Crossover Earth '98
by Ken St. Andre 
As Paco got out of his limousine in front of the Sands Sahara Cas ino in Las Vegas, he was stewing about the relative failure of his quake project in California. He still thought there should have been more than a few minor earthquakes for all that effort of drilling, lubricating with raw petroleum, dynamiting, and then setting up the diversion in Sacramento. He hoped the big attack on New York City, currently planned for late July or early August, would go better.
A. Paco Llypse stood there in the hot desert air and surveyed his next target. He was a big movie star of a man, tall, lean, handsome in a cruel, saturnine sort of way. He wore a two thousand dollar silk Armani suit, and the buttons were solid gold. The red silk handkerchief folded into his breast pocket was worth over one hundred dollars by itself. With his dark, tanned skin, and perfect white teeth, he looked something like a modern Apache, ready for a raid. He had two bodyguards with him, Mike and Mike, and they were bigger and even more feral in appearance. If the Goddess was with him tonight, the crimelords of Las Vegas would take a big hit, and the coffers of Apocalypse Now would be much healthier by morning.
The casino manager rushed out to meet him, grab his hand, and pump it up and down as he pushed his way through the front doors. "Why, Mr. Llypse," he exclaimed, "what an unexpected pleasure! What brings you to the Sands Sahara this evening?"
It wasn't a pleasure, of course. Samuel Taylor, the casino manager, had a bulletin about Adam Paco Llypse on his desk. In the few years since Llypse had come onto the international gambling scene, he had appeared in Monaco, Atlantic City, London, the Barbados, and several other places. He always gambled big, and he never seemed to lose. Taylor was dead certain that the Sahara was in for a loss tonight, and he had already done what he could to salvage things. For one thing, he had called the press--if the casino was going to lose big money, he might as well be in the headlines. For another, four of his best enforcers were standing by in case they were needed.
Chatting inconsequentially, Paco walked to the cashier's cage, snapped his fingers, and one of his bodyguards pulled out a wallet and handed him a ten thousand dollar bill. He took nine thousand in thousand dollar gold chips, and the last thousand in hundreds. Those were probably for tips--he was known to tip well.
Paco went to the roulette wheel. "Let's test my luck tonight," he said to Sam who was hovering at his elbow. Taylor relieved the croupier and took the wheel himself. Paco laid a thousand dollar chip on number 13. The wheel spun, and he lost. He came back and played the same number again, and lost again. He stuck with 13, and lost a third time.
"Maybe Lady Luck is against you tonight," said Taylor nervously.
"Perhaps," said Paco. "We'll see." The wheel spun and spun again. Paco lost and lost, but on the 9th try his number came up, and then he had thirty-six thousand dollars instead of ten thousand.
"Well, said Paco, "maybe my luck is changing at last."
Taylor grinned. "Congratulations, Sir. It looks like your persistence paid off. Maybe you'd like to try another game."
"Oh, no," said Paco, taking a Seagrams Seven from the drinks girl at his elbow and tipping her a hundred. "I like the odds just fine at roulette. There's no human psychology to beat--no weird combinations necessary. Just luck and persistence. He switched his number to 28, and stayed with it through spin after losing spin. This time it took 21 spins for him to hit, but when he did win, he was up to 51,000 dollars. The process had taken a little over half an hour and Paco had only won twice, but he was $41,000 ahead--call it $40,000 if you figured a thousand went to tips.
He kept playing. He switched to red seven and hit in 11 tries. He then had $76,000. He changed to black four and hit in only 8 tries. He then had $104,000. He had been playing for an hour, had only won 4 times, but had won over ten times his original stake.
Then he switched to ten thousand dollar chips. He picked the number 25 and hit it on the sixth spin. He then had $400,000. Taylor could see that his profits were disappearing. It only took three spins for Paco to win again, and his original $10,000 had multiplied into $730,000.
"Yes, roulette is my favorite game," said Paco. "You know, Sam, it really doesn't matter what number you pick, as long as you stick with it. Would you like me to play $1000 on the side for you each bet?"
"That's very kind of you," Taylor replied, "but I'm forbidden to gamble in my own casino."
"That's a shame," said Paco, lighting up a $100 Cuban cigar.
A few people had noticed Paco's strategy, and they began to bet with him. There was always a ten thousand dollar platinum chip on a number for Paco, and lots of ten and hundred dollar chips for the rest of the table, all on one number. Paco's next choice was 11. It took him five tries to hit it and he had $1,040,000. He had been at the table for less than 3 hours. On that one spin, the casino lost an additional $570,000 to the other bettors.
