The office park where Gallison Engineering & Equipment made its home was beyond quiet, as Saturday night ticked over into Sunday morning. Just me, and Dono, and the occasional squirrel, startled by our truck cruising slowly behind the building without its headlights on.
Willard had chosen the truck well. The little white pickup could be a landscaper’s, or a utility truck, or a personal vehicle. As a bonus, the hard plastic cover over the truck bed had hinges and stiff pneumatics to open and stay open, like a box top. Or a coffin.
Dono came to a stop at a precise spot, right under the fourth-floor window I’d been examining the day before.
He handed me a burner phone. “Don’t forget this.” Like I would have left it behind. I plugged my headset into it.
“You remember the right frequencies?” I said, pointing to the police scanner. He had already programmed the SPD dispatch channels in, I knew. I was just giving my grandfather shit for treating me like I was in kindergarten.
I shouldered the backpack, which contained most of the gear I’d need during the next hour or so, and walked quickly around the corner of the building. I wore a black baseball cap and dark, long-sleeved Henley and black sweatpants with running shoes. Except for the surgical gloves, I could have been out for a jog.
A small delivery door near the loading ramp had a Schlage-brand deadbolt, a six-pin model from a few years ago. With the lockpick gun, I had it open in one minute. From there, it was thirty paces across the dark mailroom to the hall, and another twenty-four to the same stairwell I’d used before.
At every corner I paused and listened, for patrolling guards, or cleaners, or anything at all. I was in no rush. Not yet.
Opening the door of Gallison was the part that made me nervous. Not that it was tough. I had the keycard; how much easier could it get? But the doors and walls were windowless. No way to tell if some GE&E employee might be behind one, still at his work computer at midnight, frantic to make a deadline. I took an earbud out for a moment to listen hard at the door. Nothing.
I took a deep breath and swiped the card. The scanner gave an answering chirp, and the thunk of the lock opening sounded as loud as a hammer whacking an anvil in the empty hall. I opened the door a few inches and stuck my head in for a look. The place was dim and deserted, every third ceiling light glowing with minimal wattage. I exhaled.
North wall. Third room from the end. The secure storage room with the small fortune in optical lenses had a keypad code for its lock. I could beat the lock, and without even burning a lot of time. But the guy who’d sold Dono’s fence, Hiram, all of the information about the lenses had also known the code. Some underpaid or laid-off desk jockey, probably. The human element could screw up even the best security, and Gallison wasn’t exactly a bank vault. A quick punch of 4-1-4-3 and I was in.
Once the door was closed behind me, the room seemed pitch-black. My eyes gradually picked up a faint blue glow from the night sky through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I tapped the microphone button. One beep to Dono. One beep in reply. It was safe to talk.
“I’m all the way in. Anything from the guards?”
His voice was clear but sanded smooth of emotion through the phone. “All quiet. There are two on duty tonight. One is walking the halls now. He’s been gone six minutes.”
We had timed the guard’s rounds at fifteen minutes. With five floors, three minutes per. That was during the workday. It might be a little faster at night. So he’d be on this floor within two or three minutes, and gone in six or seven.
I used a pencil flash to scan the shelves of the storage room. Loads of equipment whose functions I could only guess at, maybe bit and pieces of laser generators, and some kinds of thermal imaging cameras that looked like tiny televisions on sticks. Gallison specialized in optical engineering, which was why they had the top-quality lenses I was looking for.
I found their cases bungee-corded in place on two of the lower shelves. Twenty-six cases in all, in varying sizes. Each was made of hard black plastic with a built-in handle, like a toy suitcase. The smallest case could hold a baseball glove, and the largest could hold all three bases stacked together. I undid the bungee cords around one of the small cases and clicked the plastic latches open. Inside, wrapped in clear oiled plastic and tucked into gray protective foam, was a thick circle of glass that cost about five thousand dollars, retail price. The biggest cases would be worth ten times that. The value increased exponentially along with the size. I grinned as I stacked the cases neatly by the window. You could light one hell of a campfire with one of these magnifiers.
The contents of the backpack came next. Fuel tanks. Hollow alloy rod and attached torch. Plexiglas safety mask. Gloves. Tongs. And two hundred coiled feet of slim cotton rope, with rubber-coated carabiners attached to it on little loops every four feet.
My watch said seven minutes had passed since Dono and I had talked. The guard would be off my floor by now. I attached the fuel tanks to the torch, put on my gloves and mask, and beeped Dono three times. That was the signal that I was ready to start. Four minutes later, I heard his answering beeps. The guards were back in the lobby.
