by Ryan Stygar
Six pairs of boots trotted off with their black MP5 submachine guns ready for action. On the far end of the casino floor, past the Temple Lounge and beneath the timber doors of the Nataraja club, two additional squads of DHS agents were pouring inside. Klein felt a measure of relief when she noticed a well-dressed man with a silver pistol in his hand being tackled onto the red carpet and quickly flexi-cuffed by her agents; they had just bagged their first Lieutenant. “You can fight all you want, Dimitri,” she whispered to herself. “But you’re gonna lose.”
56
U pstairs, the Las Vegas SWAT team gripped the sides of the walls like sailors clinging to a ship being tossed in an angry sea. The sudden blast of Semtex explosives behind them was so close that the floor beneath their feet seemed to lurch upward.
Ramirez swore under his breath when he looked back and saw that the stairwell doors had been reduced to a heap of twisted rebar and smashed concrete. Black smoke billowed up from the stairwell and crept along the top of the hallway.
“There goes our egress point,” Ramirez said. He dipped his head around the corner to get a visual on the mysterious and obviously well-trained enemy down the hall. Ninety feet down, partially concealed by the slight S-curve of the hallway, he could see that the opposite exit door was still undamaged.
“Looks like the only way out is being blocked by our new friends.”
A man in a red beret fired a sustained burst of automatic gunfire at the police and then disappeared into one of the villas. Screams echoed from down the hall before being drowned out by gun blasts. All the while, electronic tones shrieked while the fire alarm’s strobes flashed in the smoky hallway. It was the most chaotic fight any of the police had seen.
“Who are those guys?” Zebra Four shouted over the noise. He jammed a fresh magazine into his MP5 and tried to get a better look down the hall.
Ramirez shook his head. “I don’t know, but this place reeks of plastic explosives right now –
He was cut off when a man with a red beret, who was taking cover in a nook about eighty feet down the hall, leaned out with his AKS and fired at them. The police were forced to find cover, which cleared the way for three Spetsnaz soldiers to advance one nook closer to the SWAT team.
“We can’t let them suppress us like that!” Ramirez shouted. Snapping back the bolt of his MP5, he leaned out into the hall and fired several three-round bursts to keep the red berets back. “They’re leap-frogging! Don’t let them force you down or else they’ll be right on top of us before we know it.”
A mighty groan rumbled across the floor.
“I don’t think this building is explosion-proofed, Sarge,” Zebra Two warned. “Whatever you want to do, we don’t have much time to do it!”
Ramirez narrowed his eyes in the direction of muffled gunfire bursting from one of the villas.
“How are we doing on ammo?” he asked the team.
“We’ve got enough to fight our way to Jordan or to bug out. It’s your call, Sir,” Zebra Four answered.
Ramirez stood and pressed his back against the wall.
“Listen Zebras, I don’t know what we just walked into here, but I don’t like it and I don’t want it in my city. I want to fight and I want to see this mission through.”
He paused when one of the Zebras raised his weapon and fired a burst down the hall to keep the red berets back.
“I’m not gonna force anyone to come with me… When you signed up for this I don’t think anyone expected to get put up against a bunch of bombs and paramilitary guys. Before I go any further, I want you to know that this goes well beyond the call of duty. If anyone wants to turn back and retreat, I promise you will not be thought a coward. Speak up now if you vote to withdraw.”
Five sets of eyes concealed behind protective goggles looked up at him. Over the wail of the fire alarm, a muffled scream rippled down the hall, followed shortly by a shotgun blast.
“The LVMPD doesn’t run,” one of the Zebras finally said. “We’re with you to the end, Sarge.”
“Agreed,” chimed another. “What’s the plan?”
Ramirez wasted no time with sentimentality. Even though the unwavering solidarity of his team made him proud, the urgency of the moment took priority.
