Vanishing Point - Marc Cerasini [63]
Resorting to a trick of his trade, Curtis had tensed his muscles while his wrists were tied. But he must have seemed too tense, because the hit man became suspicious and used the butt of his Makarov PM to knock Curtis into unconsciousness.
Still disoriented, Curtis wondered how long he'd been out. This truck had not yet arrived at the Babylon, but what about the other five?
Curtis was trussed up and helpless, he'd been chased, dragged, beaten and shot, but he still had a job to do. If he didn't stop these terrorists, they would blow up a major American hotel and claim untold lives. He had to free himself, stop this truck, and warn the authorities before it was too late ...
10THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 P.M. AND 10 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
9:06:19 p.m. PDT
Montana Burger, Home of Real Montana Beef
Tropicana Boulevard, Las Vegas
"Catch!"
Metro Police Sergeant Philip Locklear tossed the colorful bag at his partner. "Scoot over, Dallas. You eat your Montana burgers. I'll drive."
The younger man stepped out from behind the steering wheel, circled the white Metro Police car. Climbing back inside, he opened the bag and rummaged through it.
"Hey, you didn't get anything for yourself."
The sergeant shook his head, threw his hat on the dashboard, and ran his knobby fingers through his salt and pepper hair.
"I can't eat that fast food crap. It bothers my stomach."
Sergeant Locklear was in his mid-forties, but looked ten years older. Skin like leather, his blue eyes were frozen in a perpetual squint from too many decades of exposure to the desert sun. Though he was never in danger of failing his annual department physical. Locklear had a rounded belly from too much beer and too much couch surfing.
"What bothers your stomach are those ten cups of coffee you drink a shift. That stuff will kill you."
Officer Brad Dallas was the former second-string quarterback of the Las Vegas High School football team. Ex-military and still sporting the same haircut he had in boot camp, Dallas was too gung-ho for his own good — and his partner's. Still buff at twenty-nine, he was a health and fitness nut, except for the cholesterol-heavy Montana burgers he ate two at a time.
"What stuff will kill me?" Locklear asked, starting the engine.
"Caffeine, man. Coffee is the devil's brew."
The sergeant nodded. "Yeah. I heard that somewhere."
They rolled out of the Montana Burger parking lot a moment later, swung onto the road that took them to their patrol zone along the Strip.
"How about you take a gander at tonight's SVR. Shout out anything that catches your eye."
Chewing a mouthful of burger, Officer Dallas thumbed through the three page printout on blue paper. The Stolen Vehicle Report was information so new it hadn't reached the LVMP database yet. Such intelligence was the purview of the select few members of Metro's Repeat Auto Theft Squad, RATS for short. Las Vegas ranked third in total car thefts for the past five years running. The RATS patrol was formed to lower that statistic.
Because a minority of car thieves steal the majority of cars — usually to use the pilfered vehicle to commit yet another crime — the Metro Police RATS was formed to target those nefarious individuals. Of the twenty to thirty Metro Police cars prowling the Strip on a given night, one or two of them belonged to the RATS patrol, though no one but the officers in question were aware of that fact. RATS patrol cars were not specially marked, and the RATS members wore the same uniforms and performed the same duties as other patrolmen. But they were also specially trained to recognize and arrest repeat offending car thieves, and to spot the telltale signs of car-theft related activity.
When the pair began their shift, the big case was a car jacking in North Las Vegas so violent it landed the victim in the morgue. That suspect was captured by the Nevada Highway Patrol an hour ago — the news had just come across their radio when the all-points was called off.
Without a special target for tonight's patrol,