"Isn't that enough for one night, Mr. Llypse?' begged Sam.
Paco smiled cruelly, "Why, no, Mr. Taylor, it isn't. I had hoped to walk out of here with at least ten million dollars in winnings, and a hundred million doesn't seem unreasonable considering how lucky I am."
And so it went for the next three hours. When Paco finally grew tired of playing, he was up more than sixty million dollars. Finally, about four in the morning, he called for his limo, had the bodyguards tote the ten million in spare change that he intended to walk out with, and oversaw the deposit of the remainder to a Swiss bank account. The casino had lost over $200,000,000 because so many other gamblers had followed Paco's lead.
Although the majority of the money was safe in Switzerland, a number of criminals in the crowd, had noticed that Paco was leaving with over ten million dollars in cash. One of them was the beautiful super-villainess known as Beguile. She decided that this was one man she wanted to know a lot better.
In his private office Sam Taylor was giving final instructions to four of the Syndicate's goons. "He made us look like saps tonight," said Sam. "He could come back tomorrow and do the same thing. I want him dead before the sun comes up."
"Okay, boss," said the leader of the team. "He's dead." The four big silent men in black suits filed out and went down the hall to the Comptroller's office. It was his job to provide the information they'd need for the hit; namely where was Mr. Llypse staying in Las Vegas. The comptroller did a quick computer check and told them he was staying in the Penthouse on the Hotel Aladdin."
Joe Mauzer, one of the top hitmen in Las Vegas, and leader of this particular team made
his plan swiftly. "Call the manager at the Aladdin--I believe he's part of the
syndicate, and tell him to admit four servicemen to work on the elevator shaft in the
penthouse area. Once we get past the security on the 35th floor, there should be no
problem penetrating his apartment and taking him out. C'mon, men, let's go change into
some coveralls." The four hitmen quickly filed out. 
Standing just inside the door, invisible to all five of the men who were discussing the murder of a high roller so casually, Beguile got all the information she needed to find the fortunate A. Paco Llypse. The Comptroller of the Sahara was puzzled to see his door open and close--for a moment he thought he saw a woman walking through it, but he sneezed a couple of times, and by the time he had control of his own head again, he had forgotten all about it.
Beguile let her mental shield down when she reached the lobby. It's not that she had been invisible in the Comptroller's office and the private management corridors of the hotel--it's just that nobody ever looked at her, and if they saw her by accident, they forgot all about it in a second or so. Even the security guards watching the video tapes would forget her the second they looked away from the tape.
Outside the hotel, Beguile caught a cab and headed for the Aladdin. She estimated that she could beat the hitmen to the hotel by a good ten minutes. Warning a man about a murder attempt should be a good introduction.
It only took a few seconds to confirm that Mr. Llypse and his bodyguards had come in about 15 minutes earlier, and had gone up to the penthouse. She decided to warn him with a phone call instead of just walking in on him. She picked up a house phone and called the Penthouse.
The phone rang twice. A man answered, "Mike Douglas speaking."
For a moment it disconcerted her, but she quickly figured out that a bodyguard must have picked up the phone. It only made sense. A man that rich would have bodyguards with him at all times--he wouldn't be wandering around unprotected. She put all the compulsion she could into her next sentence. "Let me speak to Mr. Llypse--it's a matter of life and death," she said in a sexy voice.
"It's for you, boss," Mike said, offering the phone to Paco.
Paco knew that something was wrong. In situations like this, his guards weren't even supposed to admit that he was in the room, much less hand him the phone. It must be some form of compulsion. He thought about just slamming the phone down, but if the person on the other end was powerful enough to compel his man through a phone line, then that person could probably get into his room without much trouble. He took the phone.
"I'm Llypse," he said curtly. "Who are you?"
"You can call me Betty Page," said the voice on the phone. It was a husky, sultry voice. "I'm here to warn you. Taylor at the Sahara has sent four goons over to kill you."
"I expected no less," Paco replied. "I'm ready for them."
"No matter how good your bodyguards are," said Beguile, "the men that are coming are the best in Vegas. They'll get you if you give them a chance. But, I have powers--I can protect you. May I come up?" Again, she put a lot of compulsion into the request.
Paco felt the compulsion, but it did not master him. At least, he didn't think it did. He hesitated, weighing pros and cons, but in a few seconds, curiosity won out. "Sure," he answered. "Come on up. I'll send Mike down to get you."
