by Mike Cooper
“Redemption?”
“Investors want their money back. Right this second. And the way the agreements are written, Wes doesn’t have much choice.”
Over the years, Finn had organized a dozen major operations—big jobs, the ones that took months of setup, many people involved. In only two cases did the work go more or less as planned.
Things happened. You dealt with it.
“He told me he was golden,” Finn said. “You were there, too. He was worried that news of the counterfeit ingots might get out—not that it already had.”
“I don’t think it’s that. I’ve asked some of the investors myself, when they call in, and I’ve been following the news. It has more to do with the market generally. China’s caught cold, commodities everywhere are slumping, and people figure Wes is simply overexposed. It’s a herd mentality. Once a few loudmouths make up their mind, everyone else falls all over himself doing the same thing.”
“That sounds stupid.”
“Not really. Everybody’s measured against benchmarks nowadays. Make money, lose money, it doesn’t matter so long as you’re no worse than average. The wrongest thing you can do is something different from everyone else—because that’s how you miss the target.”
“And … Wes is in the doghouse.”
“Well, his funds are.”
“So the job’s off.”
“No, no, I didn’t say that.” Emily sat straighter in the booth. “If anything, Wes is even more keen that you go ahead. In fact, he said he’s hoping to spin it into an insurance settlement, too. Solve the counterfeit problem but make a little profit on top.”
Of course. “If all the lights are still green, what’s the issue?”
Emily hesitated. “He doesn’t have the working capital.”
“Working capital?” It took Finn a moment. “What, you mean our money?”
“Yes.”
The waitress dropped off Emily’s tea. Lipton, in a bag. She squeezed it out and dumped in two sugars.
“So how much can he front us?” Finn asked.
Emily made an apologetic face. “Eighteen thousand. It’s all he can scrape together.”
“On top of the ten you already gave me?”
“No. Inclusive.”
Finn sat back against the booth’s vinyl. “We need five times that!”
“Let me quote: ‘How expensive can it be to dig a fucking hole?’” Emily grinned. “‘I’ll buy the damn pickaxes myself,’ he said.”
“Jesus Christ.”
They fell silent. Finn ran contingencies in his head, looking for a way through.
Emily reached over and touched his forearm.
“What I’m seeing?” she said. “Wes is going down.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s always been a little rough and ready, the way he operates. Like we were talking about. He skates right along the edge.”
“He hired me. Twice.”
“There you go. Not, I mean—you know what I mean.”
“Uh-huh. So he’s, what, Heart Pine is falling apart?”
“It’s not pretty.”
Finn considered. “Does that mean that everything—the company, his funds, his future—everything depends on us doing this job?”
“I think you’re the Hail Mary.”
The waitress came by again, cleared the last dishes, and left a ticket. Approaching lunchtime, the diner was slowly filling. Finn looked over at Nicola, who had struck up a cheerful conversation with the counterman.
“And he can only scrape up eight grand?”
“I don’t know. That’s really nothing—literal pocket change for him.” Emily shook her head slightly. “Crash and fucking burn.”
“What’s he doing with the metal?”
“Nothing. He can’t sell it, because of the counterfeits.”
“How long does he have?”
“The way things are going, I’d say the end of the year. No one wants a blowup right as they’re closing their books. But come January, they’re going to be at the door with pitchforks and torches.”
“Then … our schedule still works.”
“By the calendar, yes.” She picked up the tab and glanced at the scrawled figures. “He’s counting on you, Finn.”
The money was a problem. Finn wasn’t sure how they could do the job for nothing—for example, he had a day to come up with twenty-six thousand dollars for the broker. But if they could make it work somehow, once inside, they were already planning to grab everything for themselves. Wes fucking up, over in his expensive midtown offices, was basically irrelevant.
Finn looked at Emily for a long moment, wondering.
“What do you think we should do?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Exactly what you’ve been planning.” Her smile had a cold edge. “And then clean him the fuck out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I’m telling you, this is what the internet is for.” Asher slumped in the panel van’s passenger seat, grousing. “Companies want to sell stuff, they put it online. Why the fuck are we driving all over New Jersey? We could Google it, make a few phone calls, finish in thirty minutes.”
Corman grunted. They were in heavy traffic on the Garden State Parkway, vehicles stopping and starting, brake lights glowing in the dusk across all six lanes. He drove warily, one full car length of distance at all times, hands at two and ten o’clock.
“Or better yet, I bet there’s probably a half dozen websites that are, like, specialized. Used-excavators-cheap-dot-com, some shit like that. Pictures and everything, you know?”
Some jackass abruptly tried to change lanes, causing panic stops all around. Corman hit the brakes, jolting the van hard. Horns blew.
“Fuck this.” Asher had been thrown against the dash. “Can’t you—”
“Put your seat belt on.”
“I never wear them.”
“Dumb.”
“I never told you about that time I saw a guy roll his car off the highway? Must have been drunk or who knows what, sun shining and all. He wasn’t strapped in, that’s why he lived—went right out through the window, and the car slid into the river. He’d’ve drowned for sure if he’d been stuck inside.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Saved his life.”
