The group returned to the South Point Casino. The limo driver said his goodbyes to Bandit and told him he would report to Marko. “It was a pleasure to work with you,” he said and shook Bandit’s hand profusely.
Bandit and Smokes wrapped the girls in bathrobes and took them to their room. He coordinated with a bellhop to bring them each some denims and tops while they showered. With each dressing, cleaning and hair-fixing, the girls looked hotter and more beautiful. Smokes looked at Bandit and rolled his eyes with desire.
Once they were showered and somewhat dressed, Bandit gave them $500 and told them to go downstairs and get more clothes, makeup and whatever they needed.
“Should I go down with them?” Smokes questioned.
“No,” Bandit said. “Let’s talk. You’re too easy to recognize. They are just two little hotties without makeup.”
Bandit looked hard into Shirley’s deep blue eyes. “Get down there and buy enough to get you to the coast, so you will need boots and a jacket. Keep a low profile and get back here quick.”
“Did you hear that?” Smokes said to Ruby as they took off down the hall.
“Can you hide Ruby out for a couple of days?” Bandit asked.
“I would hope so,” Smokes said. “She just keeps getting more delicious by the moment.”
“I know,” Bandit said. “Be careful.
Get geared up. As soon as they are back we need to peel for the coast.”
Shirley found the clothes shop and grabbed a pair of leather boots quick, but Ruby was too chatty and wanted to make the most of the buying spree.
Shirley tried on a leather jacket, then another until one fit. She turned to Ruby, who was chatting with a couple of the clerks. “We need to move,” Shirley said and nudged Ruby. “Remember the show times?”
Ruby didn’t get the hint and Shirley pulled her aside. “Excuse me,” she said to the clerks. “This is an important night.”
“We’ve got to move,” Shirley said staring into her eyeballs. “This isn’t over yet!”
Ruby straightened up, mentally returning to reality. They bought their threads and basic make-up and scrambled back to the room.
Bandit looked at Shirley hard, as they entered the well-adorned room. “We’ve got 10 minutes, then we are going to jam back to LA,” Bandit said. “Have you had any food or sleep?”
“It’s been awhile,” Shirley said, “But I want to move as much as you do.”
“Ruby,” Smokes said. “You will come with me for a couple of days, until the dust settles some.”
“Okay,” Ruby said. She dressed quickly and with a little eye shadow and lipstick and those boobs, she could stop trains.
“Let’s go,” Smokes said and opened the hotel room protective door. A 45-caliber bullet slammed into the door jam. Smokes dropped to the floor, pulled his 9 mm souvenir and dropped the shooter.
“We’ve got company!” Smokes grabbed the girl’s hand and ran the opposite direction.
Bandit and Shirley scrambled right behind them. They burst into the metal emergency stairway and started to run down the stairs.
A black sedan idled in front of the casino and suddenly a couple of heavy suited security guards burst out of the sedan and ran into the casino.
Bandit and the three burst out of a parking exit door and Bandit headed for his bike. “Can you make it?” Bandit asked.
“I know the guy,” Smokes said. “They stashed my bike.”
Smokes and Ruby ran down one level and mounted his FXR. “Hang on,” Smokes said as he fired the hot rod to life.
At the same time, Bandit’s Evo fired up and they peeled toward the entrance. Bandit flew down the ramp and Smokes burnt rubber on the slick concrete and followed. Both bikes flew out of the parking garage into the brightly lit registration over-hanging lights like two bandits escaping the scene. They were on fire and as they blasted past the sedan, one of the security troops burst out the glass doors and started to fire.
The bikers were gone in the early morning darkness. Smokes leaned right onto the freeway north and Bandit screamed south.
Bandit calculated his fuel supply. He could ride hard to about Baker before he would need fuel. Something else bothered him. He only had a small Walther PPK 9mm with one 6-round magazine. He also wondered who the hell these guys were, but suspected Freddie’s supplier—the mob.
The war had just begun between the Satans and the mob, and they were tipped off to Smokes somehow. What a mess. But Bandit wondered what the hell was going to connect him to these guys and how to deal with it. He wanted as much distance between him and Vegas as possible.
