John Sandford - The Devil's Code

The suite that had worried us, the possible maid's suite, was just a guest room. The computer was in a small purpose-built office. "Don't stop," I said "Just walk on by "

The balcony ran the width of the apartment. We took a moment, surveying an adjoining balcony with the night-vision glasses, then carefully opened the door and listened I could hear what sounded like a radio or CD, but it was inside, contained. Above us, I thought. We looped the climbing rope around one of the support posts on the balcony, and coiled the rope so that a quick kick would launch it down the side of the building. If somebody came through the door, we could be on the ground in less than a minute, pulling the rope after us.

That done, we headed for the safe, which was nicely concealed behind a piece of wooden paneling. LuEllen said, "I'll do this, you get going."

I walked back and forth and around the room, leaving traces of the black grease, while LuEllen started pulling out her equipment. After leaving the tracks, I went back to the door, took off my pants, jacket, shoes, and the dirty kitchen gloves, and walked back to Corbeil's office in my shorts and socks.

LuEllen made a lot less noise than I'd feared. She was good at this, and what she was doing was more a cover than any serious attempt at the safe. As long as Corbeil concentrated on the safe, and not the computer, we'd be cool.

In his office, I shut the door and turned on the light. What I was doing was simple: I was loading a program that would spool anything he typed on the computer to a file on his hard drive. Another programone of my own designwould send the file to one of my online mailboxes, and then erase its tracks. The only question was, had Corbeil booby-trapped his computer with hardware of some kind, or software, to detect intrusion?

I spent twenty minutes trying to figure that out, and in the end, didn't. I didn't think so, but you can't be sure, not in twenty minutes.

As soon as my software was in, I checked the rest of the desk, found a couple of Zip disks, and copied them to my own Zip disks.

I was just finishing when LuEllen scratched on the door I turned out the light and opened it: "Almost done," I said.

"I need your help. Hurry, and get dressed."

In the study, LuEllen had done two things, she had taken her heavy bar, which had an edge like a razor, and had cut through the wall around the cylindrical safe. The safe was set in concrete, inside a steel frame that was probably bolted to the building beams. Around the cylinder flange, she'd fitted a five-sided, one-size-fits-all steel collar, with adjustable bolts

With that in place, she'd gone to the far wall and cut another hole, exposing one of the I-beams that held up the building. The beams had been covered with drywall, so exposing them was no problem. She'd slipped a steel strap around the beam, then hooked the strap to the collar on the safe, using what amounted to a large come-along.

The come-along was essentially a high-ratio pulley, with a four-foot-long handle and a three-foot pipe as an extension; the connection was a steel cable. She'd pumped the cable tight; so tight that I could have walked on it without bending it at all.

"The thing is, the safe is starting to move," she said. "The concrete is cracking up. I can hear it, but I've got so much pressure on it, that when it breaks free, it's liable to come flying out of the hole."

"Jesus."

"It won't fly farbut it'll hit like a ton of bricks. They'd hear it all over the building. I gotta stand right next to it while you pump."

So I pumped the handle of the come-along and she stood next to the safe, watching the concrete deform. "Starting to crumble. crumbling. crumbling. Stop."

I stopped, and she peered at the safe.

"Give it a little punch." I gave it a little punch, and suddenly, the safe came free.

"All right, all right."

Working as hard and quietly as we could, it still took ten minutes to work it the rest of the way free. When it finally came out, I staggered backward with it and dropped it on a couch.

"No way I can get that down the elevator," I said. "The goddamn thing's gotta weigh two hundred pounds. It'd pull me right off the cable."

"We can't just let it sit here. we've almost got it," she said urgently.

"LuEllen, the goddamn thing is like a two-hundred-pound car batteryI can haul it, but it's got too much weight in too small a package."

"Well, goddamnit, Kidd." She walked around it for a minute, then said, "Wait," and walked out of the room, turning toward the back of the apartment.

A minute later, she was back, carrying a black satin sheet. "Let's get the safe. I'll help."

"What're we gonna do?"

"Just help."

We wrapped the safe in the sheet, so we could pick it up by the ends. LuEllen is strong as a horse, and she tied a loop in one end of the sheet so she could get it over her shoulder, and then led me back through the apartment, and out a door onto the balcony.

"What're we doing?" I whispered.

"This way."

"Oh, no."

"Yeah, we can do it. From right exactly here. It'll go right straight down into soft dirt."

"Aw, man." I was scanning the dark golf course. "Somebody's gonna see us."

"Small chance." She was grinning at me; this was what she lived for, and what might send her to jail someday. "C'mon, Kidd, be a good sport."

"Ah, fuck."

Before I became a sport, I called Green: "Anything?"

"Not a peep."

"Drive by and see what you can see."

"One minute," he said

We waited one minute and he came back, "Man reading a magazine."

"Get out of here," I said.

"Ten-four." He wasn't quite laughing.

I picked up the safe, groaning, leaned over the railing, got centered, and let it go. A couple of seconds later, it hit the ground eight stories below with a dull thud, like a small car hitting a wood phone pole.

We stood absolutely still, listening. An intake of breath? A cry surprise? Nothing but a car accelerating in the distance.

"No problem," LuEllen said.

We would have been safer, probably, going down the elevator shaft again. LuEllen convinced me to go over the side of the building. "There's nobody on the balconies. We're good," she whispered

"Jesus."

"Ten seconds from now, we're gone."

Not ten seconds, exactly. I insisted on a last look around I apartment, staying away from the computer but tracking more grease around. We packed up the black bag, and went over the edge on the climbing rope. On the ground, she gathered in the climbing rope and took the bag, while I tried to take the safe. I managed to carry it a hundred yards or so, before I had to stop. Then we wrapped it in one of the sheets, made a couple of handles out of the knots, and in ten minutes got it to the corner.

I sent LuEllen to get the car, with the sheets. She spread them on the backseat, and when she pulled up next to the fence, I threw the safe over, crawled over after it, then picked it up and humped it over to the car.

No problem.

LuEllen always gets cranked when she's been inside a place she's not supposed to have been. Dealing with her was like handling a hyperactive child: you try to keep her under control, slow her down. Tonight, she wanted the car, the safe, and the tools.

"Where're you going?"

"Back to Shreveport," she said. "If I give him the tools back, he'll cut the safe for free."

"We don't want it blown up or anything."

She rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Kidd, nobody's blown a safe since Bonnie and Clyde. He'll cut it open with a lathe."

She dropped me at the hotel and took off. As I got out, I said, "Cruise control."

"Absolutely."

When you're running, you always want to run on cruise control.

Get out on the Interstate, set your speed two miles an hour above the speed limit, and no cop on earth will look at you. If you're not on cruise control, your adrenaline will eventually get to you and you'll go flying past some cop at a hundred and ten, and it'll feel like forty-five.