Loaded Dice

by James Swain

  “Yes,” Amin said.

  “Why?”

  Amin grabbed the paneling on his door and pulled it away, revealing the bags of TATP lining the interior. The deception hit Pash like a punch in the stomach, and he recoiled in horror.

  Pulling out of the gas station’s lot, Amin drove the car back toward Las Vegas.

  47

  Valentine followed the cruisers down I-15 doing a hundred miles an hour. Whiskey Pete’s was an old-fashioned casino about a mile from the state line. Gerry had said the gas station was twenty miles before Whiskey Pete’s. By his estimation, that put the gas station twenty miles from Las Vegas.

  He watched the miles fly by on his odometer. The desert landscape was flat and unforgiving, and he looked for any break on the horizon. Then he saw a Shell station sitting off the road. It had a car wash and a convenience store, and he made his brakes screech pulling up to the front door. Through the front window he saw a big guy behind the register give him a mean look.

  He ran inside. There was a line at the checkout, and everyone on it was staring at him. For the first time, he became conscious of how he looked. Unshaven, his shirt stained, his mouth hanging open.

  “You can’t park there,” the guy at the register said.

  He took the picture of Amin out of his pocket, unfolded it, and held it up between his hands. He showed it to the guy, and those on line.

  “Any of you seen him?”

  “Earl, ain’t that the guy gave you the hunnert?” a man on line asked.

  Earl reached across the counter, took the photograph out of Valentine’s hands, looked it over, handed it back. “Yeah. He was just in here. You looking for him?”

  Valentine felt his heart going faster than the engine of his car. Outside, another police cruiser passed, and he said, “Yes. So is everyone else. Including the helicopters.”

  Earl gave him a no-nonsense stare. “Who is he?”

  “He’s a terrorist,” Valentine said.

  Earl came around the register. Normally, guys who stood behind registers stood on phone books to make themselves look taller. Earl didn’t need a phone book. He placed a giant paw on Valentine’s shoulder.

  “You ain’t bullshitting me, are you? I got a brother over in Iraq.”

  “I’m not bullshitting you,” Valentine said.

  Earl led him outside, pointed at I-15. “Guy pulled out a few minutes before you pulled in. Green car, I think it was a Taurus. Went thataway.”

  Earl was pointing east, back toward Las Vegas.

  “Are you sure?” Valentine asked.

  “Positive. You probably passed him on the road.”

  The police cruisers and army helicopters were going the wrong way, and Amin had been sitting here, watching them pass by. Valentine thought about the crowds of tourists he’d seen walking the Strip earlier. Men, women, and kids. Thousands of them. He grabbed Earl by the arm.

  “I need a gun,” he said.

  Earl had a hunting rifle and a four-ton pickup truck. He drove like a bat out of hell down I-15 toward town. Valentine sat in the passenger’s seat with the rifle in his lap. He tried 911 on his cell phone and got a frantic busy signal. In disgust, he threw the phone on the floor and examined the rifle. It was a Remington Model 700 .270 with a Leupold scope. He’d gone hunting once in the Catskills and used the same gun. It was a good open-range weapon, known for long-distance, flat-trajectory hits. Half a mile up ahead, he saw a police roadblock made up of several cruisers, and guessed the police were doing the smart thing and cordoning off the city. Earl slowed the truck.

  “You see the car?” Valentine asked.

  The big man looked in both directions. “Nope.”

  “If they wanted to get to downtown, is there another way?”

  “Not on pavement,” Earl said.

  “How about dirt roads?”

  “Sure. They could take a dirt road and loop around.”

  “Show me.”

  Earl got on a street with a DEAD END sign, and Valentine saw him flip a switch that put the pickup into four-wheel drive. At the street’s end, he jumped the curb, crossed someone’s private property, and was soon driving across the bumpy desert.

  The midday sun was blinding, and Valentine strained his eyes looking for the vehicle Earl had described to him. He remembered Bill saying that the explosives found in New Orleans were fitted inside a car. The car is the bomb, he thought. Earl pointed at a distant bluff and said, “I think we can see them from up there. If this is the way they came.”

