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HOURS EARLIER...
The warehouse smelled like a basement. The air was dank and polluted with a mildew aroma. The walls were brown, covered in dust, giving them a rusty look. A rusted staircase went up to a balcony, which looked like it would collapse at any second. The windows were covered with a dull-green coat of chipped paint and equipment scattered about.
Shareef, Reem, Ghost, and Trev sat at a table, discussing the plan to take down the armored truck. Spread across the table was a blueprint of the Federal Reserve Bank located in Center City. Next to it was a map displaying the route of one particular truck.
Surprisingly, Trev was the one who was running the show. He pointed out things on the map to let the others know where everything was located inside the bank. Trev had been employed by Lumbar Services for the last four years. He and Shareef were good friends. They had agreed to take down one of the trucks before recruiting the others.
A bulletin board was in front of the table with rows of pictures pinned to it. The pictures were of the truck, of the location they would rob, and, most importantly, of the two guards, Damarcus Stoves and Charles Wright.
The two guards were new to the truck service. There were pictures of them, their families, cars, houses, and a picture of every angle of their faces and bodies. They seemed to be oblivious to the fact that someone was taking pics of them. According to Shareef, he’d captured these shots during what he called fieldwork. The plan was to frame the two guards. They were going to make it appear that the guards were crooked and had pulled off the heist of the truck. In order to make that work, they had to get rid of the guards for good.
That morning, the guards were kidnapped and murdered, and their bodies were disposed. This way, when they tied Trev up in the truck, the cops would believe him when he told them that the other two guards with him had committed the robbery. They’re families would be questioned, but, just as planned, they would say their husbands left for work normally and never returned. It would appear as if they took the money and left the country. In reality, they would be dead and gone.
As they stood to execute the plan, Ghost spoke up again, saying, “I still think we should bring Schemes in on this.” Reem nodded his head in agreement. Shareef had expressed his lack of trust in Schemes and didn’t want him involved in the plan.
He snapped, emphasizing it again. “We don’t need him. I don’t like or trust him.” He patted his chest for emphasis. “I followed these niggas to put this together. I’m the man!”
Ghost and Reem were dressed just like Trevor. They wore matching armored guard uniforms. Their chests were bulging with the vests they wore. Name tags were pinned to their shirts with the guards’ first initials and last names.
The most clever part of the robbery were the prosthetic masks Ghost and Reem wore. They were cloned to look exactly like the two guards. They looked so real that a person would think they were actually the real people they were molded to look like. The masks were like the ones worn by Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and Angelina Jolie in Salt.
Shareef was behind getting the masks created as well. He was a master of the take. Ghost and Reem’s complexions matched those of the guards as well.
There was another person involved, a guard named Richard, who was the one who released the money after getting the signatures of the guards leaving the Reserve. He would let them sign out and take the money as if he saw nothing suspicious, making the job even more possible to pull off.
“All right, remember what we went over,” Shareef told them. “You guys must make every stop normally before we reach the point where we move. The truck will be on a GPS, so, once you get to the warehouse, we must move quickly to empty the truck and get out there before the law shows up.”
Everyone understood and was ready to go.
“All right. Let’s get this paper,” Shareef said.
Inside the underground floor of the Federal Reserve, the three men strolled down the corridor. They were headed to the garage where the trucks were loaded. The corridor reminded them of a prison cellblock because everything was steel and cement.
Occasionally, they got a glance at the loads of money in the rooms as they passed by them. Trev was used to walking through the bank, so he remained calm, but Ghost and Reem were nervous as hell.
They passed a room that looked like it had a three-layer sheet of Plexiglas on it. Inside, they could see the stacks of money being loaded in bags. It looked like too much money to count. Ghost looked at Reem, and, for a second, he thought he was the guard Demarcus. The mask looked that real.
The Reserve had state-of-the-art security equipment; cameras were mounted overhead throughout the entire building. Instinctively, they kept their heads down as much as possible to avoid them.
The plan seemed to be converging just as planned. They had the guards’ keycards, which they had taken before murdering them. However, they let Trev do most of the opening of doors.
They were approaching the garage door up ahead. It was almost over; they’d made it through the bank as stealthily as possible. As they made their way down the last hallway, they heard footsteps behind them. Chatter from walkie talkies erupted as well. At the same time, they passed a security guard posted on the wall. The short, stocky officer was clad in the same uniform as them.
“Good morning,” the officer greeted as they passed. Trev spoke back while Ghost and Reem simply nodded.
Reem was a bit nervous and removed his hand from his pocket. They turned in unison to see what the commotion behind them was. For a second, they thought that they’d been made and that it was about to go down.
Luckily, they were relieved when they saw a few technicians run into one of the rooms behind them.
“We have a glitch on machine 26B,” one of them yelled before disappearing into the room.
Ghost let out a sigh of relief, but, as soon as they were about to go in the garage, the stocky guard yelled, “Hey!”
Ghost looked at Reem. Both had the same look in their eyes. Reem gripped the Mossberg tighter and was getting ready to go postal.
Trev looked at him and lightly shook his head.
They turned to face the guard.
“You dropped something,” he said, nodding toward something on the ground.
They all looked at a keycard on the ground. It must have fallen out of Reem’s pocket when he pulled his hand out of it. Reem was so nervous that he hadn’t even noticed that he’d dropped it.
He bent over to pick the card up.
“Thanks,” he told the officer.
“New, huh?” the guard asked, picking up on his nervousness.
“Yeah,” Reem answered flatly.
“I can tell. Loosen up a little; it’s not that bad.”
Reem gave him a nod before the three of them disappeared behind the door. Once in the garage, they signed the truck out and left the back without incident. Richard let the gate rise and saluted them from the booth as they pulled out into Center City traffic.
Once back at the warehouse, they had to move quickly. While they were gone, Shareef cleaned the warehouse up, getting rid of the maps, bulletins board, etc.
They were greeted by Reef as they entered the warehouse. He stood on the balcony over the top of them, giving a round of applause.
“Good job, gentlemen,” he said, shaking his head.
Quickly, he joined them, and they started uploading the money from the armored truck into a van with DAISY’S FLOWERS scrawled across the side. While the three formed a line to pass the money down, Shareef hopped inside the truck’s rear compartment. He used plastic and tape to plant the fingerprints of the two armed guards they were framing all around the inside of the truck.
“Let’s move, gentlemen!” Shareef shouted. He looked at his watch after jumping out the truck. He knew they were on the clock before headquarters would realize something was wrong with the idled truck. He had a digital trunking scanner equipped with J-Band capability, so he could hear if a dispatch went out over the airwaves to police.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Shareef yelled, rushing the others.
They handcuffed Trev and secured him in the back of the truck. His feet were, also, bound with zip-ties. All he had to do was play his part when the police showed up.
The rest of them hopped in the van and were gone. They pulled out on Columbus Boulevard as multimillionaires.