I read the brand name on the watch face: “Mandrill.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged apologetically. “I don’t want to be untrusting, but I figure there’s still an outside chance that you and Love are running some kind of elaborate counterscheme here. So along with the jammer, there’s a destruct mechanism that lets me vaporize you by remote control if I get a bad vibe.” Her right arm came up, and I was staring into the muzzle of my own NC gun. “Put it on.”
I slipped the watchband around my wrist. The clasp emitted a faint beep as I snapped it closed, and I didn’t need to be told that trying to undo it without permission would be fatal.
“Good girl,” the bad Jane said. She put my NC gun on safety and dropped it in my lap. “Here we go…”
Two bright-eyed statues of the Egyptian god Horus guarded the entrance to the Luxor casino. As I stepped from the car, the light in their pupils dimmed and went out. The next test was waiting just inside the casino doors: a pair of real security guards. When one of them looked straight at me I thought I was busted, but the guy just yawned and turned away.
“You see?” the bad Jane said, a voice in my ear. “It’s like you’re invisible…Walk straight ahead, now. The high-stakes room is at the center of the casino floor.”
I passed between rows of blackjack tables, a wave of darkness preceding me as my Troop watch turned every king, queen, and one-eyed jack blind. Next came bank after bank of slot machines. Here the effect was more subtle: even with their Eyes Only devices jammed, the slots had lights to spare.
The entrance to the high-stakes room was a sliding door of frosted glass. The door was triggered by a motion sensor, but my watch seemed to have jammed it, too.
“Problem,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I’m patched into the electrical system. Before I open the door I need you to pay attention. Love’s dressed in a tuxedo. He’s sitting at a table with two women; they’re his bodyguards. There’s also a dealer at the table, a pit boss off to the right, and a couple other dealers cooling their heels at the back of the room. Any of them might be bodyguards, too.”
“So I need to shoot six people in, what, three seconds?”
“Two seconds if you can manage it. And don’t hit Love—even if he were light enough to carry, you aren’t that invisible. Can you handle this?”
“Let’s find out,” I said. “Open the door.”
The door slid aside. I stepped forward, raised my gun, and pulled the trigger six times.
“Well,” said Robert Love, glancing over the half dozen unconscious bodies sprawled around him, “I see my warning didn’t take.”
“Shut up.” Without his clown outfit, he wasn’t nearly as frightening.
“Search him,” the bad Jane said.
I set the bomb case on the floor and gestured at Love with my NC gun. “Stand up and lean forward. Put your hands flat on the table.” Love did as he was told. I moved around behind him. Feeling under his jacket, I found a hand ax tucked into his cummerbund. I pulled it out and set it aside. I checked his pockets. “He’s clean,” I announced.
“Good. Now explain to him what the situation is.”
“There are some people waiting to meet you in the VIP parking garage,” I told Love. “So we’re going to walk out of here now. You’ll stay in front of me, go where I say, not make any sudden moves, not make trouble.”
“Interesting plan,” said Love. “But as I can only assume you’re taking me to be tortured and murdered, what’s my motivation, exactly, for not making trouble?”
I kept the gun on him as I transferred the case from the floor to the table. I showed him what was inside it. “You know what this is, right?”
“I recognize the brand name. I can’t say I’ve seen that particular model before.”