Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) (18 page)

Flynn said nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The lion habitat was immediately beside the security area, and it took them only a few moments to reach it with their latest minder, a young guy called Josh who apparently thought they were celebrity guests looking for an insider’s tour.

He nattered away about the facility’s history and its considerable prowess as one of the most popular exhibits in Las Vegas.

The walls and floors were clear glass, so it was easy to see the lions, but not entirely. There was a small area where they could stay out of view.

There was a crowd in front of the habitat, and a line full of kids formed up along the wall. It was a happy situation, calm and orderly. No problems here. There were cubs in the habitat, and the children were eager to have their pictures taken with them. Farther down the corridor, more people were filing into Studio 54. The casino was humming, too, and a show was letting out of the Cirque de Soleil’s KÀ Theater.

This was a chess game with no board and more than one expert opponent. Or perhaps it was better to say it another way: a chess game with the perp and some other kind of game with the tiger, played by tiger rules, whatever they were.

He asked Scott, “Did you check the whole habitat?” He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from the man who had done the work.

“What’s there to check? Six lions, two cubs, glass floors, end of story.”

Obviously, Scott was not aware of how the habitat was laid out. Flynn went to the door. “I need to enter the space,” he told their minder.

The man blinked. His expression of surprise said that it wasn’t a frequent request. Finally he said, “No.”

“It’s okay, Ricky,” Scott said.

“Don’t we need a release or something?”

“I need to do this right now.”

Scott spoke into his radio, then listened. Willard, no doubt. Flynn waited. At a nod from Scott, Rickie unlocked the heavy door and stepped aside.

“Hey,” the trainer who was handling the animals said, “You know what you’re doing?”

“I need to see into the enclosed area.”

“There’s nobody in there. We’re all out here.”

This guy was tight with his lions, which was good. It meant that he could control them. Flynn was fast enough to deal with one lion, but six would be a definite problem, and lions weren’t like tigers, they worked in packs.

The public was now aware of his presence in the enclosure and was watching him. He moved through the visible space, then took a few steps up into the hidden area.

It was exactly as he expected. He called out to the trainer, “There’s another animal in here.”

The trainer’s head turned. “
What?
”

“Back in here. And I don’t think it’s a lion.”

The man came to Flynn. “That’s empty. It has to be.”

Flynn moved a little deeper into the dimness. “Get security over here.”

“This is impossible!”

“Look for yourself,” Flynn said. “Carefully.”

“Jesus, you’re right. What is that?”

“We need somebody who’s able to work with tigers. And this one is very damn smart.”

The trainer had taken out a small LED flashlight. The yellow of the tiger’s eyes reflected back. “What the hell … how did that get in here?”

“We need to get it contained.”

“There’s tigers at the Secret Garden in the Mirage. Is this one of their animals?”

“No. But they have experts, for sure.”

“Yeah, Siegfried and Roy.
The
experts.”

“Aren’t they retired?”

“If they’re in Vegas, they can advise. Plus, the Mirage has a good group of trainers. It’s a top-notch operation.”

One of the lions roared, then another. From outside there was excited babble, kids squealing.

“They’ve been restless as hell, and this is why. How long as that thing been in there?”

“That’s unclear.”

Behind them, Ricky opened the access door. “You guys okay?”

Immediately, there was a stirring from within the enclosure. “Close it,” the trainer shouted.

The lions erupted, roaring and striding, and at the same moment the tiger emerged. It was easily as big as two of the lions put together.

It fixed its stare on Flynn.

“It knows you. Is this your animal?”

Flynn said nothing.

The tiger came into view of the public, causing an immediate round of applause. The next second, it leaped, and Flynn had never seen anything quite like it. The movement was smooth and swift and covered a good fifteen feet.

As the tiger slammed into Ricky, he went down with a surprised grunt.

“Holy God!” the trainer shouted.

From outside there came a confused babble, then an eruption of screams.

Perhaps because of pack instinct, but also due to curiosity, the lions followed the tiger through the door.

“Goddamnit!” the trainer shouted.

