Lucy Baker grimaced in pain. Everything hurt.
Agonizingly she raised her head. What was going on? The bus was moving—but nobody was holding the wheel. Sheets of water were cascading over the windshield. And Steve—Steve was in trouble! Malloy had him pinned helplessly across the driver’s seat and his fist was raised in the air, preparing to strike his adversary a crushing blow.
She had to do something fast! As the bus rocked, the fire extinguisher rolled against her leg. She grabbed for it, stumbled to her feet, and, with all the force she could muster, brought the heavy brass cylinder down two-handed on Buster’s skull—just in time to prevent him from administering the coup de grace he had aimed at Forrester.
Buster Malloy’s single eye rolled up, and he collapsed in a heap.
Steve lurched back to a sitting position in the driver’s seat. Without his foot on the accelerator, the bus had begun to lose momentum. He grabbed the wheel and pushed the pedal back down to the metal. The Greyhound surged forward through the final reaches of the pool and smashed its way out through the retaining wall at the end as easily as it had smashed its way in.
03:49 remained on the clock.
Forrester accelerated the bus back toward the outbound driveway, plowing furrows in the lawn and shearing off half a dozen decorative cypress trees en route.
“Are you all right, Lucy?” he asked anxiously, glancing up at this beautiful, brave woman who had stopped Buster Malloy in his tracks—and probably saved his life, at least temporarily.
“I … think so,” she replied. She was hanging on for dear life to the vertical support pole next to the driver’s seat. Behind her, Malloy lay sprawled in the aisle. “Can I ask a question?”
“You bet.” Forrester peered through the windshield, now cracked in several places and spattered with wet grass and leaves. For some reason, there appeared to be no traffic directly ahead of them on the southbound side of Las Vegas Boulevard.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s a demolition site just north of here on the far side of the Strip.”
She peered anxiously at the clock timer on the wall. “Can we make it there in three minutes and twenty-seven seconds?”
“No sweat—just relax and enjoy the ride.”
As the bus rocketed through the exit gates onto the black asphalt of the Strip, Steve suddenly realized why there was no traffic in his path. A multivehicle pileup, the result of his previous unconventional crossing in the Mercedes, was blocking all three southbound lanes. Mangled cars and trucks, steam pouring from broken radiators, were strewn all over the road.
With an apologetic wave to the cluster of stunned motorists, Forrester banged the low-slung Greyhound across the empty lanes and over the median, creating a shower of sparks as its undercarriage scraped the raised concrete.
He pressed the horn for the benefit of the northbound traffic. But it was too little warning, too late, for the hapless oncoming motorists. With virtually no time to react, they cringed helplessly in their vehicles as the huge bus suddenly materialized in front of them. It plowed into the front end of a minivan, spinning it around like a top. Unable to stop, two other cars slammed into the van, sending it spinning again in the opposite direction. Steve wrenched the steering wheel hard left to head north; the big bus heeled over and its rear end momentarily slid out, smashing into the same Yellow cab from which Steve’s late Mercedes-Benz SL 500 had ripped the front bumper minutes earlier.
The apoplectic Arab taxi driver leapt back just in time to avoid being crushed between the two vehicles. Waving both fists in the air as the bus fishtailed off down the Strip, he called down the death curse of Allah upon both the demented infidels who had conspired to destroy his brand-new cab—the evil driver of the Mercedes-Benz convertible and the satanic chauffeur of the Greyhound Americruiser.
For years, the Drifts Hotel and Casino had enjoyed a place of honor on the Las Vegas Strip. Its golf course was world-renowned. In its fabled showroom
many of the world’s best-known entertainers had launched their careers. The famous and near famous had stayed and played at the Drifts.
But finally, the old girl’s time had come.
Her demise was slated for two days hence.
The building had been gutted. Work crews had purposely weakened the hotel’s supporting columns in preparation for the scheduled implosion; it only remained to place dynamite charges at strategic points and detonate them. Like the blowup of the Dunes several years earlier, the Drifts implosion was to be a photo op—a media event to capture even the most jaded Las Vegan’s attention, if only momentarily.
To conform with local regulations and to discourage trespassers, an eight-foot-high plywood construction fence had been erected around the site.
Steve Forrester fervently hoped that no overzealous demolition worker was inside that fence at ten minutes before midnight on a Friday.
02:43 and counting, said the clock timer at Forrester’s elbow.
“This horn just isn’t loud enough to catch people’s attention,” Forrester complained. “Where the hell is the high-beam switch? If I could flash my lights, it’d give cars a chance to get out—”
“Maybe it’s that button on the floor by your left foot,” Lucy suggested.
“Let’s find out.” He stepped on the smooth, round button. A tremendous blast from the Greyhound’s powerful air horn caused them both to jump. “Fantastic!” he exclaimed. “This’ll wake ’em up!”
With his left foot now firmly planted on the air-horn button, Steve threaded the big bus through traffic at forty-five miles an hour. Some motorists reacted to the blaring noise and pulled aside. Others refused to move over, forcing Forrester regretfully but relentlessly to push them out of the way with the mighty Greyhound. An angry crescendo of horns and a swath of damaged and wrecked vehicles marked his desperate drive toward the Drifts implosion site.