Bandit still had Sin Wu to think about as his bike made light of the weaving 15 as it lifted off the desert floor into the McCullough Range. He loved the sound of the modified FXR running hard with D&D pipes, an Andrews cam and Branch heads. He had just about 100 desert miles to cover as he sliced past slow-moving trucks over the hills and back onto the flat plains of desert.
They slid off the freeway at the second Baker off-ramp and spotted the famous Big Boy thermometer sticking three stories into the sky and indicating 95 degrees at 5:00 in the morning as the sun lifted the dark shield in the east.
Without a word, Shirley dismounted, hit the head and returned with two protein bars and two small bottles of water. Bandit refueled, guzzled, ate and tossed the trash in the can. They mounted again and cut a dusty trail to the western on-ramp and rolled onto the 15 once more. Bandit pushed the speed as hard as he could but the California Highway Patrol would be watching.
Just 30 miles out of Baker, almost halfway to Barstow, they crested the Cady Mountains when a dark sedan flew down the hill behind them and slowed. Bandit held tight to his throttle with his right hand and reached into his vest.
Terrified, Shirley held on for all she had as the rear window rolled down and a thug in a suit pointed a sawed-off shotgun out of the window. They were both doing 85 mph, but instead of attempting to run Bandit pulled next to the sedan, so close his footpeg scratched the door.
The thug tried to hold the shotgun steady in the wind on the rough asphalt and Bandit aimed the PPK at his face. “I am not a Satan, or the member of any club,” Bandit said.
Some conversation took place. “Don’t come back to Vegas,” the gunman said. Bandit nodded, pulled ahead as the sedan abruptly pulled off at the Harvard off-ramp, the home of a dilapidated truck stop, slid to a stop, darted over the freeway and headed north on the 15. There was going to be serious trouble in the Vegas paradise.
Shirley gave Bandit an extra squeeze. “Let’s stop for breakfast in Victorville,” Bandit said. “You’ve seen enough.” They pulled off the freeway as the sprawling LA traffic and community surrounded them. The LA metropolis continued to expand and would someday reach Vegas.
Bandit and Shirley dismounted as the sun crested the hills and ducked inside the Denny’s into the air conditioning. They slipped into a booth with Bandit watching the door. She slipped out of the booth and went to the head. Bandit reached in his vest, pulled his cell out and called Marko. “I’m in Victorville with Shirley. You can move Sin to a safe place.”
“Okay,” Marko said and hung up.
When Shirley returned, she had freshened her make-up and fixed her hair. Bandit pondered the incident on the freeway. He rolled the dice big time with his gamble. It was the mob or they would have been splattered all over the highway. He needed to make a call, but it could wait.
Shirley sat quietly and looked at the menu. She had to be almost 5’6”. She carried a distinct stature and grace in her movements. Here beauty glistened more at each viewing. Bandit wondered if he was getting tired and hazy. She turned more beautiful every time he looked at her like a peach, a Plumeria plant blossoming or a baby with a pure demeanor. Her features were warm and round, and when she smiled, glass melted.
“What would you like, Bandit?” Shirley asked. Even her voice softened frozen butter.
A waitress approached and she stared at Shirley as if she’d encountered a movie star. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Bring us both coffee and orange juice,” Bandit said.
“What are you thinking about having?” Bandit asked Shirley.
“I’ll have whatever you have.” Her level of sincerity seemed dream like. He began to see what Sin Wu saw in this heavenly body.
The waitress returned with mugs of hot coffee and glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice.
“What’ll it be?” the tall waitress said, staring at Shirley as if to ask for an autograph. Shirley looked at Bandit.
“I’ll have six egg whites scrambled, some cottage cheese and wheat toast after the meal,” Bandit said.
“I’ll have the same, but make it three eggs for me,” Shirley said.
Bandit couldn’t believe it. She didn’t smoke. She wasn’t looking for a beer. She didn’t blither about what they had just been through. She sat upright and quietly for a few minutes and didn’t utter a word, but then Bandit noticed her put her right hand over the Bodhi-tree seed bracelet on her left wrist.
