Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

It hadn’t worked out that way. Not only was the town jammed, but it wasn’t as exciting as he remembered from his last tour here. Half the people he had known at Nellis were gone, assigned to other bases scattered halfway around the world. But worse than that was the gulf that had opened between him and the other pilots. Oh, they still liked him well enough, but he didn’t strap his ass into a high-performance jet every day and let it hang out. He wasn’t a member of the fraternity any more and that left an awkward hole in the relationship. After a couple of painfully clumsy visits, Gilligan had begun avoiding the base and his old friends.

Blue eyes cryin in the rain:

That left him nothing to do but drink, and brood Las Vegas was a great town for doing both, he was discovering.

He hadn’t been much of either a drinker or a brooder before, not even when his marriage broke up. But then he’d drawn a mission out over the Bering Sea, come out on the short end of a dogfight with a dragon and met Karin. He couldn’t stay in mat world, but he had promised to return as soon as his tour in the Air Force was finished. The programmer/magicians there had even given him a phone number he could use to call them when he was ready.

Well, he got ready. Then the number hadn’t worked! When he tried to use it he got a visit from a couple of very serious FBI agents who questioned him about possible involvement in telephone fraud.

So here he was, left with nothing but memories. Nothing to do but remember, and drink. God, he hated himself when he got maudlin like this.

Blue eyes cryin’ in the rain:

The security guard wasn’t looking for dragons. In fact he was checking for people sleeping in their cars in the parking lot.

With hotel rooms completely unavailable it wasn’t unknown for Comdex-goers to live out of their cars. Cars were fairly easy to spot on regular rounds, as were motorhomes. Vans were special objects of attention.

As the guard came closer he heard several voices coming from the back of the rental truck. So naturally he jumped to the obvious, and wrong, conclusion.

"Hotel security. Open up in there."

He yanked the back of the truck up and was promptly trampled by a panicked dragon.

"Ah, Mick."

Gilligan looked up from the remains of his drink to see Ivan Kuznetsov standing at his table. He didn’t really feel like company, but he waved the Russian to a seat anyway.

Kuznetsov was a bit of a character. According to rumor he had defected from the Soviet Union a couple of years before it fell apart. Now he was using his connections in both the former Soviet republics and the West to put together aviation-related "deals" of much import but vague content Their paths crossed repeatedly on the air show circuit and Mick had found him a more congenial drinking partner than most of the executives he met.

"You have an interest in dragons, yes?" Gilligan nodded, vaguely recalling a drunken conversation one night in Brussels.

"Then you might want to look out front. Police are chasing a dragon around the building."

Jerry, Taj, Bal-Simba and the dragon had ducked through the first open door they could find. Unfortunately that led right into the main casino.

"Oh, shit," Jerry breathed. "Just act natural and head out the other side." As casually as they could, the three men and the dragon strolled across the casino floor. The slot players paid no attention, of course, but the guards started grabbing for their radios and moving toward them.

The magic field that kept Fluffy alive had some rather interesting effects on the laws of probability. The dragon waddled through the casino leaving a string of jackpots in his wake. In fact every slot machine he passed suddenly started paying off.

The effect was as instantaneous and predictable as gravity. The machines were mobbed by slot players determined to cash in on the sudden bounty. Since in Las Vegas "monomaniacal slot player" is a redundancy, not one of the converging crowd was willing to let a little thing like a dozen cops stand between them and riches.

The leading guard nearly fell over a tiny blue-haired woman in pink shorts who was making for a dollar slot still pouring out coins. She didn’t even look as she elbowed him expertly and sidestepped his falling body to beat out a Chinese man for the machine by perhaps one pace.

The guards behind fared even worse as the crowd congealed, blindly determined to reach those machines.

The police weren’t so much thrown back by the determined gamblers as they simply bounced off the writhing mass of humanity. One officer shouted into his walkie-talkie, trying to make himself heard above the din of the suddenly bountiful slot machines.

Never ones to question the dictates of fortune, Jerry, Bal-Simba, Taj and Moira made for a side door. They had barely turned the corner when they found themselves face-to-face with a wall of casino security guards, all looking very determined.

"Stand aside," commanded the guard in the lead and the phalanx swung around them without a second glance, intent on reaching the chaos on the casino floor. Jerry looked at Bal-Simba and Taj and shrugged. Then the four bolted out the door and dashed for their truck. In the distance the sirens were getting louder. Moira and her companions had barely gotten out the door when a mob of police erupted around the corner. The group did a fast 180 and ran the other way, cut off from the truck in the parking lot.

"Hey! Over here," a voice called as they rounded the corner ahead of their pursuers.

Jerry saw a man holding a side door open and beckoning them.

What the heck? Any port in a storm. The group made a mad dash for the door and Fluffy’s tail disappeared through it just as the first police were coming around the corner.

"Quick, this way," Gilligan said to the oddly assorted group. He led them down a corridor and stopped at one of the hotel’s freight elevators. Taking a key from his pocket he used it to summon the elevator. As soon as the door opened he piled them all in.

"We’re setting up exhibits on the third floor and I tipped a little extra for my own key," he explained to the others. "Once we get there we u make for the passenger elevators. You can hide in my room for a while."

There were several workmen in the exhibition area, preparing for the next show. They stared incuriously at the four men and the dragon who emerged from the freight elevator and headed down the hall.

With most of the rooms taken by show attendees and almost all of them at the show, the hotel corridors and elevators were deserted. It took two cars to get the parry up to the twentieth floor where Mick’s room was, but they met no one on the way.

Thanks, " Jerry panted as soon as they were inside and the door was locked. " But why: ?"

"Let’s say I have an interest in dragons," Gilligan told him. "And the people who associate with them."

"Hey, Mick, open up," came a Slavic-accented voice. The others started, but Gilligan motioned them to be calm and opened the door. There, in addition to Kuznetsov, was his friend and business associate, Vasily.

"How’d you know where to find us?"

"You are not very good at this game," Kuznetsov told him. "Too predictable."

"Great," Gilligan muttered

"You had better think of something fast," the Russian added. "They are already starting to search the hotel."

Gilligan looked around "I don’t suppose that dragon can fly?"

Too young," Jerry said.

Before Gilligan could think of anything else there was another knock on the door. "Hotel security," a voice called. "Open up, please."