Night Passenger

by David Stanley

Foster came over and dumped his huge nylon bag on the floor. Blake had him get on his hands and knees. He did what he was told without hesitation. His broad back was now in front of Thorne like a table. Reluctantly, he stepped up, first with one leg, then with the other. He stood hunched over with his knees bent, as if he was surfing. Of all the scenarios he'd imagined for the evening, this had not been one of them. He looked down at his tennis shoes on the navy-colored flight jacket. There was almost no give in Foster's back, it felt like he was standing on a piece of wood. It scared him. This wasn't fat, this was hard slabs of muscle. There'd be no way for him to beat a man like this in any form of unarmed combat. If it came to it, and he was almost certain it would, he was going to need to shoot Foster. A head shot, or center mass with something like a shotgun; anything else might just make him angry.

  With his hand braced against the steel door for balance, Thorne straightened to full height and his head entered the hole in the ceiling. There was a noticeable bump in the sound levels coming from the air conditioning unit. He put his small flashlight into his mouth, grabbed hold of two pipes above his head and pulled himself up through the hole and sat on a small ledge. He was bent over, with rough concrete pressing into the back of his neck, but at least he wasn't hanging on the pipes. The angle forced his head down into Blake's flashlight beam. He flinched at the light and twisted around, assessing his location. In front of him, the wall on the other side of the corridor continued beyond the suspended tile and joined onto the floor above. To his left, at the limit of the flashlight’s reach, rose another wall of concrete blocks which he took to be the top of the stairwell they'd climbed minutes earlier. He couldn't make out anything to his right, except for a large black hose that snaked off into the distance.

  The air conditioning for the gallery.

  He followed the snake back to where it plunged into the room below. On that side of the ledge, in place of ceiling tiles, were sheets of rough untreated particle board nailed onto wooden joists. He frowned and looked more closely at the ledge and smiled. It was the top of the nearside corridor wall.

  Thorne looked down through the hole again.

  “Hey, Blake, I got a question for you.”

  “What's that?”

  “Who's your daddy?”

  Blake laughed. “There's a way through?”

  “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome.”

  “Oorah,” Porter said, his voice flat and sarcastic.

  “Pass up a pry bar and the small RF jammer. Let's rob these idiots.”

  “I hear that.”

  Blake stepped up on Foster's back, his hands holding the pry bar and the jammer. Thorne took them and placed them on the ledge next to him, then reached down to pull up Blake. They were both over 200 pounds and the space became impossibly full with both of them in it. His flashlight in his mouth, he crawled out along one of the thicker joists until he was in the middle of the room below. The jammer was less sophisticated than the other unit, requiring only activation of different frequency blocks. No fine-tuning was possible. He felt Blake watching him from the ledge. His gut told him that neither Blake or Porter would want to kill him because of their previous friendships, leaving that to Foster, Lynch or Stockton. That was half a chance, he thought, and it might be all he needed. Down in the corridor, Porter and Lynch were talking. He couldn't make out their conversation, only that it was light, excited. Tension was easing as optimism returned. A million dollars wasn't what it used to be, but it was still a powerful motivator.

  “How’d you know it would be like this?”

  He looked above Blake's flashlight, where his face would be.

  “What's that?”

  “Down in that office, it was like you knew.”

  “I know contractors. There’s no corner they won't cut to shave a dime off their costs and improve their margin. Plus, they could be pretty sure no arty types were going to come up here to check. Security is an illusion, there's always a way past it.”

  The jammer active, Thorne reached back and waved his hand around until it stopped against the cold steel of the pry bar. It was a thirty-inch octagonal rod with a spike at one end and a wedge at the other. The bar had a nice weight, at least fifteen or sixteen pounds. He imagined dropping through the hole in the ceiling and sinking the metal into Foster's back until it punched out the front. That might be enough to take the big man out.

  His watch face caught in the beam of his flashlight.

  3:55.

  They'd already been inside seventeen minutes.

  Twelve minutes until his insurance policy kicked in.

  The wooden panels were nailed on from below so he had to work the pry bar in reverse. He worked the flat end into the edge of the joist, then leaned forward over the panel. The confined space allowed him to press his back against the concrete above for extra power. There was a squeak as he pushed down and a gap opened up. He worked the wedge deeper into the gap and pushed again. He moved along the panel, repeating the process. It was tough going and he began to overheat. Clothing chosen to limit trace evidence was not ideal for physical labor.

  After a couple of minutes, he paused to wipe his forehead on the back of his sleeve. It wasn't clear to him why he was doing construction work when his involvement was meant to be technical. Doubtless more payback for their fight. As he started to work the pry bar under the joist again, there was a loud groan and the panel dropped down an inch. There was a creak as more wood splintered. Then the panel was gone.

