Sasha McCoy, Freelancer

Prologue

YOU CAN’T CHOOSE YOUR DEATH.

Those were her mother’s words as she lay on her deathbed. No more than you can choose the family you are born to.

How true is that? she wondered as she surveyed her present situation. My life has finally caught up with me.

Somehow she managed a smile, miraculous considering her current situation. She scoffed at the moniker madam and turned an evil eye on those who called her a female pimp. For thirty-seven years she was in the business. And for the past twenty-five years, she had enjoyed the moniker Queen, or Queen B. She’d ruled the world of whoredom and criminality in Sin City, running the city with a strong hand that reached from Las Vegas to Southern California and parts of Mexico. She was known throughout the nation and overseas as a ruthless and no-nonsense pimp. And she’d survived that madness.

Now three years retired and her former life was returning to haunt her.

Actually—to kill her.

Stupid, she said. Pure stupid. This dumb shit shouldn’t be happening now.

She didn’t understand. She was sixty-years-old and crawling on the floor with a bullet in the meaty part of her left thigh. She had put her past life behind her and didn’t know why anyone would target her now. This was why she’d left the game, for this very reason. She didn’t want to end up in a pool of her own blood.

I’m too old for this shit.

It was the same thought that convinced her to walk away. The game had changed. Although she’d ruled with a steel hand, she had to leave the game behind before the game caught up with her. The young charges didn’t believe in respect anymore. Probably couldn’t spell respect. So why chance it? She’d made her bones and did what a smart businesswoman was supposed to do—leave the game while she was still standing upright.

Now she didn’t know how much longer she would be standing.

Internally she was kicking herself. Her princess had told her to pack her bags and move to a tropical island, anywhere far from the city of sin. But she had taken over the city from its previous owner and become the self-proclaimed Queen of Sin City. This was her home, and she couldn’t leave.

Now I am paying for my foolish decision to retire in the city I love. How stupid of me.

She didn’t know for sure how many of the young fools were gunning for her. She knew she had iced four of them. Good thing she still kept her babies in the nightstand by her bed—two pearl-handled special-editions Beretta 98s and a platinum-plated .357 Magnum handgun.

Call me old school or a girl who loves big things.

She blew holes through two of the young bucks’ chests and gave a serious stomachache to another. The fourth she shot in the throat as he was telling his boys down below that she had been shot in the leg.

Wish I had caught him before he opened his mouth.

From years of experience she could tell there were at least four more, maybe more. Ironically, her mind had been in a reflective state prior to this home attack, trying to recall how she’d gotten started in this crazy ass business. Instead of figuring out why, she’d just remembered the good and crazy times. It was a good ride. She’d loved the excitement and adventure.

When she walked away from the business she never gave a thought to it ending this way. Not during retirement. In her mind, this type of scenario was supposed to happen when she was deep in the game. Not now!

Who is behind this craziness? Why? And why now?

Evidently somebody had missed the memo. This was no longer her chosen profession. She wasn’t a big or even small fish anymore. She was no fish.

But she knew someone wanted his or her reputation to reverberate throughout the neighborhood, courtesy of the Queen’s death.

She looked at the young boys on the floor, and that was exactly what they were—young, wet-behind-the-ears, probably never-been-laid boys. They reminded her of the youngsters to whom she had always tried to teach a thing or two. These boys reminded her of her own prince and princess—Dave and Sasha.

Poor and misguided Dave. Could he be behind all of this? she wondered.

Please, God, don’t let it be Dave, she said in a soft voice that lacked her usual confidence. We’ve had our misunderstandings, but the love we have shared over the years has to outweigh the minor disagreements.

In a way, she felt sorry for whoever was responsible for attempting to take her life tonight.

My baby, Princess, doesn’t know the meaning of the word forgiveness. She redefines wildcat and an eye for an eye. I just hope she doesn’t get too carried away with revenge.

She missed her daughter. She wished she knew where she was at that very moment. Wished she could pick up the phone, dial a number, and within two shakes, Princess would be there saving the day. However, the lemons life served didn’t always make lemonade.

Two more boys rushed through the door and Queen B shot the first one in the gut. She dropped the second one with a headshot. She could see the young kid’s brains splattered on the walls. She was sure he’d never used them for anything useful or constructive.

She was old. Her aging body wasn’t what it used to be. She was no longer the long-legged heifer who could run like a gazelle and kick like a raging kangaroo. However, she was still as proficient as ever with her firearms.

