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Zach and Annie watched in frustration as Bulldog Brown sped
away in the black sedan.
“Nuts!” Annie said. “What do we do now, Sherlock?”
“First,” Zach replied, “we use the homing device.”
Zach removed what looked like a normal pen from his pocket. He pointed it
up Industrial Road, where they could still make out the rear lights of the speeding car. The LEDs
on the side of the pen shone bright green.
In the distance, the sedan turned right. Zach followed the
car with the homing device as it drove east towards the strip. Even though they
could no longer see the car, the homing device told them exactly where it was.
A minute later, the lights on the pen started to switch
from green to red.
“They’re turning again!” Zach exclaimed. He wiggled
the pen back and forth until the lights turned green again. “They’ve turned
south—probably on Las Vegas Boulevard.”
Beside him, Annie was dancing from foot to foot.
“If they keep going, they’ll be out of range before we
can catch them!”
Zach looked over at his friend, and realized she was right.
Somehow, they had to follow Bulldog and his goons.
But how?
Turning away, Zach waved his arms in frustration. Then he
suddenly stopped.
There, parked right beside them, were two mini-bikes!
Grabbing Annie, Zach rushed over to the first mini-bike, a
blue one. He hopped onto the seat and grabbed the handlebars.
Following Zach’s example, Annie jumped onto the second
mini-bike, a red model. Then the two of them kick-started the two bikes to
life.
The two engines started with matching growls. Soon their
roars were echoing through the concrete parking garage.
“Think we can catch ‘em?” Annie yelled to Zach over
the noise of the mini-bikes.
“I know a
shortcut,” he shouted back at her, nodding his head. “Follow me!”
Zach twisted the throttle and his mini-bike accelerated out
of its parking space. He rode towards the exit, then made a U-turn. He zoomed
back through the center of the parking garage—towards Caesar’s Palace!
Annie furrowed her brow, not quite sure what Zach had in
mind. But she put her bike in motion and followed him, anyway.
Soon the two of them were roaring past the parked cars. The
red and blue of the mini-bikes blurred together under the fluorescent lights of
the parking garage.
As they neared the entrance to the casino, Annie leaned
over to Zach.
“Now what?” she yelled.
Zach looked over at his friend, and then pointed straight
ahead to the automatic glass doors.
“That way!” he shouted back.
Giving the throttle an extra turn, Zach accelerated down
the last few feet of the cement driveway. Then he bounced the mini-bike up the
short flight of stairs!
Zach held his breath waiting for the automatic doors to
open. Then, just as they started to slide apart, he shot between them. It
was close, but he made made it.
Annie sped through the opening right behind him. Now the two of them were zooming down the inside hallway—and into the Caesar’s
Palace casino!
Even with the usual noise of the casino, the roar of the
two mini-bikes drew attention. Throughout the entire casino gamblers and dealers
alike turned to see what the commotion was. They stared in open-mouthed
disbelief as Zach and Annie drove their mini-bikes right through the center of
the casino!
Zach steered around a disheveled man with two days’
growth of beard, past two tall women in very short skirts and very high heels,
and through the middle of a group of Japanese tourists with color-coded name
tags and automatic cameras. Behind him, Annie dodged a cocktail waitress in a
short gold lame dress, two businessmen in olive double-breasted suits, and three
old ladies carrying paper cups filled with quarters.
“Sorry!” Annie yelled as she jostled the old
ladies.
She turned and saw two of the three ladies hit the ground.
There were quarters flying everywhere.
All around them, the casino erupted into chaos.
“Hey!”
Gamblers stood transfixed, watching the action.
“What the…”
Tourists backed away from the main aisle, trying to get out
of the way of the two speeding mini-bikes.
“Stop!”
Dealers ran from behind their tables, trying to figure out
what was happening.
Zach and Annie had turned right when they entered the
casino. They zoomed past row after row of slot and video poker and video
blackjack machines. They sped past table after table of blackjack, roulette, and
baccarat. They maneuvered they way around gamblers and dealers and tourists,
past the main entrance and the sports book and the cocktail lounge.
And still, they kept on going—straight towards the hotel
lobby.
