The Faberge Heist

by David Leadbeater

The cop keyed his shoulder mic, about to call it in, when Steele unleashed one hundred kilos of pent-up rage. His fist smashed into the cop’s face, sending him staggering, then another was buried into his stomach, doubling him over. Steele plucked the officer’s weapon from its holster and aimed it at the second cop, still seated in the car.

  “Don’t.”

  But the man was already reaching for his weapon. Steele didn’t hesitate. He shot the cop in the arm, then pulled away and shot the first cop in the stomach.

  Then he turned to Kushner and Faye. “Run.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  When Drake and Alicia became aware of the citywide alerts, they left their room, deciding to wander for a while. Drake felt unsettled. Initially, both he and Dahl had wanted to camp out in the Fabergé room all night, but security bosses and insurance companies forbade it, declaring that their security measures were first-class and well within the insurers’ usual range of experience.

  Dahl tried to explain that criminal gangs like the One Percenters operated above most people’s standard experience. He got nowhere.

  They took an elevator to the penthouse suites, stepped out into the corridor and walked toward the Fabergé room.

  “Over a dozen alerts,” Drake said, flicking at his cellphone. “Bellagio. The Aria, Mirage and Planet Hollywood. Those are major casinos close to here.”

  “You need to stop walking and swiping,” Alicia said. “You know the last person that bumped into me doing that almost got his cellphone shoved up his arse.”

  “I was finished anyway.” Drake put the phone away.

  “Cops are stretched,” Alicia commented.

  “Yeah, which raises my antenna.”

  “Really?” Alicia sent him a sideways glance. “I didn’t know you had a thing for cops.”

  “Not that antenna. I meant my suspicions. Something’s off.”

  “Thank God for that. No way am I dressing up as a policewoman for you.”

  Drake ignored her and used a keycard to gain access to the Fabergé room. The door clicked and they stepped through into one of the smaller living spaces. A guard was standing by the window and turned to look at them.

  “All good?” Alicia asked.

  “Quiet as the grave,” he said.

  “Where’s your pal?” Drake looked left and right, knowing they worked in pairs.

  “Recon. He went to check out the display a few minutes ago.”

  “Mind if we take a look?” Drake asked.

  “Be my guest, bud.”

  Earlier, they’d been introduced to the night watch by the hotel security boss. A good move on his part. He wanted no mishaps. Drake headed for the corridor that led to the display room. The lighting was dim. Ahead, a faint glow emanated from the display room. There was no sound.

  Alicia nudged him. “If that guard jumps out on us, I’m gonna fuck him up.”

  Drake stayed quiet, testing the silence with his senses. It was easy to get wound up and paranoid on a job like this. It was hours and days of waiting, doing nothing, and if all went well there was still a terrible sense of anti-climax. He’d been on comparable missions many times before, mostly in war zones.

  “Gotta admit,” he said as they approached the display room. “I never saw myself babysitting guards who’re safeguarding eggs.”

  “When you put it like that—”

  Alicia broke off as the entered the room. Drake drew in a sharp breath.

  “Oh, bollocks,” the Englishwoman breathed after a few more seconds.

  Drake’s field of view was captured by several display stands. Several empty display stands. At first, he couldn’t accept it. Maybe Dahl was playing a joke. There was simply no way anybody could have crept in here and stolen . . .

  Then he saw the guard on the floor in a far corner, lying motionless. Drake ran over to him. Alicia found the panic button, pushed it and listened to the claxon-like sound.

  “This is gonna be a long night.”

  * * *

  Drake leaned back on his haunches. “The guard’s dead. Shit.”

  Alicia came over. “They killed the guard? Damn, that’s cold.”

  Footsteps rushed toward them, boots slamming along the corridor. The guard they’d met came first, face ashen at the sight of his colleague and then the empty displays. In minutes, security staff piled in. Dahl and Luther came next, followed by more members of their team. Finally, the FBI forced their way in with several policemen.