“Half a block to go,” Steve announced to Lucy. “Just past that traffic light. If it stays green, we might just make it!”
“Stay green,” she implored the light. “Please stay green … oh, please stay green … oh, shit.”
As the light perversely changed to red, three lanes of unsuspecting traffic in front of them obediently braked to a halt.
The clock read 02:06.
With no driving room ahead on the road, Forrester desperately opted for the only alternative left to him. Without slowing, he hauled the wheel to the right and bounced the bus up onto the sidewalk, praying that the air horn would clear people out of the way. The continuous blast did alert two pedestrians in his path—they dove to safety with just a fraction of a second to spare.
Steve flinched and Lucy ducked instinctively as a streetlamp loomed in their path. Smash! The metal structure snapped off and flew back over the roof of the bus. A pole-mounted traffic light was next; Forrester simply drove straight through it. This last assault on the battered windshield’s integrity caused it finally to implode, showering Forrester and Lucy with a million crystals of safety glass.
“I can’t see ’round this corner—better hope there’s nothing coming,” Steve said earnestly as the Greyhound left the sidewalk and entered the intersection without slowing. He glanced left, then quickly right, and his heart stopped! Bearing down on them less than fifty feet away was a huge transport truck!
Fortunately for Steve and Lucy, the quick reflexes of the trucker saved them from a broadside ramming. In a cloud of blue smoke and screaming tires, the monstrous semitrailer skidded sideways, jackknifing to a shuddering halt inches from the side of the speeding bus.
“Thank you, Lord,” said Steve Forrester.
01:55, the clock read.
“Watch out for the fence!” cried Lucy Baker.
Through the knocked-out windshield, they could see the plywood fence that surrounded the Drifts rapidly looming closer. “Cover your face!” Forrester commanded, squeezing his own eyes shut as they smashed through the fence in a cloud of splinters, knocking plywood panels and four-by-four fence posts aside like jackstraws. Inside the compound, Steve maintained speed. The heavy vehicle rocked alarmingly as it bumped and jounced over piles of rubble, scraping the Greyhound’s underbelly and causing the explosive-filled plastic barrels to lurch ominously in their seats.
Straight ahead, the headlights picked out a marble staircase, half a dozen steps high, leading up to the black hole where the Drifts’ main lobby had once welcomed visitors from around the world. Now the famous hotel was merely a pile of steel and concrete awaiting its final indignity—an event Steve Forrester had reluctantly been obliged to reschedule.
He pushed his foot hard to the floor, hoping to power the bus up the stairs and bury it in the gutted lobby.
“Hold on tight, Lucy!” Steve yelled.
She hugged the vertical metal pole in a death grip.
A hundred feet to go. Speed fifty miles an hour … fifty-five … then—wham!—ahead of the wheels, the low-slung front bumper struck the staircase first, jarring the entire frame of the bus. The impact lifted Steve out of his seat and almost sent him flying across the steering wheel and through the glassless windshield. Somehow he held on. Lucy’s feet slid out from under her, but with a superhuman effort she managed to keep a grip on the pole.
Despite the initial impact, the combination of mass and velocity did the trick; the Greyhound’s remaining momentum shot it up the staircase and propelled it into the dark, deserted lobby.
Its odyssey ended when the eleven-foot-high bus wedged itself under a ten-foot section of ceiling, bringing the big vehicle to a rapid, grinding halt. The headlights cut a swath through an acrid dust cloud, illuminating the ghostly skeleton of the once-proud establishment. Only naked columns remained to divide the vast empty space; shards of broken glass and chunks of rubble littered the bare concrete floor.
When the call came in describing the chaos at the Roman Palladium, LVMPD Lieutenant Frank Marshall and Sergeant Morris Jaworski were parked outside the Galaxy in an unmarked Crown Victoria sedan.
Marshall quickly realized what was happening.
He switched to the patrol-car frequency and thumbed the mike button. “All units near Las Vegas Boulevard.” With his free hand he unfolded a street map onto the dashboard. “Clear civilian traffic immediately from the vicinity of the Drifts demolition site. Code 445. Set up roadblocks at the following locations: Flamingo Road and the Strip. Desert Inn Road and the Strip. Spring Mountain Road and I-Fifteen. Spring Mountain and Paradise Road. Do not acknowledge. Code 3.”
“You know, I haven’t patrolled in a black-and-white for years. I know Code 3 means ‘Emergency Radio Traffic Only,’” Jaworski said. “But what’s a Code 445?”
Marshall flipped a switch activating the siren and the blue grille-mounted flashers. “It means ‘Explosive Device,’ Moe.” He slammed the car into gear and sped off down the Strip.
“I get it. There’s a bomb on that bus. And Steve’s driving it away from the Palladium.” The scruffy police scientist tightened his seat belt. “But why the Drifts, Frank? What makes you think Steve’s headed there?”
“Put yourself in his position. You’ve got twelve thousand pounds of live explosives on board. Probably set to go off with some kind of timer. You wouldn’t risk driving the bus away if you thought the bomb could be disarmed. But you figure it can’t. So you head for the only spot within a mile where it can explode with a minimum of damage. Steve turned north on the Strip—”
“In the direction of the Drifts.”