“We came here for Dimitri Jordan, and that’s what we’re gonna get.” He jabbed a finger down the hall and pointed at the largest crater in the wall, which was once the largest door in the hall. “That’s the big man’s villa down there. Zebra Five and Six, you two will cover our rear. The rest of you follow me – if any red berets pop up I want you to shoot to kill.” Ramirez quickly raised his gun and cleared the hall with a quick burst of automatic fire. “Let’s move!”
Inside one of the villas, Lukas Petrov held up his Saiga semi-automatic shotgun and blasted a six-inch hole into his victim’s chest. The Lieutenant flew back four feet before slamming into a hallway mirror and collapsing to the ground. Beneath the wide streak of blood on the cracked mirror, his silver gun glinted under the flashing strobes of the fire alarms. Satisfied that the man was dead, Lukas took the staircase that led down to the living room where the rest of his squad was performing a sweep of the other rooms.
“Villa is clear, Lukas,” one of them announced in Russian. Lukas gave a curt nod and pointed toward the villa’s main doorway.
“I eliminated the Lieutenant upstairs.” he said. “On to the next villa!”
Smoke was pouring in from the hallway as Lukas’s men paused at the door to get a visual on the other Spetsnaz team. Peter was crouched low in a nook across the hall and firing at the police.
“They’re trying to advance!” Peter yelled as he fired controlled bursts at the enemy. Lukas’s skin stung as a nine-millimeter round buzzed less than an inch away from his face and punched a hole in the drywall behind him.
“Damn!” Lukas hissed as he jumped back behind cover. “Those men are good shots!”
Peter hooked his hand around the corner of his nook and tossed a smoke grenade down the hall. When the white smoke was thick enough to conceal his movement, he and the rest of his team jumped out from their position and ran to regroup with Lukas and his team.
One by one they slid into the doorway as Lukas fired his Saiga to cover the.
“I didn’t expect to have company!” Peter said, catching his breath. “This just became fun, old friend.”
Lukas peeked down the hall right as the last tan-clad SWAT officer ducked into Dimitri Jordan’s villa. “They are going after our prize,” he growled. “SWAT team or not, I won’t let them interfere with our revenge… reload weapons!”
Six sets of AKS assault rifles clicked as the men snapped in fresh magazines of ammunition.
“Zipper-formation,” Lukas ordered. “Peter, you cover our backs while I take the lead. Let’s move!”
Lukas raised his weapon to his shoulder and turned out of the doorway, stepping over debris with the agility of a cat while he kept his eyes narrowly focused down the ironsights of his AKS.
In the echoing chambers of the metal and concrete clad stairwell, Watson Lafayette stumbled and fell when another explosion rumbled downward. The blast stunned him as he ran past the tenth floor. His lungs were burning from the exertion of running up the stairs and fighting through the fleeing crowd of hotel guests.
Watson patted the Sig Sauer holstered on his shoulder to ensure it was secure, then whipped off his blazer and threw the sweaty garment to the ground.
Wiping the strands of tight braids from his glistening forehead, Watson peeked down the stairwell. Weighed down by heavy protective gear, the DHS SWAT team was struggling to keep up with him. If he could keep up his pace then surely he could get to Jordan in time to help him. He was just Jordan’s heir, he was also his right-hand man, he had to help him.
Tying his long hair into a rough bun behind his head, Watson sucked in a deep breath of fresh air and trotted up the stairs, passing the eleventh and then the twelfth floor in under
twenty seconds.
57
D own on Las Vegas Boulevard, Adam Friend stomped on the accelerator and sent a surge of fuel into all eight cylinders of the bi-turbo engine. The Mercedes AMG GT roared to life, throwing Adam back into his seat as he screamed past the swarm of red and blue emergency lights converging on the Sumatra Hotel. Swerving left and right to avoid crashing into the cars ahead of him, Adam pushed the German machine to its absolute limit as he raced to the Venetian.
Valets were congregating on the far end of the Venetian’s entrance to get a glimpse of the fire burning atop the Sumatra Hotel. They scattered like pigeons from a charging dog when the Mercedes screeched beneath the arches and came to a stop at the curb. One of the valets went pale when he saw the silver GT nearly collide with a family of four on their way back to their car.
