Vanishing Point - Marc Cerasini [67]
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.
* * *
9:53:00 p.m. PDT
Babylon Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas
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 С4 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 Risque show we use real fire on stage, so the city's fire code required the theater to have a bunch of emergency exits. These doors are never guarded, and one of them has a broken lock. The dancers all know about the busted door. They use it to step outside for air, to smoke, snort coke or shoot up."