Bandit waited and watched her breathe evenly. She meditated quietly until the food arrived.
As soon as it did, Bandit dug in. He took a slug of his coffee and said, “So far so good.” He held up his mug and clinked it, in a toast with Shirley.
A tear ran down that child-like cheek and she took a deep breath.
“Don’t say anything,” Bandit said. “We have another major hurdle or two in front of us, but from now on, you will be out of harm’s way. We need to focus on Sin. How long have you studied Buddhism?”
“Just as long as I’ve known Sin,” Shirley said. “She introduced me and it changed my mind and my life.”
They finished their breakfasts without another word. Bandit paid and they hustled out to his stretched FXR highlighted with Mudflap girls.
“Your bike is a knockout,” Shirley said and squeezed his arm. They mounted the chopper, refueled, fired it to life and rolled toward the city.
At just after 5:00 in the morning, Sin Wu sat up in bed, smiled and set her cell phone on the nightstand. For the first time in a couple of weeks she could finally relax.
Just then, the front door of her loft apartment burst open and three Satans members stormed inside. Sin turned and reached for her phone but the leader kicked the nightstand over and crushed the phone with the heal of his engineer boot.
“Don’t need to dress,” he said with a nasty slur. “You won’t be wearing anything but seaweed in your limited future.”
His brothers lead her out the door. The boss of the group had a nickname: Captain Blood. He ran a party pirate boat from Long Beach to Marina Del Rey. “Wait,” he snapped. “I’m not done.”
The brothers pushed her back into the room, where Blood pulled a jeweled incrusted blade out of his belt, yanked Sin’s left arm and slit it with the knife. He let her bleed on her bed and on the floor, before harshly wrapping the arm with a stained Satans bandana. “Get her out of here. There’s gonna be a party tonight.”
Before the sun shed hot light all over the coast, the brothers slipped Sin onto Captain Blood’s 50-foot Formosa, decked out to be a pirate ship, the Village Maid. Blood wasn’t a big guy, but he played all the Captain, outlaw leader cards, as if he could do no wrong and no one around him could do no right. He barked orders constantly.
By noon, his Taiwan-built ketch was a buzz of activity, dressing it up with pirate flags, skulls, and anything nasty, including a couple of operational brass cannons. Below, two club girls dressed as slinky pirate wenches were high on meth and dressing Sin to be the captured maiden in lavish multi-layered French skirts, bustier, and heavy make-up. The Chinese eyes didn’t really fit with the 15th century lace-strewn dress, but no one would care.
“Has she been fed and used the head?” Blood snapped as he reviewed her refinements. She looked hot as a firecracker with her sizeable satin boobs spilling over the top of the mock historic dress.
The club house kittens shuddered in their boots. “Yes,” one of them stammered. “She didn’t have much to eat.”
“She doesn’t need it,” Blood snapped. “Strap her down. Customers will be arriving soon.”
Sin took advantage of a momentary calm and kicked the Captain in the balls, shoved him aside and darted to the teak wood galley ladder, but two Satans members waited at the top.
“Don’t hit her,” Blood spat, straining to stand straight. “Send her back down and wait for me.”
Sin backed down the nicked and scratched varnished ladder and turned to meet the Captain on the teak deck. “I’ll take you up that ladder once more later tonight,” he snarled. “After my customers have had their way with you.”
“Chain her down,” Blood commanded the house kittens and they scrambled to obey. On either side they pushed Sin onto a large thick cutting board like wooden laminated table, strapped her down with each wrist in a leather harness, attached to small chains connected to the table with shackles. Her ivory neck was handled the same way and it was tough to breathe. She squirmed against the bindings. Finally, her delicate ankles were hoisted into stirrups with her legs spread. She couldn’t move.
The Captain leaned over and ran his tongue over one boob, up her neck and up over the side of her face. “I may be your last,” he sneered.
