24 Declassified: Vanishing Point 2d-5

by Marc A. Cerasini

  Sherry glanced at the delicate, jeweled Rolex on her wrist. She should have heard from Lev by now.

  How long can the meeting take? she wondered.

  Jong Lee was supposed to hand off the cash, and Lev was supposed to take it back to his suite, and call her immediately. Once again, Sherry squeezed her tiny handbag to make sure the cell phone was inside, that she hadn’t misplaced it somewhere.

  Becoming more concerned by the minute, she turned away from her husband, walked to a line of dining tables along the glass wall. She saw a seating card marked “Mr. Jong Lee,” at a table designated for businessmen concerned with the detrimental effects of the drug epidemic. Though most of the seats were filled with stuffy men and their plump wives, Lee’s chair remained vacant.

  If Lev didn’t call her in the next fifteen minutes, Sherry resolved to go searching for him. You can’t trust anyone these days, she mused bitterly. Not when it came to five million dollars.

  8:57:56 P.M. PDT Las Vegas Boulevard

  Curtis awoke to the smell of flowers. Then he felt the floor bump under him. He tried to open his eyes, but only one eye actually opened. The left side of his face was swollen, the eye glued shut, His head throbbed. He tried to touch the wound and found his wrists were bound together with thin steel wires that bit into his flesh. He felt another bump and realized he was riding on the floor in back of a truck.

  Finally Curtis remembered it all — the identical white trucks, the Cuban hit team, the presence of the feared Rojas brothers in Las Vegas, the plot to blow up the anti-drug conference and its VIP guests at the Babylon.

  Curtis studied the ferns and flowering plants around him, sniffed again. Underneath the cloying scent of flowers was another ominous smell, one he was familiar with. Curtis was definitely detecting the distinctive lemon-citrus odor given off by the plastic explosive Composition 4. Eyes darting, Curtis’ intense gaze moved beyond those plants, to rows of plastic garbage cans hidden behind them — each one filled with C4 explosives and rigged to a timer with bright blue detonation cords.

  This truck had five others just like it. More than enough to bring down one of Las Vegas’ most glittering casinos, and murder everyone inside.

  When Stella Hawk shot him in the chest with the police special, the relatively small.38 caliber bullet hadn’t penetrated the Kevlar vest Curtis wore under his jacket, but the impact stunned him, knocking him out cold for a few minutes. He finally came around when Stella kicked him out of her car, onto the floor of Bix’s garage. Fortunately, the wound on his leg and the deep gash in his side caused by a shard of glass, provided enough blood to fool Stella, Hugo Bix, even the Cubans. No one took the trouble to examine him because they all believed he was dead or close to it.

  While the conspirators talked over him, Curtis feigned unconsciousness. It hadn’t been easy to remain motionless during repeated jabs from Bix’s cowboy boot, or the rough treatment he’d received from the Cubans, who’d tossed him into the back of this truck and tied him up.

  Resorting to a trick of his trade, Curtis had tensed his muscles while his wrists were tied. But he must have seemed too tense, because the hit man became suspicious and used the butt of his Makarov PM to knock Curtis into unconsciousness.

  Still disoriented, Curtis wondered how long he’d been out. This truck had not yet arrived at the Babylon, but what about the other five?

  Curtis was trussed up and helpless, he’d been chased, dragged, beaten and shot, but he still had a job to do. If he didn’t stop these terrorists, they would blow up a major American hotel and claim untold lives. He had to free himself, stop this truck, and warn the authorities before it was too late…

  10. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 P.M. AND 10 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME

  9:06:19 P.M. PDT Montana Burger, Home of Real Montana Beef Tropicana Boulevard, Las Vegas

  “Catch!”

  Metro Police Sergeant Philip Locklear tossed the colorful bag at his partner. “Scoot over, Dallas. You eat your Montana burgers. I’ll drive.”

  The younger man stepped out from behind the steering wheel, circled the white Metro Police car. Climbing back inside, he opened the bag and rummaged through it.

  “Hey, you didn’t get anything for yourself.”

