The Emperor of Vegas

by Ryan Stygar

  “As long as the DEA doesn’t jam us up,” Ty added cautiously.

  “Oh, that’s been handled already,” Watson said lightly. “We won’t be hearing from them any time soon.”

  Ty raised an eyebrow. “Well then, I guess it’s not premature to declare victory?”

  Watson raised his glass in a toast.

  “Absolutely not. To our glorious future!”

  Ty took a drink from his vodka soda, Adam took a polite sip from a green glass of beer. He did his best to keep his pulse under control, but he was acutely aware that time to save his daughter was running out.

  Ty leaned close to Watson. “So… what’s the latest with the Russians?” he asked quietly.

  Watson grinned. “With Lukas and Mikhail dead, Viktoriya Petrov is on her own. She’s running scared now.”

  “Are we gonna go after her?” Ty asked.

  Watson nodded. “She’s abandoned Red Star Tower. Our spies found her name on a reservation for the Venetian. From there she’s scheduled to take an early morning flight to New York and then back across the Atlantic toward Russia in the morning.”

  Adam’s eyes went wide when he overheard this. The Venetian he thought she must be keeping Lily there!

  Ty flipped open his coat and took a seat next to Watson. “How do you know all this?”

  “She was sloppy,” Watson answered. “She used her credit card and her real name on all her reservations. There aren’t many Viktoriya Petrovs running around in Las Vegas; she was easy to find.”

  Ty shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “Sounds like she’s not very good at keeping a low profile. Maybe she’s not worth the same hostile attention as her father and her brother…”

  Watson flipped one of his tightly-styled braids away from his eyes. “All Petrovs must die,” he said coldly. “Those are Mr. Jordan’s exact orders.”

  Adam felt a buzz in his pocket. He covered the phone’s screen with one hand while he read the text from Viktoriya.

  “Time is running out.”

  Adam typed back furiously. “I’m working on it. Don’t hurt her!”

  “That is entirely up to you.”

  Adam snapped the phone shut and looked up. Ty and Watson were still in their seats. Meanwhile, a group of about six or seven young women were being ushered into the VIP booth.

  “Mr. Lafayette, your guests have arrived,” the booth’s guard announced. Skin-tight dresses swayed into the horseshoe-shaped booth while Watson threw open his arms.

  “Welcome ladies!” He picked up a bottle of champagne from the table and fired off its cork. “Who’s ready to party?”

  Delighted squeals from the girls made Adam cringe while Watson made a great show of showering the booth with champagne. Pointy heels clacked across the floor and one of the girl’s shoes stabbed him right in the toe. Beyond the stone balustrade that overlooked the idol and the dancefloor, the bass of the music was turned up another notch. The light show kicked into full gear – unleashing a seizure-inducing series of strobes and flashes as bursts of flames shot up from the golden idol’s palms. It was loud, crowded, and chaotic in that little booth.

  It was also shrouded in intermittent darkness.

  Ty was wrapped up with two dark-haired beauties in his corner. Watson was guzzling champagne and joking with a blonde woman in a shimmering silver dress. The other girls were dancing on the horseshoe-shaped couch and waving drinks in the air. Adam let the paring knife slip from his sleeve and into his palm. Keeping a tight grip on the wooden handle, he scooted closer and closer toward Watson and his new girlfriend.

  Strobe lights flashed like rapid fire to work the crowd into a frenzy. Watson had both hands wrapped around the blonde woman’s hips as she swayed with the music. Adam kept a keen eye on the space between her lean torso and Watson’s exposed neck.

  Adam saw his chance, and he took it. With one lightning-fast arc he swung his arm out and then down toward Watson’s neck. The movement was fast, but the calamitous sequence of events that followed was much faster.

  Slipping in a puddle of champagne on the floor, the giggling blonde lost her footing and fell forward onto Watson’s lap – knocking the gangster back in his seat and smothering his body with hers at the worst possible moment.

  It happened too fast for Adam to reel in his attack. With a gut-wrenching thwap! he felt the paring knife plunge into soft flesh of the woman’s shoulder. Her entire body spasmed and she shrieked in pain while a small geyser of blood spurted up against Watson’s face.