Somehow, she managed to dive through the doorway into the hallway, her Berettas blasting. She knew she hit at least five or six intruders coming up both sides of her double spiral staircases. She pulled out her Magnum and managed to take out another four before they hit the foot of the staircases. She didn’t see any more intruders and felt relieved. She quickly grabbed her ammo from her shoulder-strap ammo pouches and started reloading just in case.

She smiled at the thought that whoever was behind her murder attempt had sent a ton of young charges to take out one old woman.

The good old days. I remember a time when I would take the offensive and rush downstairs with both guns blazing, spare weapons in shoulder holsters. The good old days.

If she could, she would tip her hat to her days of old, toast her days of grandeur. Life had been very good to her. As much as she would like to call it a troubled life, she couldn’t. Unfortunately, she had known too many who had dealt with much more adversity in their lives than she had. Still, as the youngest of four girls, she had the dubious honor of burying her grandparents, her mom and dad, her three sisters and her worthless stepfather after she’d killed him for constantly beating and abusing her mom, and raping her and two of her sisters.

He was the first of many men she’d killed.

They all deserved to die.

And now, apparently, she was going to die too. For the last three years since retirement, her life had been different, been good, and the thought of dying had never once entered her mind. She was finally enjoying the easy life. She smiled internally at the thought that many didn’t know her real name—Deana McWhorter—the name that would grace her headstone.

Tonight she felt her age and she knew that number betrayed her. She had outlived the women in her life, from her grandmothers to her sisters. Now she hoped her princess would outlive her.

Sometimes it only takes a moment.

For Deana McWhorter, it would be a moment of thought she wished she had back as she failed to notice the new young charges who rushed into the house. The first bullet hit her shoulder and her right arm went numb. She managed to get off two shots, which took out one of the shooters, but now she felt weak. The second bullet grazed her neck.

Then she heard the voice behind her say to the young charges, It’s OK, I got the Queen Bitch now.

She was completely disappointed and mad at herself. She’d never seen it coming. Of course it had to be someone who had the code to her security system. It’s always the one you least expect, she thought to herself.

Inside she smiled at a life fulfilled. Outwardly, a smirk covered her face. She wished she had more time.

Please, God, wake me up from this nightmare.

The thing she hated most was betrayal. She loved her princess, Sasha, and her overzealous Dave. She’d always treated her girls and everyone in her employment like people, not animals. She’d made sure they knew how much she cared about their well-being and families. It was a cutthroat business, but she was the boss and she made it tolerable, livable, enjoyable and financially stable.

Why? she asked her soon-to-be killer.

Because I must, was the weak reply.

She felt the tears spilling down her cheeks. At this point the only thing she could do was cry. Betrayal was not a sweet pill to swallow. She shed tears for the betrayal she felt. A betrayal that would leave her dead in body . . . and soul.

Before the trigger was pulled and the words of her killer softly stated, I love you, the last thing Deana McWhorter screamed was, Princessssssssss!

Chapter 1

A PRUDENT MAN GAUGES his day by the temperature of his morning.

Elliot Lucas remembered the first time he’d heard that phrase. He was a field officer with the CIA back then, doing Company business for the protection of his country. The operation wasn’t on foreign ground, although many Americans considered Vegas a foreign land.

His day began at four in the morning. He remembered it was a Tuesday morning, the last day the object of his wrath would be in town. The assassin had been situated on the west side of Las Vegas, in a house of ill repute that sat near the corner of Martin Luther King and Lake Meade Boulevards. The man had been in Sin City for four days and had entertained fifteen women.

His fun over with, it was now time for the killer to conduct his mission—kill the director of the British military intelligence agency, MI-6, who was vacationing in Vegas with his family.

It was Elliot’s job to ensure the assassin would never execute his mission.

The assassin was a legend in his own right. There were at least twenty kills of world dignitaries, Mafioso, powerful leaders and businessmen accredited to his dossier. And those were the known dead. Hence, his moniker—Assassin X.

The assassin’s missions were flawless in their execution. His kills quiet and ruthless. The man was a professional. Elliot was sure the man loved his work and lived for the challenge—what little challenge he encountered. He was a man of mystery who evidently didn’t possess a weakness.

And how could an unknown entity possess a weakness to be exploited?

CIA Field Officer Elliot Lucas spent eighteen months obsessing over Assassin X.

Everyone had a weakness. Even assassins.

The temperature gauge read over a hundred degrees by the time Elliot entered the house. Easy access when the provider of the entertainment, the CEO of this house of ill repute personally handed him the house key. Elliot was drenched in perspiration as he sat by the bed staring at the assassin he had injected with a small syringe of drugs, aptly called a barbiturate cocktail, courtesy of the CIA.

