Featured image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay
“According to Dimitri’s file” continued Giant without missing a beat, “this Ivan dude is the real brains of the operation. He’s management. Two others, one named Boris and the other we will just call Dan because nobody can pronounce the name, they were handlers. Wanna be management. Paper shufflers mostly. The watcher is/was a scout for Russian Special Forces. I was right about that tattoo it seems. Really good at sneaking in and killing people, but not so smart at this logistics stuff you have been schooling us on.”
Giant paused to slurp his coffee then continued “it appears the watcher, is a distant cousin of Ivan’s. The other three are Russian Special Forces buddies of the watcher. They will hunt us once we take out the watcher and let them know, assuming one or both of them aren’t paying the watcher a visit the same time Stretch comes calling.”
“So” I asked. “This shit eating grin and spring in your step is all because you were right about the tattoo?” I even waited for all three of them to have a mouthful. Coffee spit everywhere. Henry was both laughing and pissed.
Once he finished coughing Giant responded “No. We just have to do a few quick kills and we can bind the others up, throw them in a trunk and drive out of state. When the news media goes crazy down here about all of the bodies we will have found some abandoned place for you to perform your interrogations. Come back when things have cooled off to retrieve the thumb drives and be out of this shitty situation.”
“You are overlooking one tiny detail lover” Slim volunteered. “Some portion of our company along with some portion of Dimitri’s company wants all of us dead. The other portion of both companies hasn’t got a clue anything is going on until that news story breaks. Right now we don’t know who to trust. Right now whoever they are, they simply appear to be doing their jobs while slowly arranging this hostile merger. They’ll empty the cash reserves of both companies buying hits on everyone who isn’t part of their master plan minutes after that story hits. We will be running hard. Too dangerous to come back.”
“Maybe” I interjected. “Giant’s not completely wrong though. I don’t suppose someone happened to hand us where they are staying?”
“They did” answered Slim. “Not far from here. We could walk there if we wanted. Wouldn’t even drink a full bottle of water before we got there.”
“Mind sharing that information?” I asked as Henry served me a plate then went to pour the boiling water into the gallon pitcher. I quickly hopped up and put my own teabags in once he finished pouring.
“I will once I show you why we got this job” continued Slim. “Realestate sites come in handy sometimes.” He left to retrieve the computer. When he returned and had it booted he said “See this picture? Lovely room. Well appointed. Has some small table with a knick knack on it nearly in the center.”
I nodded yes and he continued. “Now look at Dimitri’s surveillance.”
“That big square tile the table stands on is a full inch higher” I said. “Hard to be sure from this photo given the shadows, but, it’s been popped up and had something put under it. A different knick knack is on top and it is covered by a glass and metal box.”
“What we want is buried under the table?” asked Giant.
“No. Some or all of it is on the underside of the table most likely. The knick knack is a fool killer.”
“Great! Let’s just go take it, kill everyone and go” said Giant.
“The glass and metal box is part of an alarm system” I stated. “Kind of alarm system used only in the private collections of very selfish people. It has an independent twelve hour battery backup. Somewhere from some angle, power runs up that table now. Those things which look like dots or rivets are really part of a laser and sensor pair. Each has a counterpart somewhere in the room. The raised tile bothers me the most though.”
“Dimitri knows exactly where the thumb drives are. He just doesn’t have anyone who can steal them” said Stretch as he caught on.
“Just so you know, those tiny black looking lines near the top of the glass box are motion sensors. Even if you manage to fake out the paired lasers, the motion sensors will transmit their motion to the central system.” I offered.
“Can’t we just hack into it?” asked Giant.
“Stand alone system. No network connection. There will be a specific heartbeat message passed between the two via radio waves every so often. If they left a keyboard and mouse attached to the system and if we could hack our way into the admin account we could turn the system off” I responded. “I’m pretty certain they left the keyboard and mouse attached with the admin password on a little yellow sticky along the edge of the monitor too.”
“You’re being sarcastic now, stop that” said Henry. “We are supposed to be planning.”
“Nooooo sarcasm at all. Slim saw it, that is why he showed me the pictures. The tile is raised up.”
“So, they have a pressure plate alarm in the floor” said Henry.
“When it is armed it is a pressure plate” I answered. “When it is disarmed it is one or more pop-up land mines. A small pair of steel bars, tall enough to protect the trigger slide into place when the alarm has power. When the system loses power, magnets pull the safety bars back out of the way. Unless this is the other model where they slide the mine back and forth. Doesn’t matter. You have to know exactly where the lift points are to apply safety power.”
“Lift points?” queried Henry.
“Just what they sound like. The only places you can lift the pad from without setting off the mines. Once it is high enough you can apply current from a 9V battery to make the safeties slide back in place, then stick in transport pins locking the safeties. It’s how the things are shipped.”
“How do you know how they are shipped?” asked Stretch.
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