A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(38)
Could they?
He scooped his keys off the ground and sprinted for the stairs, already calling Denise. He left her a frantic voicemail as he raced across the parking lot, then threw himself into his car, slammed the bubble light on his roof, and turned on his radio.
“Two Henry five, Dispatch.” He rocketed out of his space and toward the entrance of the apartment complex, almost barreling straight through the security gate when it didn’t open fast enough.
“Two Henry five, go ahead.”
“Credible threat received of a possible 445 on Las Vegas Boulevard, exact location unknown, estimated time of detonation nineteen hundred hours.” Swinging a right onto the highway, he hurtled down the center lane. Cars veered out his path. “Activate the city’s emergency operations plan and notify the FBI. Mobilize all available units, ambulance, fire department-fuck, send everybody.”
It took the dispatcher a couple of seconds to respond; when she spoke, her voice was shaky but professional. “Two Henry five, copy. Dispatch to all available units . . .”
He clipped the radio to his belt, tuning out her request for assistance, and glanced at the dashboard clock. 6:43. Fuck.
Punching the accelerator, he merged onto I-215 with a squeal of tires. He put a call through to Dominic while he weaved in and out of traffic.
“You know I’m at a-”
“Utopia’s going to hit the Strip,” Levi interrupted.
“What?”
“They sent some goons after me at our apartment-”
“What?”
“And I think they’re going to set off a bomb on the Strip at seven p.m., but I have no idea where or how to stop it.”
“Where are you?” When Levi didn’t respond, Dominic’s voice went dark and flinty. “Levi Abrams, where the fuck are you?”
Levi spun the wheel to avoid a collision with a slow-moving SUV. “On my way to the Strip.”
The only sound that came over the line was Dominic’s heavy breathing. Then he said, “I’ll meet you there.”
“No!” Levi said, but Dominic had already hung up.
Levi banged a fist against the dashboard. Goddammit, why had he called Dominic in the first place?
He pretended not to know the answer, but it blazed through the back of his mind: If he was about to die, he’d wanted to hear Dominic’s voice first.
He fishtailed onto the Strip, only to hit the brakes as the street’s perpetually heavy traffic slowed his progress to a crawl. Even with the bubble light flashing, cars were sluggish to get out of his way.
Did it really matter, though? Now that he was here, he was confronted by the impossibility of his task. The Strip was over four miles long; an explosive device could be hidden in any of the dozens of buildings on either side. Hell, there could be multiple bombs, given Dominic’s estimates of how much TATP Utopia had manufactured.
Oh God, what if there was one in Stanton’s hotel?
Up ahead, more flashing lights dotted the Strip. Continuous reports came in over his radio of units responding to his call: cops searching for anything suspicious, a couple of ambulances standing by, a fire truck at the ready, an FBI response team on their way. But none of them knew where to go.
Levi should have stayed with those men. He should have made them talk, beaten it out of them—
No. He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, returning his focus to the current moment as he slalomed between cars. From what he could see of the pedestrians on the walkways, the few who were paying attention to the police presence looked more confused than anything else. Nobody was helpfully skulking around with a bulky package.
He had to think this through more logically. Why seven p.m. exactly? What was so important about the timing?
An attraction on the Strip, maybe, something that would draw a lot of people. The Fountains at the Bellagio? Unlikely. They’d been going off every half-hour since eleven this morning. The Fall of Atlantis at the Forum Shops-no, same thing, it’d been running all day.
Some entitled prick in a Lexus was refusing to move out of the way. Levi rolled down his window to shout, and that was when he heard it-the opening strains of music with a vaguely Polynesian feel, coming from across the street.
From the volcano at the Mirage, which erupted for the first time every night at seven o’clock.
It was 6:59.
Levi slammed on the brakes, causing the vehicle behind to rear-end him. He jumped out of his car, heedless of the blaring horns, and began shouting warnings as he ran across the street toward the crowd that had gathered to watch.
Even in his terror, he was struck by the surreality of yelling, “Get away from the volcano!”
People turned to gawk, staying where they were. He was too late. They thought he was crazy, and he was out of time—
The song’s drumbeat ramped up, the first flames spouted from the volcano—
And the world blew apart.
White-hot chunks of the volcano slammed into him like snowballs from Hell, throwing him onto his back. Only a decade of muscle memory in learning how to fall safely protected his head from hitting the asphalt as hard as his body.
It knocked the wind out of him, though, and his lungs spasmed as he clawed at the street beneath him. His ears were ringing, a single sharp, clear note that filled his entire head and blotted out any other noise. He knew his eyes were open, but he couldn’t make sense of anything he was seeing.