License to Thrill (17 page)

“Woo-hoo!” he shouted. “Vegas, baby!”

After driving through the desert for almost a week, it was somewhat of a culture shock to see downtown Las Vegas. Everyone was craning their necks as they drove through “the Strip”—four dizzying miles of gigantic hotels, palm trees, flashing lights and signs, wild colors, souvenir shops, magic shows, strange-looking people, and of course, casino after casino.

Most people don't know that the Strip is not
in
the city limits of Las Vegas itself. It's actually in the towns of Winchester and Paradise.

Mrs. McDonald was in paradise herself. She didn't even have to look in her Nevada guidebook to find quirky places to visit in Las Vegas. All she had to do was look out the window. . . .

The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime. The Houdini Museum. The Pinball Museum and Hall of Fame. The Elvis-A-Rama Museum. The Neon Museum. There were replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. A dancing waters fountain show outside the Bellagio Hotel. The largest gold nugget in the world was at the Golden Nugget Hotel (of course). There was a real roller coaster on top of the New York–New York hotel. And if you wanted to see a chunk of the Berlin Wall, you could come to Las Vegas. In this one town, Mrs. McDonald would be able to gather a year's worth of material for
Amazing but True
.

Even Dr. McDonald was fascinated, especially when he drove past the National Atomic Testing Museum on East Flamingo Road. He had been thinking about his book idea, and this would be a great place to do research.

“This town is cool!” Coke said. “Can we live here?”

“For two nights you can,” said Dr. McDonald as he
pulled into the Mirage, one of the larger hotels on the Strip. He handed the car keys to the valet and went to check in at the front desk.

All the hotels in Las Vegas are also casinos, and the twins had never been in one before. Once they walked through the front door, there were hundreds of slot machines all over, clinking and buzzing and flashing to attract customers.

“Can we try one?” Coke asked his parents. “It says they're only a dollar.”

“Kids aren't allowed to gamble,” Dr. McDonald told him. “You have to be eighteen before you can throw your money away.”

It was getting late, so rather than go out and search for a place to eat, their parents decided to stay in the hotel. There are twelve—yes
twelve
—restaurants in the Mirage. Mrs. McDonald chose Paradise Café, which specialized in “exotic drinks and light fare.” Not too fancy.

During dinner, Dr. McDonald kept looking at his watch as if he had to go somewhere. The waiter brought the check a few minutes before eight o'clock.

“Follow me,” their father abruptly told the twins. “I want to show you something.”

The whole family followed him out to the front of the hotel, where a crowd was forming.

“What's going on?” Pep asked.

“You'll see,” her father replied.

The crowd had gathered around a big mountain of rocks. Well, fake rocks, anyway. They were probably made of plastic, like just about everything else in Las Vegas.

At precisely eight o'clock, animal noises and eerie jungle music started to play near the rock mountain. Then, a few wispy puffs of smoke appeared to come out of the top of it.

“I'm scared, Mommy!” a little girl said, clutching her mother's leg.

But things were about to get scarier. As the native drumming became more intense, pink, yellow, and orange flames shot high out of the top of the mountain.

Suddenly, two pirates—or guys dressed like pirates, anyway—came running over.

“Gangway, landlubbers!” shouted the first pirate.

“Ahoy there!” shouted the second one. “Which of you lads or lassies is going to walk the plank?”

“Ha-ha!” laughed Mrs. McDonald. “They must have come over from the pirate show at Treasure Island down the street.”

The pirates stalked the crowd, looking everybody over. Rows of torches in the water around the mountain of rocks started flaming up.

“Well, shiver me timbers!” said the first pirate as he approached Coke. “
Here's
the bilge-sucking hornswoggler we was lookin' fer!”

“Blimey!” the other pirate said as he came over. “Ye scurvy dog! Let's flog him on the poop deck, matey!”

“I got me a better idea,” said the first pirate. “Let's send him to Davy Jones' Locker!”

With that, they grabbed Coke and hoisted him over their shoulders.

“Hey, knock it off,” Coke protested.

“Stop!” Pep shouted. “Leave my brother alone!”

