“Where the hell are you, Dick?” asked Trace.
“I’m in Starship, bound for fucking Mars. Where the hell are you?”
“The place is on fire.”
“Yeah, no shit. I got two guys in here. Got to be a lot more. Heavy fucking weapons. They look Middle Eastern, but I didn’t have a chance to ask for passports.”
Danny cut in before Trace could respond. “Dick, the security coordinator is saying they’ve lost the entire Starship security team off the circuit. They have to be in on it. Some of them at least.”
“Find out where the truck entrance is,” I told him.
“They’re getting schematics.”
“Find out,” I said as another burst from the machine gun perforated the lasers. I waited until the gun stopped firing, then gave them three very short bursts. As I fired the last one I hopped forward, took three good long strides, and leapt down onto the gaming floor, which began just off the entrance space. At that point, the machine gun began firing again. It must have murdered a dozen of the video gambling machines, which responded to the onslaught with a succession of high-pitched shouts and screams, their electronic tumblers freaking. I didn’t check to see if any had paid off—I had a good idea now where the bastard was firing from.
The left side of the casino beyond the registration area was suited up to look like an alien landscape. There were craters and fake rocks that seemed to careen off the side of a volcano. Projections of alien spacemen floated through the area; the shtick was that they could lead you to a table and even take an order. My friend with the machine gun had set up at the edge of the crater, behind one of the boulders and obscured by the parade of foreign creatures. He was using the fake rock to help brace the weapon, which was a Belgian Minimi, the same weapon as an M249 SAW.
Using the fake rock was a fatal mistake. Rocks are good cover because they’re solid. Plastic and papier-mâché are not.
And as for holograms…
I took him out with a burst from the MP5, the first shots axing into his left cheekbone and the rest popping the top of his skull like a can opener. I moved down the row of the slot machines, not entirely sure what the hell lay beyond where I was, except for machines.
“Danny, you get that schematic yet?”
“Working on it, Dick. Listen, you were right about those trucks. They were rigged to go off. But listen—one of the Delta people thinks there was a similar truck parked behind the casino a few days ago. Maybe a couple of them. They’re looking around to see if they can find pictures from the earlier tests or surveys.”
“Screw the fucking pictures. Where were the trucks?”
“Back loading area.”
“Direct me there,” I told him, trotting across to a third row of the machines. I stopped short—two figures were hunched over something down the row all the way across the room, maybe a hundred yards away.
“Dick?”
I emptied the rest of the MP5, the tracer rounds I packed at the end of the magazine warning me I’d shot my wad. Both figures crumpled, but as I ducked back, bullets once more began crashing into the machines around me. Glass and bits of plastic and metal showered across my back as I crawled to the right, trying to put something solid between me and whoever was using the weapon.
“Dick, we can’t get in the front of the place,” said Trace over the radio. “They put the crash doors down after you blew through.”
“What crash doors?”
“It’s an emergency lockdown system. We’re going to try to get a team into the loading dock area. There are two trucks there. They’ll have to be secured first.”
“Get the fuck going,” I told her.
You’d have thought—I certainly thought—that when I blew through the front end of the hotel, I left a huge gap. But what Danny, with schematics in hand, was trying to explain to me was this: the Starship had been rigged with a double set of doors designed to provide a barrier against suicide car bombers. The system had been activated by someone in the security offices, though admittedly too late to keep me out. Where once there was easily penetrable glass, there was now a metal shock shield blocking the way. A similar shield had been lowered over all street-level entrances.
I told you they’re up on their security out here.
“We’re coming for you, Dick, don’t worry,” said Trace.
“Well, do it.”
“We’re working on it. But—”
“I don’t want to hear but.”
“The security people think the attackers were rigging the loading dock area for an explosion. It’s possible the explosives were built right in when they planned the building.”
“I hope to hell you’re shitting me, Trace.”
“I would never shit you, Dick. You’re my favorite turd.”
On the page, that looks like a joke.
In real life, her voice gulped a bit when she said it.
Not the gulp you want to hear while some asshole is chewing up the room around you with a machine gun, either.
I suppose I might have been able to find my way out if I’d turned around and ran like hell toward the reservation area. Probably there were more offices behind the desk area that had windows or some sort of exit. If the way was barred by more of their magic shields, I might have been able to go up to the second floor, break a window, and leave that way. But retreat is not the Rogue Warrior’s lot in life.
Besides, I didn’t think of it at the time. I was somewhere between kicking ass and surviving.
The machine gun that was making my life so interesting was being fired from the top of a blackjack table a good two hundred feet or more across the room. This one wasn’t a Minimi. I didn’t have any trouble picking out what it was even with all the machines popping and screaming around me. I’d heard this fucking sound in my dreams. It was a Degtyarev RPD, a golden oldie no doubt bought on eBay from some asshole’s gun closet just for me. The Degtyarev dated to the 1950s and was fed, usually, by a round drum like a tommy gun’s, though the weapon has a much larger snout and a longer stock. Simple and dependable, it was standard issue for the Red Army during the opening days of the Cold War, and a common squad-level weapon in client states for a few decades after that. I’d heard those motherfuckers chewing up the foliage in Vietnam. Shadow had gotten the gun just for old time’s sake, the sentimental bitch.
