Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Forty-five

R.K. Robinson was in the prone position behind a sturdy elm halfway to the front perimeter fence, peering through drifting smoke and popping gunfire. Their situation was precarious. They were taking heavy fire, and he could see by the attackers’ muzzle flashes that they were closing in on the bridged front gate. One of the gate guards dropped, panting, to the ground at his elbow. Good! He had made it! The guard held a set of grappling hooks.

“This was tangled up in the barbed wire on top of the perimeter fence at the rear of the facility, sir.”

Grim-faced, R.K. auto-buzzed Security Control.“Faded Rose Petal to Rose Bush. We believe the defenses at the back of Xanadu have been breached.”

Rose Bush’s voice said, “Perimeter fence power is knocked out, sir, but all other scanners and alarms are condition green.”

“Roger that. Keep me informed.”

The three DKA men were crowded into the janitor’s closet inside Xanadu’s front entrance. When O’B stuck an eye around the edge of the door frame, the surveillance camera was just swinging its baleful eye away from the closet.

“Now!” he said.

Larry Ballard thrust a can of shaving cream out and up to send a thick stream splatting against the lens of the camera. He and Bart burst from the janitor’s closet and raced down the hall with their stuff-bags over their shoulders. At the corner, Larry stuck his can of shaving cream around the edge. PHHHHHT!

Bart raced by him and up the stairs two at a time to just below the first landing. He stepped around the corner. PHHHHHT! Larry was already running by him to race up the next flight.

R.K. was heartened by the attackers’ slackening fire. None of his men had been hit. The invaders were lousy shots. He sprang to his feet to finally lead a concerted charge down the sloping lawn to the front gate — and his cell phone buzzed.

“Rose Bush to Faded Rose Petal. Scanners one and two are disabled, sir. And scanner three. And scanner four, sir.”

R.K. cupped his hands to shout at his men.

“All personnel fall in on me. Internal security of Xanadu has been compromised. Repeat. Xanadu security compromised!”

O’B walked along the first-floor hallway past the disabled overhead scanners, breaking the invisible infrared light beams crisscrossing the open doorways by throwing handfuls of steel ball bearings into each room that he passed.

“Rose Bush to Faded Rose Petal! Door light beams and floor pressure plates have been activated in Art Gallery A... Art Gallery B... There goes Computer Room One, and now, yes, Computer Room Two! The entire ground floor has been taken over by hostile personnel, sir!”

R.K. told his troopers, “They’ve occupied the entire ground floor, men. We gotta flush ’em out room by room!”

The second-floor hallway’s single scanning camera stared only at the locked-down steel door of the Security Control Center. On the floor in front of the Observation Room, Larry and Bart laid out the ten dental mirrors in two rows, each with a blob of adhesive putty on the handle. Larry sprinkled talcum powder generously on his palm, blew it into the open doorway.

The invisible light beams became thin red visible lines. Bart positioned himself by one side of the door frame with a dental mirror. Larry did the same thing on the other side.

“One... two... three!”

In unison, they moved their mirrors down to exactly face one of two paired photoelectric cells. The light emitted by that cell was reflected back into itself. No alarms sounded.

They pressed the adhesive putty against the doorjamb to hold the mirrors in place. O’B came down the hallway behind them and rummaged in his stuff-bag for the crossbow as they disabled the next set of sensors. O’B cranked the bow down, arming it.

R.K. Robinson stood tensely off to the side of Art Gallery A so as not to be hit by possible fire coming from the room. He spoke into his cell phone in low, guarded tones.

“Rose Bush, cut the security for Art Gallery A. Then cut the first-floor hallway lights.”

When the hallway lights went off, R.K. spun off the wall and into the doorway, Colt .45 in his right hand, flashlight in his left. The light gave him a quick glimpse of figures massed in the darkness. He emptied the .45’s clip at them.

Oh Jesus! He heard the sound of smashing terra-cotta over the slam of the .45. Taking his lead, the other men were firing.

“CEASE FIRE!” he bellowed. “Hold your fire, goddammit!”

The gallery was deserted except for the maimed art. He realized, all too late, that the enemy merely recced the room and moved on — no place to hide in here. No, they would be in the computer rooms where the machines would give them cover.

They converged on Computer Room One. R.K. gave the signal. Yelling, they charged in. And went into wild tarantellas as their feet came down on the ball bearings strewn across the floor. They crashed down like bowling pins. A perfect strike.

O’B heard the first far faint whup-whup-whup he’d been half-listening for. They would have maybe three minutes. He fitted the quarrel with the expanding-bolt head into the cranked-down crossbow. Fastened to a ring behind the fletching of the arrow was a coil of light, strong nylon rope. He raised the bow, sighted, pulled the trigger. SPRONG!