  “Oh shit!” Adam hissed as his eyes met Watson’s. The poor girl was squealing like a fawn shot with an arrow as she tumbled off Watson’s lap and onto the floor.

  Rage. Hate. Murder.

  Watson’s shock and his subsequent glare was the most horrible look Adam had ever seen on a man’s face.

  “Traitor!” Watson bellowed. He lunged over the girl on the floor in an attempt to catch Adam. Without half a thought toward his wounded date, Watson jumped after the man who’d just tried to kill him. “Traitor!!” he screamed.

  Adam barreled through the crowd of girls like a bowling ball through pins. Glasses shattered everywhere as girls were thrown to the floor. Ty Marcus, who seconds earlier was occupied with his date’s luscious lips, became instantly aware that something was wrong. Pushing the brunette away, his jaw dropped at the sight of the blonde girl writhing on the ground with the knife in her shoulder.

  “Traitor!!” Watson screamed again. He leaped over the drink table like a hurdle and sprinted after Adam.

  “That treacherous worm!” Ty roared. Leaving his guards to attend to the gaggle of shrieking, bawling girls, Ty rushed out of the booth and flung himself down the stairs to catch and kill Adam Friend.

  53

  Federal Building, Downtown Las Vegas, 10:10pm

  I f Patricia Klein was panicking, she was doing a damn good job of concealing it. The staging grounds of the Federal Building were abuzz with activity. Two armored personnel carriers (APCs) with the DHS seal painted on their hulls loomed like deadly war machines under the bright white lights. Behind them, the LVMPD helicopter’s blades were revving up as the pilots ran through their pre-flight checklist. Everywhere she looked, black and tan tactical uniforms were running to and fro.

  Minus one team.

  The DEA command tent was empty save for two exasperated agents struggling to contain the damage from the ambush that killed their commanding officer. Like firefighters trying to save a fully involved building, the man and woman under the DEA canopy were fighting a losing battle to get a handle on one of the worst tactical disasters in DEA history.

  Klein called an emergency all-hands meeting when she got the news about what happened to Clayton Burns and his team. With a megaphone in one hand and a radio in the other, she jogged up to the DEA tent to get a situation report. The white EZ-up tent, flanked on one side by a standard issue GMC Yukon, was littered with scribbled notes and documents fluttering away in the breeze. The space had the look of a defeated military camp.

  Klein was greeted by a slight caucasian man with dark-rimmed spectacles.

  “We’ve been all but neutralized at this point,” he confessed as the radio on his hip squawked incessantly at him. He was wearing a light DEA jacket and slacks instead of tactical gear – the trademark uniform of an administrator rather than an operator. His partner, a woman in her late thirties who was wearing a similar outfit, looked up at Patricia Klein from her DEA-issued laptop.

  “We’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened, but it’s bad – really bad.”

  “What’s the damage?” Klein asked. It sounded less empathetic than she’d intended. “I mean, how bad is it?” she added, more softly this time.

  “Clayton Burns is dead,” the woman replied, suppressing a quiver on her lower lip as she did.

  “No…” Klein said. “Clayton?”

  The man nodded grimly. “Apparently he died trying to protect his team from the ambush.” His head sagged. “He took a
bullet to the throat.”

  “My God,” Klein gasped. “Did anyone else get hurt?”

  “Worse than hurt,” the woman answered. “Four others were killed in action; and another agent is fighting for her life in the ER as we speak. This is a disaster.”

  “How could this happen?” Klein said. The agents looked at each other, then to her, but neither had an answer.

  “We don’t know,” the man with the spectacles finally said. “We’re still trying to stop the bleeding over here.”

  His partner added, “This effectively terminates our ability to support your team. We’re out of the fight now.”

  Klein felt an awful burning sensation in her chest. Clayton Burns had been with her from the start, and she struggled to avoid dwelling on the fact that he was really gone. Instead she focused on the mission, shoving aside her personal emotions in order to remain focused. But even that brought her little comfort.

