We kept busy and the day passed quickly. My nerves got a little jangled around five o’clock, knowing the party started in two hours. At five-thirty we assembled in the parking garage beneath the hotel. Two vans where waiting there for us, both painted black, with lettering on the side that read PERFECTION CATERING. One van was an actual catering van with food and catering supplies inside, but the other one was a mobile command post.
Brent opened the back door, looked inside, and almost fainted. The rear section of the van looked like NASA Mission Control. It was pretty clear you could launch a worldwide nuclear assault from it. It had two captain’s chairs and a floor-to-ceiling console of high-tech equipment. Flat-screen lithium monitors, computer consoles, and I’m pretty sure a trash compactor for good measure.
“Wow,” said Brent. Wow was right. He climbed in the back and sat in front of the bank of monitors. He ran his hands over the console, touching the buttons and flipping the switches and making little gurgling cooing sounds.
“Wow,” he said.
“Do you need a moment alone?” I asked.
Rinteau cracked up and even Alex chuckled a little bit, but Brent didn’t even hear me.
Mr. Kim looked at his watch.
“Very well. We begin. We have trained long and hard for this, so I don’t expect any problems. But the first rule of a successful operation is that you must expect and anticipate problems. It is important for us to retrieve this relic. But it is not all-important. Rachel, Pilar, it will be up to you. You have the most dangerous part of the mission. If you feel that the situation has become untenable, you must withdraw. Do not take any unnecessary risks. Take the safest course and do not put yourselves in danger. We can find another way to retrieve the Firehorn. Is that clear?”
The thing is, during his big blah blah speech about not taking unnecessary risks and blah blah blah making sure we were safe, he’d pretended like he was talking to me and Pilar—but he was looking at me the whole time. Ha! Like I’m the only one that takes the unnecessary risks? What about that time … Or that other time when … Well, okay. I guess he had a point.
“Clear,” I muttered.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s saddle up.”
Alex drove the regular van with Pilar and me, while Mr. Kim drove Rinteau and Brent in the van that I now referred to as the Brentmobile. The party was going to be held not far from the Glenwood section of Beverly Hills, which is where the absolutely wealthiest people live. Not even Charles Buchanan had made it to Glenwood, much to Cynthia’s (my mom’s) chagrin. It was a playground for the super-duper mega-rich. Not even Spielberg and the other Hollywood types could afford to live there. It was old money—big money—and some of the wealthiest people in the world had homes there.
We stayed to the side streets and arrived at the Devereaux mansion at six p.m. We had an hour to set up before the guests began arriving. The property was gated and you couldn’t see the house from the street. Three security guards stood in front of the gate. Mr. Kim pulled up first. One of the guards with a clipboard spoke to him through the window. Another guard walked around the van with a mirror on a long pole allowing him to see under the van. After completing a circuit of the Brentmobile, he began the same inspection on our van. I started to sweat.
I tried to act nonchalant as the guard circled the van. Just kept staring ahead, like a bored little catering person who couldn’t wait until the job was over. Yep, that’s me. No sweat beads popping out on the brow, no nervous tapping of the fingers on the dashboard—just the picture of serenity.
The guard seemed satisfied our vehicle was not a weapon of mass destruction. Mr. Kim waved at the guard with the clipboard. Slowly, the gates rolled back and we pulled the vans through. We parked in the driveway beside a huge garage the size of Delaware. Two more Perfection Catering vans were already there. The people inside were all agents, but they were actually going to cater the affair. We were also going to pitch in but our main focus would be to get the Firehorn and then get out. The other “caterers” would continue on with the party and clean up so no one would get suspicious.
Mr. Kim and Rinteau got out of the Brentmobile and we opened the back doors to our van. We grabbed bags of equipment and catering supplies and carried them through the side door into the main kitchen of the house. The kitchen was ultra-modern, with black granite and stainless steel everywhere. It was also roughly the size of Bermuda. It appeared Mrs. Devereaux liked a lot of space in kitchens and garages.
None of the other caterers paid us any attention. We had to act normal because members of Mrs. Devereaux’s household staff were also present. This is exactly how we’d rehearsed it.
I heard Brent’s voice through the earpiece in my glasses.
“Rachel, I’ve got a good visual feed. As soon as you’re able, give me a voice check,” he said.
I held a large box of linen napkins in my arms.
“Where should I put these?” I asked an agent caterer who was prepping some appetizers near the side door.
He pointed to a spot on the counter and I set them down.
“Roger that, Rachel. I read you five by five,” Brent’s voice came back to me. “The video transmitter is in place and I’ve successfully interrupted the feed. The security office won’t see anything but an empty room. Your glasses are working perfectly. You have thirty minutes before showtime.”Guests were already arriving. The agent caterers were hustling in and out of the kitchen with trays of food and drinks. In another thirty minutes, Mrs. Devereaux was going to give a little speech. We hoped everyone would be occupied and it would last long enough for Pilar and me to make our way through the crowd and get the Firehorn. Piece of cake.