The arrow buried its heavy steel head deep in the center of the ceiling. The flanges popped open to anchor it securely. The thin nylon rope angled down from it to the coil in the hallway.

Ballard grabbed the end of the rope and swung, legs out straight ahead of him like Tarzan going through the jungle, his butt clearing the floor by inches. At the far end of his swing, he jammed his feet down on the floor just in front of the observation window where there were no pressure plates. He grabbed the sill to keep from stepping back and causing the alarm to sound. Seconds were precious.

He faded the mirroring, tapped on the glass. In the next room, Freddie swung himself off his cot. The Baron had assured them that the orangutan knew this trick from Hong Kong. Ballard very slowly spelled out the unfamiliar signs for USE STICK TO GET KEY.

Freddie signed something, Larry didn’t know what, picked up his play stick and thrust it through the bars toward the ring of keys hanging on the wall flanking the cage.

R.K. got gingerly to his feet and held several ball bearings in one hand while rubbing his hip with the other. It had all been a feint! He hurled the ball bearings across the room and yelled into his cell phone.

“Check the ape.”

Rose Bush brought up Freddie’s room on the monitor. He gaped in astonishment. “The ape is gone!”

Rose Bush leaped to his feet, ripping off his headpiece. When he did, he heard the unmistakable whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades! He dithered for a moment, flung open the door and rushed into Freddie’s room. The empty cage’s door gaped.

Freddie waddled out from his hiding place behind the opened Security Center door and beneath the scanning camera. He shoved. The duty officer stumbled forward. Freddie, playing the game as he played it so often in Hong Kong, slammed the cage door shut.

On the floor below, in Computer Room One, R.K. yelled into his cell phone, “Rose Bush, Rose Bush, this is Faded Rose Petal. Come in, Rose Bush.” No response. “Come in, goddam you!”

Still no response. He hurled the cell phone to the floor, jerked out his .45 and rushed from the room.

Freddie lumbered into the Security Control Center to stare at the glowing lights, pushed the black button. The panel slid back, Kearny and Knottnerus-Meyer came clattering down the stairs from the third-floor barracks as Ballard, Heslip, and O’B burst in from the Observation Room. Freddie grabbed the Baron’s hand.

“Everybody here?” demanded Kearny.

“We haven’t seen Trin since he took out the gate.”

“Ve can’t vait,” said the Baron. “Ve must get Freddie to der roof and into der chopper.”

The hall door burst open and R.K. Robinson came through in a headfirst dive. He tucked and rolled, came up to his feet with the only gun in the room in his right hand.

“Hold it right there, wiseguys!” he yelled.“Dis exercise iss finished,” said the Baron frostily.

R.K.’s .45 didn’t waver. And then Freddie punched him in the chops. His eyes went vague, his legs went rubbery, his gun sagged. They all ran for the stairs as R.K.’s troopers came charging up the hall, too late as usual.

The DKA men were already in the big chopper. Knottnerus-Meyer shoehorned Freddie into one of the rear seats and got in beside him. Everyone was excited and talking at once.

“Take it up, Jacques. Vunce around der meadow, den ve bring Herr Freddie back home again safe and sound.”

The rotors roared as the chopper lifted off. Xanadu fell away below them. The open meadow below was a pale blue by soft moonlight, pretty and peaceful. But then the pilot tapped the instrument panel, switched on his glaring landing lights, and started down.

“Vut iss der matter?” shouted the Baron.

The pilot yelled back over his shoulder, “Oil gauge acting up. I’ll have to do a manual check.”

He set it down just at the far edge of the meadow, opened his door, and yelled over the diminished noise of the rotors.

“Everybody out except the ape.”

They trotted well away from the chopper in that peculiar bent-over primate stance almost everyone adopts even though it is seldom necessary. Knottnerus-Meyer was last out. None of them noticed him turn around and climb back in after the pilot.

The engine roared, the rotors screamed, the chopper leaped into the air as if shot from a cannon. The four DKA men turned and ran after it instinctively. There was a very long, astounded, chagrined silence.

Dan Kearny started for the top of the road down the mountain without a word, too enraged to speak to anyone.

“Twenty miles down to Sycamore Flats,” said O’B hollowly.

“Ve haff vays uff making you valk,” said Larry.

“Vehicle coming,” warned Bart.

Headlights were rushing toward them along the uneven dirt track. The driver was pushing it hard; the vehicle was leaping into the air and crashing down, its lights jumping around crazily. They stood there, dispirited, as R.K. Robinson’s open Jeep skidded to a stop in their midst.

Beaming out at them from behind the windshield was the round moon face of Trin Morales.

“Need a lift, gents?” he asked.