Springboard

39

The House of Good Fortune — now there was an appropriate name. The question was, of course, who enjoyed the good fortune. At the moment, it wasn’t the House — and they had no idea how bad it was yet to become.

Locke grinned. So far, his plan had worked like a fine Swiss watch. So simple, when you knew how. Almost an anticlimax.

When the heavily armed paramilitary “terrorists” had started their assaults on two casinos, firing submachine guns into the ceilings and throwing flash-bangs all around, it had been bedlam. The two casino security heads, who had been carefully primed earlier by Locke in his colonel’s disguise, warning of this very thing, had taken one look and done just as they had been told — they called the People’s Army antiterrorist hotline. They believed that the local police would be outgunned, just as Locke had told them. And even if they had called the police, Locke had that covered as well.

Everything was covered.

A few guards were killed or wounded, but then the People’s Army charged in and saved the day, shooting, spraying tear gas, capturing the dozen terrorists in the House of Good Fortune, and being ever so heroic in the process. And how fortunate, no tourists had been slain!

When the second casino — the Palace of Jade — was hit, Wu had declared a state of emergency, then quickly surrounded and occupied the Jade and three more of the major casinos with his troops. The second “terrorist” team was captured as easily as the first. Then Wu had explained to the casino managers that such a large-scale raid indicated a major threat, and that it was better to be safe than sorry. Nobody argued with him.

The owners and managers had been more than grateful. It never occurred to them that Comrade General Wu was the one about whom they should be worried — that the “terrorists” were no more than a sham.

With the cooperation of the security people and the blessings of the owners, Wu temporarily shut down all casino and hotel communications from the gambling palaces, so, he said, any hidden confederates inside could not aid the robbers. Massive and powerful jammers blanketed each place so that not even cell phones would work.

Time was critical. A few hours was all they would have, and then higher powers would want to know what the devil was going on.

For now, Wu had control of the buildings, and even if those inside had worried and thought to call for help — which they would not — they couldn’t make that call.

So they held five casinos, with an average of over sixty million dollars U.S. each on hand: yen, dollars, euros, pesos, pataca, pounds, dinars, rupees, rubles… Most of the money was used and unmarked, some of it in computer-accessible draw-upon accounts or certified flashmem deposited in the casinos’ computers.

A third of a billion dollars, at least.

It could not have gone any better. Locke was ecstatic.

But, of course, this was the easy part. The hard part— getting away with the loot? That was where Locke was going to earn his money. And his cut, a mere twenty percent, would be enough to let him buy first-class accommodations in a number of countries around the world by the time they did figure it out.

The plan was pure genius, if he did say so himself.

The only small beetle left in the pudding was Net Force. Leigh was recently buried in a shallow grave in a local park, and would aid no one. But Net Force did have a faint trail, and Locke wasn’t sure how far along it they actually were.

They almost certainly had Shing, who knew that Wu was behind the military computer attacks, but Shing didn’t know about this part of it. Locke didn’t think they were that close — and what could they do against Wu’s trained troops anyhow? — but he couldn’t be sure — he’d been more than a little busy here, setting up the score.

Well. He’d worry about Net Force later. Even if they knew more than he thought, knowing it and proving it were two different beasts. By the time they might be in position to cause any problems, the party would be long over.

Locke’s com button chirped. He tapped the tiny button on the device, which was small enough to fit entirely in his left ear. It operated on one of the very few frequencies not blanketed by the jammers.

“Here.”

“Stage Two?” came Wu’s voice.

“Yes.”

Locke tapped the com device’s control again. He went and found the casino’s manager.

“Ah, Colonel,” the man said, his face full of relief. “We are forever in your debt. Is everything okay?”

“Actually, no, sir,” Locke said. “We have uncovered a major problem. The terrorists claim they have set dirty bombs in several of the casinos.”

“Set what?”

“Explosive devices rigged with small amounts of radioactive material.”

“An atomic bomb? Here?”

Locke thought the man might bolt in a dead run for the doors.