  “I can’t believe it. I just can’t—” Coulson, the head of hotel security, had been repeating the same phrase since he arrived. He turned from stand to stand and stared at the dead guard. His face was pasty white, his eyes wide.

  The head FBI agent was open mouthed. “I don’t get how this happened.”

  Drake saw another figure push its way into the room. When he looked over, he saw Mr. Singh. The billionaire collapsed with his head in his hands.

  “A lot of people doing nothing here,” Dahl said. “We’re wasting time.”

  “He’s right.” Luther was looking for someone senior and in control. “The guard they killed only left the outer room ten minutes ago.”

  Several men were visibly trying to pull themselves together. Some leaned against walls, others just stared at the empty displays. Someone thought to check on the four lost eggs and returned with the grimmest look on his face. “All gone.”

  Singh let out a wail. Someone grabbed him by the shoulders and escorted him away. Drake rose and stepped away from the dead guard as medics appeared. He caught Dahl’s eye and nodded at a corner.

  Most of the team met there.

  “What are we thinking?” Luther asked.

  “What do we know?” Drake said. “They bought explosives, for sure. Shit, they need to check this room. They might blow it to cause a distraction.”

  Alicia darted off, followed by Mai and Molokai. Drake heard them calling for attention and laying out the possibility that the room might be wired. Immediately, everyone checked the room and someone called the bomb squad.

  Drake walked across to the window. “No way they got in here. It’s solid.”

  “There are other rooms off the corridor,” Dahl said.

  Two minutes later they stood before a large window with a hole in its middle. A hole large enough to admit a man. To the left of the hole, the pieces of glass that had been removed were attached to the outside by heavy-duty suction pads.

  “The roof,” Dahl said. “Now!”

  They moved fast, explaining to the FBI as they went. Drake removed his handgun and held it close. They found a stairwell, followed it up to a door, then entered a code. Soon, they were outside in the cool night air.

  Drake and Mai rushed to the right, toward the Strip, finding nothing. Dahl and the rest went the other way and called out when they found the abseiling rope and zip line.

  “They’re gone,” an FBI agent said. “Alert the police. Do we have CCTV footage?”

  Finally, someone wanted to take charge. Drake then heard a conversation between him and a colleague, stating that the insurers had insisted some of the cameras fitted inside the display room were old-school, not connected to Bluetooth or W-Fi signals. Apparently, it was a popular thing to do these days. Progress, especially electronic, would always be intensely vulnerable.

  “Yes, sir. We have a few captures,” the lead FBI agent was told. “Two men, one skinny, one well-built, wearing black suits and carrying black backpacks. They have facemasks on, sir.”

  “Never mind. Get the general description out right away. They can’t be far. And get some units over to that hotel.”

  He pointed at the Wyndham, where the zip line led.

  Drake listened as a citywide manhunt was ordered. Standing there listening, he felt superfluous. Not entirely sure what to do, he gestured at the rest of the team. “Wanna check out the Wyndham?”

  “They killed a man.” Dahl nodded. “That makes this personal.”

  “We couldn’t prevent this,” Hayden sai
d. “We couldn’t have known.”

  “Clearly it’s been a long-term plan,” Dino said, scratching his head. “But where would they go next?”

  Drake narrowed his eyes at the half-Italian. He was right. If the One Percenters had left this rooftop, say even five minutes ago, they’d be exiting the Wyndham by now, if not further away. The real question was—where were they heading?

  Hayden looked out across the city. “If their plan’s long-term, they have an outlet. Several probably. They knew this might happen. And they’re not afraid of murder.”

  “They don’t know we have them on camera,” Karin said.

  “Doesn’t help,” Hayden said. “Once they’re away they’ll change clothes and lose the backpacks. We won’t know them from anyone else on the street.”

  “Wait.” Luther turned to them, his bald head catching the faint light of the moon. “How about the other information we have? The police station and the bus.”

  Drake wondered how it fit together. “I can’t imagine how the police station fits, but the bus might.”

  “For a getaway?” Hayden asked. “It’s pretty mundane.”