Pilar and I worked our way through the crowd, trays in hand. We didn’t make eye contact or speak to anyone, trying everything to keep our nerves under control. I don’t know why I was so nervous. Compared to most of the other times we’d tried something like this, the situation was a little more normal. No jumping out of helicopters into shark-infested waters, no containers on exploding ships, no Mithras.
There it was. I suddenly realized what had me on edge. See, the thing is, whenever we got around one of these artifacts, Simon Blankenship had a convenient way of showing up. Somehow he knew our every move—and since we were here, I expected him to be here too.
I emptied my tray and hustled back into the kitchen. “Brent,” I said quietly to the transmitter in my eyeglasses.
“Copy.”
“Can you link up with the FBI Facial Recognition Database from the van?” I asked.
“Absolutely. I can hook up to the Hubble Telescope if I want to,” he said.
“Good. I’m going to go back in to the party and make eye contact with as many of the guests as I can. Take video captures and run them through the database.”
“Copy. Who am I looking for?”
“Who do you think?” I asked.
A pause. “Ah. Got it. Go ahead,” he said.
I loaded my tray with more puff pastries and headed back out into the party.
This time, I went from guest to guest, looking them square in the face and asking them if they’d like a delicious appetizer. Brent would give me a verbal cue in my ear when he’d captured their image and we’d move on to the next one.
After about fifteen minutes, I’d gotten through most of the guests in the party who were the right age and size for Blankenship. Nothing from the database so far, but it took time for the program to run. Of course, Blankenship could have sent any one of his minions, someone we didn’t know about, but I wanted to cover all the bases.
Brent’s voice came over the earpiece.
“Rachel, Mrs. Devereaux is going to start her speech any minute. It’s time,” he said.
“Copy,” I whispered.
Moving back toward the kitchen, I caught Pilar’s eye across the room and nodded in the direction of the kitchen and she worked her way through the crowd toward me. Once there, we waited. Rinteau was still serving in the party roo
m, and would give Brent the signal when Mrs. Devereaux began speaking. Pilar and I pretended to be doing dishes and other catering stuff while we waited.
“It’s a go,” Brent said over the com link.
“Time,” I said to Pilar.
We’d hidden our gear inside two of the catering boxes. Gathering it up, we left the kitchen from the back hallway leading toward the part of the house where Mrs. Devereaux kept her collection. She had her own household staff and security, but the only cameras were in the room with the Firehorn. As long as we didn’t run into somebody, we’d be okay. We each carried our trays, still with a few appetizers and napkins on them, so if we were discovered we’d just claim we’d gotten turned around and were lost. Yeah, that should work.
We crept carefully along the hallway, pausing at each door to see if anyone was there. The house was huge. It had to be more than twenty thousand square feet. At the end of the hallway, we turned left, and the end of that hallway led directly to the room holding the Firehorn. We paused as I peered around the corner. Clear.
In a few strides we stood in front of the doorway. Brent’s voice came over the com link.
“She’s just started talking,” he said.
I didn’t answer, but pulled the suit from the duffle and slipped it on. Pilar used a small spray bottle of water and misted water into the doorway. The water particles lit up in the beam of the motion detector without setting it off, so we could see exactly where it was placed. It crossed the door about waist high. So far, so good.
I took out the CO2 pistol with the hook and cable attached, taking a deep breath to calm my nerves. Aiming carefully, I pulled the trigger. I couldn’t miss. If the hook didn’t pass through the light fixture, it would fall and break the beam of the motion detector in the doorway and the alarm would sound.
The hook whooshed out of the gun and found its mark. The projectile shot through the metal arm of the light, the grappling hook popped open, and the cable was secure. Pilar snapped open the titanium rod and secured it in the doorframe, attaching the cable to the end of it and pulling it taut. I grasped the bar, pulling myself up. This was the most difficult part. It required a gymnastic-like move: clear the beam with my legs and then extend them outward into the room. As I held the pose, Pilar reached up and attached the harness clip on the suit to the cable motor mechanism. So far, so good.
Turning on the switch, I starting moving slowly toward the center of the room. “Give me an update, Brent,” I said.
“She’s still talking,” he said.
Slowly I inched my way along on the cable.
“Thirty seconds,” said Pilar.
So far it was moving smoothly. In another fifteen seconds, I reached the center of the room and hung suspended over the Firehorn. I paused for a moment.
“Brent, we’re a hundred percent sure that this thing isn’t alarmed, right?” I asked.
“Yes. The blueprints showed no power supply to the pedestal, and there’s no kind of wireless feed either. The room is the security system; there’s no pressure plate on the pedestal or anything,” he said.
Good. I hoped we wouldn’t be surprised.
The fake Firehorn was secured in a big pouch that ran along the front of the suit. I flipped open the Velcro pocket and took out the horn with my left hand.
“Sixty seconds,” said Pilar.
With my right hand, I snatched the Firehorn off of its pedestal and held my breath, half expecting sirens to go off. Nothing happened. I let all the air out of my lungs. I put the fake on the pedestal, quickly loading the Firehorn into the pouch, and then I flipped the switch on the mechanism. Slowly, I started moving back toward the door.
“One minute thirty,” Pilar said. Piece of cake. I was going to make it, easy.