  The sergeant shook his head, threw his hat on the dashboard, and ran his knobby fingers through his salt and pepper hair.

  “I can’t eat that fast food crap. It bothers my stomach.”

  Sergeant Locklear was in his mid-forties, but looked ten years older. Skin like leather, his blue eyes were frozen in a perpetual squint from too many decades of exposure to the desert sun. Though he was never in danger of failing his annual department physical. Locklear had a rounded belly from too much beer and too much couch surfing.

  “What bothers your stomach are those ten cups of coffee you drink a shift. That stuff will kill you.”

  Officer Brad Dallas was the former second-string quarterback of the Las Vegas High School football team. Ex-military and still sporting the same haircut he had in boot camp, Dallas was too gung-ho for his own good — and his partner’s. Still buff at twenty-nine, he was a health and fitness nut, except for the cholesterol-heavy Montana burgers he ate two at a time.

  “What stuff will kill me?” Locklear asked, starting the engine.

  “Caffeine, man. Coffee is the devil’s brew.”

  The sergeant nodded. “Yeah. I heard that somewhere.”

  They rolled out of the Montana Burger parking lot a moment later, swung onto the road that took them to their patrol zone along the Strip.

  “How about you take a gander at tonight’s SVR. Shout out anything that catches your eye.”

  Chewing a mouthful of burger, Officer Dallas thumbed through the three page printout on blue paper. The Stolen Vehicle Report was information so new it hadn’t reached the LVMP database yet. Such intelligence was the purview of the select few members of Metro’s Repeat Auto Theft Squad, RATS for short. Las Vegas ranked third in total car thefts for the past five years running. The RATS patrol was formed to lower that statistic.

  Because a minority of car thieves steal the majority of cars — usually to use the pilfered vehicle to commit yet another crime — the Metro Police RATS was formed to target those nefarious individuals. Of the twenty to thirty Metro Police cars prowling the Strip on a given night, one or two of them belonged to the RATS patrol, though no one but the officers in question were aware of that fact. RATS patrol cars were not specially marked, and the RATS members wore the same uniforms and performed the same duties as other patrolmen. But they were also specially trained to recognize and arrest repeat offending car thieves, and to spot the telltale signs of car-theft related activity.

  When the pair began their shift, the big case was a car jacking in North Las Vegas so violent it landed the victim in the morgue. That suspect was captured by the Nevada Highway Patrol an hour ago — the news had just come across their radio when the all-points was called off.

  Without a special target for tonight’s patrol, Sergeant Locklear was fishing for an interesting angle.

  “Not much here,” Dallas noted. “There was an assault and truck jacking this morning, out at Mesa Canyon, corner of Smoke Ranch Road and North Buffalo. The truck was a late model Dodge Sprinter, white with commercial plates. It was a Fit-Chef delivery van.”

  The sergeant made a face. “My ex-wife ate that crap all the time. Shit cost an arm and a leg, but she never lost an ounce from that fat ass of hers.”

  Brad Dallas had met his partner’s ex-wife. She was an attractive woman with nice legs and a biting sense of humor, and he didn’t think she had a particularly fat ass, either. Officer Dallas wasn’t going to argue the point, however.

  “Hey, this is weird,” Dallas said a minute later. “Someone else jacked a Dodge Sprinter this morning. Over near Mulberry Mall. It was white, too… Same model year.”

  He flipped through the pages. “Damn. Here’s another one. Nine AM, a uniform supply company van
in front of a Dunkin’ Donut.”

  “Okay, so you’re thinking that somebody’s planning a big heist using a trio of Dodge Sprinters? How likely is that?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Dallas replied. “I was just saying I thought it was interesting, that’s all. Anyway, if you’re thinking about it, why stop with three?”

  “Okay, partner. I’m hooked,” Sergeant Locklear declared. “I think it’s time you check the police data banks in Reno and see if they’re losing Dodge Sprinters, too.”

  They turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard. Traffic was moving, but the streets were already packed with cars.

