through the front ranks of bodyguards scattered across the main estate, taking them out quiet, no casualties. Duct tape and razor wire. A couple of tough guys in the bunch. It’s always easy to shut them up fast. Big guys go down harder. B-Team was mine, and we were already at the rear servants’ entrance, five guys waiting for the signal to move.
That’s how it works. You advance with military precision. You need that kind of training. The timing is crucial. One team forward, then the next, each waiting for the other’s word to move again, like fists climbing a ladder.
Twenty seconds and the whole perimeter was covered. Guns on every exit. Bodyguards and estate security brought down hard. The main windows rigged to blow. We used to call it getaway insurance. My eyes blinked sweat away as I glanced at Toni’s feed on the six tiny video windows across the top of my handheld: My wife running her nose along thick lines of cocaine in the back of a limo, not batting an eye while the old man talked his trash, pouring drinks, spouting the usual greasy gangster crap about all the things he could do for a woman like her. His voice, loud and clear over the wire, as my fingers worked the locks. No music. Just the silence of logic.
We were inside the house within three more seconds. Moving toward the main corridor. The vault six feet below us, just off the main service elevator. My father waiting with his team to cover our escape. Toni in the old man’s lap now, seducing him with one arm behind her back, the drugs hardly even affecting her steel-trap mind. My team down the elevator, into the giant steel-walled strong room. The vault, like a silver monolith, glinting offthe miners’ lights strapped to our heads. My mind and my fingers, working the numbers, forcing myself to be somewhere else, somewhere far away among walls of pure logic, so I couldn’t see his hands all over Toni. His hands, filling the tiny video windows now, touching her . . . and . . .
. . . and . . .
The wire exploded in my ear—glass and gunfire and screeching tires, twenty miles away, the limo punched into Swiss cheese from the outside by shooters. We were right on the vault when the shit came down. All that rapid-fire chaos, as Hartman’s guys stepped in. He’d warned us not to use Toni on this one, and my father told him to go fuck himself. He laughed and said he would get personally involved if we stuck to our guns, and my father told him to go fuck himself again. Hartman’s laughter was ringing in my memory and I was cursing our own stubbornness. I never thought he would really do it. When I look back, the whole thing seems so absurd.
Everything went straight down the toilet at our end. The bodyguard in the limo Hartman ambushed must have signaled a backup unit near the estate grounds—one of those X-factors you always try to anticipate, but you’re never quite ready for when that ice shock of adrenaline kicks in and the panic oozes up your throat, my father’s voice screaming that the world is ending and we fall back to Plan S.
S for shotgun .
At the vault, I was done with the retina scanner and halfway through the time lock when I started to hear the dull thump of explosions inside the house. Three of our own men blown down quick, cluster bombs and return fire hacking the bad guys to hell. The magnificent thunder-blitz of cracking artillery, screams and crashes and hard shells clattering on marble floor. Flesh and bone pounded by solid lead slugs—the kind that tear through a car door with muscle to spare. The hard metal-on-metal pump ofpistol-grip assault weapons, like deep pistons chunking in unison with the explosions. I held myself in the silent spaces between the muffled blasts and concentrated on getting the goddamn vault open.
While the good old days ended, just out of sight.
Across town, Toni was pulled from the back of the shredded limousine by David Hartman. Her shoulder, bleeding from a 9-millimeter slug
That’s how it works. You advance with military precision. You need that kind of training. The timing is crucial. One team forward, then the next, each waiting for the other’s word to move again, like fists climbing a ladder.
Twenty seconds and the whole perimeter was covered. Guns on every exit. Bodyguards and estate security brought down hard. The main windows rigged to blow. We used to call it getaway insurance. My eyes blinked sweat away as I glanced at Toni’s feed on the six tiny video windows across the top of my handheld: My wife running her nose along thick lines of cocaine in the back of a limo, not batting an eye while the old man talked his trash, pouring drinks, spouting the usual greasy gangster crap about all the things he could do for a woman like her. His voice, loud and clear over the wire, as my fingers worked the locks. No music. Just the silence of logic.
We were inside the house within three more seconds. Moving toward the main corridor. The vault six feet below us, just off the main service elevator. My father waiting with his team to cover our escape. Toni in the old man’s lap now, seducing him with one arm behind her back, the drugs hardly even affecting her steel-trap mind. My team down the elevator, into the giant steel-walled strong room. The vault, like a silver monolith, glinting offthe miners’ lights strapped to our heads. My mind and my fingers, working the numbers, forcing myself to be somewhere else, somewhere far away among walls of pure logic, so I couldn’t see his hands all over Toni. His hands, filling the tiny video windows now, touching her . . . and . . .
. . . and . . .
The wire exploded in my ear—glass and gunfire and screeching tires, twenty miles away, the limo punched into Swiss cheese from the outside by shooters. We were right on the vault when the shit came down. All that rapid-fire chaos, as Hartman’s guys stepped in. He’d warned us not to use Toni on this one, and my father told him to go fuck himself. He laughed and said he would get personally involved if we stuck to our guns, and my father told him to go fuck himself again. Hartman’s laughter was ringing in my memory and I was cursing our own stubbornness. I never thought he would really do it. When I look back, the whole thing seems so absurd.
Everything went straight down the toilet at our end. The bodyguard in the limo Hartman ambushed must have signaled a backup unit near the estate grounds—one of those X-factors you always try to anticipate, but you’re never quite ready for when that ice shock of adrenaline kicks in and the panic oozes up your throat, my father’s voice screaming that the world is ending and we fall back to Plan S.
S for shotgun .
At the vault, I was done with the retina scanner and halfway through the time lock when I started to hear the dull thump of explosions inside the house. Three of our own men blown down quick, cluster bombs and return fire hacking the bad guys to hell. The magnificent thunder-blitz of cracking artillery, screams and crashes and hard shells clattering on marble floor. Flesh and bone pounded by solid lead slugs—the kind that tear through a car door with muscle to spare. The hard metal-on-metal pump ofpistol-grip assault weapons, like deep pistons chunking in unison with the explosions. I held myself in the silent spaces between the muffled blasts and concentrated on getting the goddamn vault open.
While the good old days ended, just out of sight.
Across town, Toni was pulled from the back of the shredded limousine by David Hartman. Her shoulder, bleeding from a 9-millimeter slug
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