Ogreball: Rag and Bone Warriors

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Ogreball: Rag and Bone Warriors Page 7

by Griffith, KF


  They all looked at me as if I had three heads.

  Elganbok and Bearwald joined us at the model. “Are you sure you’re not an ogre?” said the dwarf.

  “Or a thief?” added Baerwald.

  “Do you have something like a pulley or a hoist?” I asked.

  “There’s one topside, outside the dock,” said Brunda. “We use it to lift the barrels of blrrrgbrew so that we can bring them in through the windows at the back of the Goat.”

  “We can unfasten it and take it with us,” said Baerwald.

  “If you break my pulley . . . .” Brunda started.

  “We’ll be really careful,” said Baerwald.

  “Yeah, we don’t want everybody angry at us because they have to carry the barrels up the steps,” said Elganbok.

  “They’d most likely drink half of it before it they got it to the top of the steps,” said Brunda.

  I touched one of the walls of the model. “So what did I miss? Judging by this, it looks like you guys have a plan.”

  The rest of the ogres joined us around the model. The ogres that had been barfed on had cleaned themselves up, but they were scowling at Elganbok from across the table.

  “So here’s the plan,” said Brunda. She pulled the roof off of the model to expose the interior. “Wow!” I said. “That really looks nice. It’s so detailed.”

  The model showed all the rooms, the walls, the windows, the stairways, it even had what looked like miniature versions of cameras high up on some of the walls.

  “Are those surveillance cameras?”

  “They are,” said Baerwald. “Guards keep an eye on the place from a room in the basement.”

  “The guards make regular patrols,” said Elganbok, “That’s a big enough problem. But there’s always somebody keeping an eye on those cameras, they’re always being watched.”

  “Which is where you come in,” said Baerwald.

  “Me? What do you want me to do about the cameras?”

  “We want you to keep an eye on the cameras from this building here,” Brunda pointed to a miniature rooftop across the street from the miniature Ogreball Hall.

  “We’ll tap into their surveillance system so that you can see what they see,” said Elganbok. “And we’ll have you stationed on that rooftop with all the equipment you’ll need to warn us about where the guards are,” said Baerwald. “You’ll be our eyes and ears.”

  “And you won’t be in the building if something goes wrong,” said Brunda.

  “What could possibly go wrong?” asked Elganbok.

  “If Baerwald barfs while he’s hangin’ from that chain,” said one of the ogres that Elganbok had vomited on, “he’s liable to drown someone.” He gave Elganbok the eye.

  Everybody laughed.

  “So what are you going to do now that you don’t have to sneak in from above?” I asked Elganbok.

  “Maybe I should sneak in through the sewer. The surveillance system is probably located in one of the lower levels. I might not be good danglin’ on the end of a chain, but I’m pretty sure I can handled hackin’ into their security system.”

  “Oooooh, I like that,” said Baerwald. “That way, if I get into a pinch, you’ll still be able to run up and grab the trophy.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” said Brunda.

  The other ogres nodded their agreement.

  “Now that that’s settled, we need to break up into our groups and start running drills,” said Brunda. “Surveillance team, follow me. That means you, too, Grady Burr.”

  “Entry Team with me,” said Baerwald.

  “You mean Entry Team 1,” said Elganbok. “I’m gonna need some support. Probably some welders and some good swimmers.”

  “I can weld,” A beefy ogre raised his hand and smiled. He was missing most of his teeth and he had blackened scorch marks all over his face and hands.

  “If you can swim, you’re on Entry Team 2 with me,” said Elganbok.

  We moved off with our work teams while Elganbok removed pieces from the model to reveal a miniature version of the sewer system under the Trophy Hall.

  “Wow! This really is a good model,” he said.

  Chapter 13: Breaking and Entering

  We practiced our drills for an entire week before the mission. We weren’t even close to being ready. I’d never been a burglar before, but I got the feeling that our efforts weren’t going as well as Baerwald and Elganbok wanted. I found out that they usually worked together as a team of two, but this time, since it was such a complicated job, it was going to take a much larger team to pull off the heist. The two of them were going to be the “inside men” entering the building while the rest of us supported their efforts from the sewers and the rooftops.