The cocktail had an immediate effect. The man was in a state of drowsiness, enhanced by the extreme heat.

Elliot Lucas studied the man known as Assassin X. In the matter of size doesn’t count, the man was a real example that in the world of killing, the cliché was true. Elliot placed his height at probably five-five, maybe five-six, medium build for his size, maybe all of one hundred sixty-five to one hundred seventy pounds. He was a half-breed—half Spanish, half Italian. One hell of a deadly mixture, Elliot thought. He wasn’t sure Assassin X had reached the ripe old age of thirty yet, probably twenty-seven at best. His weakness—women for pay.

The man woke up groggy but with a smile on his face. The field officer solicited information about the assassin’s past and current client. The man continued to smile and tried to make small talk. Elliot Lucas returned the smile and played along until he delivered his own form of justice.

He didn’t speak to the clean-up crew as they entered the house and he departed. Nor did he say anything to the woman in the black Mercedes trimmed in red. The nod of their heads spoke of an understanding and an unspeakable alliance.

It was the renewal of a long lasting relationship at a time before he’d donned the title of Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As Elliot walked out of the front door of his suburbia DC residence, the prudent director didn’t give much regard to the falling raindrops. His steady, calm and confident gait didn’t differentiate between rainy, snowy or dry days.

He slid into the backseat of the big Lincoln sedan, specially designed for the director of the CIA.

Elliot, the CIA director greeted his guest. Don Caughman was on year four of his tenure as the head of the CIA. During his reign he had returned the Company to its rightful place in the arena of secret operations—the most clandestine organization in the world of spying.

Elliot Lucas smiled, his first smile of the day, and probably his last. No pleasantries required, Donny.

So I take it you know, Donny Caughman replied quickly.

What haven’t you told me?

The two men looked at each other. They had known each other for more than fifteen years. Although they had never crossed into the realm of friendship, mutual respect was the order of the day, and the closest two men in their business would ever get.

We have lost contact with one of our handlers and his asset, the CIA head reluctantly stated. We don’t know if one, or both, had anything to do with last night’s event in the desert. Looks like our twenty-five-year operation may have finally come to an abrupt end.

No, the daughter wasn’t involved, Elliott tried reassuring the intelligence czar. I guarantee you that she is in the dark. Probably unknowingly working off the clock on an op she undoubtedly thinks is sanctioned.

Elliot, you know in our business we can’t take that risk. Operation Sainthood is suspended for now. Better safe than compromised.

Long ways from suspended to terminated.

The two agency heads shared a look of optimism. One knew the consequences all too well. After all, he was the mastermind behind the twenty-five-year operation. The other knew damage control—one loose lip could create grave havoc in a clandestine organization, an organization that believed in creating and controlling its own havoc.

A prudent man gauges his day by the temperature of his morning, Elliot volunteered.

Meaning?

Meaning McWhorter was a hell of a storm, but she was controlled, deliberate, knew how to deliver pain and power in proper dosages, and was a great asset to her country. Elliot let his wandering eyes take in the view of the city as the Mercedes eased into downtown DC. Her spawn is just as controlled as long as her leash is short and held in check. Unleashed, she may be the worst nightmare you ever encounter.

Donny Caughman hoped it was an encounter that never occurred.

Chapter 2

A GOOD DAY FOR KILLING.

I was sure that was what my horoscope said that morning. If not, that was what it should have said. From my viewpoint, it was a great day for killing, a better day for dying.

Partying late, waking up later. Nice swims, day and night. Damn, I loved this island. Nothing quite like Hawaii, except the beaches in Sicily, the Caribbean, Mexico and a host of other places to which I had traveled.

I wasn’t being disrespectful to Hawaii. I really did love the island. There was nothing like the morning, waking to the rising sun or feeling the drizzle of falling raindrops during monsoon season. Just before dawn on the main island of Oahu was heavenly, and certainly worth living for.

I also loved Hawaii because it seemed as if it was a million miles away from where I was born and raised—the original city of sin, Las Vegas—always copied, never duplicated.

I sat in my Orange Pineapple taxicab outside the Honolulu airport in the pre-dawn light, waiting on my fare, Abdullah Azizi Mufar, son of a Saudi Arabian oil baron. My employer had arranged with the Orange Pineapple Cab Company that I would be the driver for our special guest. Mufar was an enemy of the United States. He was behind many acts of terrorism throughout the world. He had been connected to at least seven terrorist attacks within the past two years, the last two involving the bombing of American embassies in Peru and North Africa. He’d finally gotten what he wanted—enough national attention to put him on the Top Five hit list. He’d gotten the attention of the U.S. government and the attention of the Company—my employer.