“Let’s get out of here!” Zach shouted to Annie. She
nodded in agreement as they put on a last burst of speed.
The two of them steered their mini-bikes into the hotel
lobby, past long lines of guests checking into the hotel. They circled a big
pile of luggage in the middle of the lobby, then turned left and drove up a
short flight of carpeted stairs.
Then they zoomed out the lobby entrance!
The heat of the Las Vegas desert hit them as they sped out into the night. They zoomed around two
uniformed bellmen and past a long line of taxi cabs. Then they accelerated down
the long driveway towards Las Vegas Boulevard.
“That was fun!” Annie exclaimed with a grin as they
sped away from the hotel. “I bet nobody’s done that before!”
Zach smiled in response, then turned and pointed towards
the Strip. Annie followed to where he was pointing. Then she saw it—a black
four-door sedan, driving south on Las Vegas Boulevard!
“That’s them!” Zach yelled, and twisted the mini-bike’s throttle.
Bulldog’s car was coming down the Strip. It passed
Caesar’s Palace just and Zach and Annie raced onto the street. The two
mini-bikes pulled up to the rear of the sedan—and the chase was on!
Inside the sedan, Bulldog must have recognized Zach and
Annie. As soon as the two mini-bikes pulled up behind the car, it started to
accelerate.
Even this late at night the Strip was thick with cars. The
sedan began to weave in and out of traffic, trying to get away from its
pursuers.
“They’re trying to shake us!” Zach shouted as he and
Annie followed the sedan from lane to lane.
All around them cars were honking their horns and trying to
swerve out of the way. Zach even heard some of the other drivers yelling at them
from open windows.
The bright neon lights of the casinos became a blur. The
two mini-bikes zoomed past car after car, trying to keep up with the speeding
sedan.
They passed the Bellagio, they passed Bally’s, they passed the Aladdin
and the Holiday Inn Boardwalk and the Monte Carlo, and still they stayed on the tail of the black
sedan. The heavy traffic was
keeping the fast car from pulling away from the slower mini-bikes.
Suddenly, Zach saw the sedan’s front passenger window
open, and a dark shape poke out. Moments later a bright flash appeared at the
window, followed by a sharp crack!
“They’re shooting at us!” Zach exclaimed. He
ducked his head and swerved his mini-bike to the left.
There was another flash from the car, followed by another crack!
Annie felt the wind on her cheek as the bullet passed by on
her right.
“Geez!” she exclaimed. “This is getting dangerous!”
As they approached the mock skyscrapers of the New York-New York casino, Zach heard sirens coming up behind them. He turned his head and saw
flashing red and blue lights.
Now the police were on their tail!
“Great,” Zach muttered to himself.
He swerved to avoid another shot from the car. Ahead of
him, the black sedan honked long and loud. Then it swerved around slower traffic
and turned right on Tropicana Avenue, just past New York-New York.
“This way!” Zach shouted. He motioned for Annie to
follow him.
Making a sharp right, Zach drove his mini-bike up onto the
sidewalk. He drove through gaping crowds of onlookers, and cut across the corner
in front of the casino. He zoomed out onto Tropicana, going west, just behind
Bulldog’s getaway car.
Tropicana Avenue was less busy than Las Vegas Boulevard. Without all that traffic, the black sedan started to pull
away from the blue and red mini-bikes.
Zach looked ahead and saw the entrance to I-15, the major
interstate that went through the heart of Las Vegas. He knew that Bulldog would try to get away from them on the freeway.
Behind them, Zach could still hear the sirens of the
pursuing police cars. Ahead of them, between the black sedan and the entrance to
the interstate, Zach saw a handful of slower-moving cars—and a large
double-decker tour bus.
The bus was getting ready to turn onto the interstate,
directly in front of Bulldog’s rapidly approaching car!
“Uh oh,”
Zach said to himself.
He saw the black sedan pull to the right and cut off the
bus. The bus, trying to avoid a collision, turned left, hard, its tires
squealing. The sharp movement unbalanced the tall bus, and it started to tip to
the left.
As Zach watched in horror, the bus tipped on its left-side
wheels. Then it started to roll onto its left side—directly in
front of the speeding mini-bikes!
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