  The weight of the wood caused it to hinge open along the opposite side, then tear itself off and fall into the space below. The noise was incredible, like an explosion, and the flat concrete next to his head amplified the sound still further. His heart beat wildly in his chest. He hadn't considered the sound the panel would make when it fell, never mind how he might prevent it. Dust swarmed through the air and he coughed to clear it out his lungs. He pointed his flashlight at Blake and saw a huge grin on his face.

  “That was fantastic! Did you shit yourself? I know I did!”

  Thorne didn't reply.

  Unexpected loud noise was no joke when you'd worked EOD.

  His hands were shaking now, a classic shock reaction. He sat back on his heels and let his hands rest on his thighs. He hoped it wouldn't get worse, shock could be extremely debilitating and he needed to be on top of his game. He kept the flashlight trained on Blake's face so he wouldn't see the shaking, but Blake had already moved on and was looking into the room below. Behind him, a wild-eyed Lynch appeared, a nickel-plated .45 clenched in his fist. Without turning, Blake spoke to him.

  “Put it away, Lynch, just a piece of wood falling on the floor.”

  Blake's crew were oddballs, but they were tight.

  He crawled back along the joist. Blake had stopped moving his flashlight about and had it trained on something. Thorne turned to look. It was the end of a metal shelving unit, and it made a perfect ladder.

  “It's like they put it there to help us,” Blake said.

  He sat next to Blake on the ledge and let his legs hang down through the hole he'd created. It felt good to stretch his muscles and restore circulation. After several seconds, his eyes settled on the space where he'd set up the second jammer, a space that was now empty. He groaned inwardly. The twisting force of the falling panel had knocked it into the room below, a fall it would not survive. He saw no point telling Blake, the damage was done. If the alarm had been triggered, the cops would arrive before they could get out. All he could do was hope there was no sensor and carry on. He turned to Blake.

  “You want to go first?”

  “After you, Gunny. Age before beauty.”

  Thorne sighed. “You're a real hero, Blake.”

  “I don't know if I ever told you this, but I once considered joining the Navy.”

  Thorne laughed, he couldn't help it. Some things never changed. Blake and Lynch were laughing too now. The sound was strangely pleasing, like a tide washing ashore. The laughter relaxed him, even though
it caused a ball of fire to burn where Foster hit him. If he lived to see the following day, there'd be the most amazing bruise there, no doubt about it. Blake passed him a night vision headset. Thorne took off his baseball cap and stuffed it into the front of his top and pulled on the device. It was a cheap civilian rig, the kind used by perverts and serial killers. He crouched at the edge, judging the distance to the shelving unit.

  Five feet out, three feet down.

  He put the flashlight in his mouth and launched himself across the void onto the shelving unit. The shelving was either incredibly heavy, or screwed into the floor, because the impact of his body slamming into it caused only the smallest movement in the metalwork. He climbed down onto the floor. Next to his shoes was the battered wooden ceiling panel. Looking up he saw three flashlights aiming down at him; Porter had joined the party.

  “Kill the lights, I'm going to do a sweep with infrared.”

  “Whatever you say, amigo.”

  The flashlights winked out one after the other and the darkness rushed in. He gave his eyes a moment to adapt, but there appeared to be no available light in the room. Without light, the noise given off by the air conditioning unit was all the more monstrous and overwhelming. He flipped down the night vision goggles and turned them on. A grainy green room appeared before him. He took in his surroundings. There were rows and rows of shelving units, each of them about fifty feet long. The room had to run the entire width of the building, each shelf filled with wooden crates. Hundreds of them. Behind him stood the huge air conditioning unit. He looked at the corners of the room, searching for sensors. It looked clear. He turned his head sweeping the scope back and forth until he found what he was looking for: the remains of the second jammer. He quietly kicked the pieces under the nearest shelf out of sight.

  “C’mon man, what are you doing?”

  Blake's voice had an unpleasant, hard edge.

  “I bet he's rubbing one out,” Lynch said.

  Above him, he heard laughter.

  “You're…not are you Thorne?” Blake asked, humor creeping into his voice.

  “He's thinking about Foster's asscrack,” Lynch said. “I saw him check it out.”

  More laughter. He was dealing with morons. The last piece of jammer hidden, he walked to the doorway, deactivated the night vision and turned on the room lights. Panel after panel of fluorescent lights flickered on. After the darkness, the light was brutal. There were groans from above and he allowed himself a smile.

  “Jesus Christ, Thorne!” Blake said. “Thanks for the goddam heads up.”

  While he waited for the others to join him, he clenched and unclenched his fists. The shake was gone now, his body had burned through the spike of adrenalin pumping through it.

  Porter came down first.

  Thorne noticed Porter's right pants leg didn't sit properly at the ankle. On the outside, the material was bunched up around something roughly the size of a woman's fist. He didn't need to see it to know what it was: a Smith & Wesson .38 Chief’s Special. If he'd been ready, he could've grabbed it off him, but then what? Shoot his way out? The truth was, his problems wouldn't end with all of them dead. Blake's girlfriend would still be out there somewhere and he had no way to find her. She'd kill Kate. He believed it, that was no idle threat. The woman was crazy.