  Since I was assigned to monitor the video and audio communications in the Ogreball Hall, they cobbled together a portable rig for me that had a radio unit and a bank of video monitors. I don’t think I’d seen anything that looked new since I’d gotten here, and this stuff was no different. The equipment all looked like it was left over from an old black and white sci-fi movie. I was surprised that it worked, but it did. Barely.

  Elganbok and his team had set up an underwater maze in the canal and had been practicing swimming through it. They’d placed a few iron grates into the maze to block their path, so they got plenty of practice using their blowtorches to cut through the obstacles. They’d constructed the maze so that it ended in a chamber in the secret hideout beneath the Flaming Goat. That way when they’d finally worked their way to the end of it, Elganbok could climb out of the water and practice tapping into a mockup of the security system in a room similar to the one in the Ogreball Hall.

  Once Elganbok and his team accomplished their part of the mission, I was able to tap into the video system Brunda had setup for us to practice on. The idea was that I was supposed to guide Baerwald so that he could avoid being seen by any of the guards. The problem was that the junky equipment I had really did make it hard to tell exactly what I was looking at. Half the time, I ended up steering him right into a hallway full of guards.

  Towards the end of the week, we eventually got good enough at the exercise that Brunda said we might actually be able to pull it off. Baerwald and Elganbok didn’t seem quite so upbeat about our chances. I kept telling myself that this was going to be just like a really cool video game, but I was still so nervous that I could hardly eat or sleep.

  So, after a week’s worth of practice, Heist Day finally arrived. There I sat on the roof of the building across the street from the Ogreball Hall with my pile of dinged up equipment. Just like during our training, I had to constantly adjust the settings to keep a stable image on the screens. Even if the other equipment inside the Ogreball Hall was top of the line stuff, I was going to be struggling with the junk I had just to be able to tell what I was looking at.

  From the top of my building I could see down onto the rooftop of the Ogreball Hall. I watched as Baerwald and his crew used ropes to haul their equipment up from a narrow alley between the Ogreball Hall and the building next to it. The crew on the ground had to time their movements perfectly so that they wouldn’t be seen by the cameras mounted on the outside of the building. The cameras turned slowly this way and that so that, over time and inch by inch, they observed the entire area surrounding the building, leaving nothing unguarded. I watched as his team picked up the final piece of gear – the hoist rig – and scuttled with it as fast they could behind some cover to avoid being seen by the cameras. They strapped the gear into a harness, gave a signal to Baerwald and his crew on the roof, and watched as he pulled it up. As soon as they had it on the roof, Baerwald’s team quickly set it up and strapped him into the leather harness. They slowly fed him line as he walked over to the lip of the inside courtyard. He rechecked his harness, turned himself around so that he would be descending backwards, and gave his teammates the thumbs up sign. He reached up and turned on his headset camera, and backed down off the roof into the courtyard.

&nbs
p; “First ogre in,” he said.

  “Copy that,” I said. I watched the second monitor as the image from his headset camera filled the screen. The image bobbed up and down as he lowered himself slowly. I was suddenly glad that I was up here on my own rooftop with my junky monitors and barely functional headphones.

  I turned to watch Elganbok’s progress on Screen 1, the monitor I had dedicated to keeping an eye on the sewers. One of the ogres on Elganbok’s team had a camera strapped onto his head, so I could see everything he saw. He swam along behind Elganbok, and I could see that they were making good progress. Every once in a while, the cameraman would turn towards the wall of the sewer so that I could see the number on the brass plaques placed there to mark the location. I flipped open the training notebook I’d been keeping and looked up what I’d written down about the sewer system. Based on the latest plaque number, they had one more iron grate to cut through before they would be able to surface inside the Ogreball Hall.

