CONTENTS
Dedication
Copyright
Title Page
Chapter One - Prologue: Stranger on a Plane
Chapter Two - A Sort of Homecoming
Chapter Three - The Long and Winding Road
Chapter Four - The Nightcap
Chapter Five - A Talk in the Clouds
Chapter Six - Road Trip
Chapter Seven - The Great Exodus
Chapter Eight - Colleagues with Benefits
Chapter Nine - Pink Pig: The Little Jeep that Could
Chapter Ten - Istanbul, not Constantinople
Chapter Eleven - Saturday Night Fever
Chapter Twelve - Staying Alive
Chapter Thirteen - First Class Idiot
Chapter Fourteen - Flying the Friendlier Skies
Chapter Fifteen - A Room with a View
Chapter Sixteen - Dead Men Don't Wear Jogging Shorts
Chapter Seventeen - The Linen Gorilla
Chapter Eighteen - Mall Rats
Chapter Nineteen - Boys Will be Boys
Chapter Twenty - Are you there God? It's Me, Tag
Chapter Twenty-One - Smokey and the Bandit
Chapter Twenty-Two - The Oddest Couple
Chapter Twenty-Three - The Desert Fox
Chapter Twenty-Four - The Oasis in the Oasis
Chapter Twenty-Five - The Flight of the Phoenix
Chapter Twenty-Six - A Walk in the Clouds
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Cannonball Run 4
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Two Tickets to Paradise
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Blond Ambition
Chapter Thirty - A Real Homecoming
Book 4: Mr. Pickles
The Mantasy Series
Acknowledgements
Origin of the Mantasy Genre
About the Author
This book is dedicated to all who have faced adversity in terms of health, work, relationships, or even a really disgusting public restroom, and now desperately need a FUCKING literary, if not FUCKING literal, break from this crazy thing we call
life.
•Please excuse the use of profanity and be warned that there will be more to follow, as well as some bathroom humor and sex, though it will all be delivered tastefully and with the intent of conveying a deep, rewarding, and soulful catharsis.
Gordita Conspiracy
© 2019 Lyle Christie, © 2013 Lyle Christie
2nd Edition
All Rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the author.
Mantasy Inc.
www.lylechristie.com
[email protected]
Book Design and Layout: Christopher Imlay
Cover design: Christopher Imlay & Lyle Christie
Editors: Ruth A. Bright • Chris Cooper • Aria Pearson • Katherine Gundling
Proofreaders: Matt Zeeman • Kris Christie • Matt Thomas
First published in 2012
Revised in 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-949386-02-8
GORDITA CONSPIRACY
by LYLE CHRISTIE
BOOK 3 IN THE MANTASY SERIES
CHAPTER ONE
Prologue: Stranger on a Plane
VIRGIN FLIGHT 442 from Frankfurt Germany was on final approach to San Francisco International Airport, and, up in first class, the flight attendant, a beautiful and shapely brunette named Amber, was making her final walk-through of the cabin. She checked to make sure that everyone was properly buckled in, but she saved her last stop for her new favorite passenger. His name was Klaus, and he was romance novel cover hot with his chiseled jaw, shaggy blond hair, and muscular frame. He was also particularly charming, and he and Amber had been flirting with each other since the very first moment he walked in to the first class compartment. She smiled as she arrived at his seat, and he, of course, smiled back at her as he pointed down at his seat belt buckle.
“Am I properly buckled in?” he asked, his English excellent though clearly flavored by his German accent.
“I’d better check.”
She leaned over and purposefully dangled her enticing cleavage in front of his eyes as she reached down and checked the buckle before moving her hand past it and giving his groin a playful squeeze. Klaus was already sporting a semi, and Amber appeared to be fairly impressed.
“Oh, well now! Everything seems to be just fine here,” she said, before looking around the cabin to make sure none of the other flight attendants were nearby.
At that point she lowered her voice and leaned in close to Klaus.
“So, when you finish up with your business, let’s go out for that drink,” Amber said, with a flirtatious smile.
Klaus found himself feeling pretty damn excited by Amber’s spicy comment, though, strangely, it was her rather outgoing nature, not her beauty, that he found to be her most alluring quality.
“Yeah, though I might be running a little late depending on how things go,” he said.
“Better late than never, and, in case you need a little motivation, you’ll have this,” Amber said, as she picked up his iPhone, activated the camera, then knelt down out of view of the other passengers.
Klaus was curious what she had in mind and couldn’t believe his eyes when she undid her two top buttons, slid her shirt open to reveal one of her breasts, then smiled and snapped a quick selfie. Finished, she put his phone down, buttoned up her shirt, and leaned in and gave him a quick kiss.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said, as she stood up.
“Or perhaps even sooner,” he responded.
She headed back towards the front of the plane, and Klaus couldn’t help but watch her every step, as her tight fitting uniform made quite a show of her stunning figure. Sure, Klaus tended to garner more than his fair amount of female attention, but his busy work schedule and frequent travel made it nearly impossible for him to meet someone as charming and alluring as Amber. He was, therefore, definitely going to do his best to finish up his business and make it out for a drink with her tonight.
