“What’s the railing?” he asked.
“Monorail,” Mildred answered. “Used to run people from the MGM to Bally’s and back again. They made plenty of places for tourists to drop their money.”
Ryan fell silent again, keeping watchful. Opportunities for escape would present themselves if he remained patient. There was no way to force it. He read the signs of the places and streets they passed, listening to Mildred talk to J.B. about the things she’d seen over a hundred years ago.
A huge building with a glittering entranceway stood on the edge of a precipice. Neon lights announced the name as Bally’s. Ryan figured it was the one Mildred had been talking about, especially after he saw part of the monorail sticking out from the side.
The wag swerved off the street, following a path beaten through the growing brush and over built-up patches filling the cracks in the ground. Ryan shifted, holding on to the bars with one hand as he watched a steel door in the wall before the wag. The steel door wasn’t part of the original building. It had been added sometime later. Rust covered the facade, blending the dents and tears into a rugged sameness.
With a rough rasping of chain links rolling over a drum, the steel door went up in jerks. The wag driver came to a near stop, then edged forward until the door cleared the top of the vehicle. Inside the parking area beyond, Hayden LeMarck had a full complement of sec men armed to the teeth.
Light came from fluorescent tubes on the high ceiling, supplemented by oil lanterns hanging on the walls and carried by some of the sec men. LeMarck rushed over to the wag, calling out to his men and gathering them around him.
A large, burly man with hair sprouting across his shoulders leaped onto the back of the wag. He fitted a key into the lock and removed it, then whipped the door back. “Out,” he ordered. “And if you try anything, we’ll gut shoot you and leave you to die while some of those rabid mutie animals we’ve got penned up eat you.”
Ryan led the way out of the wag. The steel door came down with a rush of chain and a clanging thump against the remnants of royal purple carpet over the concrete foundations. He signaled to J.B. with his fingers, telling the Armorer to stand and observe.
LeMarck stopped in front of Ryan, remaining out of easy reach. “Are you ready?”
Somewhere beyond the concrete wall in front of them, the sound of drums beating echoed into the room, accompanied by wild yells and the sound of animal cries. There were also mechanical noises, groaning and hissing that Ryan couldn’t recognize.
“I have a choice?” Ryan asked dryly.
LeMarck smiled, but it wasn’t a confident effort. He turned to one of the other men. “Get them suited up.”
LESS THAN TEN MINUTES LATER, Ryan had been outfitted with a scarlet armored bodysuit that covered his chest, stomach and groin. He also had his holster, though empty of the SIG-Sauer P-226, and pouches and pockets for ammo and other gear.
The guards took Ryan, J.B. and Mildred up three flights of stairs and down two different hallways until they found Hayden LeMarck. The room was large, a public meeting place of some kind, lit by oil lanterns hanging on wall hooks that left soot patterns on the decorative walls. Ryan reckoned it had been a gaudy of some type at one time, judging from the shelves, remnants of mirrors and freestanding bar against the back wall.
LeMarck stood in front of the opposite wall, which had taken heavy damage in the past. Sledges had been used to knock out sections of it, and glass panes had been puttied in, creating a ten-foot-wide and six-foot-tall window that looked out over some of the worst carnage in Vegas.
It looked as though a giant had stomped a footprint into the center of the ville just beyond Bally’s. Keeping his sense of direction even after he’d been brought into the building had been second nature for Ryan. He knew they were facing north.
The neon glare of the ville was strongest at this point, teeming with dozens of colors of differing intensities. The lights slammed against the windows, all of them offset from the others, and created prism effects that spun out over Ryan, J.B., Mildred and the nearest sec men. LeMarck looked as if he were standing in front of a burst rainbow.
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