"Thank you, Mr. Llypse! You won't be sorry."
"Call me Paco," he said impulsively. The phone went dead.
"Mike, go down and bring Miss Page up to the Penthouse," Paco ordered. The bodyguard closest to the door immediately headed for the elevator. A few minutes later he returned with a stunningly beautiful woman. Somehow, Paco had known she would be.
The truth was that Beguile's appearance was almost entirely a projection. Part of her powers was the ability to project any appearance she wanted into the minds of anyone within a thousand feet of her. This was so automatic that she didn't even have to think about it. At the moment, she looked like the famous model Betty Page, short black bangs, impish grin and all.
As she entered the room, she automatically tried to read Paco's mind. Most men would have been gaping at ther beauty, and probably drooling a little, too, but in Paco's mind was the image of a grinning shark. She pulled herself out of there quickly before the shark teeth could close on her mental self.
"How can you help me, Miss Page?" Paco asked abruptly. His grin was not a bit friendly.
"I have certain hypnotic powers," she answered. She smiled dazzlingly. Nobody drooled.
"I've noticed," said Paco. "I have a few powers of my own."
"I could make the hitmen believe they had killed you and recovered the money. They'd leave, and then get in real trouble the next day when you show up alive to take the Sahara for another hundred million dollars," she offered.
"I'm afraid that would spoil our fun, Miss Page," Paco told her. "We have all been looking forward to getting our hands dirty."
Paco, Mike, and Mike grinned toothily.
"Sharks," thought Beguile. "They are all human sharks!"
"Someone is coming up, boss," said one of the bodyguards.
"That will be Taylor's hitmen," answered Paco. "How shall we deal with them?"
One of the bodyguards pulled an Uzi out of a black valise. "I could just wait until the elevator door opens and cut loose," said Mike Douglas. "Simple, effective, bloody!"
"True," said Paco, "but why mess up the furniture? What's your plan, Mike," he asked the second bodyguard.
"I have a cyanide grenade here," said the bodyguard showing off an orange hand grenade. One whiff of this and they'll be dead within three minutes.
"But it leaves such a nasty smell," said Paco. "I guess I'll have to do the job myself. Let's all go out into the lobby and wait for them."
The three men, followed by Beguile, filed out into the small alcove outside the room to wait for the assassins in the elevator. Both Mike's carried uzis now, just to be safe. The elevator came closer and closer.
"Don't do anything unless it looks like I need help," said Paco. He stepped back a pace, closed his eyes, and began to hum softly. Beguile caught a mental image of a spring winding tight.
As the elevator doors slid open, Paco shot through them in a throat high, flying karate kick. His immaculately polished shoe caught one big man in workers coveralls right in the face, driving the short nasal bone back from the nose and into the man's brain--dead before he could hit the floor.
Paco's flying kick carried right through the man he hit and into the back wall of the elevator. As his legs buckled against the wall, his arms caught the two other men around the necks, and he jerked their heads violently around. The bigger man resisted, and there was a sharp crack as his neck broke cleanly at the third vertebra. He wasn't dead yet, but he was already out of the fight.
The third man was a little shorter, a little faster than his companion. In the fraction of a second that he had to see Paco flying toward him, he began to duck and shrug to the side, at the same time reaching into a pocket for his weapon. Paco's arm caught him across the top of his forehead, and slipped on over the top. The blow staggered the hitman, but did not knock him down. His .38 machine pistol came smoothly out of his pocket and began to track on his attacer.
And Mike Douglas shot him three times, once in the head, once in the throat, and once in the chest with a silenced .45 Magnum. Any of the three shots would have killed him instantly. But, even in his death spasm, the assassin managed to clench his fingers and pull the trigger, getting off a short burst of fire in Paco's general direction.
He missed. Beguile didn't see how he could have missed. There were only a few inches of space between his gun and Paco's flying body, but all missiles went wide and the third hitman went down.
Paco finished collapsing against the back wall of the elevator, fell to the carpet, did a back flip and came to his feet. There was hardly room to stand with three corpses sprawled in all directions.
There were big, sharklike grins on the faces of all three men now. They seemed positively ecstatic amidst all the blood and bodies.
"I thought you said there were four killers coming, Miss Page," said Paco ironically.
