Connie Hall - Flashpoint

Tommy gazed at Betsy’s glass of fruity wine, tasting it with his eyes. He’d been a recovering alcoholic since he was sixteen. He picked up his can of Pepsi, frowned at it like an old friend who annoyed him, then said, “How many guards on duty?” He settled against his flight jacket that rested on the back of his chair and sipped his soda. The slogan, Pilots Do It Better, blazed across his T-shirt.

“One at the lobby desk,” Lucy said. “Three manning the security cameras.”

“Better than ten.” Tommy rubbed his finger around the top of the can.

“I can get us past the readers and the metal detectors,” Cao said in his quiet, serene voice, all the while looking at Betsy as if he were imagining what lay beneath her sweater and bra. He reached in a briefcase and pulled out something that looked very similar to a hotel pass key, but had a metal casing.

“What is it?” Betsy asked, narrowing her eyes at the gadget.

“A microprocessor wireless modem. My design.” He grinned, looking pleased that she had questioned him about it. “You just insert it into the electronic reader and I’m in their computer.”

Betsy frowned at the invention as if it were a new brand of bullet that she’d never used before. “You sure it will work?”

“Of course.” Cao shot Betsy an indignant glance.

“Won’t they have filters that scramble a foreign signal?” Tommy asked.

“I’ll break them before the alarm goes off.” Cao paused, seeming to be at war with an emotion for a moment, then said, “There’s one drawback.”

“What?” Lucy asked.

“This device has to stay in the electronic card reader and cannot be taken out. Preferably the reader in the parking deck. Inside the bank, the wireless signal will be blocked.”

“It’s only got to get me inside and to the strongbox. So will it work…here?” She pointed on the schematic to the security gate that opened into the underground parking deck.

Cao nodded.

Betsy reached for another chip. “We have to make sure it’s not spotted by a guard or another customer.”

“We’ll deal with them.” Tommy chugged the rest of his Pepsi and burped.

“You’ll have three minutes between the entry doors,” Cao said.

“Okay.”

“What about the strongbox’s password?” Cao asked. “No way I can find out that info.”

“I got the password right here.” Lucy pointed to a pea-size piece of C-4 she had stashed in a pillbox.

Tommy leaned back in his chair, the glint in his green eyes turning apprehensive. “There’s another hitch—the carbon monoxide delivery system in the vaults. Get caught in there and your ass is grass.”

Cao spoke up. “It only takes a concentration of .04% to be fatal. At 1.28%, you’re dead in less than three minutes.”

Betsy frowned at him. “You’re a regular book of creepy facts.”

Cao cocked his head at her. “I designed a gas chamber for North Korea once.” He didn’t sound proud of the fact, but he still met her eyes without blinking.

Betsy winced. If he had meant to shock her, it had worked.

Lucy said, “So will a gas mask work?”

“Not with CO,” Cao said. “It absorbs all available oxygen, and with a mask you’re filtering and breathing in the stuff that comes out of your car’s tailpipe, but more deadly.”

Tommy spoke up. “You can use a portable oxygen mask. That’ll keep you alive until you can get to an oxygen source.”

Their conversation drifted into a heavy silence that mixed with the sound of the breaking waves outside the door.

Lucy stared at the glowing schematic on the screen. It radiated with an eerie liquid blue glow. Was she looking at the blueprint of her own coffin?

Pincer Industries, Cape Town, South Africa

Nolan Taylor drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. What was taking so long? He had arrived promptly, not a minute before or after, twelve hundred hours. He lifted the heavily starched French cuff of his white shirt and read his watch: 12:10. Was punctuality too much to ask?

The hum of a computer on the sleek modern desk across the room began to irritate him. He looked at the webcam turned in his direction. Was he being observed? Nervous energy got the better of him and he stood and walked over to the windows that ran floor to ceiling in the high-rise office, out of the webcam’s sight.

From his fifteenth-story view, the vast microcosm of humanity that was the metropolis of Cape Town spread out before him. Cape Town had evolved from a refueling outpost for Dutch ships in the sixteen hundreds to what it was today, a diverse city with 2.9 million people, one of the busiest shipping corridors in the world. This made it a perfect place for smugglers and terrorists.

He could see the N1 Freeway curving around the fringes. White beaches and blue water met the Atlantic seaboard side of Camps Bay and Bantry Bay. Along the waterfront were the old Dutch docks that had been converted into Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, a tourist’s dream of shops, bars and cinemas. Part of this area, the Sea Point Promenade, included the Muslim district and the notorious “red light” district. He’d tracked down terrorists in the Muslim district before.

High-rises stacked the city proper like building blocks. Down the street from Pincer Industries, the historical yellow sandstone walls of City Hall gleamed in the sunlight. Farther on the Botanical Gardens formed a lake of green. Table Mountain towered in the background over the whole seaside city, its plateau looking just like the natural UFO landing pad in Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a few extra hills on either side.

His gaze moved southeast of the city to Cape Flats, where its white beaches looked pleasantly beautiful, innocuous enough from this distance. His brows furrowed as he remembered what he’d left there only two hours ago.

A side door to the office opened. He straightened his tie, then turned to face the CEO of Pincer Industries.

Downtown Cape Town

Lucy drove a rented Corolla down St. John’s Street. She had rented six vehicles for the stay in Cape Town: the Corolla, three Jeeps and two vans, all at different rental places, all fees paid with cash, and all under assumed names. She tugged at the short black bangs of a wig, making sure her auburn eyebrows were covered. Cao had her disguised with a Roman nose, black glasses, and sideburns. She’d wrapped her breasts so they wouldn’t show beneath the male pin-stripped suit she wore. She was just tall and muscular enough to pull it off, with the help of shoulder pads. How did men get used to all these layers of tight clothing?

She glanced in the rearview mirror. The white van carrying the rest of the team cruised several car lengths behind her. It reassured her, but it didn’t stop the adrenaline strumming her veins.

She neared the target, Plus Suisse Worldwide Depository, a monolith of steel and glass that shadowed half a block.

She approached the cement-lined ramp to the underground parking deck and slowed. “Okay, going in,” she spoke into the bone mic.

“Passing you,” Tommy said as the van eased past her.

“Turning.”

Cao, Betsy and Tommy all wished her luck, and she heard the worry in their voices. Tommy pulled the van into an alley across the street, next to a sleek modern law office. Cao slid a tiny portable dish onto the roof.

She paused before the electronic podium and gate. An LCD screen spewed out directions in Afrikaans, French, Dutch, German, English, Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Setswana, Muslim, Hindu…and the languages kept rolling.

She spoke more than ten languages, a necessity from having lived in many impoverished Asian and African provinces with her mother, so she had already pulled out the mini modem.

“Okay, in we go.” She slid it in. It fit perfectly. No alarm went off. Always good.