If Mufar looked at my ID card, it would read Georgia Hayes, but my real name was Sasha McCoy. Georgia Hayes was one of many aliases I used.

I continued to chill in my borrowed taxi, snacking on fresh pineapples from one of the plantations on the island. As I waited, thoughts of my time on the island in the past and during this visit drifted through my head. As thoughts of the things I’d done here before floated through my mind, I realized I wanted to spend some leisure time in Oahu after this mission. It was a mindless thought on my part. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Even if I didn’t have another mission after this one, spending time in the city after the mission was frowned upon at the CIA, especially if that city was a small island called Paradise.

My phone rang, bringing me back to reality. It was my handler.

Codename: Cobra Blue.

I’d never liked my middleman. He was a parasite from the first day I’d met him. His beet red face gave him the appearance of permanent sunburn. He was short and a hamburger away from being pudgy. His hair was thinning up top, and his face always sported a five-day growth of beard. If his purpose was to throw off the bad guys by looking like something someone discarded, he was doing a great job of it.

Cobra Blue was calling from inside the Honolulu airport. Every blue moon, he supervised a mission in country. Meaning he stepped away from his office in San Francisco and stepped out where the rubber met the road.

This time the road was in Hawaii, so he definitely wanted to be on the frontlines for this mission. The man was responsible for at least three other field officers that I knew of and I wondered if he was a pain in the ass to them as well.

He informed me the target was on his way out.

Mufar had briefed his partners in crime in Honolulu that he would be arriving in two days. We intercepted the call and coerced his small contingent of bad players into dealing with us. Of course, the coercion included killing three members of their group before the other two would cooperate.

Sometimes we must do what we must do. I laughed at my own silliness. Death wasn’t funny to me, but destroying our nation’s enemies made me feel good inside.

I spotted the ambitious Abdullah Azizi Mufar as he exited the terminal. I could see why he fit in well in American culture. He was smooth shaven with a chestnut brown complexion, a neatly trimmed thick, black mustache and a combination curly and nappy mini-Afro. The only thing that distinguished him as a Middle Easterner was his mustache, but a casual glance at his appearance made him look more like an African-American man with a thick mustache.

I pulled up slowly by the curbside and parked. The man recognized the cab and its number. He had also been given my basic identity: Dodgers baseball cap, light brown complexion, short hair. Nothing extravagant, just blending in with the other cabbies.

He immediately jumped in with only a small carry-on bag in his possession. It was strange, but Azizi Mufar didn’t believe in traveling with an entourage. He believed in blending in, and what better way to stay low key than flying on a commercial airliner by yourself.

He didn’t speak. I knew where I was supposed to drop him off. That was if I was his real scheduled driver.

As soon as I turned onto the main drag departing the airport I looked in my rearview mirror and saw my passenger looking out the window. He started to yawn and I immediately surveyed my surroundings for other vehicles and pedestrians, then lifted my SIG Sauer P6 from the side of my seat and surprised my passenger with a point-blank shot to the head. The hollow point round exited his head and cracked the back windshield.

I pulled off the main drag at the next turn fifty feet away before anyone noticed the bullet hole or the brain matter splattered over the back windshield. I parked the cab in a back alley not far from the airport. I had been there before. Cobra Blue had already arranged for someone to pick up the car, clean it up, wipe it down and return it to the cab company. The bullet hole in the windshield could easily be explained away by our clean-up guy. Besides blood and brains, the clean up would be easy. I didn’t believe in leaving a mess. Because of the gloves I wore, no fingerprints or hair follicles would be traced back to me. And our guys were the best at cleaning up a mess, including ensuring no traces of Azizi Mufar were in the cab.

Mufar had pressing business in Honolulu. He had plans to meet with two other terrorist leaders—Jin Con Chen of North Korea and retired Army Brigadier General MacLean Baxter, U.S. born and Army bred and raised.

My job was simple. Eliminate all three before the planned meeting. One down, two to go. Number two would certainly be easier.

Or so I thought.

The sunrise was so beautiful this time of morning. Damn, I loved Hawaii.

Chapter 3

JIN CON CHEN was a morning person.

He liked doing everything in the morning except business. He preferred to do business in the evening hours, before nightfall. His personal ambush of four American GIs outside a restaurant in Seoul was accomplished prior to the fall of night. The four soldiers never exited their vehicle. The report stated that Chen and two of his henchmen had unloaded almost a hundred rounds into the small four-door Mitsubishi. That was just the first of five similar type ambushes the North Korean had carried out.