  Earl was asking him a question, wanting confirmation.

  “Is that the way you’d go?” Valentine asked him.

  “Yeah, it’s the quickest.”

  “Then take it.”

  Earl floored the accelerator, and the pickup shot into the air like an animal released from a cage. They hurtled across the desert, Valentine grabbing the oh-shit bar by his head and holding on for dear life. A bad thought flashed through his head. He had not asked Earl if the rifle was loaded.

  The Model 700 had an internal box magazine and could hold four bullets, plus one in the chamber. If the gun was fully loaded, that gave him five chances to take Amin down.

  As they neared the bluff, Earl slowed down, and Valentine pulled the bolt back and checked. Only three bullets in the magazine, none in the chamber. He felt his body lurch forward as Earl slammed on the brakes.

  They both jumped out of the pickup. The elevation was no more than thirty feet. Nothing but sagebrush and half-ugly land that would someday probably hold lots of identical-looking houses. Earl grabbed him by the arm and pointed.

  “There. Over there.”

  Valentine cupped his hand over his eyes. A quarter mile away, a car matching Earl’s description was driving through a half-finished housing development. The car’s wheels were caked in brownish red dirt. He lifted the Model 700 to shoulder height and got the occupants in the crosshairs of the rifle’s telescopic lenses.

  “That’s them?” Earl asked breathlessly.

  Valentine stared at the driver, then his passenger. Both Middle Eastern males. He lowered his line of vision and looked at the trunk. He imagined Gerry lying in back.

  “Is it?” Earl demanded.

  “Yes.”

  Earl banged the side of the pickup with his fist. “Shoot the bastard!”

  Valentine found the back of Amin’s head. He knew that the rifle’s bullet was going to do more than kill Amin. It would go straight through him and hit the engine or, worse, hit the plastic explosives lining the interior. The bullet was going to make the car explode, killing his son. He lowered the rifle.

  “What the hell you doing?” Earl bellowed. “You’re letting them get away.”

  “My son’s in the trunk,” he whispered.

  Earl wrestled the rifle from his hands, aimed, and let off a round.

  “Fucking shit,” he screamed.

  The gun’s retort echoed across the desert. Amin veered off the road and jumped a curb. He knew he was being hunted, and drove the Taurus toward a finished development filled with prefab houses and Japanese imports in the driveways.

  Earl let off another round. Dirt flew up around the Taurus.

  “Shit,” he screamed.

  Valentine thought of Yolanda back in Tampa, about to give birth, and remembered it like it was yesterday, his son’s head popping out of his wife’s womb, screaming at the world. The greatest moment in his life, for sure.

  “I love you, Gerry,” he whispered.

  Then he grabbed the rifle out of Earl’s hands, aimed at the back of Amin’s head through the telescopic lenses, and fired the last bullet.

  48

  Nick sat in his office in the Acropolis, staring at the casino’s ledgers lying on his desk. He had come to Las Vegas in 1965, and opened the Acropolis two years later. It had been a helluva run.

  He heard a delicate cough and looked up. Wanda was standing in the doorway, dressed in a red leather mini skirt and stiletto heels, his favorite outfit.


  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  He hadn’t seen her since yesterday. Too busy figuring out how much Albert Moss had screwed him out of. Good old Al had run him right into the ground. His cash reserves were gone, his credit allowance at the bank depleted.

  “Can I come in?” Wanda asked.

  “Of course, baby.”

  Wanda didn’t walk into a room: She made an entrance. Nick rose from his chair and watched her come around the desk. Taking his hand, she led him across the office.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the big picture window. I have something wonderful to tell you.”

  He needed some good news. She picked up a remote and pushed the button that automatically drew back the picture window’s blinds. Sunlight streamed into the room.

  It was a gorgeous day. Down below, one of the last of his employees was standing on a ladder, scrubbing his ex-wives with a mop. He was going to leave the fountains on for as long as he could, just to piss everyone in town off.