“Stay cool, we’ve got work to do,” Flynn said. He grabbed Scott’s radio. “The animals are in the casino,” he said on the emergency channel, “you need crowd control and all the wranglers you can get.”

He followed the trainer out into the broad hallway between Studio 54 and the casino. The lions were close together, moving down the center of the hall toward the casino, and the large crowds still exiting KÀ were parting like the Red Sea. But not all of them. An elderly lady who looked like a pile of bags with a face clapped her hands and confronted them, smiling happily. “Oh, how cute,” she gushed.

Another voice shouted, “It’s an act,” and there was a smattering of uneasy applause.

“Oh, God,” the trainer moaned.

Security was pouring into the corridor from both directions. Then a little boy with a toy ray gun burst through the crowd and took a firing stance. The next thing Flynn knew, he was spraying the lions with a super-soaker.

They remained silent and still, shaking their heads, annoyed by the water, unsure of themselves.

“It’s not gonna last,” the trainer shouted back at Flynn.

“I know it.”

A guard appeared with a gun.

The situation was three seconds from trample panic. “Don’t fire that,” Flynn shouted, “don’t let people see it!” The guard holstered it and stationed himself in front of the lions and spread his legs and arms, attempting to block their progress.

Now other people joined the old lady, attempting to attract the lions to them. One man succeeded in petting one of them.

“Lay off,” the trainer shouted, “don’t confuse them!”

“Folks,” Flynn said in his most commanding voice, “we need you to back out of here. Nobody run, just move out of the corridor, please. Stay away from the animals.”

The old lady was lifting the dewlaps of a lioness and shrilling at her husband to take a picture. Flynn’s warning did not stop her. Then a man with a cigar in his hand burst around the guard, roaring and thrusting it at the lions.

One of the them charged this sudden movement. The old woman was knocked over.

In three strides, Flynn moved among the lions, then past them. Quickly, he confronted the man with the cigar, lifted his arm and shook it out of his hand, and twisted the arm back behind him. Then he took the guy’s legs out from under him, whirled him around and pushed him away. He turned to the old woman and drew her to her feet. “Put her back together,” he said to another security guard who had just come up.

The lions, now afraid, began running. More screams erupted. Flynn’s trained ears counted ten sirens immediately outside the building, just beginning to wind down.

“Call your pros,” he shouted to Scott. “Right now!”

“It’s been done!”

Willard burst onto the scene. “SWAT’s deploying.”

Flynn took off after the lions.

They invaded the casino, moving fast. Their fear was escalating fast. At this point, they were highly likely to lash out at anybody who confronted them.

This was a huge space, and most of the patrons still weren’t aware of what was happening. But then one of the lions jumped up onto a blackjack table and roared. Nobody could mistake that sound, and every head in the casino turned this way. Then the rest of them ran deeper into the room, and were lost to Flynn’s view amid the high-roller slots. Roars and cries of terrified surprise followed immediately.

“Stay with this animal,” Flynn shouted to two guards. “Send SWAT into the slots with nets, not guns. No guns, do you get that?”

“Yessir!”

He also ran toward the slots, vaulting the nearest row of them and landing in the lap of a spectacular young woman. Her chips scattered, mice on the run.

People were jumping up from their machines, shouting, flapping their hands at the lions, trying to leave the area.

Flynn knew about as much about lions as he did about tigers, which was just enough to know that they were efficient killers, but would only attack for food or in self-defense. For them, violence was a tool, and right now what he needed to do was to convince them not to use it.

“Clear the area,” he shouted into the panicking crowd. “The police are on their way. Just take it easy, back out, don’t make sudden movements.” They slowed down, clustering, getting quiet. “That’s it, that’s right. Now just back out. Security will escort you to safety.”

In moments, fully equipped SWATs appeared, and they had animal control nets. There was going to be some roaring and some resistance from the lions, but basically this was over.

Diana came up beside him. “This is what the perp’s been waiting for. His tiger’s going to take us out somehow, and right now.”

“He’s going to try. Listen, I need you out of here.”