“Relax, honey,” said Mrs. McDonald. “It's all part of the show.”

“Dead men tell no tales,” one of the pirates said as they carried Coke up the mountain of rocks. As they did, Coke got a close look at their faces.

“Bowler dudes!” he exclaimed.

“Right you
arrrr
!” cracked the mustachioed bowler dude. “Long time no see!”

“Let me go!” Coke shouted, struggling to get free.

“Yo ho ho!” shouted the first pirate. “We're gonna throw this scalawag into the volcano!”

See? I
told
you that Coke was going to get thrown into a volcano! But you didn't believe me. Well, I can
hardly blame you after that business with the snakes back in chapter 13. But let's continue. . . .

One of the bowler dude pirates grabbed Coke's arms and the other one took his legs. They began swinging him back and forth. The crowd began clapping rhythmically.

“No! Don't!” Coke yelled.

“One . . . two . . . three . . .”

With that, they tossed Coke into the volcano.

Fortunately, the volcano was a fake. If the bowler dudes had thrown him into a
real
volcano, Coke would have crashed into the rocks or been burned alive by molten hot lava. Inside this volcano was an intricate computer system that produced incredibly realistic smoke, light, and sound effects.

Oh, and there were two other things inside the volcano.

Bones and Mya.

When Coke came flying over the edge, they caught him before he could hit the bottom.

“You're safe,” Mya said. “It's not a real volcano. They're just playing with your head.”

“What are
you
doing here?” Coke asked.

“No time to talk now,” Bones said. “We'll come by
your room tomorrow so we can swap information.”

“Get back out there,” Mya told him. “You're part of the show.”

Coke climbed out of the volcano to the applause of the crowd. The bowler dude pirates had already dashed away, cackling and giggling like the idiots they are. The flaming torches flared in time with the music, and then they were extinguished as the volcano show came to an end.

“You have to admit, that was cool,” Dr. McDonald said as the crowd began to disperse.

“I love Vegas!” said Mrs. McDonald as they walked back to their rooms. “Where else in the world do they put on a free volcano show every night?”

“What was
that
all about?” Pep asked her brother.

“Tell you later,” he whispered.

“We have a big day planned,” Mrs. McDonald announced when she woke the twins up the next morning. “I want to go to the Mob Museum, see the fountains at the Bellagio, that fake Eiffel Tower—”

“And I can't wait to go to the National Atomic Testing Museum,” said Dr. McDonald.

The two of them were as giddy as schoolchildren.

“We don't want to go,” Coke announced.

“What do you mean you don't want to go?” asked Mrs. McDonald, irritated. “We're a family.”

“You told us that since we turned thirteen, we were old enough to do things on our own,” Pep said.

“Yeah, maybe we want to do different stuff than you do,” Coke said.

The truth was, the twins didn't want to do
anything
. Those crazy bowler dudes were out there on the Strip somewhere. Maybe Dr. Warsaw and John Pain were lurking around too. Coke figured it would be safer if he and Pep stayed in the hotel room. Besides, Mya and Bones had promised to come by.

“What is it that
you
kids want to do?” asked Dr. McDonald.

“We want to watch TV,” Coke said.

“So let me get this straight,” said Dr. McDonald. “Instead of going out and having fun at all these cool Las Vegas sights, you'd rather sit in a hotel room and watch TV?”

Coke and Pep nodded.

“You're going to miss all the fun,” said their mother.

“We've had a lot of fun,” Pep said. “We just want to relax today. Maybe we'll take a swim in the pool.”

“Suit yourselves,” Dr. McDonald said with a sigh. “But your mother and I are going out. Come on, Bridge.”

They gave the twins money for breakfast and left,
shaking their heads and wondering—like all parents—what was wrong with the younger generation.

A half hour later, there was a soft knock at the hotel room door.

“Room service,” somebody said on the other side.

“We didn't order any room service,” Pep replied.

“It's not room service, you dope!” Coke said. “It's
them
!”

He opened the door and Mya and Bones were standing there, in Mirage uniforms. Bones was pushing a rolling cart filled with eggs, toast, orange juice, and sliced melon.