Once she disappeared from view, he turned his gaze out the window and saw that the weather was clear and sunny, and it was looking to be a lovely day in the San Francisco Bay Area. As the large jet descended, he heard and felt the thump of the landing gear being deployed, and, not long after that, the nose of the jet flared up, and they dropped smoothly onto the runway. They taxied to the terminal and, when the jet came to rest, all of the passengers prepared to disembark. Klaus reached up and grabbed his carry-on bag from the overhead compartment then joined the slow procession for the exit door. There, he came across Amber and the other flight attendant, who were both making sure to personally say goodbye to each and every one of the first class passengers.
“Until tonight,” he said, as he nodded and smiled.
She smiled back and gave him a little wink, which inspired him to pick up his pace and pass the other people ahead of him as he made his way up the jetway. Now, that he had some enticing plans for the evening, he was even more determined to finish his work in a timely manner. He arrived at customs and flashed his diplomatic passport, and it allowed him to bypass the usual security checkpoint, and he was soon at baggage claim. His suitcase came onto the carousel, and he grabbed it and texted the person who was picking him up to tell him that he was headed outside to wait at the curb. A minute later, a white Audi S4 pulled over in front of him, and the driver, a well dressed, clean cut Arabic looking man, popped the trunk release. K
laus went to the back of the car and placed his luggage beside a black leather attaché case then closed the trunk and walked around and slid into the passenger seat.
“Welcome to San Francisco, Klaus,” the man said, with an obvious British accent as he held out his hand to shake.
“Good to see you, Gareth,” he said, as they completed the gesture.
“How was your flight?” Gareth asked.
“Excellent, as I managed to score a date with a lovely flight attendant.”
“Bloody hell, mate! I had to spend at least a month is this city before I met an eligible woman, and you fucking met one before you even put your feet on the ground.”
“Perhaps you should go to the gym more often.”
“I don’t think they have a machine that will make me look like you.”
“Yeah, they do, it’s called a bench press.”
The two of them shared a laugh as Gareth turned onto the access road that skirted the airport and led to the location of many of the support businesses such as catering, air freight, and aircraft maintenance. Traffic was unusually light, and it wasn’t long before Gareth turned in to the parking lot of an unmarked warehouse and parked beside a silver BMW M4.
“All right, mate, this is where I get off,” Gareth said.
“Yeah, but, unfortunately, I won’t be getting off until later,” Klaus said, as he pulled out his phone and brought up the picture of Amber.
It was an obvious attempt to rub it in his friend’s face, and it worked exactly as planned.
“You bloody ass! Does she happen to have a twin sister?”
“If she does, I’ll call you and tell you how it went—with both of them.”
The two of them shared another laugh, then they stepped out of the car and walked around to the back.
“All right then, my friend, everything you need is in the attaché case, and I obviously don’t need to tell you that it will be a lot easier for everyone involved if it happens to look like an accident.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good, then I’ll be going and let you get to it, so you can finish up and get to that date tonight. Cheers,” he said, as they shook hands.
“Cheers,” he said, with a smile.
Gareth pulled a key fob out of his pocket, hit the unlock button, and went over and took a seat in the BMW M4. It started with a deep throaty grumble, then he gave a final wave as he headed out of the parking lot. Klaus waved back then popped the trunk of the Audi and opened the attaché case to see there was a silenced 9mm Glock pistol and four magazines. He picked up the Glock, slid in a magazine and chambered a round, then placed it back in the case and closed the trunk. It was time to get to work, so he casually strolled around and slid in behind the wheel then pulled out his phone, made a call, and patiently waited for three rings for the person on the other end to answer.
“Hello, Klaus, I take it you’ve arrived,” the person said.
“Yes, so everything is in motion,” he responded.
“Excellent, and I would say good luck, but I know you don’t believe in that kind of thing,” he said, with a chuckle.
Klaus was notorious for his very German-like belief that success always depended upon proper planning and execution.
“No, I definitely do not,” Klaus said, also chuckling.
“Well then, call me when it’s done.”
“I will,” he said, just before ending the call.
He opened the picture app on his phone and had another look at Amber, and couldn’t help but get excited at the thought of seeing her later tonight. Unfortunately, he had a job to do first, so he swiped his finger back to the left to reveal a picture of the man he would soon see in person. He’d, of course, already memorized his face and various details, but Klaus was a perfectionist and thought it wise to have yet another look. Satisfied he would be completely able to recognize him, he closed the app and placed the phone down in the car’s center console. He instinctively had a look around his surroundings and, seeing no suspicious persons or vehicles in the vicinity, started the car and drove out of the parking lot. He left the frontage road and merged onto the 101 freeway heading north towards San Francisco, though his final destination would be on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, specifically the beautiful little town of Sausalito, where he had one simple objective: kill Tag Finn.