“Yo, Shadow, you’re not going to claim you’re a jilted lover, right?” I yelled as the gunfire stopped.
I thought I heard a click as if the weapon were being reloaded, but before I could raise my MP5, the room started exploding again. The RPD’s 7.62mm slugs tore out a row of video bandits behind me and then started grinding down the ones just in front. Fortunately the person firing the weapon couldn’t lower it quite enough to give me more than a haircut. As the bullets began moving to my right, I started to the left, rolling across the open aisle just quickly enough to escape his attention or at least his aim. I started crawling up in the direction of the game tables. I got no more than five feet when the gun began firing in my direction. Flat on my back, I realized that the bastard was taking direction from the eye in the sky cameras in the black hubs at the top of the room.
That I could deal with. I laced two on the lower ceiling near the RPD, rolling back as the gunner began trashing the nearby machines. I made a feint to the right and cut back to the left, crossing where I’d been. There was a pause, but when the gunfire began it was back in my direction again, chuttering up the remains of the machines.
At some point crawling through the glass I heard Trace yell something in my ear. It didn’t sound like “Kiss your ass good-bye” so I figured it wasn’t meant for me. I reached the end of the video slot machines and started to lean out; the gun spit and then made what sounded like a hollow pop.
I leapt up and laced the table. I scored a direct hit on the gun, but whoever had been at the trigger had already abandoned it. I barreled forward, charging down the aisle, eyes and head rolling left and right but not seeing anyone
. I reached the area of the tables and threw myself forward, rolling under one but still not drawing fire.
As pleasant as my sojourn in the gaming room had been, to this point it had been less than profitable—a typical visit to Vegas for me.
If the place really was rigged to explode—and at that precise moment I had no reason to doubt that it was—I needed to figure out where the hell the person with the plunger was. With Danny still trying to find a map, I reasoned that some of the people I’d creased earlier might provide a clue, so I headed back over to the wall where they’d been.
The dead men had what looked like a computer cable in their hands. It was thick and round, the sort of thing we used at Rogue Manor to set up a router network for the broadband Internet connection. A metal panel sat at the base of the wall, its cover half removed. I pried it off the rest of the way; a row of what looked like oversize telephone jacks sat beneath it.
Now this was what I called on-site tech service. But the only geek who made house calls with a submachine gun was Shunt, and these guys were carrying better hardware than he usually had in his toolbox: MP9s, a kind of improved Uzi built by Ruger mostly for the police market.
“Shunt!” I said over the radio. “Where the fuck are you, Shunt?”
“Yo, Dick, I’m in the JSTARS, man. How are you, Dude?”
“Real sucky, Shunt. What do you call that wire that you used to connect the computers up back home with?”
“Ethernet 5E, Dude.”
“Could you use it to blow up a bomb?”
“Only if it were, like, on the network.”
“Well, let’s say you had that. What else would you need?”
“Like, a computer to hook into it.”
I checked Heckle and Jeckle. Neither had a laptop or handheld.
“Dick, we have that schematic,” said Danny finally.
I dropped the wire and started back toward the area where the stairway was. “Tell me how to get to the computer room,” I told Danny. “No, tell me how to get to the backup power generators. And in the meantime, can you get a power surge into the building, and then cut their power?”
“Why?”
“I want to fry as much of their gear as possible, and then take their power out.”
“Yeah, okay. Where are you, exactly?”
“Near the blackjack tables. I think there are elevators at the far end here, and the stairs have to be near them.”
“There’s one closer—a stairway at the far end of the room near the Martian Lounge. Go down two flights, then take a right, and you’ll find a whole bunch of utility rooms down there. They have a backup power generator there.”
“Can you work out the electricity angle?”
“I’ll try.”
“Where’s Trace?”
“Didn’t you hear her? She and Hulk are going in with the emergency response team at the back of the building.”
“Didn’t one of you just tell me they think it may be rigged to explode?
“I think that’s the reason they went in. That’s just a theory, Dick, because they can’t get hold of the security people and whatnot. And something else: the managing architect and two of the foremen on the project died of accidents, and, uh, there was also one unsolved murder during the construction.”
And they didn’t figure something was suspicious then? But this was Las Vegas.
“Doc, Tiffany, and Sean are coming over from the cargo trailers,” said Danny. “As soon they get here we’ll be in to back you up.”
“I love you Danny, but don’t bother. That’s an order.”
“Fuck yourself, Dick.”
“You’re an insubordinate son of a bitch.”
I heard some muffled explosions in the distance; I imagined they were flash-bangs or maybe some improved C-4 on a back doorway, wherever the hell that was. Las Vegas hotels aren’t just big; they’re cities unto themselves. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the back entrance they were blowing into was a mile away.