“Breakfast is served!” Mya announced.

As the twins chowed down, Mya and Bones gave them an update on what was going on.

“It's good you didn't go outside today,” Mya told them. “Those bowler dudes are checked in at Treasure Island right up the street, for one night only.”

“Remember Mrs. Higgins, your so-called health teacher?” asked Bones. “She's working as a psychic healer in Sedona, Arizona.”

“We know,” Pep said. “We saw her. She didn't try to hurt us at all. She says she's no longer working for Dr. Warsaw.”

“Can she be trusted?” asked Coke.

“Maybe,” Bones said. “She's no longer in love with
him. We believe she's come to her senses.”

“What about John Pain?” asked Pep.

“His whereabouts are unknown.”

“And Dr. Warsaw?”

“He was checked into an insane asylum in Arizona, but he escaped,” said Mya. “We understand he has acquired enough uranium to build a briefcase bomb, but hasn't assembled it yet. We don't know what his intentions are.”

Pep pulled out her notepad with the four ciphers written in it.

“If only we could figure out how those clues tie together,” she said. “I'll bet it would lead us to him.”

Bones and Mya looked at the notepad, but it made no more sense to them than it did to Pep.

“We need to be on high alert now,” Mya said. “We feel that Dr. Warsaw may try to set off his bomb very soon, possibly in the next few days.”

“We'll be
home
in a few days,” Coke said. “We're only about five hundred miles from San Francisco now.”

The thought of Dr. Warsaw confronting them in their home made Coke visibly upset. It was obvious to Bones and Mya that he was not the same confident, cocky boy they had met five weeks earlier.

“It will all be over soon,” Bones said, putting an arm
on Coke's shoulder. “We promise you. Stay strong. You'll need each other now more than ever. Here, we brought you a little present.”

He pulled a “Welcome to Las Vegas” Frisbee out of his bag.

“A Frisbee grenade?” Coke asked, brightening.

“No, it doesn't explode or anything like that,” Mya replied.

“Does it decompose and give off a noxious gas that poisons the person who catches it?” Coke asked hopefully. “That would be cool.”

“No.”

“Maybe it emits an ear-piercing shriek that blows out their eardrums?” asked Coke.

“No, you just throw it back and forth,” Bones explained, “for
fun
.”

“Gee, thanks,” Pep said, taking the Frisbee.

Mya and Bones left. Coke flipped on the TV, but there was nothing good on. He tried to read a magazine, but his mind kept wandering. He couldn't get Dr. Warsaw, John Pain, and those crazy bowler dudes out of his head.

“I'm going stir-crazy in this room,” he finally said to his sister. Let's go someplace.”

“You heard what Mya said,” Pep told him. “The bowler dudes are right down the street. As soon as
we set foot outside this hotel, they'll be all over us.”

“Then let's go swim in the hotel pool.”

“Well, okay . . .”

They put on their bathing suits and took the elevator down to the lobby, following the
POOL
signs. Lining the hallway, as everywhere else, were dozens of slot machines.

“Hey, let's try one,” Coke said. “I have a dollar.”

“You heard what Dad said,” Pep told him. “Kids aren't allowed to gamble. It's against the law.”

“Dad will never know,” Coke replied, looking both ways and fishing a dollar bill out of his pocket. “Come on, let's do it.”

“What if you win?” Pep said. “You know, if you hit the jackpot, lights start flashing and bells start ringing. I've seen it in movies. If you hit the jackpot, we'll be in all kinds of trouble.”

“What are the chances of
that
happening?” Coke told his sister. “They program these things so you'll
lose
. That's how casinos make money. Everybody knows that.”

“Well, if you're so sure you're gonna lose,” Pep asked, throwing her hands up, “why do it in the first place? You're just throwing your money away. Just like Dad said.”

“It'll be fun!”

Coke looked around to make sure nobody was watching, and then slipped his dollar into the nearest slot machine.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Give it a pull. What are they gonna do, throw us in jail?”

Pep sighed, and pulled the lever.