  They arrived at the last iron grate, and I watched as Elganbok used his blowtorch to slowly cut through the thick metal. When he was done, he pulled the freshly cut portion of the grate away from the other bars and handed it back to his teammate. In the beam of the cameraman’s light I watched as Elganbok gave them the thumbs up sign. “I’m goin’ in. You guys head back to base. See you there.” He turned, swam through the now open grate, and floated up and out of sight. “Second ogre in,” he said.

  “Copy that,” I said again. I watched Screen 1 as Elganbok’s cameraman looked around. As he turned to head home, I could see his teammates gathering the blowtorch and other equipment as they prepared to leave. There was a bright flash off to one side, and the cameraman spun suddenly towards it. The picture blurred for a second, swung around wildly, and then it looked like the camera was floating downward, towards the floor of the sewer tunnel. A thick cloud of silt billowed up when it hit the bottom. That seemed weird. He must’ve dropped his camera. I guess I would have left the camera, too, if I was in his place. I couldn’t blame him. I’d rather lose a piece of equipment and get away than go back for it and risk getting caught.

  I turned away from my monitors and looked across the street to the rooftop of the Ogreball Hall. I could see Baerwald’s teammates struggling to keep from being pulled over the edge by the giant’s weight as they lowered him. I still didn’t have access to the Hall’s security cameras yet. What was taking Elganbok so long? According to our schedule, he should have been in the utility room by now. I fidgeted as I waited.

  My headphones crackled. “Second ogre patching into system feed,” Elganbok said. “You should have visual . . . now.”

  The blank monitors in front of me flashed to life. I had three monitors for the interior of the building, so I could now see three different views from inside the hall. I flipped a switch on my control board and flipped between additional camera views. “Copy that,” I said. “Confirming all camera channels.”

  “Great!” said Elganbok. “Second ogre standing by for exit.”

  I switched the third monitor so that it read “Interior Courtyard 1” at the top of the screen. I wanted to see if there was any sign of Baerwald on any of the inside cameras yet. So far, so good. I couldn’t see any sign of him. He’d practiced trying to avoid all the cameras when he ran his exercises over the past week. He’d been very good at it, too. For a big guy, he sure knew how to be stealthy.

  Baerwald’s team on the Hall’s rooftop finally gave me the thumbs up, indicating Baerwald had made it all the way down to the floor of the courtyard. I returned their signal to confirm I understood. “Team One and Team Two are inside and in place,” I said into my radio. “Mission is a go.”

  Chapter 14: The Heist

  I watched the second monitor as Baerwald turned to look around the courtyard. He quickly focused on the double doors leading into the main trophy room that were on the opposite side of the courtyard. It looked like he was peeking through some kind of bush.

  “Are you in a bush?” I asked.

  “I’m crouching behind a big potted fern,” he said.

  As I was keeping an eye on Baerwald’s headset camera I was also cycling through the Hall’s security cameras on my other two monitors. There was a guard patrolling a hallway on the third level, a pair of guards sitting in what looked like a cafeteria eating sandwiches, and three guards walking out of the security office.

  “I’ve got eyes on six guards,” I said into my radio. “One is patrolling on Floor 3, two are on their dinner break in the cafeteria on Floor 2, and three just walked out of their office in the basement.”

  “Right on schedule,” said Baerwald. “Time to move. The three in the basement are going to be coming up to do their rounds. I need to get into the trophy gallery fast.”

  His camera bobbed as he ran between statues of famous ogreball players towards the trophy gallery doors. I could see his hands as they grabbed the large door handle and pulled. Nothing happened. The door didn’t open.

  “Got a bit of a problem,” Baerwald said. “Door’s locked. I’m going to have to pick the lock.”

  His hands disappeared for an instant, and then I could see his small leather toolkit being opened and a lock pick being pulled out. He wrapped up the toolkit and put it away. He stooped down and placed his left hand beside the keyhole. He stuck the lock pick into the keyhole and began to move it around as he felt for the tumblers inside the lock.