“Yeah, you told me already.”
They crawled on through the rush-hour mire. Corman was hungry, but he didn’t say anything. No point in reminding Asher of something else to complain about.
“I liked the last one.” Asher had his phone out, swiping at the screen. “Got a nice picture of it. That Chinese skid steer. Guy seemed willing to deal, too.”
“They were all willing to deal,” said Corman. “Not much demand for electric-motor excavators.”
“No shit. It was me, I’d drive over the fucking cable all the time, probably electrocute myself.” He looked up. “Aren’t we there yet?”
“Almost.” Corman had his signal on for the next exit. “You got maps on that thing?”
“I thought you knew where we were going!”
“Finn just told me the address.”
Asher got the phone’s GPS going. “Looks like … take a right off the ramp. Down there a ways.”
It was an industrial zone—chain link and truck lots, metal-walled Butler buildings and piles of scrap. Corman followed Asher’s directions, and they turned off the main road, bumping down a rutted way between rows of closely parked cargo trailers. Most carried dirty forty-foot containers, paint flaking and streaked with grime.
“I don’t know why we couldn’t just meet at the motel, same as we been doing,” Asher said.
“Finn said the hacker girl didn’t think it was safe.”
“What the hell does she know?”
Co
rman shrugged. “More than me and you—about computers.”
“You ask me, she’s fucking with us.”
“Didn’t ask.”
They rounded a corner, the long row of containers finally ending.
“Whoa!” Asher sat up. “Look at that.”
A dozen school buses were parked on one side of an asphalt apron. Crammed in front of them were several airplane fuselages, from a little executive jet up to what looked like a 747. All were damaged—scorched by fire, wings torn off, tilted at bad angles on smashed landing gears.
“You know,” said Asher, “I don’t think the airlines want people to see this shit.”
Behind the aircraft, a row of cranes pointed into the sky. Cherry pickers, tower cranes, hydraulic forklifts. It was going dark, and a few antiquated sodium lights cast more shadow than illumination.
Corman rolled the window down. He thought he smelled smoke—not the pleasant wood-fired kind, but oily and chemical laden.
“Weren’t we, like, driving through suburbs a couple miles back?” Asher seemed impressed.
“I don’t know.” Corman closed his window. “Which way now?”
“Up ahead.” Asher gestured. “Somewhere. Was this her idea?”
“What?”
“The hacker girl. Did she choose the place? Because, you know, this ain’t exactly the Microsoft campus.”
They drove past a lot full of delivery trucks, old ones, crusted with graffiti and dirt, all parked nose to tail and apparently abandoned.
“Tell you what,” Corman said. “Maybe we can find an excavator right here.”
Finn looked around. Uninsulated metal siding, some light fixtures way up at the roof, and a dirty concrete floor visible between vast heaps of junk. Broad roller doors looked out at even larger piles of scrap, pushed twenty feet high by the front loader still at work around the corner. Absolutely nothing natural visible anywhere, except for dirt—no trees, no grass, no creatures, no bugs even. Rats maybe, somewhere. But what would they eat?
Over engine noise and clanking from the front loader, Finn said, “Fuck it all. Maybe I can just get a job here.”
Jake laughed. “Tinch sits in the office all day. Nicer in there.”
Tinch was Jake’s contact. Happy to let them use the warehouse after hours, equally happy to take the two bills Jake had offered.
The front loader’s engine faded, then cut out completely, coughing into silence. Darkness was falling fast. Jake found a wall panel and threw the breaker, switching on three overhead bulbs just as the equipment operator looked in the door.
“Going now,” the man said. He had a helmet in one hand, heavy gloves in the other, a thick coating of grime and dirt over his boots and coveralls. “Tinch says you can close up. Main thing, be sure you close the padlocks on the gate.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Don’t go wandering around other side of the fence. Tinch mentioned, right? They got Dobermans over there.”
“You don’t?” Jake said.
“Who’d steal this shit?” The man half waved and disappeared.
Finn looked at a ten-foot jumble of plumbing scrap next to him: brass pipe, fixtures and fittings, the pipes bent and broken, everything tarnished, old.
“Someone already did,” he said. “Stripped it from abandoned buildings.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe not abandoned, some of them.”
Jake shrugged. “Could be contractors. Tear-outs. Someone shows up with a pickup truck full, I don’t think Tinch is gonna ask about provenance.”
Corman and Asher arrived, bickering.
“Trouble finding your way?” Finn said.
“No.”
Grunt.
“I knew where we were going, all you had to do was—”
Jake found some mismatched crates along the wall, pulled them out to sit on. The incandescents overhead cast dim and inadequate light. Finn walked around a bit, checking visibility, but even through the open doors, mountains of scrap outside blocked anyone from seeing them.
“Hey, guys.” Nicola strode in, gray courier bag over one shoulder, gray jacket, gray pants, gray hat. “Hi, Finn. How’s it going?”
Conversation stopped dead.
“Glad you could make it, Nicola.” Finn pointed. “Corman, Asher, Jake.”
