The Emperor of Vegas

by Ryan Stygar

  Lukas had to smash through the glass exit doors as he and his men escaped outside. Two armored vehicles with the DHS seal painted on their hulking black bodies were blaring their warning horns and reversing away from the Sumatra. Teams of federal agents, police, and even a few lagging hotel guests, were stampeding away from the towering inferno. Wide glass windows, scorched black from the fires above, popped out of their panes and fell fifty stories to the street, shattering into a billion razor-sharp shards and slashing the faces of people trying to get away. Hot ashes rained downward. When Lukas looked up he saw a twenty foot tall date palm – its entire canopy aflame like a torch – plummeting down from the ruins of Club Nariphon. It landed with a smash! as it crashed into one of the fire trucks parked along the base of the tower.

  Indistinguishable from the scores of police and federal agents swarming about in the chaos, Lukas and his team hustled past the evacuating bodies to the other side of the Strip.

  “It’s crumbling!” one of the Russians gasped.

  It was like slow motion. Buckling from their own colossal weight, the top eight floors of the Sumatra Hotel started to list heavily to one side. Inside the long S-shaped tower, damaged steel beams, rendered even weaker by flames, failed in rapid sequence like dominoes. First the south side of the Sumatra broke, sheering off from the rest of the tower as it collapsed to the ground, then another chunk fell away, then another.

  Great clouds of yellow and black dust wafted up from the Las Vegas strip as hundreds and then thousands of tons of smoldering, flaming debris plummeted from the top of the tower. Rumbling like bomb blasts and unleashing a hurricane-like wall of dusty wind, the Sumatra Hotel was instantly reduced to a treacherously unstable, forty-seven story shadow of its former self.

  At the base of the tower, protected by the steel hull of the industrial dumpster, Adrian braced himself against the shower of smoking debris blowing past him. Like a skier taking shelter from an avalanche behind a boulder, Adrian Ramirez ducked his head and waited out the worst of the collapse. Heavy chunks of concrete slammed down behind him. Tangled clusters of steel and glass and stone and lumber poured across the alleyway.

  Darkness enveloped him as the pieces of the building fell, but the dumpster’s steel wall shielded him from being crushed. When the avalanche of debris slowed to a trickle, Ramirez began the slow, painful climb to the world above him.

  Twenty minutes passed with him fighting his way up to the surface. It was a war of inches. It seemed that for every foot he managed to climb, a loose chunk of concrete would give way and send him sliding back down two feet. Rebar jabbed out and stuck into his ribs like spears. He was stuck, tangled, unable to move.

  Ramirez was struggling to free himself when a voice called out from over his head. “Police! Can anyone hear us? Police! If anyone can hear us, call out! Are there any survivors here?”

  “I’m down here!” Adrian called up from the dark cavern of rubble. Boots crunched against the dust and concrete almost fifteen feet above his head as the search party converged on the location of Ramirez’s voice. “Sergeant Adrian Ramirez, LVMPD. I’m badly wounded and I’m trapped down here!”

  “Hold on, Sergeant!” the voice called back. “We’re coming to get you!”

  Gloved hands set to work removing rubble from above Adrian’s head. White light trickled down from the rescuer’s flashlights as they opened up a space and began working their way down to Adrian to help him out.

  “Boy am I glad to see you guys.” Adrian said, pointing to the cluster of rebar jabbing into his side and pinning him down. “I thought I was gonna be stuck here all night!”

  A diamond tipped saw was lowered down and fired up. One of the rescuers removed his ballistic vest and held it over Ramirez’s face to protect him from the shower of sparks as the other rescuer cut through the rebar.

  “You’re bleeding profusely, we’re gonna have to med-evac you right away,” the rescuer said.

  “Fine by me.” Ramirez winced as the men pulled the rebar aside and helped him up. Ramirez allowed himself to be stripped as a team of paramedics converged on his position and dressed his wounds in white gauze. “Just tell me we got some of those bastards in custody…” he added.