  I could see on the third monitor that one of the guards had just come out of a stairwell on the first floor and had turned towards the courtyard.

  “We’ve got another problem,” I said. “You’ve got a guard heading your way. He just came out of the stairwell and he’s heading towards the courtyard.”

  “I’m almost in,” Baerwald said. “Just one more second.”

  The guard was walking along the big glass windows that looked out into the courtyard when he stopped.

  There’s no way he could see through that glass. It was like all the other glass I’d seen here, thick with grime. He bent down like he was trying to peer through the dirt. He rubbed the window with his sleeve and looked again. Then he straightened back up and moved on. He walked past the door leading out into the courtyard when he stopped and turned back around, pulled the door open, and walked out into the courtyard.

  On Baerwald’s camera, I could see the crack of the door to the gallery closing as he pulled it shut behind him. He’d made it inside just in time!

  “That was close,” I said.

  “Not a problem,” said Baerwald. He turned and looked around the gallery. It was filled with trophy cases and displays and statues of players that were a little less famous than the ones that had statues in the courtyard.

  “Wow!” he said. “No matter how many Ogreball Halls you’ve been to, you never stop being amazed.” I could hear the awe in his voice.

  “You might want to keep moving,” I said. “That guard is still out there in the courtyard. He’s out of my visual range, but as far as I know, he’s still out there. You might have to choose an alternate exit route if he stays out there.”

  “Copy that,” he said. “Let me get what I came for.” He moved deeper into the gallery.

  As he turned from side to side, I could see the cases along the walls filled with all sorts of artifacts, from complicated looking goggles to metal gloves with dark stains on them. The cases further into the room were filled with shiny metal trophy cups, tall strangely shaped trophies that looked almost like small pillars, and large elaborate plaques.

  Baerwald stopped in front of a case that housed a group of large stone bowls. “Stone Age trophies,” he said. “These are from the time when we first began to play the game. We were barely even civilized.”

  “You’re barely even civilized now,” I said.

  “You have a point,” he said. “The game goes all the way back to our roots. We’ve never really left those roots behind, have we?” He chuckled.

  He tilted his head up to look at the art
ifacts higher up in the display case when he froze. I could see what stopped him. On the other side of the case with the stone bowls was an ornate metal pedestal with an enormous trophy on top of it. The trophy was bathed in a spotlight so that every detail on it was shown to great effect. What a cool trophy!

  Its base was made up of dozens and dozens of miniature ogres piled on top of each other in a great circular heap. On top of that was a thick column wrapped in chains. On top of that was a pair of crossbones with a skull resting on top of them. There were two handles, each one sticking out from either side of the chain-wrapped column. The thing was a pretty good size. Only someone as big as Baerwald would be able to carry the thing. It was taller than Elganbok.

  Baerwald walked over to the trophy and gave it a good look up and down. “Here you are.”

  He scanned the pedestal and walked around the trophy, examining it from all sides. “No alarms that I can see. They must think that with six guards in the building, this thing is pretty safe.”

  He grabbed the trophy by the two handles and lifted it off the pedestal. “It’s pretty for sure, but it’s not very safe, is it?” He said.

  I watched as he placed the trophy on the floor and then layed out the leather harness for it. He picked the trophy up, placed it in the harness, fastened it in, and picked it back up, swinging it around to his back. He bounced a couple times to settle it and turned to leave. “That was easy.”

  He spun around to head for the door and looked right into the eyes of the guard. “Where do you think you’re going with that?” the guard asked.

  The guard pulled out his radio and spoke into it. “This is Guard Four, in the trophy gallery. I need . . . .”

  He fell face forward onto the floor. Behind him stood Elganbok with a big dented trophy in his hand.

  “It looked like you needed some help.” He turned the trophy around and looked at the dent. “I bet that hurt,” he said.

  The radio squawked. “Guard Four, this is Guard Three. What’s your status?” I could see Elganbok looking at Baerwald with a panicked look on his face.

 

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