The King's Tomb

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jessica Clark tightened her legs hard and flexed her hamstrings and quads. The Weston Gym in Downtown LA was quiet tonight, just the way she liked it. Outside in the street a police cruiser screeched past with sirens wailing and a news chopper was hovering over a building on the next block.

She stretched her calves now, pointed her feet to the ground and let go of the bars until she was hanging upside down. She brought her hands up to her face and started to crunch up until her face was parallel with her waist. Thirty reps was the usual, but today she was heading for fifty.

Thirty-five.

It hurt. The pain in her abdominal muscles was something else, but she knew better than to let it get to her.

Forty.

Burning around her torso as the lactic acid seeped into her muscles. Up she went, crunch and back down. The sweat ran from her forehead, trickling into her eyes on the way down and running into her ears and mouth when she crunched up.

Forty-five.

Crunch and back down.

That pussy Garcetti used to mock her for only being able to complete fifteen reps of these upside-down crunches. If he were here now she’d make him eat his shorts.

Fifty and she stopped, suspended upside down like a vampire bat. The blood rushed to her head and she glanced over at her zip hoodie and cell phone. She left it on silent in the gym, but she could see it was buzzing. Someone was ringing.

She reached up — the fifty-first crunch — and grabbed the bars. Slipping her legs out of the top of the bar she spun the right way up and her training shoes hit the gym’s carpet tiles with a gentle thud.

“Hello?”

“I didn’t realize you were into heavy breathing, Agent Cougar.”

“Fuck off, Garcetti.”

“And I thought you loved me.”

“You’ve got the personality of a sweat sock, why would I love you?”

“My manly physique?”

She laughed. “Garcetti, you have to unhook your top pants button before you sit down or your gut will make it fly off like a champagne cork and put someone’s eye out.”

She heard a wistful sigh. “So how many crunches you up to?”

“Seventy.” What was the harm?

“That’s impressive stuff, Jess.”

“Why are you bothering me, Tony?”

“I have a job for you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Any details?”

“There’s an international team of assholes running around the globe, hunting for treasure and ancient relics and generally poking their snouts in where they do not belong and the boss wants them deleted from the program, so to speak.”

“When you say boss, you mean who exactly?”

“The VP.”

“Got it.”

“Yeah,” she heard a cigarette light up. “Thing is, these assholes are causing problems and it’s time they got taken out. Faulkner was very clear about offering you total carte blanche in order for you to get rid of them. You can do whatever you want and there’ll be no questions asked.” He chuckled. “Hell, you might even get the Medal of Honor.”

“Only the President can award that decoration, pinhead.”

“Oops, my bad. I was getting ahead of myself. Anyway, that’s your head’s up, so get yourself ready or whatever the hell it is you do. I’ll call when I have more details, maybe even with a kill order.”

When Garcetti hung up on her, Jessica gave the phone a look of disgust and slipped it into her pocket. She showered and picked up her gym bag. Walked out to her car. It was dark and she was parked in a side street to dodge the fee.

Three men stepped out of the shadows.

She scanned them for all the usual stuff — who was the boss, who was the strongest, the weakest, the fastest, the slowest.

Then the top dog pulled out a .38 Special. “Gimme your wallet.”

She sighed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Hand it over, cupcake.”

Jessica sighed inwardly and glanced at the TAG Heuer Aquaracer on her wrist. She was already late and now this. She dropped her gym bag on the sidewalk and cussed.

He laughed. “What, am I inconveniencing you? Hand your fucking shit over.”

She pulled her purse from the bag and stepped into the man’s shadow. Handing it over to him, he moved almost sideways to keep the gun on her but out of her reach and then stretched his hand out to take the money.

She struck like a bolt of lightning.

Flicking the purse into his face, she darted her right hand forward and grabbed his wrist. Twisting it around hard so the thumb side rotated around clockwise until his palm was facing skyward. That was as far as the joint went without breaking, which she made happen next with ruthless force.

The wrist bones shattered and split. He screamed out in pain, but she was only on the starter course. The main meal was yet to be had and now she was hungry. In the confusion, she reached out and grabbed the gun by the silencer, pushing it up into his hand until the grip slipped out of his palm.

She went with the momentum of the disarming action and swiped the gun up away from his hand and into his face where the top of the barrel collided with his nose and smashed the upper lateral cartilage into a mushy pulp.

The other two guys flicked a look at one another and ran into the fight.

Jessica was already three moves ahead. She swivelled around on her right ankle and struck one of the men in the balls with a powerful flying side kick. He went down like a dead moose and cracked the back of his skull on the side of a garbage can.

The top dog spat a wad of blood and lunged toward her, working with the other remaining guy like a tag team.

Jessica rotated back toward top dog, lifting her right leg up and driving a hefty crescent kick into the side of his head. She heard his jaw break and thought she saw it dislocate a little in the direction of the blow. He was down and out, but she finished him with a chin strike and knocked him back into the pile of garbage cans where the other guy was still out cold.

The third guy raised his palms and started to step away from her, a tire iron in his right hand. “I’m sorry, okay? I don’t want any trouble.”

“I guess that’s too bad, huh?” She glowered at him, her eyes turning icy cold and brimming over with pure hate. “’Cause you got it.”

He ran for it, but she was faster. She hunted him down before he made the end of the street. Hooking his legs out from under him she brought him crashing down into the slime of the gutter. His face slammed down in the grime as he tried to scramble away from her. He got to his feet and gripped the tire iron hard. This was it. The bitch wasn’t going to let him go so he had to take her out.

He swung the steel lever at her and she stepped not away but into the arc of the swing. Opening her hand, she brought her arm up and moved it in the iron’s direction of travel. She gripped the lower end of the weapon near the man’s hand and rotated her arm around until the elbow landed in his face and broke his nose.

He grunted and fell away from her. She seized the moment and yanked the tire iron from his hand, disarming him of the weapon in less than five seconds from his initial attack on her. She spun around and brought the steel rod down on the top of his skull and then twisted around until she was able to smash him in the face with the back of her other hand.

It struck him like iron and blasted his head back allowing her to land a punch on his left temple. He stopped fighting now and seemed to hang in mid-air for a few seconds until he started to sway on the spot like the town drunk. It was not an impressive effort, she thought and landed the final blow.

She extended the tire iron to the full reach of her arm and spun around at her waist one-eighty to maximize the momentum of the steel bar. It landed on his jaw and shattered the teeth on the left-hand side of his mouth. He fell down and landed face-first in the gutter slime, a Whopper box cushioning the final impact.

She dusted her hands off, picked up her purse, walked over to her gym bag and blipped open the doors to her RAM 1500. Climbing inside, she tossed the gym bag on the passenger seat and fired up the engine. “Three minutes,” she said with a frown. “That’s a full minute per asshole. I have to sharpen up.”