  “Hold my hands,” Wanda said.

  Nick obliged her. An ancient gold coin hung around her neck, and he smiled. He’d given it to Wanda the night he’d proposed. It was the only coin that hadn’t disappeared when his employee had hidden his treasure.

  “Remember when you gave me this coin,” she said, “and told me how you believed it was magic. Do you?”

  Nick smiled. “Yeah, baby.”

  “Well, it really is. I’m pregnant.”

  He gulped hard, then lowered his eyes and stared at her wonderfully flat stomach. “I thought . . . you couldn’t have a kid.”

  “That’s what the doctors said. My first husband and I tried everything—in vitro, artificial insemination—and they kept coming back saying it was me, I couldn’t be a mommy. Well, they were wrong, Nicky.” She touched the coin dangling above her magnificent breasts. “The coin was magic. I’m going to have a baby.”

  Nick stared at the coin. His father and grandfather had been sponge divers in a town called Tarpon Springs. Some nights they would come home and give Nick coins they had plucked off the ocean floor. They’re magic, they had told him.

  He put his arms around her waist. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. You’re not . . . mad, are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “I thought . . . maybe you wouldn’t want a baby.”

  “Your baby I want,” he said.

  She squealed and jumped up and down and kissed him all at the same time. She was acting like it was the greatest day in her life, and he decided to wait, and tell her later that he’d lost the casino. Holding her in his arms, he felt a tremendous explosion rip the air.

  “Oh, my God, Nicky! Oh, my God!”

  The whole building was shaking, and they watched the picture window bow like it was made of putty. Amazingly, it did not break, and they stared at the enormous black cloud rising in the western sky.

  The cloud quickly blocked out the sun. Down on the street, terrified tourists were running for cover, with people being trampled and hurt. Nick wanted to do something, but wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He looked at Wanda. She was crying.

  “Nicky—what’s happening?”

  He wished he knew. Going to his desk, he picked up the phone and began punching in numbers. He knew everyone in the Metro LVPD who was important. All the police lines were busy, and he slammed down the phone.

  “I want you to go home,” he said. “Stay in the house, and don’t come out until I call you.”

  Wanda’s face was pressed to the window. She wasn’t moving.

  “Did you hear me?”

  She turned from the window. “Oh, Nicky,” she cried.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “What?” he said.

  “Magic,” she said.

  Nick hurried over to where she stood. Down below, the employee on the ladder had fallen onto the statue of Bambi, his second wife. The statue had broken at the waist, and hundreds of shimmering gold coins now lay in the fountain’s turquoise water.

  49

  Valentine blinked awake. He was lying in the pickup’s shadow, and Earl was standing over him, holding the Remington with one hand. Earl’s lips moved, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “Can’t hear you,” he said.

  Earl knelt down and put his mouth to Valentine’s ear. “Mister, what the hell was in that car?”

  Valentine pushed himself into a sitting position. The last thing he remembered was shooting Amin in the back of the head. The Taurus had banged against an embankment and flipped over. He’d started to run, believing he could still save Gerry. Then a brilliant white light had enveloped him.

  He stood on shaky legs, staring at the deserted lot where he’d last seen the Taurus. It was gone, replaced by a black, smoldering crater as wide as two football fields. His eyes shifted to the housing development Amin had been heading for. The windows on every house were gone. Many of the closer houses had lost their roofs. The destruction looked horrific, and he saw a line of neighborhood people standing at a fence, gaping at the crater. Earl’s massive hand touched his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry about your boy,” Earl said in his ear.

  Valentine went and leaned against the pickup. Stared at the ground for a long while and listened to himself breathe. He’d done what he had to do.

  “You going to be okay?” Earl asked loudly.

  “No,” he replied.

  Earl got on his cell phone and tried to dial 911. All the lines were busy, and Valentine heard him call his gas station. Suddenly, he acted excited, made Valentine get in the pickup, and gunned it across the desert. Valentine knew he should stay—the police would eventually show up, and want to ask a thousand questions—but Earl was having none of it.