  “One Lieutenant from Dimitri Jordan’s gang was captured alive, yes,” a rescuer replied. “But the rest of this operation went to shit… I bet a lot of Feds are about to lose their jobs over this mess.”

  Adrian shook his head. “Well… this night sure went to shit for Dimitri Jordan too. At least we can take some comfort in that.”

  70

  30,000 Feet Above San Diego County, 6:30am

  A dam shifted his weight to accommodate Lily’s little head resting on his lap. The Boeing 747 was cruising high above the desert while the toddler snoozed. Reaching over her and past the seat where Vince was snoring heavily, Adam cracked open the window shade to look out at the eastern horizon.

  The early flight was the first available departure from McCarren. While Adam was fighting like hell to rescue Lily and make it to the airport in one piece, Vince had loyally done his part by getting the tickets ready for them.

  It was an anxious wait in the terminal. Adam arrived almost five full hours before take-off and he was constantly looking over his shoulder while they waited to be boarded. In a few short days, Adam had killed more people than he cared to try to count. It was nothing short of a rampage. Despite the promises from the police, whom he had yet to hear so much as a peep from, Adam feared that official interest in his crimes was alive and well. Adam’ mind worked furiously to figure out the best way to keep a low profile once they landed in San Diego.

  “How long was I out for?” Vince groaned as his eyebrows fluttered open.

  “Just a few minutes,” Adam said, closing the window shade.

  “Leave it open, I like the view,” Vince said. “Wow it felt like longer than a few minutes… are we close?”

  “We should be; it’s a short flight.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She seems fine… but I just know that everything from last night will be burned in her memory forever. Three year olds aren’t built to handle being shot at,” Adam shuddered as he relived the close call in the Venetian. Vince reached a muscular arm over and patted the little girl’s back.

  “She’s already beaten the odds a few times. This little one’s a fighter, she’ll be ok.”

  Adam ran his fingers through Lily’s golden hair a few times. “I hope so…”

  Vince tapped on his window after a few minutes of silence. “Hey check that out.”

  Adam leaned over in his seat to look where Vince was pointing. To the southeast, a long shadow was being cast on the earth below their plane. Above it, a miles-high column of black smoke billowed upward from a three thousand acre wildfire burning in the eastern half of San Diego county.

  “Don’t see that every day,” Vince remarked.

  “Wow,” Adam murmured. The tower of smoke was thick and ominous – it loomed over the county like a mythical monster. “I heard San Diego was known for wildfires as much as it is for beaches and beer.”

  “With the good comes the bad right?”

  “I guess so,” Adam answered. Both friends watched the fire as the plane drifted past the anvil-shaped pyro-cumulous clouds. Behind them, the sun was concealed by smoke until it was little more than a dim-red orb.

  

  Half an hour later, the plane touched down at San Diego International Airport. Beside the modern skyline, a white forest of masts rocked in the massive harbor. The first thing Adam noticed when he stepped onto the terminal ramp was how crisp the air was. Even at the height of summer, with a fire burning to the east, San Diego was easily thirty degrees cooler than Las Vegas.

  Lily shivered in his arms and he hoisted her up close to press more of his warm body against hers.

  “She’ll acclimate in a few days,” Vince said, tossing his small carry-on bag over his shoulder as they walked into the terminal.

/>   “She’s got the desert in her blood, just like her dad…” Adam said. His voice trailed off when he caught a weird look from one of the airport staff. When their eyes locked, she was speaking into a black telephone connected to her ticket desk. It was just a brief moment of eye contact, no more than a few seconds, but it made Adam uneasy.

  It was just… unfriendly. That’s what it was. Her gaze was unfriendly.

  “You okay?” Vince asked. He was pulling out his cellphone to call for a ride.

  “Yeah…” Adam said, breaking his eyes away from the woman at the desk. “Yeah, I’m just shaken up I guess.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Vince said as he pressed the phone to his ear. “You’ve been through a lot, brother. But you’re safe now. She’s safe too.”

  Adam tried to shake off his uneasiness as they moved along with the crowd to the end of the terminal, but his gut was burning.

