Project Perses: Redemption

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Seven

Getting to the base proved to be a royal pain in the ass. 

After the Cathy Pacific flight landed in San Francisco, I had copied my actions that had led to me being on that flight, locating the first flight that was heading my way…which conveniently was a United Airlines flight that delivered me to McCarran Airport in Vegas just after midnight.  

One nice thing about airports is that they have big parking lots full of cars; cars that no one is going to miss anytime soon, especially in the long term parking lot.  The bad thing about airport parking lots is the profuse use of security cameras.   After locating and hotwiring a nondescript run of the mill vehicle in a nice dark part of the parking garage, in this instance a nice Honda Accord, I had to kinetically lift the gate to get the damn car out; knowing damn well the camera at the pay booth was filming me the whole time. I should have just grinned and waved for the camera. The car I took only had a quarter of a tank of gas, and food was becoming an issue too.  I hadn’t eaten in almost a full day and my energy levels were waning.

After a quick stop at Terrible Herbst, a one-stop shopping emporium for food, gas, oil changes, sporting goods and God knows what else, I was back on the road with a full tank of gas and enough food stuffs to keep me busy.  I’m not going to lie, I was pretty nervous the whole time, not because I was currently on the run, but because of the incident that had happened in Sin City not too long ago.  I wasn’t sure how fresh the bank robbery or the ‘mystery man’ was in these people’s memories here, but I wasn’t about to take any chances.

Compound that by the things I did in Hong Kong and the news channels even here were having a field day. I had avoided public places like the plague since landing but I couldn’t help hearing it while waiting to pay for my haul at Terrible Herbst.  Standing there as the fourth person in line, listening to the coverage while trying to look nonchalant was frustrating.  The one saving grace in all this was my fully loaded debit card because the only hard currency I had on me was the Hong Kong dollar, and I didn’t think they’d take that here.  Once I made it to the register, I was in and out in a jiffy, no need to fumble for perfect change.

Having two and a half hours of driving a head of me, I settled in and drove at a sedate pace through the dark streets of suburban Vegas, if only to avoid attracting the po-po.  I definitely didn’t need some bored cop pulling me over in a stolen vehicle, with no identification, and probably a warrant out for my arrest.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitchell already had me on America’s Most Wanted or at least at the top of the Ten Most Wanted list for the FBI.

So within an hour of touch down, I was leaving Las Vegas behind me, the lights of the city a bright halo in the sky in my rearview mirror.  The drive gave me a lot of time to reflect on things, things I didn’t want to admit to myself.  Like that I really was an idiot. 

Maybe it was my youth, maybe it was my inexperience or ignorance, but I was stupid.  I had trusted Mitchell from the get go, mainly because he’d set me free when I had been trapped in that lab, so weak from the mercuric fluid I couldn’t free myself. I had seen him as an ally.  He had come at the right time, right when I needed help the most, which had conveniently served his purpose.  He spun his tale of a non-existent son, released me from that prison, and then pointed me in the direction of the enemies he wanted me to eliminate. And I had complied.