’d last eaten, planes weren’t made to fit Pay, either.

Pay yanked their single carryon, a fifty-pound black canvas duffle bag full of non-sequential tens, twenties and fifties, out of the overhead and they moved quickly toward baggage claim. The primary reason they were in New York was to find and kill an asshole named Morano. He’d shot Chase, shot and tortured Pay and kidnapped their teammate Brooke, intending to turn her into a sex toy. So, there was no point in wasting unnecessary time.

Just like there was no reason to give a random skycap any time to inspect the two carefully sealed foot lockers accompanying their luggage. One was full of ammo. The other held enough weapons to start World War III.

Below is one of my favorite scenes about a really bad man. – Myles

A blaring phone ripped the snore from Morano’s throat. He grabbed for consciousness with both hands, pulled himself to the surface and lunged for the red plastic 1960’s Ma Bell telephone on the nightstand. His ribs spasmed, he collapsed back into the bed and wound up staring at his reflection in a huge, dingy, circular mirror on the ceiling. Bloody sheets covered his chest. His normally shaved head was covered with half an inch of dirty, patchy gray-black hair and his goatee had become a full beard.

An empty intravenous bag hung from a bare metal hook in the wall. And the fucking phone kept ringing.

“God damn piece of shit.” He jerked his right hand up to feel his ribs and screamed. Bloody gauze covered his wrist, palm and the stump of what had once been his thumb.

The phone stopped.

Then started shrieking again.

“Shit, fuck, god damn.” Can’t sit up. Damn phone won’t stop ringing.

Morano scooted his ass sideways over to the edge of the bed and took three slow, deep breaths, preparing himself for the pain. Lifting his left foot as high as his ribs would let him, thankful for the brace that immobilized his knee, he swung his leg quickly to the floor, using the momentum to pull his top-heavy body to a sitting position and found his foot planted on filthy, worn “romantic red” shag carpet. Jesus. Where am I, 1970?

 With his left hand he picked up the receiver, “Who the fuck is this?”

“Sergei. I’m the guy who owns you.” A quiet voice with a Russian accent.

“Nobody owns me.”

“I was pretty sure I was going to have to kill you before you woke up.”

“Come on over and take your best shot.”

“About a month ago, people I know hauled you out of a warehouse. A big guy and his friends were using you as the test dummy for their new flame thrower. And for target practice. And as a piñata. Concussion, broken ribs, cut off thumb, second degree burns, blah, blah, blah. The veterinarian we use for shit like this said to keep you in a drug induced coma on tube liquids and pain killers. Today he told us you were more or less stable. So, we could wake you up and put you to work. That’s when we turned off the intravenous feeds. He told us you should be awake about now.”

Morano groaned, clutching at his compression wrapped ribs.

Laughter rumbled from the earpiece. “There are horse tranks in the bathroom. I hope you can limp that far because you are going to need them. With broken ribs, all the ligaments in your left knee ruptured or torn and a missing thumb it’s going to be awhile before you can do anything useful.”

“Gave you motherfucker’s lots of good stuff. You owe me.”

“That was the other guys. They rescued you, drugged you, paid a doc to cauterize your thumb and wrap your ribs. Then somebody at the black ops organization Home Land Security set up to keep you at a deniable ‘Morano, we don’t know anything about anyone named Morano’ distance decided you were nothing but a big ass problem so they sold you to us.”

 “We weren’t sure we really had any use for you. After all we would need a very high return to take on someone who’s been discarded by Home Land Security as too dangerous. So, we took you as a guaranteed sale. If you don’t make us money, we shoot you and dispose of your body. They will return our money and pay us $50k. Either way we win.”

“Ah, fuck.”

“The sale is guaranteed for two months. As of now you’ve got, oh, let’s be conservative, thirty-one days left. You either generate cash or you get a bullet. There’s a box in the closet that contains some things you will need.” The phone clicked off.

Morano scanned the room. Faded yellow spurts on the sheets, drywall chalk flaking through the red velvet wall paper, rumpled circular bed with matching mirror on the ceiling. A 60” flat screen TV dominated the wall at the foot of the bed. The ache in his back told him they might have updated the TV for porn, but that he wasn’t laying on no fucking Temperpedic.