  Washing down the last bite with a gulp of Diet Coke, Dallas put his greasy burger wrapper on the seat and swung the dashboard computer so it faced him. The young policeman wiped his fingers with a napkin, then cracked his knuckles. The RATS patrol had special access to up-to-the-minute car theft data from all over the state, not just Vegas. In a moment, Brad Dallas was exploring the state’s law enforcement database, city by city.

  9:18:19 P.M. PDT Las Vegas Boulevard

  With each swerve and bump, Curtis managed to shift position, until he could observe the two men in the front seat. The driver was grizzled and well into middle-age, with sagging eyes and a blubbery neck. Curtis recognized that one — the fellow who beat him into unconsciousness and tied him up.

  The man in the passenger seat was young, with dark, excited eyes under bushy eyebrows and close-cropped hair. His name was Hector and he seemed nervous and jumpy. While Curtis watched, the man swallowed an amphetamine without water. Both men wore nondescript navy blue uniform-type overalls that appeared black in the gloom of the truck’s interior.

  Right now Curtis was helpless to do more than watch. There was no way he could free himself from the wires binding his wrists. They were firmly embedded in his ravaged and swollen flesh. Fortunately, after the older guy had beaten him down, he did a sloppy job of wiring Curtis’ legs. By twisting around for several minutes — and ignoring a considerable amount of pain — he’d managed to loosen the wires enough so that he could sit up, maybe get to his knees or even his feet, when the time came.

  “You missed the turn, Salazar. The Babylon is on the other side of the boulevard,” Hector cried.

  The young man suddenly turned his head around, to peer over the back of his seat. Curtis froze, but the man’s gaze passed right over him, to the view out of the rear windows. After a glance, he turned around again. Curtis relaxed enough to breathe.

  “You have to circle around now, old man. Try making a U-turn and be quick about it. Come on, come on, do it man. we’re running behind schedule.”

  The younger man’s voice was laced with adrenaline. He trembled with nervous impatience.

  The older man frowned, rubbed his hairy neck. Then Salazar jerked the steering wheel into a sharp turn. Hector grunted in surprise, clutched the dashboard. Curtis, still on his back, used the vehicle’s momentum to help him roll to his knees. Fighting to remain upright, the steel truck bed digging into his kneecaps, Curtis heard tires squeal and the angry blare of a horn.

  “Watch out, estupido,” Hector warned. “You’re cutting across traffic, man! You want to get us killed?”

  9:24:03 P.M. PDT Las Vegas Boulevard

  “Would you look at that,” quipped Sergeant Locklear. Still behind the wheel, he stared down his nose at a white van swerving none too safely across two lanes of traffic.

  “Dude. That’s a white Dodge Sprinter!”

  Still staring, Officer Dallas read the stenciled letters on the side of the panel truck. “Sunflower Gardens Florist.”

  “I know the joint,” Locklear said. “It’s over near the University. A little late to be delivering flowers, though.”

  Officer Dallas grinned in anticipation. “What are you gonna do, Sarge?”

  A thin smile crossed Locklear’s worn face. He sped up, weaving through traffic to catch up with the white truck. They just made it through two traffic lights and ran a third, until the Metro squad car was finally tailing the rear bumper of the truck. Locklear flipped on the bubble lights, blasted the siren.

  To both officers’ surprise, the vehicle slowed down immediately. But it still rolled for half a block, along a fairly deserted stretch of road bordering on the newly built Wynn Hotel. Finally the truck turned off Las Vegas Boulevard, onto a ser vice road made of uneven concrete, that led to a fenced-in construction site. The truck halted at the locked gate, perhaps fifty yards away from the busy boulevard.

  Locklear rolled to a halt bumper to bumper with the Sprinter so the truck could not flee the scene, threw the police car into neutral.

  “Check the plates. I’m going to talk to this guy.”

  Before Dallas could reply, Sergeant Locklear was out of the car and approaching the truck, one hand on his holstered gun. The younger man entered the plate numbers and waited for the computer to spit out a report.

  “I told you not to pull over, man,” Hector hissed, a drop of saliva flecking his sweating lip.

  “What was I supposed to do, drive away, have him chase me? This truck is full of explosives.” Salazar clutched at Hector’s arm. “Calm down, hermano. I can talk us out of this…” He reached down to clutch the handle of his own weapon. “Or I can shoot if I have to.”

