appella freight services, port of new york,
new york city, 11:45 p.m. edt
The rain was still steadily falling, causing the streetlights to glow with halos. Terry and Kristen had been sitting, parked on a side street, watching the freight company building for about fifteen minutes. Conversation was nonexistent as they both stared intently at Terry’s target.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Piece of cake,” he replied.
The building was a two-story stand-alone red brick affair with fire escapes at both ends. They knew from the address the offices would be on the second floor, but unfortunately, K had been unable to find a floor plan online, so in that respect, they were blind.
“Are you going in from the fire escape?”
“Nope. Right through the front door. If there’s an alarm, it will be in their offices, and seeing as other companies use the building, no one will be surprised to see someone going into the building this late at night. Now, if I was to be spotted on the fire escape lurking around, you can bet your ass the cops would be called.”
“Good point,” she replied. “I’ll remember that next time I plan on breaking into a building.”
They both started to giggle, and then they were laughing hard. It felt good to relieve the tension. They finally got it together, and Nolan handed her his night-vision device.
“Keep an eye out with that. If you see anything, get on the walkie-talkie.”
He opened the door and was about to slip out into the night when she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. She held him there, not wanting to let him go. She really had begun to love this crazy British man. Sure, he was incredibly dangerous, but there was a gentleness in him, and she understood how his wife and daughter must have loved him very much. She could also see why the loss of his daughter was still affecting him so deeply after all these years. The thought of anything happening to him was almost more than she could bear. He touched her cheek with his hand and wiped away a tear running down her face.
“I’ll be back,” he said in his best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression as he released himself. “Always wanted to say that.” They both started to giggle again and then he was gone, his head tucked into his shoulders, the raised collar of his coat protecting his neck from the cold rain while also hiding his face from any security cameras in the area.
As he walked away, she suddenly felt so alone in the world it was almost unbearable. She had come to accept that Shae was certainly dead, and now she was watching him walk away into God only knew what danger awaited him. She wanted to run and stop him, but knew that she couldn’t, and it nearly broke her. Take a breath, Kristen, he knows what he’s doing. Just keep it together and do your job.
The lock on the main door took a few seconds to disable with the battery powered Dremel he had purchased earlier at Home Depot. After the door shut behind him, he took out a small wooden wedge and shoved it between the door and the frame where the lock had been. Anyone checking that the building was secure would have to use their shoulder on the door for it to open. He ran up the stairs and took out the red-light flashlight he had purchased, shining it on the names on the doors until he found the Appella Service’s offices. He opened the door with the Dremel, and he was in. He stood for a second as the alarm started to beep its warning, then walked toward the keypad and was relieved to see it was an older model. He set down the small backpack he was carrying and pulled out the alligator clips that were attached to a battery pack that he would need to disable it. Hooking them up to the appropriate wires, he then ran another wire from his phone to the keypad and started a program that had been loaded onto the phone by MI5 for just such an occasion. It took all of five seconds for the beeping to stop. Keeping the alligator clips attached, he disabled the alarm wires and keypad permanently while maintaining the circuit. He sighed with relief that the program had worked—it was known to be a little temperamental at times. Now where are those shipping manifests?
There were a number of locked metal file cabinets, and he proceeded to pop them open one by one. Luckily, they were in alphabetical order, but he came up empty. Where the hell are they? He saw a glass-fronted door with the company president’s name and title underneath it. This one wasn’t locked, so he walked in and looked around. Still nothing. There were several pictures of ships on the walls, and he started to look behind them. There he found what he was looking for, a wall safe. Bingo.
It had always amused him how movies depicted blowing a safe as just slapping some plastic explosive on the door, and voila, it popped open with ease. In reality, to blow a safe door that way would require so much plastic explosive that either all the contents would burn to a crisp or the entire room would be taken out, and the safe would have remained closed. As he had learned, the problem with explosions is they take the path of least resistance, which, in the case of a safe, was out into the room, barely leaving a dent in the steel. What was actually needed was something with weight to put over the explosive and create a shaped charge to force the explosion inward. In this case, that was achieved with a garbage bag full of water hanging over the C-4, pressing it against the door. This plan also had the added benefit of requiring a smaller shot and putting out any potential fire. Additionally, it deadened the sound of the explosion quite dramatically.
It took him five minutes and then he was ready. He walked into the other room, took the radio out of his pocket, and keyed the mic.
“Is everything clear out there?”
“One second,” replied Kristen. “Why, what’s up?”
“There’s a wall safe I have to blow. Keep an eye out in case it attracts any attention.”
“Will do.”
He hit the electric detonator, and there was a muffled bang and a flash of light from the other room. The door of the safe was twisted open and the room covered in water. There was smoke from the explosion, but nothing was on fire. Opening the safe door fully, he was surprised to see a great deal of cash on hand, at least $30,000. He quickly shoved it in his pockets and the small backpack and then started checking the papers in the safe. He smiled. There it was: a manila envelope with the name Global Medical Logistics.
Folding the envelope, he stuffed it down the back of his pants and then proceeded to toss files and paperwork all over the offices. He hoped to make it so hard to find what specifically was missing they’d put it down to a straight robbery for a few days. He removed the silenced Walther from his bag, slid it in his coat pocket, and took one more look around the office before slipping out the door. When he got to the entrance, he radioed Kristen to make sure the explosion hadn’t attracted any undue attention, which it hadn’t, so he walked confidently and slowly back to the Lexus.
“Got it?” she asked when he climbed back into the Lexus. She was grinning like the Cheshire Cat with relief at his safe return and reached over to grip his hand.
“Yup,” he replied. “I told you I would be fine. Now, I don’t know about you, but I sure would fancy a bottle of port with the rest of those cakes.”
“Couldn’t have put it any better myself.”