  Soon they were back at the gas station. One of Earl’s employees was standing by the front door. Earl jumped out. Valentine’s hearing had come back, and he heard Earl say, “Where is he?”

  The employee pointed at the car wash on the other side of the station. Earl came over and opened up Valentine’s door. Grabbing Valentine by the arm, he said, “Come on.”

  Valentine followed him, feeling like he was in a dream that he was never going to wake up from. They walked around the car wash, and Valentine saw two men he recognized from earlier, on line at the cash register. They were standing over another man, who lay on the ground. Valentine felt his heart leap into his throat. His son.

  Valentine pushed the two men aside without thinking, got on his knees, and saw that Gerry was breathing. He told God right then that he was going back to church again, and he cradled his son’s head in his arms and heard him groan.

  “Something’s wrong with his shoulders,” one of the men said.

  The other man had put his jacket beneath Gerry’s head, and Valentine lowered his son’s head onto it. There was a mean-looking bruise on his temple, and his eyes were cloudy, but otherwise he looked absolutely beautiful.

  “Hey, Pop,” his son whispered. “You stop them?”

  Valentine told his boy that he had. Gerry smiled.

  “Way to go.”

  “How did you end up here,” Valentine asked.

  “Pash . . . pulled me out of the trunk,” his son said.

  Gerry was having trouble speaking, and one of the men ran to the convenience store, got a bottled water, and soon had it beneath Gerry’s lips. His son thanked him.

  “Was Pash the other one in the car?” Valentine asked.

  Gerry nodded. “Yeah. Amin’s brother. He pulled me out of the trunk while Amin was inside the store. Told me he was sorry, and conked me in the head.”

  “What’s wrong with your shoulders?”

  “Popped them out of their sockets freeing my arms,” Gerry said.

  “They hurt?”

  “Like a son-of-a-bitch.”

  Valentine heard the sound of approaching sirens. Earl walked around the car wash, and Valentine heard him calli
ng to the driver of the police car that had just pulled into the gas station. He saw his son grimace, and realized it had nothing to do with how he was feeling. It was time for Gerry to tell the police everything that had happened.

  His son motioned to him, and Valentine knelt down in the dirt.

  “Closer,” his son said.

  Valentine realized Gerry didn’t want the other men hearing what he was about to say. He lowered his head, and brought his ear next to Gerry’s lips.

  “I know this is going to sound stupid,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I really liked Pash. I’m sorry you had to kill him.”

  Valentine felt himself shudder. He saw a blue uniform come around the car wash, heading straight toward them. In a whisper he said, “You’d better not tell the police that.”

  50

  Except for Amin and Pash, no one had died in the blast.

  The bomb had ripped a hole in the earth worthy of a falling meteor, the explosion strong enough to be felt as far away as Los Angeles, and now the newspapers and TV stations and Internet news services were calling it a miracle.

  Several thousand windows were shattered—including those in casinos over five miles away—and a hundred houses within the blast’s immediate radius were damaged, their gas and water lines rupturing, forcing the immediate evacuation of their occupants. The cost was estimated at twenty million dollars, not including the loss of revenue the casinos experienced from being temporarily shut down.

  Even the two Pakistani waiters whom Amin had tricked into driving to Los Angeles were spared. They had pulled off at a truck strop on I-15, and were inside the building relieving themselves when the Apache helicopters swooped down and riddled their rental car with over a thousand rounds of ammunition.

  An elderly lady named Alice Sweet was found dead in her house several miles away from the blast, but the Clark County coroner quickly determined that she’d passed away peacefully in her sleep the night before, and had died from natural causes.

  But many could have died. The media brought in their experts and showed what the bomb would have done had Amin made it into the city, and detonated seventy-five pounds of TATP in a closed space. Besides killing thousands of pedestrians, the explosion would have taken down a block’s worth of buildings. The estimated loss of life was put at over fifty thousand people.