  “Exactly,” Drake said. “It’s understated. Discreet. It’s bloody perfect. The backpacks will fit right in too.”

  “You want us to check out every bus station in Las Vegas?” the FBI man had been listening. “On a hunch? If you’re wrong, we’d lose all momentum.”

  “How many bus stations are there?” Hayden asked.

  “You kidding? Dozens. And there’s the operators too. Greyhound. Megabus. Amtrak.” He shrugged. “Too many.”

  “But . . .” Dahl said. “Using the bus makes sense. The stations run twenty-four hours a day. Buses leave every minute. And then there are the events, conventions, functions, parties. You’d be best served to do whatever you can.”

  The agent stared between Dahl, Hayden and Drake. “Who the hell are you people again?”

  “You know who we are,” Alicia answered with a mysterious inflection in her voice.

  “Get me some evidence,” the FBI agent said and walked away.

  Drake opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly a cry went up around the room. Everyone turned to a cop holding a radio close to his mouth.

  The cop looked up.

  “You won’t believe this,” he said. “But we’ve got them!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  It was a huge operation, fluid and noisy, brash and aggressive.

  And Strike Force were in the vanguard of it. Even as he ran from the Azure, Drake was shrugging into a flak vest, checking his Glock, getting thrown an SIG machine pistol and strapping on a new comms system. It was a fast dash, a running jumble of men and arms as the vast security machine grinded into action.

  They jumped in police cars, into vans. Into anything that was getting ready to race with blue lights flashing and sirens screaming along Las Vegas Boulevard as fast as it could. They didn’t have time to strap in, barely had time to take a seat. Drake was thrown backward as his car took off. Kinimaka, next to him, lost his gun and scrabbled head first in the footwell for it.

  He was wedged down there for a while, so Drake shouted over the top of his broad back: “You get any more info?”

  Dahl slammed a fresh mag into his Glock, looking grim. “Yeah. FBI guy said those old, crappy black and white photos were matched to a recent robbery in California. Two pairs of high-tech gloves were stolen. The kind of gloves that help you stick to a window five hundred feet in the air.”

  Drake slammed his Glock in its holster and brought the SIG around, resting it on the seat. “And they matched that to someone here, in Vegas?”

  “They didn’t wear masks in California. Sloppy. Didn’t have time, I guess. Must have been a rush job. Anyway, three of them are here, yes.”

  “Three?” Drake leaned over Kinimaka’s back to study the photos.

  Kinimaka groaned. “That’s not helping, guys.”

  “No name match,” Dahl said. “Just faces.”

  Drake studied the three grainy photos, taken six years ago. Then he compared them to five more, taken two days ago.

  “Facial rec identified them in a bar at Caesar’s,” Dahl said with some bemusement in his voice. “Nobody’s approached them yet.”

  Drake felt bewildered. He didn’t have to say it was one of the oddest situations they’d ever come across. If these three were part of the One Percenters, why were they sitting there so openly? Why weren’t they running? And where were the bloody eggs?

  “This just gets weirder and weirder,” Alicia said through the comms.

  Drake held on as the car swung hard right, drifting onto the Strip with sirens blazing. The traffic had been stopped. He looked through the back window, seeing the stunning sight of nine cop cars and two police vans in hot pursuit, all screaming onto Las Vegas Boulevard in a line, tires screeching.

  People lined the streets, stopping and gawking. Some gave chase. The fountains of Bellagio erupted to the left, huge spouts of brightly lit water reaching to the skies. The golden Eiffel tower flashed by to the right. Cops were everywhere on the sidewalks, holding people back. The traffic signals ahead had been cordoned off. Drake saw Caesar’s appearing to the left and then his car was slewing hard across the junction, crossing the other carriageway and entering the road that led to the front of the hotel. The FBI were out first followed by Drake and Dahl. Two SWAT vans were already parked up. Dozens of cops stood near the doors.

  “We ready?” someone shouted.

  “Ready,” the SWAT commander said.

  “Go!”