  The DEA was a key resource needed to take down the opium delivery and then pin Dimitri Jordan with hard evidence. Without them, the entire enterprise would be exponentially more difficult.

  Klein whispered, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  The female agent shook her head. Patricia noticed for the first time that tears swelled in the woman’s eyes despite her stern composure. “If you want to help, then you should go out there and see this through,” she wiped the corner of her eye, “Don’t let this be for nothing.”

  Patricia Klein put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We’ll make it work. Take care of yourselves and please don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything.”

  The DEA agents thanked her. Moments later, Klein hurried to the staging area where the DHS team was assembled for the all-hands meeting. The DHS agents were quickly joined by Sergeant Adrian Ramirez and his squad of Las Vegas SWAT officers.

  She clicked on her megaphone to address the combined DHS and Las Vegas force of almost forty SWAT officers from.

  “I’m sure you’ve all heard the news by now. Several DEA agents were killed by a cowardly ambush-style attack. I’d like for us to have a moment of silence for our fallen brothers and sisters.”

  Several moments passed with only the sound of generators rattling in the evening air. Klein keyed her mic again. “The Sumatra gang is dangerous, as we’ve clearly seen. But do you know who else is dangerous? We are. Our anger is righteous. Our purpose is just. Dimitri Jordan and his gang of violent criminals have a history of attacking law enforcement officers. Tonight they are finally going to face the consequences.”

  She paused for a round of applause from the SWAT teams.

  “I am pushing up our timeline. All DHS resources are to report to your tactical officers immediately. Las Vegas SWAT, you’ll be departing in a few moments. Good luck everyone.”

  

  Las Vegas Boulevard

  Twenty-two million gallons of water fill the man-made lake in front of the Bellagio Hotel. Bordered on one side by the elevated porticos of boutique shops and by the Las Vegas Strip on the other, the massive fountains come to life at regular intervals. At regular intervals throughout the day and night, over one thousand powerful nozzles fire sheets of white water as high as four hundred and eighty feet into the sky.

  A crowd of almost three hundred tourists had gathered along the balustrade to witness one of the greatest water shows in the world. When the jets came to life, however, the cameras weren’t pointed at the massive geysers. Instead they were turned back to the much more exciting spectacle on the street.

  Fountains are everywhere, but it’s not every day that you see two armored war machines rumbling down Las Vegas Boulevard.

  The Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs) were acquired by the DHS from the Pentagon to support high-risk operations in urban environments. Cameras flashed as the MRAPs and their escort of six black GMC Yukon SUVs roared past them with lights and sirens blaring.

  Holding onto the sides of the mighty armored vehicles, Department of Homeland Security SWAT officers bristled with Mossberg shotguns and MP5 submachine guns.

  The fountains of the Bellagio would have to tolerate being upstaged for the time being. As the two DHS armored vehicles rumbled toward the Sumatra Hotel with the six-vehicle convoy in their wake, an LVMPD helicopter thumped along the Strip just a few hundred feet above the federal convoy.

  The small airship had both of its side doors open so that the team of SWAT officers could perform a rapid deployment upon landing. With one hand gripping the safety cable over his head and his feet firmly planted against the helicopter’s landing skids, Sergeant Adrian Ramirez tugged down his face mask and keyed his throat-mic to radio his team. His voice crackled in their earpieces over the sound of the thundering helicopter blades.

  “Alright Zebras, I don’t need to tell you how dangerous this is going to be. Dimitri Jordan has been untouchable for years. A lot of people are afraid of him and with good reason; he kills cops, and he gets away with it.”

  Ramirez paused and held on as the pilot pushed the helicopter into a rapid ascent to the top of the Sumatra Hotel, sending hot wind rushing past his face. The twinkling blue lights of the DHS convoy shrunk beneath his boots as the chopper flew higher and higher.

  “Tonight we are putting a stop to it. Tonight Dimitri Jordan and his army of gangsters are finally facing justice. I am incredibly proud to be serving with each of you. Years from now, this will be remembered as the night that the LVMPD wrestled control of its city away from a dangerous criminal. When we step off this bird, Zebras, we are stepping into a new era of history.”