  Two San Diego Police officers were standing just forty or fifty feet down the long walkway. They seemed to be checking people as they passed by, asking them a question or two before waving them along.

  “Vince…” Adam murmured as he looked at the San Diego Police. Vince held up a finger.

  “Hi… yes we’re here… the flight was good thanks. We’re at Terminal Two, we’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Vince!” Adam hissed, tugging his arm.

  “What gives man?”

  Vince’s jaw dropped when he saw that the pair of San Diego cops were joined by three more police officers. Each was wearing a tan tactical vest and carried an M4 rifle. One of the men in blue nodded up in Vince and Adam’s direction and the trio of heavily armed officers marched up the terminal toward them. Their black gloves gripped handles of their M4 rifles with deadly intent.

  “You think… you think they’re here for us?” Vince stammered, stopping in his tracks as the men forced their way through the crowd.

  “I don’t see any other killers around here, do you?” Adam whispered back quickly. Tightening his grip on Lily, he turned and started walking away from the heavily armed men at a rapid pace. At once the three of them started trotting, then they broke into a run.

  A voice barked through the crowd, “US Marshals! On your knees now!” A man in a black bullet-proof vest emerged from the crowd of passengers with his pistol held up high. “You’re under arrest, Adam Friend!”

  Adam tried to turn and run, but collided with a pair of screaming teenagers who were scrambling away from the marshal and his weapon. At once Vince was knocked down to his knees. The heavily armed officers pounced on him like a pack of lions; they had him cuffed within seconds.

  “Freeze! I said stop right there!” the marshal yelled from behind Adam’s back. “Get the child!” he ordered. Two of the men with rifles lunged at Adam. Adam was thrown to the ground by one man while the other ripped Lily away from him.

  “Daddy!” she wailed.

  “Wait! Wait you can’t do this –

  There was a high-pitched buzzing sound and three sharp barbs were fired into Adam’s back. In an instant, 50,000 volts of electricity surged through Adam’s body – causing every muscle in his body to seize violently.

  “Cuff him!” an angry voice commanded.

  Adam melted into the floor like a puddle of jelly when the power to the Taser was disconnected. Cold metal cuffs clamped around his wrists while a pair of arms forcefully dragged him to his feet.

  “Adam Friend, you’re under arrest for the murder of a federally protected witness; Andrew Kremenski.”

  “That wasn’t…” Adam stammered drunkenly, “I didn’t…”

  “That’s just the first in a long list of charges,” the marshal retorted, “so you can just put a pin in it.”

  “Lily…”

  “Get her off to Child Protective Services, tell command I have Adam Friend and Vincent Corspucci in custody.” the marshal said to his team. He then grabbed Adam’s face to look him in the eye while the burly tactical officers held his arms behind his back. “Your little killing spree has just come to an end, Mr. Friend.”

  71

  Pacific Ocean, 7:10am

  O ne hundred miles out to sea from the Port of Los Angeles, Dimitri Jordan’s two hundred and eighty foot mega-yacht, the Invictus, sailed south by southwest at a cruising speed of fifteen knots.

  Custom built in northern Germany, in a shipyard owned by the Lürssen Company, the gold-painted Invictus was commissioned by Jordan to celebrate the fifth operational year of his stunningly successful hotel and casino. With accommodations for up to twenty passengers plus the crew, the massive ship featured the finest amenities available at sea.

  The Gold Fleet, as Jordan dubbed it, was a veritable armada of luxury. The Invictus sailed with a compliment one seventy-two foot tender (which on its own put most yachts to shame), one fifty foot MonteCarlo MC5, and one twenty foot power boat.

  Jordan hadn’t eaten or slept since arriving at the Invictus via helicopter. Pausing on the helicopter pad only long enough to plant a long, passionate kiss on Kiersten’s lips, Jordan immediately ran aft toward his executive office within the gold leviathan’s superstructure. There he was on the phone non-stop from the middle of the night until sunrise, assessing the damage inflicted upon his multi-billion dollar empire and scrambling to salvage his desperate situation.