“Sir! You can’t just –
Adam pulled a wad of hundred dollar bills from his pocket and threw it at the valet without counting how much was there.
“Just keep it ready and keep it running!” Adam screamed as he sprinted into the grand entrance. “And go find me a car seat!”
The glass doors whisked open and Adam Friend disappeared into the painted halls of the Venetian.
A boy-faced security guard was turning down the volume on his squawking walkie-talkie as he ran out to the valets. “Whoa! Dustin, who the hell was that? He was driving like a freaking lunatic!”
“I don’t know… but he was loaded.” the valet named Dustin muttered as he knelt down to pick up the pile cash on the asphalt. After pocketing the seventh one-hundred dollar bill he decided that he didn’t care who that guy was or how close he’d come to running over half the people at the entrance, he was going to do exactly what he had asked.
Dustin trotted over to the idling Mercedes AMG GT and parked it alongside the curb with the other VIP vehicles. Revving engines made him look up as he finished placing the fourth and final traffic cone around Adam’s stolen car.
With almost as much fury as the silver Mercedes that came before them, a squadron of four white Range Rovers roared into the main entrance of the Venetian like charging cavalry. Doors flew open and unloaded at least ten men wearing suits. Four of them held silver pistols in their hands while the others carried MAC-10 submachine guns. None of them were at all shy about brandishing their weaponry as they charged into the Venetian just moments after Adam.
Inside the Venetian, a pair of frazzled concierges were gawking at the manic-looking man in front of them.
“Viktoriya Petrov is staying here, what room is she in?” he panted.
The girls at the desk, a pair of UNLV students just trying to pay their way through school, were dumbstruck. Brass name-tags identified the two as Vicky and Bianca. Bianca was first to speak up.
“Sir, we can’t disclose guest’s room numbers–
“I know the law but this is an emergency!” Adam pleaded. Vicky reached her slender fingers under the desk to trigger the silent security alarm, but retracted them when Adam plopped a handful of hundred dollar bills on the desk.
“Please, I have to go find her!”
The students gaped at the pile of cash, then at each other. Bianca whipped her head around to see if her managers were looking, then quickly slapped a hand on the money and pulled it back. She gave Vicky a nudge and without a word the girl ran to get the key.
Perhaps if tuition and textbooks weren’t so expensive, then the college girls might have refused to help him. But the wad of almost twenty hundred dollar bills would go a long way between the two of them. Vicky emerged from the back room with a little white envelope in her hand and Bianca hustled off to distract the manager, who was approaching their workstation to see what all the commotion was about.
“You did not get this from us, understand?” Vicky said, eyeing Adam cautiously. Adam wasted no time accepting the key-card and noting the room number scribbled on its white envelope. “Thank you… Thank you!” he said before running off. Vicky watched Adam run for about three seconds before bullets whizzed past her head and slammed into the oil-paintings behind her.
“Gunmen! Get down!” she screamed to her coworkers. They all dropped down below the counter as almost a dozen armed gangsters burst through the doors and fired down the gilded hallway after Adam Friend. From beneath the cover of the desk, Vicky reached up and triggered the security alarm.
58
Sumatra Hotel, 55th Floor
D imitri Jordan was in his office when the first round of explosions went off. The blasts were so violent that instinct caused him to jump out of his seat like a spring before his brain registered what was happening. His floor-to-ceiling windows shook so hard that a six foot long crack streaked across the central pane. Picture frames fell from his wood-paneled walls and shattered on the floor. Lights flickered, then strobes flashed as the fire alarm blared. Jordan was just getting his bearings again when the muffled cracks of gunfire erupted in the hallway outside his villa.
“What’s going on out there?!” Jordan shouted as another explosion rocked the building and caused him to stumble. He’d just caught himself against the side of his mahogany desk when Kiersten threw open his office doors.
“Dimitri!” she screamed. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, stay with me!”
Jordan unbuttoned his blazer and threw it over his chair. Beneath his white collared shirt, every one of his powerful muscles tensed in preparation for battle. He looked to Kiersten, “There’s a small glass obelisk sitting on the bookcase, pull it!”