Last night I posed as a waitress at a stripper bar he frequented when he came to Honolulu. Surprisingly, he liked me more than the dancers that were on stage. I loved it when the subjects made my job easier.

I told him I was new to the island and he followed his typical M.O., or modus operandi, to a tee. He gave me his room key and told me to meet him at his hotel, the Island Tropical Inn, room two nineteen, at seven in the morning. It wasn’t the hotel where he was primarily staying. It was a rinky-dink motel on the outskirts of Waikiki Beach he used as his pseudo playhouse to get his freak on.

I was supposed to be his freak, his plaything.

I wore a bright red short skirt that showcased my long legs and accentuated my butt. I had on open toe, flat sandals. I much preferred sneakers, better to run in if the need arose, but my Korean terrorist informed me he had a foot fetish. He loved looking at and sucking toes. Hell, I loved getting my toes sucked, but it wasn’t happening that morning. However, I granted him his request—open toe sandals. Plan A was to kill him as soon as I walked in the door, so my footwear wasn’t important. But I always had to be prepared for the unexpected and have a plan B and sometimes a plan C.

My white halter top fit tight enough to show off everything I wanted him to see—my cleavage, pert nipples and my washboard stomach, which was something to die for, an envy of those who had dropped a baby or two. I played the role of a harlot for sale with the style experienced girls displayed. Definitely dressed to get laid. More importantly, dressed to distract—providing me valuable seconds of surprise that could be the difference between of life and death.

If I was hooking, the average john couldn’t afford me. The thought made me smile, my warped sense of humor at its best.

And it was warped. I knew hooking all too well unfortunately. I had grown up around hookers and the craziness of sex for sale. As nutty as it seemed, I understood the madness of whoring, the mental capacity of the women involved in the trade and who created that madness.

The thing I didn’t understand, nor did I try to, was the male libido. Many of those horny bastards just couldn’t keep it in their pants. If I really thought about it, I would probably feel sad for the sorry sons of bitches. But I didn’t have the time, nor desire to think about weak men who couldn’t control their sex drive.

I arrived at the Island Tropical Inn and surveyed the area from the car. I did the same thing last night when Jin Con Chen gave me the key and I left the stripper bar while he and his entourage were still having fun.

Surveying an area at night is valuable when your preferred time of kill will be a night operation. During a day op, accomplishing night reconnaissance included taking mental pictures of the number and type of vehicles, the layout of the land, trees, dumpsters, greenery, shrubs or anything that could pose as a threat to mission success.

The foliage of a kill site meant something. A lack of bushes, small trees and neatly trimmed grass meant no potential hiding places bodyguards or attackers. Whereas big trees, untrimmed bushes and tall grass were reasons to be more vigilant.

The motel had a small parking lot that sat right off a side street. This wasn’t a typical hotel or motel that sat on its own property. It was a good hundred feet or more from the street. The street-level motel had maybe thirty rooms at best and consisted of two floors. The two-way side street sat maybe sixty feet from the motel. Not ideal. However, traffic was very light this time of day. The good thing was that it was a decent motel, not a pay by the hour one that prostitutes frequented.

I surveyed the parking lot one last time. I was looking for a car or SUV that had one or two of Jin Cho Chen’s bodyguards. I saw a black SUV with very dark tinted windows that wasn’t there the night before. I couldn’t tell if anyone was in the vehicle, but could only hope not since there was no way I could easily find out. If I went up to the SUV and knocked on the window, pretending I forgot the room number, a good bodyguard would know something wasn’t right.

So I took my chances and walked slowly up the staircase with my big handbag, checking my six as I made my way to room two nineteen. At the door I pulled my Sig Sauer with an attached silencer out of the handbag, put it in my right hand and hid it behind my leg. I knew I was taking a chance of my gun being seen if someone was in the black SUV, but I had to chance it.

Using my left hand, I unlocked the door with an old-fashioned key, and to my surprise my Korean john was already undressed, playing with his little pecker. His chest was hairy, which was unusual for men of Asian persuasion. I wondered if any hookers went home and got themselves off after dealing with some of these damn men with teeny-weeny peckers.

I knew why the manufacturers of the Silver Bullet, the Rabbit and many other sex toys never had to worry about job security. BOBs or battery-operated boyfriends would outlast us all.

I knew the layout of the room. The restroom was to the left, somewhat behind the room’s entrance. I closed the door and as soon as I did, one of Chen’s associates from