“No way.”

“They must not take both of us. So you get out of here, you get in the car, and you drive, Diana. You drive far.”

He spotted the tiger. It was making its way behind the high-roller slots, moving fast, staying low.

“The perp could be leaving the facility about now. You go out to the front and make a note of every vehicle that pulls away.”

“He’ll use his chopper.”

“In broad daylight? He’s gotta have permits, he’s got to get clearance to use the helideck. No, he’ll use a car and this is a chance to see him or see somebody who works with him. Get some basic detective information.” The tiger disappeared from view. The animal was going somewhere. It would be picked up, and Flynn intended to still be alive when that happened, and to be there.

“You come with me,” Diana said.

“The tiger’s going somewhere to be picked up. If I’m there, I can call in support from the local cops. Maybe round up some of these people.”

“You will not survive this, Flynn.”

“Go!”

She turned.

“
Now!
”

She left.

Flynn trotted to where the animal had been, but there was nothing there. He looked ahead and saw an access panel. Loose. It must have gone through, and it must have been helped, otherwise the panel wouldn’t just be loose, it would be open. Smart as the damn thing was, the tiger didn’t have hands. Fortunately.

As he slid the panel aside, he reflected that he’d seen the tiger’s face more clearly this time. He’d had the uncanny sense that a person had been looking back at him through the eyes of an animal.

On the other side of the panel he found an access area that led to a forest of ductwork. It was a ventilation management shaft. The interior was unlit.

This was the moment when he needed to nibble the bait, not swallow it. The smart fish also had the discipline to defeat his own eagerness, and that was not easy, not when you were as hungry as he was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

He stood waiting for his eyes to get used to the dark. His night vision was decent, and this was always preferable to a flashlight. He could use his night vision equipment, which was still in his backpack, but it projected infrared and that would not be wise. For all he knew, tigers could see into the infrared, or this one could.

Soon, he was able to make out the shapes of ducts. There was light coming from his left. Also, on the floor, smears in the dust that could only be tracks. Instead of hiding, this tiger had gone toward the light, and that was very damn strange, especially because light changes the hormone mix in the human brain but not in the brains of predators. More visual information makes our other senses less acute. Could the tiger sense this, or somehow even know it? Or was it just a coincidence that it was going against its own instincts in such a way that gave it an advantage, but would look to most human pursuers like a mistake?

Flynn made his way under a long series of ducts, skirting the lighted area, moving as swiftly and silently as he could. He listened for any and every sound, and soon began to hear noises coming from the deeper dark. He stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Closed his eyes to concentrate on his hearing. Finally, he cupped his hands over his ears and turned slowly. As he did so, he was gradually able to make out a voice. Then that it was a female voice. Then that it was the voice of a child.

“Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town, upstairs and downstairs, in his nightgown…”

Incredibly, what he was hearing was a little girl telling a Mother Goose story.

“Rapping at the window, crying through the lock, are the children in their beds … are
you
in
your
bed, Jerry?”

He got his gun into his hand and went down on his stomach, drawing himself forward slowly enough so that the sliding sound was barely audible. As he moved ahead, the little girl’s voice grew steadily more distinct. Also, he began to see flickering light, very dim. A candle?

The voice continued, “Hush-a-bye, baby, mommy is near, hush-a-bye, daddy is near…”

There came another voice, even smaller, hardly even articulate, whimpering.

“Hush … hush.” The little girl was comforting an even smaller child.

Using the voices as a guide, he felt his way along, soon discovering an iron hatch that was standing open. As he felt the edge, he could detect neat slices in four heavy lock tongues. This door had been cut open, and not by any tiger, no matter how clever it was.

This was the work of the perpetrator or his people, the first overt sign of their presence he had found. So his instinct had been right. It wasn’t just the tiger under here. Somebody with a powerful tool was here, too, and not a blowtorch. The edge was absolutely smooth to the touch. A torch would have left a much more irregular surface. No, this had been cut by a very good blade—as a matter of fact, no blade Flynn had ever heard of.