“I’m fine.”
“You’re fine.”
Hondo changed the subject and said, “Jett told me what she saw up until she left the parking lot.”
I said, “Wasn’t much after that, except Berenko and his crew got the MAVs from me.”
“MAVs. That’s what they were after?”
“Yeah, real cutting edge technology. They’ve got wings like a dragonfly, they’re the size of a bee, and a hell of a lot more deadly.”
Hondo said, “How many?”
“All of them. Three thousand.”
“Did you see where they went?”
“Nope. I called Agent Harris and told him about it. He’s got everybody but his grandmother looking and watching.”
“And he blames you.”
“Oh yeah. He’s probably going to arrest me before it’s all over.”
Hondo looked at Jett, then back at me and said, “Then we need to get busy.”
Jett finished with Hondo’s head bandage and kissed the top of his head. She said, “Okay, take me to the Page Museum Parking Lot and blindfold me.”
I said, “I knew she was kinky the minute I laid eyes on her.”
Jett grinned and said, “When I woke up after the explosion I was blindfolded, but I tried to memorize the route they took to La Brea. I think I can trace it backwards if I’m blindfolded.”
Hondo said, “I’ll get a few things from the safe, then we can go.”
As he spun the combination I said, “If we can find them, maybe Harris won’t put me in a jail cell with some prison-tatted guy named Tripod.”
“That,” Hondo said, “Should be all the incentive you need.”
**
When Hondo says ‘A few things’, what he means is enough gear and weapons to take over a small country.
He finished loading the last of it in the GTO’s trunk and I said, “You know, Hannibal used elephants; I think you forgot to pack one.”
Hondo closed the trunk and said, “Pack light, that’s my motto.”
Jett got in the front seat and yelled, “Shotgun.”
I jingled the keys at Hondo, “Tsk-tsk, I guess you get the back seat.”
Hondo rolled his eyes, then adjusted the dark windbreaker that covered the two Kimber .45s he carried in shoulder holsters. He was ready.
We positioned the GTO as close as Jett and I could remember to where the Mercedes had been parked, Then Jett put on the blindfold. “Go out of the lot and take a left,” she said.
We meandered through the streets of greater Los Angeles with Jett saying, “Go a little faster,” or, “”Little slower, Ronny,” and with her giving occasional direction changes left and right. Twice she asked us, “Is there a stop light up ahead?” and both times she was right.
We drove on through the city and worked our way up into the hills, higher and higher. This was pricey territory and mansions dotted the hillside behind gated entries that guarded personal driveways. As we pulled up to a stop sign, Jett said, “It’s not far ahead, maybe a quarter mile or a little more.”
She took off her blindfold but kept her eyes closed and said, “No, we need to turn right here and then about three or four hundred yards up there’ll be an automatic gate. I heard it working when we approached it.”