I was visualizing my dismount over the motion detector when the motor on the cable came to a grinding halt and I stopped midway between the pedestal and the door. Whoops. So much for positive thinking. “Uh … problem,” I said.
I looked at Pilar from my upside down position and her face looked at mine in alarm.
“What,” Brent said over the com link.
“I’m stuck,” I whispered.
“What? What do you mean stuck?” he asked.
“How many kinds of stuck are there? The motor stopped working. I’m halfway back to the doorway and not moving.”
“Umm … not possible,” Brent said. “I checked the motor myself. Six times. It was working perfectly,” he declared.
“Maybe you should have checked it seven times. BECAUSE IT’S NOT WORKING NOW!” I whisper-yelled.
“Two minutes,” Pilar said. “Rachel, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Brent, how do I fix this thing?”
“You’ll need a screwdriver; start by taking off the small side panel …” he spoke very slowly.
“Brent. I realize you’re all Discovery Channel and everything when it comes to this stuff, BUT I DON”T HAVE A SCREWDRIVER!” I whisper-yelled again.
“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” Pilar said.
“Okay. Okay. Stay calm,” he said. “On the side of the mechanism opposite the switch, there is a small white button. Push it in.”
I did. Nothing happened.
“Nothing happened.”
“I know, but what that does is release the tension on the wheels. It should be free to move now, and you can pull yourself hand over hand to the door,” he explained.
“That’s it? That’s your plan? I’m starting to heat up, and I’ve got about a minute left! There isn’t an emergency jet engine or something on this thing?”
“Uh. Hmm. No, just the white button.” He sounded embarrassed his little gadget wasn’t working.
“Three minutes,” Pilar said.
Well, this was definitely not going well. Okay. Time to cowboy up.
I pulled on the cable with both hands. It worked, except I only slid toward the door about six inches. There was a good ten feet to go. This was not looking good. I would overheat and set off the alarms.
I grabbed the cable again and pulled with every ounce of strength I had. I moved maybe eight inches this time. Grabbed and pulled. My arms were starting to shake with the exertion. Another eight inches. Slowly, I crept along the cable. The door was growing closer.
Sweat was forming on my face. The suit wasn’t designed for this type of movement and it took great effort to pull myself along. “Three minutes, thirty seconds,” Pilar said.
I pulled and moved a slow, heat-building half-foot at a time.
“Um, Rachel,” Brent’s voice came over the com link.
“Yeah,” I said. I was grunting now with the exertion of pulling myself along.
“The speech is over,” he said. “People are starting to move around.”
“What? It was supposed to last twenty minutes!”
“Yeah, well, she shortened it up considerably. Better get moving,” he said.
Oh boy. I liked Brent, but he was ticking me off today. First his little gizmo goes all Millennium Falcon Hyperdrive on me, and now he was bossing me around while I was hanging there in mortal danger.
Five feet to go. I pulled with all my might and went maybe ten inches this time.
“Four minutes,” Pilar said.
I heard Rinteau’s voice from the doorway.
“What’s going on? Why are you still in there?” he asked.
“The motor broke down,” Pilar told him.
“What are you doing here?” I looked at him upside down.
“I hate to tell you this, but the speech is over. A few more minutes and they’re going to start touring the house,” he said. “I could hear you over the com link. I came to see if I could help.”
“Thanks for the info,” I said grunting as I pulled myself ever closer. Maybe three feet or so still to go.
“Go ahead. Start crabbing at me. That will get you to the door faster,” he deadpanned.
I pulled and pulled and pulled and at the five-minute mark, reached t
he bar in the doorway. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but passed the Firehorn to Rinteau and he secured it in a duffle. My face was red and covered in sweat. It must have been a thousand degrees in the suit.
I held onto the bar with both arms. It was now five minutes and thirty seconds. Pilar unsnapped the clip. Now came the tricky part. The plan was for me to lift myself over and around the beam of the motion detector, then release the cable from the bar. By letting tension out of the cable, we could get the grappling hook to close. Pushing a button on the cable mechanism would make the cable, made of some kind of high-tech carbon fiber composite (Brent had tried to explain what it was made of and how it worked, but I zoned out after “high-tech”) stiffen. We would pull it out of the room without it hitting the floor and setting off a pressure alarm or breaking the beam on the motion detector. Presto! We would leave no sign that we were there.
I was close to six minutes inside the room when Pilar unclipped me. According to plan, I held myself in the correct pose and flipped through the doorway and around the beam. But I hadn’t counted on the motor breaking down and having to use so much of my strength to get to the door. Nor did I count on my body overheating and my muscles cramping. I hadn’t counted on not being able to clear the beam, and breaking it ever so slightly with the toe of my foot.
And I definitely had not counted on how loud the alarm actually would be when it broke through the silence like the sound of a crashing freight train.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Where Did It All Go Wrong?
THE NOISE WAS DEAFENING. The alarm continued to wail as we stood there frozen for a moment, not sure what to do. I slipped out of the suit and stuffed it in the duffle.
The Spy Who Totally Had a Crush on Me Page 10