  Jordan was on a video conference call when Kiersten cracked open the dark wood door to his massive office. To her left, a handsome and well-dressed Swiss banker was speaking to Jordan through a seventy-two inch flat screen on the wall. Behind Jordan’s Italian leather chair, curved floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the bow of his mighty ship offered a one hundred and eighty degree view of the Pacific Ocean and the California coast off to port.

  “… Thank you, Mr. Rochat,” she heard Jordan say as he wrapped up the meeting. “That’s very good news indeed.”

  The Swiss gentlemen bowed his head deferentially. Speaking in a thick Swiss accent he said, “I am happy to be of service, Mr. Jordan. As always, thank you for being a loyal client for so many years. I am looking forward to continuing our personal and professional relationship.”

  “Farewell, Mr. Rochat.”

  “Mr. Jordan.”

  The Swiss man faded away and the screen then reverted to a digital image of the Invictus braving a stormy sea. Jordan leaned back in his leather seat and let out a deep sigh. He had bags under his eyes, something she’d never seen on him before.

  “I thought you’d be hungry,” Kiersten said.

  “What time is it?” Jordan asked her. He looked over his shoulder and seemed surprised to see that the sun was up.

  “Just past seven. You’ve been working non-stop for hours.” She laid a silver tray with oatmeal, sausages, hot coffee, and melon slices on his desk and then pulled out a seat across from him. Jordan smiled at her.

  “Not so far away, Kiersten, come sit with me.”

  He reached across the table and took a bite of melon as she floated around the desk to his chair. Scooting up onto his lap, she wrapped her well-tone arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “You know I love you no matter what, right, Dimitri?”

  Jordan brushed aside a long strand of her raven hair and pressed his lips against hers. “And I love you. Thank you for the breakfast.”

  “The staff made it, I’m just your delivery girl.”

  “And a beautiful one you are,” Jordan replied. “Keep the coffee coming; I’m afraid my work is only beginning.”

  “How bad is it?” Kiersten asked cautiously.

  “It seems it’s less severe than we initially thought. Based on my discussion with the Swiss, I haven’t officially violated any of their laws. To Mr. Rochat’s knowledge, I’m not named on any Interpol warrants either. So regardless of how badly the United States wants to throw me in jail, Switzerland still sees me as a friend.”

  “Why does it matter what the Swiss think?”

  “The details are complicated,” Jordan answered, tapp
ing a well-inked notepad on his desk. “Long story short; most of my assets with the Sumatra Holdings Group are insured through Mr. Rochat’s bank. As long as I remain on good terms with Swiss law, then my losses from last night are insured for three times their value.”

  “My God…” Kiersten gasped. “You mean…?”

  “Like I said, it’s very complicated, and it’s going to be a busy day.” Jordan interrupted, anticipating her question. “But yes; it’s possible that last night’s disaster might have left me richer than ever.” He took a bite of melon and thought a moment, “I can use that money to make up for my lost casino income fairly quickly. The trick is to get access to the funds.”

  Kiersten looked at him as if he were a god. She truly never cared about Jordan’s wealth, although she enjoyed the lifestyle that it afforded her. It was that indomitable spirit of his. It was his uncanny ability to turn disasters into stunning victories. It was his sheer force of will. Those were the things that she found so magnetic about him. Admiration gave way to worry, however, and her dark eyebrows furrowed.

  “… What about American federal police?” she asked. “If they’re still going after you then how can you collect your insurance?”

  Jordan rubbed his eyes. “That, my love, is the complicated part about all this. Once I can answer that question, we’ll pull into port somewhere in the States. The Invictus will remain at sea until I can safely set foot on US soil again.”

  Kiersten absorbed his words like a stone. After a few seconds she nodded with determination. “You’ll find a way. I’ll sail with you to the ends of the Earth if that’s what it takes.”

  Jordan smiled, then gently tapped her bottom to indicate that she should get up. He then stood from his seat and stretched out his broad arms and took a deep breath of sweet, cedar-scented air.