“No, sir, not an atomic bomb — it’s a conventional explosive, probably C-4, could even be dynamite. Low-yield. It probably wouldn’t begin to knock your building down, or even cause major damage by itself. But around the explosive core is something radioactive — medical-grade material, or low-level uranium, most likely. If those go off, they will contaminate the buildings — everything — and everybody — in them. Nobody will be able to come back into any of the casinos for a long time, and nothing in them will be salvageable.”

Locke didn’t know if dirty bombs worked exactly that way or not, but the story sounded both plausible and dramatic, and that was all that mattered. Besides, it was highly unlikely that the casino manager was any kind of expert in radiation poisoning and contamination.

Locke let the manager get there ahead of him, and it didn’t take him long. “Our money! We’ve got to get it out, to a safe place!”

The idea of sixty million dollars that nobody could touch, much less spend? What a horrible idea to a casino manager!

“Yes, sir. Get your guards to help my men. We’ll move all the cash and credit tabs to a secure location and come back to find the bomb. We’ll force the terrorists to tell us eventually, but we might not have much time—”

“Yes, yes, of course. Wong!”

The head of the casino’s security hurried to where Locke and the manager stood. “Go with the colonel — there’s a radioactive bomb here, we need to get our money out, now!”

“And have your people evacuate the building,” Locke said. “If that bomb goes off, everybody in here could be contaminated.”

Wong pulled his walkie-talkie and began speaking rapidly into it.

Pure genius, Locke thought. The best plan he’d ever come up with.

“Where will you take the funds?” the manager asked.

Locke pretended to think. “There is a small steamship in the harbor that belongs to the People, a cargo freighter used for Army supplies. It will be easier to guard with water all around it, and the river is upwind from the casinos. If there is an explosion at one of the casinos, the money will be safer there than anywhere else. We’ll take it to that ship. Your security chief will stay with it.”

“Yes, yes. Hurry!”

Hurry and steal all our money! Locke had to hold his smile in check. Indeed, he would hurry.

The freighter was a red-herring — the money would indeed go up a ladder on the starboard side — but without pause, it would go down another ramp on the port side, where a trio of fast boats would be waiting. These in turn would go but a short distance to a makeshift airfield where much faster airplanes were standing by.

Wong the security man would be clouted on the head and dumped into the bay, as would the other security people invited along to allay even the most remote suspicion. The boats would be roaring away as soon as they were unloaded, and the freighter rigged with explosives — nothing radioactive, just enough to make a very large bang and to sink it — and when eventually someone came looking for their money, the freighter would blow up.

After transferring the money to the aircraft, the empty boats would head for Taiwan. These might or might not escape detection, and too bad for the men running them if they did not.

The money by then would be flying along just over the sea, in stealth-gear-ensheathed airplanes painted to match the sky from below and the water from above.

All of this had been put together like a fine Swiss watch, every cog in place, jewels at every friction point, as slick as a film of oil on glass.

Wu had a hundred men in the operation, hand-picked and trained, and loyal to him, most of whom believed they would receive a quarter of a million U.S. dollars each for their help in the heist. In truth, ninety of them — including the twenty or so who played the role of terrorists — would get jacketed metal machine-gun bullets instead of money. Of the ten survivors, most thought they would get a million each. Eight of those would eventually join their fallen comrades, leaving only two who expected to receive five million apiece.

Greed was a wonderful motivator.

Wu would dispatch those last two, and then there would be none.

Well, save for Locke, and he had no intention of turning his back on anybody. He had his own plan. He would divert a portion of the money for himself — for there would be four fast boats opposite the freighter, instead of three, as well as a helicopter hidden elsewhere with a range sufficient to reach Taiwan or maybe even India — and Locke would be gone before anybody knew it, including Wu.

Especially Wu.

By the time whichever authority in charge got it all sorted out, Wu would be in Taipei, and Locke halfway to somewhere far, far away, the first leg of several flights and passport changes to leave a cold trail behind him.

Locke’s plan was so bold, nobody had ever considered it before. And, as everyone knew, fortune favored the bold…

Locke went to direct his team, who would be helped in the theft by the casino’s own guards and the blessing of its manager. In a few moments, Army trucks full of money were going to roll through the streets of Macao, with the enthusiastic assistance of those who were unknowingly being robbed.

Pure genius. No doubt about it…