I wouldn’t have minded a few grenades myself when I reached the stairway, but the best I could come up with was a chair. I threw it ahead of me down the stairway after opening the door, hoping the clatter would provoke a response from anyone hiding below.
Nothing happened. I slipped through the door. An electric eye had been set up near the side, and I smashed it, figuring that if I had to come back this way, it would be handy to do so without letting Shadow or whoever was watching know.
I made my way down to the first level, stepped around the chair and then continued downward. I’d just reached the last two or three steps when I heard a sound above. My first impulse was to duck back, expecting gunfire. Something clinked down the steps instead. I fired the MP5 at the lock on the door in front of me, then leapt to the door. By the time I got it open, a second grenade had begun to sizzle. I pulled the door open and threw myself inside the room as the lights in the place blinked out.
“Danny, I hope that was you.”
“Me and the electric company. They say they sent a pretty massive jolt through the system, but there’s no telling what sort of damage it would have done. These big casinos have all sorts of safeguards.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, Dude,” said Shunt. I think he was trying to be reassuring—he is, after all, the God of Power Surges—but with the backup systems flickering, I didn’t take it that way. I started making my way toward the generators Danny had told me about when I realized there was a wire running along the floor similar to the Ethernet cable I’d seen upstairs.
“Shunt, I see some more cable. What happens if I cut it?”
“You lose your connection, Dude.”
Was that good or bad for a bomb? Was it even connected to a bomb? I decided it was bad for the bomb and the hell with everything else. I snapped through it with my knife.
Either the bomb wasn’t rigged to go off when this connection was broken, or the first people you see in the afterlife are two greasy-haired bozos looking to sear their names into your backside with MP5s. In any event, the latter appeared in the hallway thirty yards ahead and immediately began competing to see who could empty his magazine faster.
Chapter
21
I was still on the floor and their first shots missed a little too high.
Mine didn’t.
I rose slowly, feeling a shot of pain in the knee I’d whacked earlier. I limped down the hall to the two men, checking not for ID but additional magazines. As a rule, I hate using ammunition I haven’t packed myself. Call me a perfectionist, but I like to know the weapon in my hand has been properly prepared, and besides, using tracer rounds to start and finish a box is the sort of habit that’s tough to break, especially when your life’s on the line.
But if Shadow was going to be generous and give me additional rounds, who was I to refuse? Meenie and Minie had three extra thirty-round boxes apiece; I slipped them into my rucksack and turned back to find the auxiliary power room Danny had been steering me to.
At some point, I realized I could just follow my nose—the auxiliary generators ran off diesel fuel, and a light odor of oil hung in the air. Danny’s directions and the scent led me to a corridor blocked off by a steel door. The door had been locked by the remote control system. A little C-4 would have taken care of it—but I was suffering from an acute lack of C-4.
Danny led me around to a second room that connected to the area. I used the knife to hack through the plasterboard, only to find that the wall had been reinforced with blocks. The ventilation system was too small for my shoulders. I pounded the wall in frustration with the side of my fist. The sting didn’t help me think, so I pounded it again even harder.
While all of this was going on, Trace and some of her old Delta friends, along with Hulk and members of the local SWAT team, were upstairs in the hotel, working to secure potential hostages. I didn’t have the details at the time, but the terrorists had used the security system to lock down much of the guest areas, turning them into a priso
n. They’d killed about thirty of the security force. Their bodies were found in two rooms on the first subbasement level and over in the residential tower. A dozen other members of the security team were actually members of the terrorist cells; most of them didn’t know each other until that day.
Trace punched a hole into one of the glass walls on the observation deck at the top and helped lead the Delta assault. After they secured the area, a pair of fire department ladder trucks were brought in and hotel guests were evacuated down the ladders. After a few minutes, they decided the process would take too long and brought in one of those inflatable beanbags for people to jump onto. But there were something like three thousand rooms in the complex. Most were empty because of the parade, but they all had to be checked and secured. The explosions I’d heard were from C-4, which had been used not just on the windows but to create mouse holes into some of the rooms for the teams to get through.
“The SWAT team is going to try to get down to you,” Danny said as I pounded the walls, trying to figure a way into the auxiliary power room. “We’re going for the loading area right now. Some trucks are there. We have some Tangos, too.”
I heard gunfire in the background as he handed off to Doc, who became my only link with the outside forces.
“Hey, Dick, you still got the Jitters unit with you?” asked Shunt.
“I’m using it as an expensive bullet stop,” I told him.
“I got an idea. You think you could take that cable you found and connect one end into the commo unit and one end into a computer socket? You said there was one by the wall, right?”
“I think there were two. But they were shot to shit by machine guns, including mine.”
“I’ll tell you how to hardwire it,” said Shunt. “It’s not hard. If it’s, like, connected to a bomb or something, I could disarm it, maybe.”
Or set it off. Shunt didn’t think about the downsides of his operations—maybe the geek was SEAL material after all.
RW12 - Vengeance Page 29