Stephen Cannell - The Plan

On the roof, Naomi jumped as the little dish began to move beside her. She photographed it with her Nikon motor-drive while it first elevated then rotated to the east, looking for the UBC transponder on the Galaxy Four satellite. She could hear the alarm bell still ringing far below, but she tried not to let it bother her. Naomi Zhu had been trained in covert operations. She knew nothing ever went the way it was planned. Half of being good at fieldwork was being able to improvise.

In the control room, John Baily was waiting for the dish on the roof to access the satellite. He was looking for the UBC signal so he could pull it in on a downlink-none of which could be traced. The ATIS only registered when they transmitted. Once he had the network feed, he would make minor manual adjustments to get rid of electronic noise. Once he'd cleaned up the signal, he would have the same images on his five monitors in the truck that the Sunday crew in the Rim control room had on their monitors. Then he and Cole heard the three electronic beeps that told them that the GPS had found the transponder on Galaxy Four. A few seconds later, the typed words they were both waiting for appeared on the main line monitor: "Satellite Acquired," it said in white block letters at the bottom of the screen. In seconds, they were watching the Game of the Week postgame show from the Jets locker room. Akmad Rashad was interviewing a defensive back named Calvin Hobbs: "We was just getting good reads and tryin' to keep interior containment. . It was a team effort," Hobbs said, grinning on all five monitors.

Ryan and Lucinda had fifteen minutes to get the rest of the job done. They had gone over the plans earlier that afternoon with John and Cole.

Babbling John had been hunched over his schematic drawings in the dimly lit control room at the Truck Mart. He showed them where the exterior door at UBC would be located. It would be locked. "But," he said, "I still got the key. Assholes forgot t' take it from me."

He had pulled his heavy ring out off his belt. Why, Ryan wondered silently, did X-over-Y geeks always carry fifty keys on giant key rings attached to their belts? One of life's mysteries.

John removed a key and handed it to Ryan. "I can't guarantee they didn't change the locks on this door, but knowing them guys, my guess is no." Ryan put the key in his pocket. "They got two big exhaust ports coming out about ten feet over the door that leads down there. Those ports are for the two generators in the lower basement. When the shore power is pulled, the generators kick on automatically. They're both air-start, five hundred KVAs. They get turned on by a blast of air instead of a starter motor. Between the time the shore power is out and the building goes dark, these things will be up and running in less than six seconds, turning the power back on throughout the building. You gotta take the gennies out first, then go for the shore power. Do it the other way and you're gonna give 'em time to phone out. All the phones in there are on computers. You blow the power and those assholes're gonna have t' shout out the windows to get help."

Nothing in Ryan's experience prepared him for what he was about to do. He and Lucinda moved around the side of the building, finding a small alley that separated UBC from the Federal Bank building next door. The space between the two huge high-rises was the size of a lane just wide enough to allow service trucks to pull up to the doors. He looked up as he felt the first drops of icy rain hit his neck "It's raining," he said to Lucinda.

"Probably isn't gonna change much."

He marveled at Lucinda and her courage. She was right there beside him. If nothing in Ryan's existence had prepared him for this, he wondered what it must be like for her.

They found the door John had told them about. Ryan took out the key and stuck it into the lock. It slid in smoothly and turned. Ryan opened the door and, just that easily, he and Lucinda stepped onto the ground-floor service entrance of UBC.

The stairwell was well lit, the poured concrete walls shiny and smooth, reflecting the banks of humming overhead fluorescent lights. They moved slowly down the wide metal staircase. Ryan felt his leg tightening but he pushed on. John had said that the power room was in the lower basement. They would have to go down a long, lighted corridor, and the double doors at the end of the hall should open with the same key that had let them in from the alley. They could hear constant humming from ten servo-mechanisms, as air conditioners and elevator motors turned on and off, whining to life and then thumping off with pneumatic precision.

At the bottom of the stairs, Ryan opened the duffel bag. Inside were two blankets and two big battery-powered flashlights and tools to disconnect the main power handles. Ryan checked both flashlights and then, holding one, they moved down the long corridor to the service doors. Ryan slid the key in this lock, and again, it worked.

The power room occupied almost a quarter of the basement. The west wall was dominated by six huge circuit-breakers, all with large levers with red rubber handles. The two enormous 500-KVA backup generators sat side by side in the center of the room, screened off by a low interior wall so that nothing could fall accidentally into the machinery. Ryan saw that the ceiling was almost thirty feet above them. The basement in this portion of the building was two stories high. For some strange reason, Lucinda laughed. He cocked his head in a silent question.

"Nerves. Either that, or I'm slipping over the edge."

He took her hand and squeezed it.

"Let's get these handles loosened." He handed her two pairs of square-bit, rubber-handled pliers and took two pairs for himself. Then he moved to the first lever, and clamping the teeth of the pliers to each side of the bolt that held the handle, he started to unhook it. The idea was to get all six of the power levers loosened so that they could throw them and shut off the power. Seeing by the flashlights, they would then unscrew the bolts with thei r f ingers, remove the handles, and take them with them when they left, making it impossible for UBC security to turn the power back on.

It was here that they encountered their first major problem. . All of the bolts had been spot-welded into place.

Red Decker was in his chief engineer's office at UBC when Wallace Litman called and told him to go directly to an office in midtown Manhattan. He had packed o ne of the little Sony GPS hand units and a large electroni c s atellite map of New York that gave latitude and longitud e a ccurate to feet and inches. It filled a small suitcase. Th e m ap had been developed by Lojack, a car alarm syste m t hat gave precise electronic locations of stolen cars throug h a radio signal. It would also work for the portable GPS.

Red found the office in a turn-of-the-century building decorated by ornate columns and pigeon shit. The office he was looking for was on the third floor and the fogged-glass door said DIMARCO AND SON, FREIGHT FORWARDING. He had been told to be there at five P. M. and was right on time. He tried the door and found that it was unlocked, so he moved slowly into the little room.

"Is'a okay, I'm'a wait for you. . "

Red spun around and saw Pulacarpo Depaulo leaning back in a swivel chair, a Sony Walkman on his curly, black head. Pulacarpo flashed a broad, white smile across iridescent green lapels.

"You from'a TV?"

"Yeah. From UBC. I'm here to help find the stolen equipment," Red said, demonstrating his total lack of understanding of the real mission.

Pulacarpo pulled the headphones down around his neck and got up. "Everybody, they next door. . " Red Decker followed him down the hall to the rickety lift, which groaned like an old whore as it rattled and lunged down four flights to the underground garage.