The Heist

to go, that she allowed herself a whoop of victory and a smile. It always felt great when an op went as planned, and it didn’t matter if it was a legitimate sting or a scam, she realized. Success was sweet. Not that she would share this with Nick. She thought she might be screwed if Nick knew she was enjoying the con.
    Burnside was
certain
that he was screwed. He’d been kidnapped by Vibora killers, thrown into the trunk of a car, and taken to God-knows-where to be tortured and killed. It was hard to be more screwed than that, unless you were dead. And the only reason he wasn’t dead was the Viboras’ belief that he knew where Derek Griffin was and, by extension, where they could get their money back and maybe all the rest of the plunder, too. That was half a billion dollars of leverage.
    What Burnside had to figure out was a way to use that leverage to avoid torture, get himself out alive, and, as a bonus for hiscreativity and cleverness, get some compensation for his pain and suffering. He was a smart man, and a lawyer, he told himself. His lifetime of experience arguing cases and bartering deals had to be useful for the life-or-death situation that he now faced. The key, despite all of the indignities he’d endured, was not to show weakness or fear.
    The car stopped, he heard the trunk spring open, and he was jerked out and stood on his feet. His hood was snatched off and one of the masked men cut the tape on his ankles. Burnside wobbled a little before finding his balance. No one was saying anything. He squinted into the darkness and saw that they were parked beside a small private turbo jet that was perched in front of a rusted, dilapidated aircraft hangar in a remote corner of what he guessed was the Van Nuys Airport.
    There were no major airlines flying out of Van Nuys. The airport was used for cargo jets and small chartered private and commercial aircraft. It was also a popular location for movie and television productions, which used the hangars as soundstages to house large interior sets and used everything else to re-create military bases or big international airports. It gave Burnside the strong but fleeting sensation that he was in a movie himself.
    There were no people in sight besides the two Vibora gunmen. The other hangars nearby were closed and dark. The larger of the two gunmen walked ahead of Burnside into the plane, and the other, slimmer guy walked behind him, prodding him with the barrel of his gun to get moving.
    Climbing into the plane with his hands bound behind his back wasn’t easy for Burnside, and he banged his head going through the low doorway into the cramped cabin. There were six seats in the plane, three on each side in a row against the bulkhead.
    He was shoved into one of the middle seats, and the thin gunman ripped the tape from Burnside’s mouth. It felt like a knife cutting across his face and it brought tears to Burnside’s eyes. He half expected to see his lips stuck to the tape in the gunman’s hand. The tape binding his hands was slashed and bottles of water were passed around. One was dropped into Burnside’s lap.
    Burnside chugged half a bottle and buckled his seat belt as the plane taxied along the tarmac to the runway. The plane paused for a long moment, the engines revved, and the plane moved forward, gaining speed. It rumbled and shook, and the Vibora sitting across the aisle from Burnside gripped his armrests hard. The plane lifted off, wobbled, bounced down, and lifted off a second time. The second liftoff was like a rocket launching, shoving Burnside back into his seat. He was glad it was dark out so he couldn’t see how close they might have come to shaving off the rooftops of the buildings adjacent to the airport.
    The plane shook and rumbled some more. It dropped, lifted back up, and dropped again before finally leveling off. Burnside looked out the window at Los Angeles, spotted some landmarks, and realized they were heading south. It was a struggle to keep his eyes open, his brain fogged over, and his last thought before passing out was that he’d been drugged.
    Nick unbuckled his seat belt, got up from his seat across from Burnside, and made his way into the cockpit, slipping into the co-pilot’s seat beside Willie.
    “How’s it going?” he asked, taking his hood off.
    “Absolutely great,” she said. “Sit back and enjoy the flight.”
    “That’s not easy to do when you’re flying vertically.”
    “It’s called liftoff for a