He met his brothers at the top of the stairs. “Customers will be arriving soon,” Blood said. “Here’s the deal, for five bucks customers get to tear at her clothing. For 20 they get to touch her and for 200 they can fuck her. We’re going to make bank tonight. You guys need to get in your costumes.”
As the sun warmed the asphalt in Riverside to 99 degrees, Bandit and Shirley slithered through bunched traffic as they entered the city. Moving slow but steady, they made their way toward the coast. Shirley held tight. She wasn’t accustomed to splitting lanes and dodging distracted drivers.
Bandit could sense his phone ringing in his vest, but there was no checking as he maneuvered for his life on the crowded freeway. At almost 3:00 in the afternoon, they neared the 110 freeway and the sea air cooled them as the headed south directly to San Pedro on the point and the Port of Los Angeles.
As the smiling Shirley and relieved Bandit pulled in front of the Cantina, they were met by Marko and Frankie. “Sin doesn’t answer her phone,” Marko said. “I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Tina, help Shirley get settled in my apartment,” Bandit said. “Frankie, take care of my bike.” He looked sternly at Marko. “Let’s go in the van.”
“Step on it,” Bandit said as they pulled out of the parking lot and headed east over the Vincent Thomas bridge toward Long Beach. They flew into downtown and they both scrambled out of the van and into Sin’s building.
Her door was ajar and the jam shattered. They searched and found the blood on the bed. Bandit called the Redhead at the Pacific Marina. “Hey baby. What about a party boat?”
“The club boat just pulled out,” the Redhead said concerned. “All the big bad crowd on board.”
“I need a skiff, quick and a boat handler,” Bandit asked. “What can you do?”
“For you, anything,” the Redhead said. “I’m on it.”
The sun began to sink in the west as Marko and Bandit pulled up to Pacific Yacht Landing. The Redhead ran out of her office. “What’s wrong?”
“They have one of my best girls on a party boat,” Bandit said.
“It’s the new club guys,” Marko said. “The Satans.”
“Their boss, Captain Blood, has a Pirate Party Boat and it’s happening tonight,” the Redhead explained. “They pulled out awhile ago heading out of the harbor. I found a skiff.”
“I can’t speak for the captain, but the skiff will get you there,” the Redhead said. She introduced Bandit and Marko to Timmy, the skiff owner and a talented fabricator in his day. The little stub of a man spent the last ten years in a bottle and it took its toll on him mentally and physically. He struggled from day to day.
“Hey,” Timmy, the toothless wharf rat said. “I’m gassed up and ready to roll.
“We’re burnin’ daylight,” Bandit said and he gave the Redhead a hug and they hauled ass down the ramp toward the ratty tool-filled skiff. It didn’t look like it could make it across the narrow channel, let alone out to sea, but Timmy used it constantly to tow broken down private boats and make an extra buck.
“We may need to sink this bastard,” Bandit said. “Do you have the tools?”
There were 15 Satans, several believers and just a couple of girls on Captain Blood’s Formosa and the rum, tequila, whiskey and tacos flowed.
His lieutenants readily collected various amounts from the customers and the levels increased as the brothers toured the salon where Sin was shackled and drugged for maximum impact. She looked to be a real captured princess of another captured galleon in the Caribbean.
Blood hadn’t allowed the action to start, teasing his customers, but a couple of his outlaw brothers tore at her clothing and exposed one soft breast and touched an aroused ruby nipple.
The Formosa motored at just a lumbering five knots as it weaved through various channels away from Wilmington searching to reach the main channel and the inner harbor.
***
The ratty skiff pushed against the tide. The old vibrating outboard shook against the cracked and split transom wall. There was not an inch of open space in the leaking skiff not covered in bags of tools, leaky oilcans, gas cans, oily line and rags. They pushed on in the dark empty channel looking for a black ketch flying a pirate’s flag and sporting party lights and reverie.
The skiff, once painted red, white and blue, now a scuffed and stained mess pushed against the current at just over seven knots. Leaning port onto the main channel, suddenly a half-mile ahead the pirate ship laid a wake down the center of the wide channel. Bandit could see open ocean and the LA light ahead in the half moon lit night.