“Nice to meet you.” She kind of waved, looked around, and chose the closest crate. It creaked as she thumped her butt down onto it. “Love the setting.”
“Really?”
“This is exactly where you should be planning the heist of the century.”
Corman grunted. Finn thought amusement might have been in there somewhere, but it was hard to tell.
“This is a dump,” Asher said. “Literally. A fucking junkyard. What was wrong with the hotel room?”
“Hang on.” Nicola stared at her cell phone, then raised it in the air and moved it left and right. Seconds passed.
“No signal?” Jake asked politely.
Another few moments, and Nicola put the phone down, looked at everyone. “Just a quick check,” she said. “Clean. If someone’s got a wire in here, they’re using oddball frequencies. Seems unlikely.”
“Uh-huh,” Jake said. “That’s like, what, you got some kind of special app on that?”
“Modified hardware.” Nicola unfolded a thick metallic bag and unsnapped it. “Okay, everyone, time to hand over your phones. In here.”
No one moved. In the silence, Finn could hear a truck grinding into gear nearby. The air smelled of grease and metal.
“How about I just take the battery out?” Jake, smiling, tried to charm away the tension. “That’s what they do on TV.”
Nicola shook her head. “Not good enough.”
“No.” Asher crossed his arms. “Who’s running this fucking show? We don’t even know you. I’m not handing over anything.”
A snort from Corman, which could have meant anything. But no one reached for his phone.
“Finn?” She looked his way.
“You’re the expert,” he said. “But …”
“Okay.” Nicola set the Faraday bag aside and found her own phone again. “We need the dog and the pony, that’s fine. Give me a minute here.”
They watched her run a cable to another device, half visible in the courier bag—small, black, anonymous. No blinking lights. She tapped at the screen.
Tinny sounds, too faint to understand.
“Can’t hear it,” Finn said.
“Sorry.” She tapped again. A scratchy voice blared out:
“—OUGHT YOU KNEW WHERE WE WERE GOING.”
“FINN JUST TOLD ME THE ADDRESS.”
“LOOKS LIKE … TAKE A RIGHT OFF THE RAMP.”
Asher suddenly leaned forward, hands on his knees. “What the fuck? Is that—?”
Jake looked puzzled. Corman raised an eyebrow. Finn kept a poker face, not sure what Nicola was doing. A clanging in the yard nearby obscured the playback for a moment.
“—THIS HER IDEA?”
“WHAT?”
“THE HACKER GIRL. DID SHE CHOOSE THE PLACE? BECAU—”
She tapped again, abruptly cutting the sound, and looked up with a bright smile. “Anybody recognize that?”
“That’s impossible.” Asher glared at Corman. “You’re in on this, aren’t you?”
Shrug.
“Know what? Not fucking funny.”
Corman’s voice was deep and slow. “Twenty minutes ago,” he said. “Tops.”
“What?”
He looked at Finn. “Me and the rockhead, talking in the truck on the way over. Not half an hour ago.”
Asher squawked. Finn sighed. “Magic.”
Nicola shook her head again. “No.” All business now, sitting straight on the crate, playfulness gone. “I got your n
umbers from Finn’s phone yesterday. He didn’t notice. Last night, I phished each of you—remember the text you got? ‘Call me back its super important’?”
“Sure,” Jake said. “Deleted it straightaway.”
“Smart.” Nicola inclined her head in his direction. “That’s the right thing to do if you don’t know who it is. Because there might be a payload, some bad code, a little bit of malware hidden in the link.”
“Malware?”
“Oh, for instance, a root exploit with a process hack.” She saw their incomprehension. “Look, that device in your hand, it’s got a microphone, a computer, a cellular connection, and Wi-Fi. A five-year-old could turn it into a remote listening device.”
Finn replayed his memory from the diner yesterday morning. He’d handed her the phone, she glanced at it, tapped the screen once or twice.
She’d memorized his entire call list, with no obvious break in the conversation, in less than ten seconds.
“Okay, I’m impressed.” He turned at the others. “Are you impressed?”
Grumbling.
“Only one of you clicked through,” Nicola said helpfully. “About average.”
They all looked at Asher.
“What? What?”
Eventually, they passed over their devices. She dropped them in the metallized bag, folded the top over a Velcro strip, and set it on a vacant crate.
“Wait a minute,” Asher said. “What about the batteries? You didn’t even turn them off! What the—”
“Tinfoil. Mesh something.” Corman looked at Nicola. “Right?”
“Exactly. Blocks everything.”
They finally got down to business. The air was cold and getting colder, the crates not comfortable.
“Before we start,” said Finn. “There’s a decision to make.”
Jake caught the tone and looked hard at him, which flagged Corman’s attention.
“Long and short,” Finn said, “Wes is pulling back.”
Silence and frowns.
“What does that mean?” Jake asked slowly.
“Business is bad. He’s losing cash. Customers are withdrawing their investments.” Finn raised his hands, like, Who knows? “Everything is a lot tighter all of a sudden.”
“So?”
“So, apparently, he’s unable to front us for setup.”