Assault on Sunrise (The Extra Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF

wanted—write your own ticket.”
    “Oh Devlin! You’re givin me a woodie with all this sweet talk,” Lance teased.
    “Well then see what this does for you: I walked off that set with mucho clacks, and I’d be happy to pay you boys a mil apiece to help me steal something.”
    The pair of them grinned at each other.
    “Well,” squeaked Lance, holding in another toke, “there’s no harm in talking it over.”
    “OK. Do you guys know Mazy and Ming?”
    *   *   *
    At the same moment, the two young women in question were lying by their own pool—both deck and pool perhaps a little smaller than Trek and Lance’s. Mazy and Ming were payraft pilots, and though similarly housed in the Hollywood Hills, they were situated just a bit farther downslope.
    Mazy told Ming, “I’m not saying we should agree with her. I’m just saying we ought to go see her and listen to her.”
    “I’m not gonna talk to that bitch,” snapped Ming. When she was all tightened up like this with anger, her lean little form always seemed smaller. From her partner’s tension, Mazy saw that a fight was inevitable between them. She sighed.
    “I’m sorry, hon, but you’re really being immature.” Mazy was twenty-two, and Ming nineteen. Being the younger, Ming’s identity was a very Big Deal in their relationship. And being the less experienced lover only intensified her insistence on her separate self. Mazy saw she was going to have to talk fast to be heard at all.
    “It’s because I love you that I have to say this: You’re mad at her because—even renegade—Sandy Devlin’s still the best rafter god ever made. Come on, Ming! We should never get mad at the best for their gifts. Never get mad at talent—learn from it!”
    “I’ll respect anyone who respects me! I don’t give a shit what they can do otherwise!” Ming’s silver hair trembled. She was going shag, letting her pineapple grow out because Mazy was keeping her own.
    “Honey,” said Mazy. “She’s never reprimanded anyone who didn’t fuck up, and she comes right out and tells you whenever you do a bitchin job!”
    “Oh I do bitchin work—I’m as good as you or her. Better.”
    “I said ‘you’ meaning anyone, you silly bitch.” Mazy said this laughing, because ‘silly bitch’ was among their love-words. But Ming could always choose to be offended when her mood so inclined, and now she jumped to her feet. “You talk to her if you want. I’m not gonna.”
    She jumped in the pool—an unintentionally comic gesture, because the pool was maybe five strokes long, but she started swimming the dinky laps it allowed, getting more steamed each time she had to throw a turn.
    “You know what I’m saying, Ming!” Ming’s strokes grew noisier, and Mazy half-shouted to be heard. “Sandy Devlin got out! She got out rich!”
    She let that sink in.
    After three more stubborn laps, Ming vaulted out, dripping, and sat with her feet in the water, glowering and at first refusing to speak.
    Mazy smiled a little sadly. She knew it wasn’t the word “rich” that had gotten through to her intense partner. It was the word “out.” The few times that Sandy Devlin had dressed Ming down had been for reckless risks of rafts and extras. And Mazy knew—as she thought Devlin must have known—that Ming’s reckless dives and razor-sharp swoops were the girl’s way of dealing with her revulsion at being a rafter at all and the mass murder of which she was part.
    *   *   *
    Late the same afternoon, the five of them were at the young men’s place. The grill was still smoking—Sandy had insisted they all eat something before tonight’s work. Ming had said, “Screw that, Devlin. I didn’t come up here for lunch. Whaddaya want from us?”
    And Devlin had handed each of them a neat packet of bills. “Ten K apiece, a small advance. Eat, listen, then walk if you want and keep the clacks.”
    They’d eaten—all of them except Ming—and now they were waiting to listen,