Storming Las Vegas How One Outlaw Ambushed the Strip--and One Detective Risked It All to Take Him Down

BOOK ONE GUNFIGHT ON LAS VEGAS BOULEVARD Chapter 1 FIRST BLOOD It is June 28, 1999, 9:52 a.m. Pedro Sandoval tosses his empty plastic water bottle into the wheel well and double-checks his paperwork as the moving van threads its way down the Strip to the Desert Inn Hotel and Casino at 3145 Las Vegas Boulevard. It's going to be a long, hard day. The blistering heat rises from the desert, eventually reaching 110 degrees by midday. The crew is scheduled to drop off twenty-four electronic slot machines, each costing $15,000, weighing six hundred pounds, and featuring stars like Pat Sajak whooping and hollering on the sound track. Lots of bells and sirens for the fanny-pack and flip-flop crowd. At 9:54 the eighteen-wheeler pulls up to the south side of the hotel, next to the Desert Inn Race & Sports Book. After manhandling five of the machines onto a forklift, Pedro wipes the sweat from his brow and glances toward the Sports entrance as an off-duty showgirl pedals by on her red bicycle. Beyond the casino doors is a strip of landscaping about thirty feet long and twenty feet wide; there, something catches Pedro's eye. On a morning devoid of breeze, it seems odd that the rosemary plants in the mini-oasis appear to be moving. Pedro looks again. The thick shrubbery shakes vigorously and then, to Pedro's amazement, expels two dark shapes. Pedro blinks. "What the fuck?" As a second, smaller truck-gray and boxlike, with blue striping on its side-turns off Spring Mountain Avenue and approaches the casino entrance, the shapes from the shrubbery come into focus: two men dressed in black from head to toe. They are moving, all too quickly, toward Pedro and the eighteen-wheeler. They are armed. Pedro Sandoval, a former paratrooper, recognizes the firearms and issues new orders to his three-man slot machine crew, perhaps the most prudent and useful instructions he has given in his twelve years as a foreman. "Fuck the slots!" he yells. "Vamonos, vamonos, muchachos! Vete de aqui! Get out of here!" The movers break and run in the direction of Las Vegas Boulevard. The gunmen are now within thirty yards of the moving van, but they have no interest in the slot machines or the laborers fleeing the scene. The men in black have been hiding in the bushes since four in the morning, sleeping, fidgeting, quarreling, dreaming of untold riches and pristine beaches in Costa Rica, beautiful women in Spain, oceanfront villas in Portugal, and leggy, bronze women in Rio. Although the desert night is balmy and the early morning uncomfortably warm, the two men wear black fatigue trousers, black boots, black sweatshirts, black hoods, black baseball batting gloves, and black ski masks. The shorter man clutches a white garbage bag. His taller, heavier partner carries a duffle bag containing hand grenades and spare ammunition magazines that rattle. The larger man has a .45-caliber Glock pistol in his right hand. The squat gray truck that just pulled off Spring Mountain Avenue and rolled to a stop in front of the Desert Inn is the target of the gunmen. Often called an armored car, the vehicle is a 25,500-pound 1994 International Harvester 300 truck with 10-gauge galvanneal zinc-alloy steel plating, level-three window armor capable of stopping a .44 Magnum, five gun ports, and high-security six-pin key-lock cylinders. There is an emblem on the truck and the word BRINK'S spelled out in large blue letters. Inside are a driver and two guards. Each carries a .38-caliber pistol in a holster. The Brink's truck, on the road since six in the morning, began the day at the Sahara Hotel and Casino, then picked up cash at hotels along the southern end of the Strip, including Circus Circus, Westward Ho, the Stardust, Treasure IsHuddy, John is the author of 'Storming Las Vegas How One Outlaw Ambushed the Strip--and One Detective Risked It All to Take Him Down', published 2008 under ISBN 9780345487452 and ISBN 0345487451.