I lit the torch. It whuffed to thick orange life, bright as a birthday cake in the black room. I quickly dialed it back to a narrow flame that ran along the inside of the hollow alloy rod. The rod tapered to a point. It was a very special piece of metal, as expensive as some of the lenses for its ability to retain heat. Over twelve hundred degrees Celsius, once it really got rolling. The tip glowed red, then white, then almost clear. I could feel it even through the silicone-coated Kevlar gloves.
I picked a spot on the window, about one foot above the floor. And started melting through the glass.
It was slow going. The window was two panes of tempered safety glass with a thin layer of argon in between for insulation. The panes would crumble if I created too much stress. So I let the heat do the work, just like a hot blade cutting frozen butter. The glass popped and sizzled in tiny beads, almost launching itself away from the superheated rod. I wondered if one of the hot beads might somehow fall four stories to land on the truck. We’d have to check, later. It could be evidence.
I needed to make a hole about one foot by two feet, for the largest cases. After five minutes, I’d melted a three-inch line. If I kept the same pace, I’d have my hole in two hours. The liquefied glass smelled like candle smoke and paint thinner.
This was the first big score—not just a house job or piecemeal stuff—that Dono and I had done together in months. He’d had other work, with other crews. Dono didn’t like involving me in scores that required a team. He said the fewer people who knew about me, the better. I was at the age where the law might prosecute me as an adult. It made some sense.
But I wondered if his secrecy was also to keep me from branching out. I knew I could get work with some of his partners. Maybe even set up my own scores, with Hiram as the buyer. Hell, I’d have to chew through the leash, someday.
The earbud beeped once. I kept cutting. I was nearly to the end of the first side. It beeped again, a longer blast.
I spoke as it was starting again. “Yeah?”
“You’re supposed to signal back before talking,” Dono said.
Jesus. “I’m here now.”
“They’re making rounds. Two min—no, three minutes in now.”
The torch was quiet enough. The guard didn’t come into the Gallison offices from the hallway. “All right.”
The guards finished that patrol, and made one more an hour later, while I was closing in on the last inch of uncut glass. The piece I’d carved out of the window was warped into tiny crocodile bumps at the edges. A cool bit of sculpture. If it wasn’t a dead giveaway, I might want to keep the thing. I gripped the big rectangle with the tongs in my left hand, lifting its weight off the rod. Drops of sweat had been rolling off my forehead and the tip of my nose for the last hour, drizzling the inside of the face mask.
Then the rectangle of glass was free, and I had to drop the tongs to catch the sudden burden. I set the glass aside and rolled out my shoulders. The night breeze came in through the open hole and chilled the perspiration on my chest. I shivered, and it felt great.
I took off the face mask and heavy gloves, and beeped Dono. He responded instantly.
“Fresh air,” I said.
“Go.”
I grabbed the end of the hundred-foot rope, and fed the end out the open hole. When I came to the first rubberized carabiner on its short loop, I grabbed the nearest carrying case—one of the little ones, no need to risk fifty grand on the first try—and clicked the carabiner onto the handle. The case went out the window, and down a few feet before I got to the next loop. I heard the case tap softly against the side of the building. I repeated the process with the next case and carabiner, and the pricey pieces of custom glass steadily inched their way down the side of the building.
I worked quickly now. The cases could be spotted as we lowered them, from the inside or by someone who happened to walk by the building, not that pedestrians were likely in an office park at two in the morning. But there were other buildings, other guards who might step outside for a smoke. And I didn’t like the way the cases tapped randomly against the building. Faster was better.
At the bottom, Dono was receiving the first of the cases, unhooking them, laying them in the open truck bed. I couldn’t hear him over the wind, but I felt the tug on the rope as the weight of each case came off.
Onto the last of the cases now, the big ones. They fit through the hole I’d made with an inch to spare. Hot damn. I let the cord play out, giving Dono just enough slack.
Then there was a sound from outside the storage room. The heavy clunk of a door closing.
I stuck my head out the window. The last case was still two stories above Dono.
My earbud beeped. He must have seen me looking.
I beeped back.
“Everything all right?” he said.
It could be a janitor, in the outer offices. Or just a regular spot check by the patrolling guard. No reason to panic.
“Keep going,” I said.
“That’s not an answer.”
Someone turned on the lights in the outer office. The yellow glow came under the storage room door with an almost audible rush.
“Talk to me,” Dono said.
From the outer office, a radio receiver squawked with an indecipherable voice. And footsteps. I definitely heard footsteps now.
Coming right toward the storage room door.