  “Well said Sarge!” An approving voice crackled in his earpiece.

  The pilot pulled hard on his control stick and sent the chopper screaming up the tall sides of the Sumatra Hotel. Ramirez and his five fellow officers held on tight.

  “Remember; we want this son of a bitch alive,” Ramirez said as the airship flared over the side of Club Nariphon. The pools were whipped into a mist while palm trees flailed under the beating blades. “Our mission is to shock, intimidate, and confuse in order to gain tactical superiority. Lethal force is to be used only as a last resort – but if it comes to that, we are going to show these thugs what a professional police force is truly capable of doing.”

  The LVMPD pilot flickered the red lamps in the fuselage on and off to signal that he was ready to unload the team. Sergeant Ramirez held out a thumbs up.

  “Zebra One to command,” he said into his DHS-linked radio. “We are ready for insertion.”

  “Roger Zebra One.” Patricia Klein’s voice returned. “Leaks below are being plugged. You’re clear to deploy. Godspeed Zebra One.”

  Ramirez cinched the chinstrap of his tan ballistic helmet. Releasing himself from the safety cable, he leaped from the hovering LVMPD helicopter and down to the concrete deck of Club Nariphon with his MP5 ready for action. The other five SWAT officers jumped down one at a time with their weapons ready. In total silence, except for the whine of the helicopter above them, the SWAT officers spread out into a six-point star to form a perimeter.

  Ramirez said into his radio, “LZ is secure. Eagle One, we’ll call when we have a package for you.”

  “Roger Zebra One, good luck in there,” the pilot replied. An instant later, wind barreled down against the helmets of the SWAT team as the helo floated away, leaving them alone atop the dark tower.

  Ramirez held up a finger and spun it in a circle to indicate that his team should rally around his position. Forming a tight zipper-formation behind their leader, the LVMPD officers wielded Mossbergs and MP5 submachines in alternating order. They stayed in perfect formation as Ramirez led them down the winding paths of the pool club. To some of the officers, the jungled pathways felt more like a trail through hostile Vietnam than the top of a luxurious Las Vegas hotel.

  Footsteps shuffled in silence. Every officer kept a sharp eye out for signs of trouble. They swept the barrels of their weapons left to right and up and down. After twenty seconds, Ramir
ez held up a fist to stop their advance. He dropped to a knee, “Hold!” he whispered.

  A shadow lying in the middle of the path ahead caught Ramirez’s attention. Pressing the MP5 to his shoulder, he gestured for Zebra Two to cover him while the others held their position.

  Ramirez kept the ironsights of his submachine gun locked on the shadow as Zebra Two covered him from behind.

  “Jesus,” Ramirez whispered when he was close enough to see the pool of blood on the ground.

  Then he saw the boots.

  Two black soles were poking out from the planter to his left. Quickly but cautiously he rushed up to them and pushed away the broad banana leaves. He let out a heavy sigh when he saw the body of Javier Benitez drenched in blood.

  “Security guards,” Ramirez whispered to his partner. Without looking down at the body, Zebra Two tapped Ramirez’s shoulder and pointed to a shadow lying on the ground behind the guard booth.

  “I count three of them, all dead. Do we alert command?”

  “No, there’s nothing they can do about it now. This is our problem. Follow me.”

  Ramirez motioned for three of the SWAT officers to secure the northern exit while he and the other two hurried to the southern end of the tower.

  Ramirez was preparing his forcible entry kit to breach the door when his radio chirped in his ear.

  “Zebra Three to Zebra One. I have something you need to see, rally on my position.”

  Sergeant Ramirez left his partner to guard the southern exit point as he hurried to see what the problem was on the north side.

  “What’s going on?” Ramirez asked the tan-clad officers at the door. They looked like robo-cops with their identity-concealing balaclavas and mirrored protective goggles under their helmets. With a gloved hand one of them pointed along the white lines of light spilling out from the door’s broken jambs.

  “Someone’s already breached the doorway,” Zebra Three explained. “Alarms are disabled too.”

  Ramirez looked back in the direction of the slain security guards. His mind worked out a thousand possible explanations.