“Let’s just hope the crazy bastard makes it in time.”
Dust filled the gutted lobby of the Drifts Hotel and Casino. Steve Forrester pulled himself stiffly from the driver’s seat of the battered Greyhound Americruiser and staggered to his feet. He checked the timer: 01:20 … 01:19 … 01:18 …
“Feel like setting a new record for the hundred-yard dash?” he asked Lucy breathlessly.
“I guess so.”
“Then let’s go for it!” Steve leaped into the stairwell and gallantly extended a hand to assist her down the steps.
She began to move toward him.
Suddenly, without warning, her ankle was seized from behind in an iron grip!
She screamed in surprise and fright.
“You ain’t … goin’ nowhere … pretty lady,” Buster Malloy croaked. Holding on to Lucy’s ankle with his right hand, he hauled himself to his knees. Still kneeling, quick as lightning, the big man reached up and locked his left forearm around her neck.
Forrester rushed back up the steps. “Let her go, you sick son of a bitch!” he said.
“Stay back, or I’ll snap ‘er neck like a fuckin’ matchstick!” Malloy hissed. Forrester froze. Buster Malloy rose from his kneeling position, keeping the headlock on Lucy; as he drew himself upright, he dragged her up with him so that her feet left the floor. She struggled to twist free, but her captor’s animal strength was overwhelming.
Steve was paralyzed by indecision. Every fiber in his body ached to
charge wildly at Malloy, to crush the life out of the murdering son of a bitch and free Lucy. On one hand, he knew the big man would not hesitate for a second to carry out his threat. But on the other hand, what choice did Forrester have? He glanced frantically at the clock: 00:56. They’d all be blown sky-high in less than a minute anyway. He had to do something. And he had to do it fast.
The reflected glow of the headlights shone in through the windows upon Buster Malloy’s ruined countenance. It revealed a visage from a horror movie, the bogeyman’s face out of a child’s worst nightmare. Gore from the deep gash in his scalp matted his hair; blood coursed down his forehead and into the dreadful puckered hollow where his left eye had once been. It dripped from his nose and ran between his crooked teeth, lending a vampirish aspect to his twisted grin. Pure evil shone from Buster’s bloodshot good right eye.
“Go ahead, Mr. Steve Fuckin’ Forrester,” he sneered. “You can leave. You jus’ get outta here now an’ save your arse. But Lucy an’ me, we’re stayin’ for the fireworks. Ain’t we, lover?” He tightened his arm around her slim neck and fondled her breast with his free hand; she clawed ineffectually at the massive bear paw. “Oh baby, what a fuckin’ turn-on. Gettin’ snuffed with you—I’m gettin’ horny just thinkin’ about it.” Malloy laughed insanely, uproariously.
“Steve …” Lucy cried weakly, gasping for breath, “Get away … save yourself …”
Forrester knew that the psychotic killer was now over the top—beyond reasoning, beyond talk. Frozen on the top step of the stairwell, he looked about wildly for some instrument of deliverance, some miraculous machination that would permit him to release Lucy from Malloy’s clutches before twelve thousand pounds of explosive released all of them from the bonds of Earth.
He looked to his left. Flashes of red and blue from outside the condemned building told him that the cops had arrived—too late.
He looked to his right. The clock read 00:33.
He looked down. The detonator wires! Malloy had somehow gotten his right foot snarled in a loop of wire! A chance—a slim one at best, but it was all he had!
In a flash, before his bloodied adversary could react, Steve reached down, grabbed a double handful of wire and pulled with all his strength. The loop tightened and jerked Malloy’s foot forward. It skidded out from
under him. Instinctively, he flailed his arms for balance, freeing his captive. With a roar of fury and frustration, the murderous Irishman toppled over backward as Lucy Baker stumbled forward.
00:24 showed on the timer.
Badly shaken and barely conscious as a result of Malloy’s cruel choke hold, she collapsed in Forrester’s arms. He threw her over his shoulder fireman-style and leapt from the doomed bus. With a strength and speed born of pure adrenaline, he raced for safety. In the darkened ruin of the Drifts’s lobby, he tripped over a loose piece of concrete, almost losing his balance. Somehow he recovered. Hardly noticing the weight of his precious cargo, Steve burst out of the entrance. He plunged down the stairs without breaking stride. Across the moonlit courtyard he ran, zigzagging around piles of rubble, streaking for the only shelter there was: the plywood fence.
A hundred feet to the fence—and maybe twelve seconds to go before the Greyhound Americruiser became ground zero in the biggest blast Nevada had experienced since the fifties.
With a final burst of speed, Forrester dashed through the shattered fence. He spun around and gently placed a still-dazed Lucy in the lee of the closest intact section of fence. All they could do now was pray. He dropped to all fours and protectively straddled her body.
A uniformed metro cop stepped casually out of his patrol car and approached the prone couple.
“Excuse me, sir—,” he began.
Steve raised his head unbelievingly. “Get down, you idiot!” he shouted at the young policeman. “There’s a bomb—”
He never finished the sentence.