  “Too late for talk.” Quivering, Hector pulled the MP5K automatic from under the seat.

  “No, Hector,” Salazar cried.

  Sergeant Locklear appeared at the driver’s open window at just that moment. “Okay, step out of the car—”

  Hector squeezed the trigger and the shot cut the Sergeant’s command short. The burst blew past Salazar’s face and the man howled. The policeman’s head exploded, and the torso dropped from view.

  Curtis made a desperate lunge over the seat, too late to save the officer. He looped his arms around Hector’s neck and yanked the man backwards. The Maschinenpistole K continued to chatter until the 9mm magazine was spent. The shots went wild, firing into the seat, the dashboard. At least two bullets slammed into Salazar’s abdomen. Face scorched by powder burns and gut shot, the man behind the wheel fumbled with the handle and opened the door — only to tumble to the pavement, his own weapon clattering to the ground.

  Clicking on an empty chamber, Hector let the gun fall and clawed at the suffocating arms coiled around his throat. Curtis groaned as the wires around his wrists dug deeper, but he did not let up on the pressure. Bracing his knees against the back of the seat, he pulled until he heard Hector’s neck snap. The fingers raking his arms went limp, and Curtis let the dead man slide out of his grip.

  The passenger door opened. “Out with your hands up!” Officer Dallas shouted in a voice tinged with panic.

  Curtis immediately raised his hands to show us the wires binding his wrist. “I’m not armed!” he cried. “I was a prisoner of these men. I’m a federal agent—”

  “Shut up,” Dallas screamed. “Shut the fuck up and get down on the ground.”

  Curtis could hardly move. The wires still bound his ankles as well as his arms. Instead of arguing with the cop, Curtis stumbled through the door, landed on the pavement.

  The policeman loomed over him, gun waving in Curtis’ face. “I can’t hurt you, but you have to listen to me,” Curtis said in a reasonable tone.

  The policeman saw the wires around Curtis’ arms and legs. But instead of freeing him, Officer Dallas circled the front of the Sprinter to the driver’s side. Curtis heard the cop moan.

  “Jesus, oh shit Jesus, Sarge…” he whimpered.

  Officer Dallas appeared a minute later. “Listen to me,” Curtis said. “I’m a federal agent. These men are terrorists…”

  “I have to call for an ambulance—”

  “You have to set me free first,” Curtis said in a firm voice. This time his words, or his tone, seemed to penetrate the policeman’s shock. Officer Dallas fumbled at his belt, pulled some kind of cutting tool free of its holster. He attempted to cut the wires binding Curtis’ wrist. The pol
iceman hesitated when he drew blood.

  “Just cut it, man,” Curtis commanded. He swallowed the pain while Officer Dallas probed the flesh to cut the final loop. When his hands were free, Curtis snatched the Teflon cutter out of the cop’s trembling hand and cut the wires on his ankles.

  Dallas helped Curtis to his feet. “My partner’s dead…” he said.

  “You and your partner may have saved countless lives. There’s a bomb in this truck. More on the way to the Babylon. We’ve got to put in a call to your department, warn them—”

  “What are you talking about,” Dallas demanded.

  “This truck is full of explosives,” Curtis repeated. “There are five other trucks just like it at the Babylon. Terrorists are going to blow up the hotel.”

  Curtis opened the back of the truck, showed the policeman the barrels of C4. Curtis also yanked the detonation cords. This truck bomb wasn’t going off — but there were five others out there just like it. That message finally got through to Officer Dallas.

  “I’m gonna call this in,” he declared. The officer raced back to his squad car. Curtis limped to catch up.

  He counted it a miracle that he was able to convince the policeman, but Curtis envisioned another time-consuming conversation just like it when detectives arrived. It would be better if he could alert CTU. They could issue an immediate Code Red.

  Officer Dallas sat down behind the wheel and lifted the radio handset. Curtis stepped around the open squad car door. “After you call in, I need you to patch me in to the Counter Terrorist Unit at frequency—”