“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 policeman 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—”
Curtis was interrupted by a hail of automatic weapon fire. The police car windshield exploded in a million little pieces. Officer Dallas jerked in the seat as bullets tore through his body. More shots struck the hood, the door, inching toward Curtis. He reeled backwards before he was hit.
Down on one knee, Curtis faced the white truck. Salazar was stumbling forward in a pained crouch. Arm extended, he squeezed the trigger on an empty MP5K. Salazar’s other arm clutched his abdomen, which bubbled black blood that dribbled onto the pitted concrete.
Curtis lurched to his feet, struck the man across the face with a bunched right fist. Salazar’s jaw shattered, the automatic tumbled from his hand. Salazar dropped to his knees, but before he tumbled to the ground, Curtis snatched the man’s head in his hands and twisted, snapping the Cuban’s hairy neck. Curtis released him, and Salazar’s dead face bounced off the pavement.
With a groan, Manning limped back to the police car. Officer Dallas was finished, his body slumped over the steering wheel, dead eyes wide with surprise. The radio handset was shattered, and several shots hit the engine block. The squad car was as dead as its former occupants.
Manning bit back a curse and pondered his next move. Desperately he searched the bodies, but came up empty. Without a radio or cell phone, his options were strictly limited. He could wait for the police to show up and try to explain what happened all over again — an absurd waste of time, and dangerous if the cops were trigger happy or didn’t buy his story. He could drive to the Babylon and try to put a stop to the terrorists, maybe get in touch with CTU from a pay phone. Or he could drive the truck back to the Cha-Cha Lounge, get Jack and Morris involved, and alert CTU of the danger from there.
His mind made up, Curtis reached across the dead policeman and snatched the shotgun off the rack, along with spare ammunition. He took the dead officer’s pistol, too. Then Curtis limped back to the Dodge Sprinter, climbed behind the wheel. There were bullet holes in the dashboard, and the windshield was cracked, but in the first break Curtis got all day the truck started up immediately. He threw it into gear, backed up, pushing the disabled police cruiser car out of the way.
When he had enough room to maneuver, Curtis made a fast U-turn and rolled onto Las Vegas Boulevard.
Pizarro Rojas couldn’t believe how easily it was to get around hotel security and into the underground garage. The counterfeit electronic card glued to the windshield, another gift from Hugo Bix, worked perfectly. A hidden electronic eye automatically scanned the card, and the gate rose to admit them. With Balboa behind the wheel, Stella and Pizarro Rojas hiding in the rear of the truck among the flowers and explosives, they rolled unchallenged and undetected into the supposedly secure area. A uniformed guard even waved to Balboa as he sped past the glass-enclosed security booth.
They found a parking space close enough to one of the central support struts to blow it apart when the truck bomb detonated. There were six struts supporting the hotel’s main tower, and six truck bombs to take them out — or at least that was the plan. The Rojas brothers didn’t have time to circle the entire garage and see if they other trucks were parked in their designated spots. They would find out how many men reached the hotel and planted their explosives when the Cubans rendezvoused at the airport later. They did check the timer on the bomb. It was working perfectly.
Then Balboa activated a second timer, this one on a device Hugo Bix had procured for them from his secret source inside the U.S. military. The electromagnetic jamming device was about the size of a microwave oven, and Hugo’s men had installed two automobile batteries to power the machine. Bix had guaranteed that this advanced, military-style jamming device would effectively cut all communications in and out of the Babylon.
Pizarro frowned. Hugo Bix had proved himself to be a valuable ally. Pizarro would be sorry to lose him.
“At ten forty-five the timer will activate the jamming mechanism,” Roland told his brother. “At that moment, all the hotel’s phones and computers will fail. Satellite communications will be jammed, too. No information will get in or go out.”
“Then what happens?” Stella asked.
“The keynote address is scheduled to begin at approximately eleven o’clock. The truck bombs will detonate fifteen minutes later, right in the middle of the gringo Senator’s speech to the conference.”
For the first time since she’d met him, Stella Hawk saw Balboa Rojas smile. “Everyone will die,” he gloated. “Everyone.”
When they left the truck, Balboa locked the doors, then broke the keys off inside the locks, one by one. Before they’d left Bix’s garage, he’d instructed the other drivers to do the same thing.
Stella Hawk led them through the underground parking garage, to an exit door that took them outside, along a sidewalk made of flat desert stones that wound through a manicured lawn. Both men carried potted plants that concealed bricks of C4 and two detonators — the explosives destined for the main ballroom. Once again, Pizarro marveled at the luxury of the hotel. Even a remote spot such as this, a forgotten corner of this grand hotel, had an expensive sidewalk, glowing footlights, a perfect lawn.
“That’s the Babylonian Theater up ahead,” Stella informed them, her heels clicking on the stones. “In the
Tossing a sidelong glance at Pizarro, Stella’s full lips curled into a smirk. “Some girls have a problem dancing nude six nights a week in front of a packed house. I’m not one of them.”
They reached a steel door. Stella halted. “Here we are.”
There were no handles, no way to open the door that the Rojas brothers could see. Without comment, Stella reached into her bag, pulled out a wire coat hanger than had been spun into a tight loop. She unbent the end, slid it into the crack between the door and the doorjamb. The men heard a click.
“Open sesame,” Stella chirped.
She held the door open and the men slipped inside. Pizarro locked eyes with her as he crossed the threshold and Stella could see his attitude was softening. His face wore the same sneer as his brother’s, but she could see admiration behind his stare, too. Stella gently closed the metal doors, faced the brothers.
“How close are we to the ballroom?” Pizarro asked.
