Chapter 26

 

Las Vegas

 

Inside the Caesar’s lobby, having just watched the thick glass doors fracture into a thousand pieces and those pieces cascade to the stone floor and bounce in every direction like dice thrown by a drunk, the rider shouldered an FN-6 Man-Portable Air-Defense System missile launcher and sighted on the spot in the sky the American helicopter was most likely to emerge. While the rider waited, what was left of the mangled motorcycle the second rider had just gotten astride was leaking different-colored liquids onto the floor. A suitcase-sized hunk of shredded flesh trapped underneath the bike and spilling internal organs was all that remained of a man who had just stopped firing on the helicopter long enough to issue the order to deploy the MANPADS missile.

Limbs trembling furiously, the second rider looked away from the patch of blue sky and regarded the multiple blood trails leading away from the limbless torso.

At the end of one bloody track was an arm. It had come to rest against a massive round column in the middle of the lobby. Bent at a ninety-degree angle to the floor, the gloved hand appeared to be waving a final goodbye.

A bare leg—still shod in a black combat boot—sat atop a white rug slowly turning crimson.

The dead rider’s rifle and parts of the arm and hand that had been gripping it were now a gory jumble at the terminus of yet another jagged red streak.

The dead rider’s helmeted head was nowhere to be seen.

Confident that firing a missile at the futuristic-looking helicopter would ensure a similar fate, the second rider discarded the MANPADS, straddled the dirt bike, then kick started the engine to life.

 

Having swung the Ghost Hawk out of harm’s way and repositioned above an intersection a block down and at an oblique angle to the Caesar’s Palace entrance, Ari held the helo in a hover and watched for movement in the area where the rifle fire had come from.

“I think Skip pasted them both,” Lopez said glumly. “Set us down and I’ll lead a team in to gather intel.”

Griff was glassing the front of Caesar’s with Steiner binoculars. “Not necessary,” he growled. “We have a squirter.”

On the monitor, Lopez watched a lone rider atop a camouflage motorcycle bounce down a long run of stairs, make a sharp left by the fountain, and barrel toward the far fence line. The point in the fence the rider was tracking for was fronted by a handful of Zs. The sidewalk occupied by the Zs was already littered with a dozen twice-dead corpses, some of them surrounded by pools of brackish fluid.

Cross said, “No doubt they cut the fence to get their bikes inside. Look for a seam. That’s got to be where he’s headed.”

“Closing the gap,” Ari said as he side-slipped the helicopter down the street toward the rabbiting rider. “Axe, if I keep presenting you this angle, you think you can drop him inside the perimeter?”

“Certainly,” Axe answered. “He’s not going home to his mum.”

“Unless he starts shooting at us, keep him alive,” Lopez ordered.

“Copy that,” replied Axe, dropping his eye to the high-powered Leupold scope atop the Remington MSR chambered in .300 Win Mag. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, dead center in the open starboard-side door, with only a thin nylon strap to prevent a hundred-foot fall should he get pitched out.

The rider appeared to be slowing down, then all of a sudden he swerved right and accelerated rapidly toward a spot in the fence a few yards from the assembled Zs.

“I see where they came in,” Griff said. Pointing out the spot for Axe, he went on, “It’s only secured with a couple of zip-ties. To get through, he’ll be forced to stop and clip them. Hit him when he dismounts.”

Axe said nothing. He was already in the zone, everything external slowing and snapping into sharp focus. The moment the speeding rider presented his full right-side profile, the SAS shooter announced, “Right thigh. Through and through,” and pressed the trigger.

The only indication Axe had just discharged his suppressed rifle was the subtle rocking back and forth of his upper torso.

Still training the minigun on the squirter, Skipper saw the spritz of blood and witnessed the rider’s right leg leaving the peg. By the time the damaged leg was toe down and being dragged limply along the pavers behind the slumping rider, the bike had adopted a serious death wobble and was leaving in its wake an oil slick.

A total of three seconds elapsed between the disabling shot and the bike and rider going down hard in front of the crease in the fence. As the rider spun away in one direction, arms and legs flopping as if all control of them was lost, the bike skittered off in the opposite, shedding parts and marking the white walkway green wherever the camouflage paint came into contact with it.

The rider was arrested by the fence a couple of yards short of the opening. The bike was not. It hit the fence a few feet to the right of the unmoving rider, opening up the seam and becoming wedged there.

Lopez saw the Zs take note of the rider and begin a slow march towards him.

“Murphy just arrived,” Griff said. “The fence is breached.”

Seeing a few of the dead go to ground by the motorcycle and start clawing their way through the fence to get to the rider, Lopez said, “Axe, do not let the Zeds get to the rider.”

Axe said nothing. He was busy slinging lead downrange at the prone zombies.

Addressing Skip, Lopez said, “There’s more Zs on the way. Think you can eliminate them without dinging the rider?”

Skip said, “Negative.”

Coinciding with rapid-fire reports from Axe’s rifle, the pair of Zs clawing their way up the rider’s legs went limp. More Zs fell as Axe shifted aim and emptied the rifle’s magazine.

Struggling to get free of the corpses piling on, the rider lost hold of the sidearm he’d been trying to bring to bear. As he groped the ground blindly in search of the lost pistol, the already compromised run of fence bowed inward.

Cold ball forming in his gut, Lopez said, “Skipper, we need him alive for questioning. You have got to take the shot.”

Considering the number of dead things drawn to the scene by the harmonic rotor thwop and initial minigun fusillade, it was a wonder the fence still stood.

“Going hot,” Skipper warned a half beat before the minigun came alive with the sound of a thousand angry hornets. Aiming head-high to the gathering throng, he walked a three-second burst left-to-right across the fence. When the crew chief finally took his finger from the trigger, the sidewalk and ground opposite the downed bike and rider was littered with body parts and a couple of dozen twice-dead Zs.

Watching the surviving rider crawling on hands and knees away from the carnage, Lopez said, “Ari, how close can you get us?”

Eyes scanning the ground all around, Ari said, “I’ll put down right next to the fountain.”

For the first time in a long while Lopez second-guessed the ace pilot, saying, “You think there’s room?”

A wide grin appeared under Ari’s visor. “If Evel Knievel can land his Triumph on that postage stamp, no reason I can’t squeeze this old girl in there.” Then, voice all business, he said, “Wheels down in ten.”