Bandit looked at Marko who brought his own bag of tricks. He opened the canvas bag and Bandit peered in. It contained a couple of revolvers wrapped in rags and a small disc.
Bandit looked up at Marko and their eyes met. “Just get me near the stern,” Marko said.
Timmy took over the skiff from another wharf rat, “Fat Frank,” who died on his sailboat. Paramedics were forced to cut the cabin off to top of his boat and hoist him out with a crane. Too bloated to fit out the hatch he was hoisted like an old fat cow.
Captain Blood knew one thing. He needed to be 12 miles off the coast before he could allow prostitution on his vessel. The laws for sea-going vessels were stringent and he had no choice but to lumber past the jetty for 7 miles to seaweed reef before he could allow the action to begin.
His partiers were getting lit and drawing lines of cocaine and meth on the table near Sin. They were beginning to lick her legs and tear at her clothes like hungry animals. She thrashed against the chains.
The skiff neared the stern in the dark and Bandit wanted to handle this mess before they hit the open ocean and the swells made an operation unruly. Timmy pulled close to the galleon’s stern, which stood tall out of the water like any self-respecting pirate ship.
Marko grabbed the top of the rudder, leaned in close in the mild harbor seas and planted a small electronically controlled IED against the fiberglass hull.
Timmy spun the outboard motor operating as a powered rudder and the skiff slipped away from the hull. Captain Blood stood on the quarterdeck where his brass cannon was mounted and prepared to load and fire the cannon to keep his partygoers from attacking Sin just yet. He needed to clear the jetty and the blinking LA Light every 16-seconds.
“They are going to fire the cannon,” Bandit said. “That’s our signal.” Captain Blood followed the pirates’ tradition, firing a cannon as he departed a harbor.
Marko held the firing mechanism in his hand for the explosive IED. “Hold the skiff to the starboard,” Marko instructed Timmy, who was sober for the first time in a week and terrified. His eyes expanded with every move they made. He wasn’t exactly sure what the hell was going on or how it might affect his future. He clinched his jaw and prayed his motor kept running and the skiff didn’t sink.
Bandit turned to Marko and Timmy. “As soon as he fires that cannon, let that puppy rip,” Bandit said. “Then Timmy, as it begins to list, we need to climb on board. Then stand by and watch for three of us on the starboard side.”
“Fuck,” Timmy said.
“I know you can handle it,” Bandit said.
Blood went below where one of the brothers tore at Sin’s shorts and wanted to be the first. He smacked the biker along side his face. “Come to the main deck and help me with the cannon.”
The big biker didn’t like being smacked and pushed around, but his drug haze left him soft. He just want to have a piece of her. He strained not to fight, but ripped open her blouse to reveal her succulent white tits in defiance. They giggled in the faux candlelight, she screamed.
“Another ship approaches,” said one of his crew. “Let’s fire on her.”
“Go fire the forward cannon,” Blood hollered. “I need to steer the ship. “Just light the fuse and stand back.”
The biker scrambled to the bow, fucked with his lighter and finally got a flame going in the evening offshore breeze. With one calloused palm blocking the wind he held the flame to the fuse and it lit immediately creating a band of sparks flying around the burning fuse. “Stand back,” the captain shouted from the helm where he held the massive wooden wheel and steered his Village Maid toward the LA light.
A small sailboat approached and the drunks on board waved as they watched the party rage and the crew waved fists and swords. “Let’s board her and take their women. We need more,” one outlaw shouted. The other brother screamed in the night as the cannon went off and the sailboat turned away.
The skiff rolled against the wake from the pirate ship and Marko held firm to throw the switch. The blast wasn’t timed perfectly, but they saw the small charge blow a hole at water level, just after the cannon went off.
The team in the skiff held tight to wait for a reaction but there was no movement on the main deck except the cannon blast celebration. It was impressive and distracted everyone except Blood. He fired the cannon often and never noticed a secondary reaction beneath his feet.
“She wants to use the head,” one of his house mousses approached the captain.
“Fuck her,” Blood growled. “Quickly, un shackle her and let her use the head, then strap her down again, quick.”