  Drake ran with Dahl, Kinimaka and Luther just behind him. Cops and agents surrounded them. A bomb squad van screeched to a halt close by. Drake passed through the outer doors and into the hotel, blessed by a gust of cool air. Civilians were everywhere, being herded away from danger via a far door.

  The SWAT crew streamed to the left. People jumped out of their way. Drake held the SIG pointed at the floor, trying to get closer to the front. Dahl was already there, loping along like an eager Labrador at the head of the pack. Drake’s comms flashed with heated exchanges. Ahead, a restaurant appeared. Its staff had been told to act normally. It had been cordoned off from both ends of the corridor that led to it, so nobody could warn the suspects. Inside, all was normal.

  Drake readied himself. The entire force stopped and took a breath, hidden by the curve of the corridor.

  Twenty seconds passed.

  “Are we go?” the SWAT commander asked.

  “Go.”

  There was a blur of action. Men leveled their weapons and ran at the restaurant’s door, kicked it open and surged inside. They shouted at everyone, at customers, staff and especially the suspects. Drake felt long moments of tension. He aimed the SIG at the table where all three members of the One Percenters sat, keeping steady and breathing easily. The suspects were made to raise their hands and then lie on the floor. Then their fingers were tested for explosive chemicals. Finally, they were hauled back into their seats.

  Drake and the rest of his team moved forward, closer to the table. Cops dispersed, herding customers and staff out of the room. They would conduct an interrogation right here and now.

  “Names,” the FBI team leader, a man Drake now knew was called Paulson, said.

  “Where’re the explosives?” Dahl asked.

  Paulson shot him a hard glare. Dahl shrugged.

  Drake studied their captives. One was a tall, slim man with stylish hair and a soft face. An arrogant smile played at the corners of his mouth. Another man sat next to him, a large brute with big hands clenched into fists, looking as if he wanted to smash everyone in sight. Finally, there was a small, dark-haired woman, sitting uncomfortably as if she hated company, leaning more toward the cops than her colleagues.

  “We got you,” Paulson said. “It’ll be easier if you cooperate.”

  “You got us?” the tall, slim one repeated. “For what exactly? You have evidence?”

  Paulson glared.
“You’re the One Percenters.”

  “I don’t have any idea what that means.”

  “You robbed the Azure tonight.”

  “That would be tricky, considering we’ve been here since this afternoon.”

  Paulson sighed. Drake studied the captives. None of them looked scared or insecure. In fact, they all appeared cool and unruffled.

  “Look,” Paulson said. “Normally, we’d do this at the station. And that’s still a possibility. But we’re on a clock here, guys. Tell us where the eggs are, and it’ll go easier for you. We want the explosives too.”

  Drake looked around. Cops and members of SWAT and the bomb squad were searching the restaurant but coming up empty-handed.

  “Listen,” the woman spoke up now. “Like he said, we’ve been here all day. Why don’t you check the surveillance? This casino must have a million cameras.”

  Drake watched her speak. Hayden, to his right, whispered in his ear.

  “She’s entirely too confident. They’ve rigged something.”

  Drake nodded. Already, he was certain they wouldn’t crack. He was also beginning to believe their alibis might hold up. Was this another diversion? A way of giving the other two members of their team time to escape with the eggs?

  “I want to see your evidence,” the arrogant one said.

  Paulson turned away, conferring with fellow agents and local detectives. Soon, three men were leaving the restaurant with the hotel’s manager, their instructions to find the pertinent footage and send it back.

  “What’s their game?” Karin asked. “This is clearly staged. They knew we had photos. They knew we’d connect them.”

  “Hey,” Dino shrugged, “you’re the brains. I’m just the muscle.”

  Both Luther and Molokai looked down at him. “If you’re the muscle, I’m the subtle one,” Luther growled.

  “Plus, they’re in police custody now,” Hayden said. “It doesn’t sound like the best plan in the world.”

  “No,” Drake said. “Because there’s something more to it.”

  He planted two fists on the table, leaning forward and staring the big man in the eye. “What are you three wankers up to, eh?”