Joe Mauzer had sent his three men up together in the elevator, and he came into Paco's penthouse apartment from the roof. It took him a little longer to climb the last three stories of the building on the outside than he had planned on, but he found the trapdoor on the roof that led down to the entry panel inside the walk-in wardrobe inside the penthouse. As he dropped lightly into the floor inside the suite, he heard a machine pistol go off in the alcove outside. It sounded like Bill's weapon. He figured the boys had completed their hit, but nevertheless, he drew his own Ruger .52 magnum machine pistol. It was a big gun with heavy hollow point ammunition packing enough stopping power to down a charging rhinocerous. Most men would not be able to handle such a weapon. The recoil alone would break their wrists. But Joe handled it easily. An arm corded with muscle so strong he could lift a 200 pound man above his head one-handed was an arm strong enough to absorb the kick of any hand weapon on Earth.
When the door opened, Joe was surprised to see a woman calmly walk into the suite--a very beautiful woman whom he vaguely remembered seeing back at the Sahara, and right behind her came Mr. A. Paco Llypse.
The two men saw each other at the same time, and things seemed to happen in super slow motion. Mauzer brought his gun into line and slowly squeezed the trigger. Beguile's face spasmed into terror as she realized that she was directly in the line of fire. Paco clenched his teeth, his face strained, and his eyes sort of bulged, even as he started to drop into a crouch from which he could uncoil and spring across the room. The two bodyguards were still out by the elevator cleaning up bodies.
Mauzer pulled the trigger.
Click! The gun jammed. (In fact, Paco had telekinetically broken the firing pin in his instant of strain.)
Paco leaped forward, battering Beguile aside like a kleenex in a windstorm. She fell across a couch, but as she went down, she opened her mind to the telepathic impressions of the two men.
Mauzer swung his big pistol like a club, but Paco came at him so swiftly that the blow hit without much force somewhere behind his shoulders. In a second, Paco had one hand on Mauzer's gun hand, and his other hand on his throat, and the two went into a clinch.
Mauzer dropped the gun and tried to pull his hand free. It felt like it was in a steel clamp. He fisted his other hand and brought it up into the side of Paco's head as hard as he could--a blow that could smash bricks and stave in a man's temple. It hit a little high above and behind the ear. Damn! but this man's head was hard!
The blow staggered Paco. A wave of red passed over his vision, and for a moment the strength in his hands and arms faltered. Mauzer broke free of his grips, at the same time bringing his knee up into Paco's crotch in a blow designed to leave his foe gasping on the floor.
Beguile saw past Paco's mental defenses in that moment of agony as he crumpled under the hitman's knee in the groin. There was an image of Paco kneeling before a beautiful Indian woman of high caste. Her skin was many shades darker than Paco's, and she wore a red jewel in the center of her forehead. Tiny insects crawled upon her skin, and her face was drawn with pain. So strong was the image that it overwhelmed Beguile's own self image as Betty Page, and her self-projection changed into that of the Indian goddess. In that instant everyone forgot that Betty Page had ever been there.
The force of Paco's obsession overwhelmed Beguile, and in that instant she became the Goddess. The goddess had many names--Maya, Parvati, Kali Druga, and Beguile was all of them. She saw her greatest worshipper and truest acolyte helpless before an invader, and she overflowed with righteous anger. Her head caught on fire (it was all illusion) and her flesh burned away until only a blackened skull was left, and sheer terror emanated from her in overwhelming waves as she levitated from the couch and slowly moved toward Mauzer with serpents twisting out of her clothing and flame roaring above the blackened skull that was her face, and her fingernails growing into long blood-red claws that reached for him.
Joe Mauzer was as strong as any man on Earth. He had beaten A. Paco Llypse to his knees, and there were not many who could have done that, but the sheer horror, terror, and compulsion emanating from the ghastly apparition advancing upon him would have overwhelmed anybody. He wet his pants, tried to turn and run, and fainted dead away from the horror that whelmed his brain.
Kali/Beguile turned her countenance on Paco once again. The flame went out, the skull recovered itself with flesh, the dark eyes flashed with lightning that said, "Come here, I want you!" She began ripping his clothing off him, and as for her, she was naked already. They came together like elemental forces--she impaled herself upon him, he lost himself in her.
Mike and Mike came to see what was going on, dragged Mauzer's body out of the room, and tactfully closed the door, before calling the police.
Paco renewed his devotion to his goddess--she would never fail him! Beguile became the tortured goddess of the earth, united with her true champion--her power increased a hundred fold, but it would all be for Him. She would never fail him! . . .
(to be continued)