CHAPTER TWO
A Sort of Homecoming
IT WAS NINE fifteen on a Saturday morning when I arrived home and entered my houseboat for the first time in almost a month. I had forgotten to take out the garbage before departing on my last job, and my place smelled faintly of the last meal I had cooked. I believe it was a breakfast consisting of eggs and chicken apple sausages, and it certainly smelled better then than now. Still, it was nice to be home, but I was missing the warm weather of the Caribbean and the excitement and female companionship I’d had on my European adventure. Oh well, life moves on I suppose. I put my things down at the foot of the stairs and strolled into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. While it brewed, I took out the garbage, opened some windows, and soon the heavenly aroma of coffee was wafting across the kitchen on the bay breeze. The brew cycle finished, and it was time to walk over and pour myself a cup. Unfortunately, the half and half had soured, so I had to open up a carton of almond milk that I kept around for just these kinds of emergencies. It wasn’t as good as my usual cup, but it would do the job and get my morning moving, so that I could make the most of the twenty-four hours before I started my next job.
The first and most important chore was to unpack the case of Soft Taco Island premium rum I had acquired during my travels. Each precious bottle was carefully encased in bubble wrap and stored in a wooden case, and it took a good five minutes before I could free all the bottles and move them behind my bar. With the alcohol stashed in its new home, I strolled back to the kitchen to sort through the pile of mail that my neighbor had left on the breakfast table. As usual, I discovered only bills, but at least I could afford to pay them for once, as the last month of work had been particularly lucrative. Speaking of which, I needed to go to my bank and make a deposit that was going to make my banker shit his pants when he saw the amount. When I had left three plus weeks ago, I was in dire jeopardy of losing my home, but now I was worth in excess of a hundred and fifty million dollars. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure as hell made misery more bearable. Of course, I wasn’t exactly miserable at the moment, quite the opposite, in fact, though my recent wealth came with a lot of strings attached and a hell of a new client and requisite back story.
It all started with an exciting adventure in the Caribbean, where I rescued a damsel in distress and went up against a French arms dealer in order to sabotage the largest terrorist attack since nine eleven. The arms dealer got away in the end, and my next job entailed chasing him down in Europe and bringing him back into the loving arms of the Central Intelligence Agency—the caveat being I was paid more than a hundred and fifty million dollars in valuable gems left over from the failed arms deal. I got my man, but, things were far more complicated than I could have ever imagined and the entire affair, from start to finish, had been cleverly orchestrated by a secret society. Unlike the Illuminati, who had a cool and menacing name, my puppeteers were simply called the Topless Agenda. They were a collection of some of the most powerful people across the globe, and their esteemed ranks included politicians, wealthy industrialists, royal families, and of course lots of old money. They might have a silly name, but they were a very serious group of people with very serious plans, and everything thus far was just a prelude to the real prize—a new and exciting assignment whose success lay solely in my humble hands.
Five years ago I went on my last assignment for the CIA’s Special Activities Division. The mission had entailed smuggling a brilliant scientist out of Iran. His name was Farid Ardeshir, and he was the head of their rapidly growing nuclear program, but he desperately wanted to escape to a better life in America, and America, in turn, was
more than happy to take him into their loving arms. As is the case with most special operations, things didn’t go exactly according to plan, and, when Iranian agents showed up in Istanbul, the mission orders changed for the worse. Rather than risk the scientist falling back into enemy hands, the people in charge of the operation ordered me to kill the scientist and send his body to the bottom of the Aegean Sea in an old fishing boat. As far as the official record was concerned, I completed my mission then, completely disenchanted with government work, resigned from the Agency and returned home to Northern California and became a private investigator.
Somehow, the Topless Agenda knew the real story—that the supposedly dead scientist was, in fact, currently alive and living large under a new identity in the United Arab Emirates, and, more importantly, had discovered the Holy Grail of the modern age—the secret to making cold fusion work. Cold fusion had been the bugaboo of the scientific community since electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons believed they had discovered it back in 1989. Unfortunately, further research showed that they were incapable of replicating their findings, and cold fusion, or low energy nuclear reaction, was believed to be technically impossible. If Farid could indeed make it work, then it would become the biggest energy boom since crude oil, and the Topless Agenda believed, rightly so, that his discovery was going to forever change energy production, and in turn, the fate of the entire world. Thus, they desperately wanted to bring him back to the west, but, they needed me because I was the only person in the world Ardeshir would theoretically trust after the whole CIA debacle.
So, there I sat at my breakfast table, my mind spinning as I pondered the thought that I was about to head halfway across the world on yet another exciting job. It was certainly hard to believe that a month ago I was an underpaid private investigator, yet now held the solution to world’s energy problems in my very existence. The immortal words of Ferris Bueller suddenly came to mind: life moves pretty fast, and, if you don’t stop and take a look once in a while, you might miss it. Well, I had been missing it and living a bit like Ferris’s best friend Cameron, though my hiding place wasn’t my bed, but rather my daily mundane existence. Those times were over, however, and I certainly wasn’t missing anything anymore.
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