The diminutive blonde, who had a penchant for bikes, loved the parties, the action and motorcycles flying free on highways in the middle of the night. She delighted in the drugs and her eyes glistened in the night as a tattooed snake weaved up the side of her neck.
She scrambled below and shared her instructions with her long straight-haired brunette partner in crime.
The salty oil harbor brine rushed in the foot diameter hole in the stern and took in the fragments of fiberglass hull. In a matter of minutes the hole in the hull only partially under water became submerged below the water line. The narrow v-shaped bilge filled first, then salt water began to splash against the cast iron engine casing, dulling the sound of the thumping diesel.
Blood, a seasoned captain, noticed the altered hum of his engine and wanted to go below, but then his ship listed and he heard a scream. Sin came out of the head with a faux, line-handling, wooden pin and smacked one of the girls.
Bandit spotted the Captain peering over the side and his ship listing. “Let’s go,” Bandit said and Tim accelerated toward the starboard side of the ship leaning toward the channel.
Suddenly there was pandemonium on the Village Maid and brothers ran to the port side like scurrying rats running from a salty death at sea.
“We’re sinking,” a crewmember shouted. “Mayday, mayday,” another drunken pirate shouted at the sea. They could see marinas less than a half-mile from where the Blood boat foundered in the channel.
The captain had no dinghies, but someone called 911 on a cell phone. Timmy deftly pulled the skiff along side the tilting ketch. Marko and Bandit scrambled onboard. Marko followed as Bandit make his way to the cockpit at the stern. They both donned Pirate garb to fit in with the party.
Bandit scrambled below, where Sin Wu fought the biker broad. He grabbed Sin. “No more fun,” He said. “Let’s go.”
The blond recognized the rescue mission and screamed for Captain Blood as the salty brine started to lap at her feet. She screamed again as the cold seawater jarred her senses. She looked a Bandit with terror in her eyes.
Blood left his station and stormed the hatch leading below, but Marko, a master at Judo and Close Quarters Combat met him with a couple of solid strikes. The captain went down.
Other brothers spotted the exchange and charged the two. But the ship listed and threw them off balance. Sirens sounded at the coast guard dock and the crew scrambled aboard their steel, armed vessel. A fireboat pulled away from its dock less than a half-mile away on the other side of the channel.
Unlawful brothers tossed their party favors in the channel and some dove in and began to swim for the rocky shoreline.
Bandit helped Sin Wu scramble up the hatch and pointed to the railing, which began to dip into the chilly brine. “Hold on there. The skiff is coming.”
“No so fast, asshole,” Captain Blood shouted and lifted his 45 semi-auto in Bandit’s direction. They were less than a foot apart on the tilting teak deck. He attempted to aim as mast rigging began to splash in the water. Bandit was equally off balance as he raised his hand in a mock surrender, moved between Sin and the captain and stared into the short man’s eyes.
“You’ve made a lot of mistakes tonight,” Bandit said. “Don’t make another one.” The Village Maid lurched and Bandit moved out of the pistol’s aim, it fired and Bandit’s left hand shifted the weapon farther away and he wrapped his fingers around the barrel, twisted the gun out of Blood’s hand and tossed it in the channel. He hit the captain as hard as he could with his free hand and the two brothers scrambled to the railing.
Timmy pulled the rocking skiff alongside the sinking vessel and Bandit stepped in, and then helped Sin and Marko. Another brother tried to board the skiff and Bandit smacked him with a wooden oar. Brothers in the water tried to grab the transom but Marko held them off as Timmy accelerated. “We can’t take on anymore passengers,” Timmy hollered. “They’ll sink us.”
“Drop a line tied to a life vest over the side,” Bandit said. Timmy did and let out the line.”
“Hang on,” Timmy hollered to the swimming crew. “Keep your heads up.”
As the fireboat approached, they dropped the line and the brothers were hauled aboard.
“Shirley’s waiting for you at the Cantina,” Bandit said as water splashed over the bow and they motored back up the channel.
“In our bed?” Sin asked.
“You know it,” Bandit responded.