Kiersten did as she was told, pulling down on the obelisk and stepping back when the bookshelf whisked open to reveal a small armory of assault rifles, pistols, and submachine guns.
“Which one do you want?” she asked.
“On the left there’s an AK-107. Beneath it is a 97-round drum magazine. Pull them both out and then grab a small pistol for yourself.”
Kiersten quickly pulled down the Russian-made AK-107 and tossed it to Dimitri, who caught the weapon with one hand. Jordan pulled out a duffel bag from his desk and was rapidly filling it with cash from one of his safes. When it was full he slung the bag of cash around his shoulders. Kiersten found the heavy drum magazine and placed it in Jordan’s palm. Slamming the 97-round magazine into the bottom of his assault rifle, Jordan racked the slide, pressed the weapon up to his shoulder and hurried out of the office with Kiersten carrying a Walther PPK behind him.
Downstairs from his office, smoke rolled past the splintered frame of Jordan’s front door. Two body guards were standing several paces apart and aiming automatic pistols at the breeched doorway.
“What’s happening down there?” Jordan barked from the top of the stairs.
“We’re under attack!” one of the guards shouted up to him. “The door just blew open, then white smoke started pouring in from outside. I spotted six SWAT officers taking cover just one door down from ours!”
“What’s all that shooting about?”
“There’s another group of men on the other side of the hall, they have automatic weapons and they’re shooting at the SWAT team.”
“Our guys?” Jordan asked, confused. The guard shook his head.
“They’re wearing green camo and red berets, that’s all I know, Sir.”
“Red berets…?” Jordan muttered to himself. SWAT made sense; apparently there was more blowback from attacking the DEA than he anticipated. But red berets? That didn’t make any sense at all. Jordan gripped his heavy AK-107 and aimed the ironsights at the smoky doorway.
“Damian,” he said to one of his guards, keeping his gun aimed at the door. “I want you to take Kiersten out the emergency exit behind me and then get her to the Invictus.”
“That’s all the way in Los Angeles! I’m not leaving you!” Kiersten yelled. She hurried to where Jordan was crouching with his rifle and threw her tattooed arms around his shoulders. “I’d rather die than go on the run without you!”
Jordan shoved h
er off of him. “You will do as I say and I will meet you at the Invictus. Do not make me tell you again!”
Tears streamed from Kiersten’s cat-eyed makeup. Damian holstered his pistol and ran up the stairs to grab her arm. “Come on, Miss Kiersten, we don’t have much time.”
“I love you Dimitri!” Kiersten yelled as the guard pulled her away. Jordan turned his head and told her he loved her too.
“Now go to LA and get ready to set sail; I’ll meet you there. GO!”
Two tan-clad figures emerged from the smoky haze right as Kiersten’s black hair whipped around and she ran toward the emergency exit. The last thing she heard was the ear-splitting blasts of her lover’s heavy assault rifle.
Dimitri Jordan’s villa was situated close to the northern end of the S-shaped tower with Watson Lafayette’s villa directly across the hall from his. The Spetsnaz team, maintaining their strict zipper formation, took less than forty-five seconds to sweep through the hall and arrive at the splintered remnants of Jordan’s front door.
“Enemy behind us!” Peter called out, raising his AKS to fire.
Two silver pistols emerged from about thirty feet behind them. Heavy .45 caliber rounds bombarded the men as they scattered for cover.
Peter tucked and rolled away to avoid being hit. The man behind him, however, wasn’t fast enough.
Two dark red rosebuds flared out from the gaping holes in the Russian’s chest. Lung tissue sputtered from the wounds as the man struggled against unimaginable pain to breathe. Lukas immediately assessed that the man was beyond help.
“You are a good man Yuri. I will miss you.” Lukas said. Without hesitating he raised his Saiga to Yuri’s skull and pulled the trigger – ending the man’s life instantly. Lukas looked at the others, “I expect you all to do the same for me, should I become so badly maimed.”