  Porter got to the floor and turned to face him. His eyes narrowed, seeing Thorne standing so close to him, but they quickly widened again.

  “Oh shit, look at the size of this place.”

  “Just wait,” Thorne said. “You haven't seen the worst of it.”

  Porter walked past him and looked down the gap between two rows of shelving units. With the lights on, the volume of items stored was hard to ignore.

  “Damn,” Porter said. “That’s a lot of boxes.”

  There was no denying it. It was a hell of a lot of boxes and for sure they didn't have time to crack open each one to find the Picasso. There could be 300 crates on those shelves. He glanced at his watch and his eyes widened in surprise. 4:04. Three minutes left. Even if they left immediately, he doubted there was time to get out the way they had come in.

  It dawned on him that the robbery was going to be a bust. To his surprise, this realization brought with it a wave of despair. For the first time, his thoughts focussed on the money Blake had promised him rather than threats to his life. He had no idea how he could survive without it. In his mind, he'd already started to spend the money. Pay from this season’s show was already half gone, advanced early by the network to head off a previous crisis. It would be months until money from his producer credit started to trickle in and that was barely enough to keep the lights on.

  He walked down one of the aisles. Perhaps there’d be something worth seeing at the other end. He didn't believe it, but he figured someone ought to check after they'd come this far. Thorne reached his hand out as he walked along, his gloved fingertips brushing past each box. It made no sense for them to file the box away on one of these shelves if it was being shipped out the next day, that part of Blake's story rang true. Either the crate would be set aside, or the painting was still in the gallery and they hadn't boxed it up yet. He got to the end of the aisle and found what he had expected: a blank wall.

  He paused to study the nearest crate more closely.

  It was covered in labels from different security firms charged with its transportation. He prodded it experimentally with his index finger. It moved. It was lighter than it looked. Lighter, than it should be. He looped around the stack and came back along a different aisle. A box cutter lay on one of the shelves and he palmed it and put it into his back pocket. All three men had now descended the shelving ladder and were now deep in an argument. Porter stood directly in front of Blake, the top of his body pitched forward aggressively.

  “Blake, all these crates look the same. How’re we going to find the right one? You said it would basically be on its own in here.”

  “Clearly the information I had was out of date.”

  “You think? Your information's so out of date the building's changed shape since it was true. This room isn't even on your blueprints.”

  “I don't like that tone, Porter.”

  “Really? My tone is the problem here? You going to get Foster to hit me too? Maybe your pet dog won't bite if there's no meal coming. I shouldn't have to tell you this, Blake, but you're only in charge when there's a payoff. This goes south, it's a free for all.”

  Blake's mouth wrinkled up on the side closest Thorne.

  “Porter…Sam, we can fix this, this can still work.”

  Lynch shook his head. “I don't know about that. Porter's right, we aren't going to find Jack in this place. I think they got the lost ark in here somewhere.”

  “That's enough.” Blake turned hopefully toward Thorne. “Find anything?”

  “Nothing good.”

  “Come on!” Lynch said. “Let's just grab a couple of these other paintings and get the hell out. Who cares if it isn't the right one?”

  Blake sighed.

  “And do what with them, Lynch? Sell them in Venice Beach?”

  “I don't know, we can figure that part out later. This stuff is probably worth millions, it'd be crazy to leave it here.” Lynch shrugged. “Maybe your buyer would take them.”

  “He was very specific. To put it in a way you would understand, we were hired to steal a Ferrari and offering him five Toyotas instead isn’t going to cut it. This is exactly the kind of amateur stunt that gets us caught. We have to stick with the plan, the plan is solid.”

  Lynch almost choked.

  “Solid? Is that a joke? The plan is dogshit. We busted our ass for nothing. What I'm suggesting we will at least have,” Lynch paused, “a bunch of Toyotas.”

  “There's something you need to know about these boxes,” Thorne said.

  “Yeah?” Lynch said. “What's that?”

  “They're all empty.”

  The three men turned to face him properly, their mouths open.
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  “What?” Blake asked.

  “It hit me. There must be 300 boxes here. I thought to myself, that'd be enough to fill a whole gallery and then I realized. They are. These boxes are for shipping them around the country, they don't store them in there. For sure the painting we want isn't in one of them, filed away along one of those shelves. If it's not sitting roughly where you're standing as you originally said, then I got to think it's still mounted on the wall.”

  The tension on Blake's face melted away. Truth could do that.

  “Fuck.”

  Blake seemed to have summed up the whole night for all of them.

  “Isn't that basically a guess, Thorne?” Porter asked.

  “Sure, but if you look closely, all the crates have been opened. The lids are resting on top upside down. You can see the nails sticking up.”

  They all turned to look, except Thorne. He wanted to see their reaction.

  “I can't believe I missed that,” Blake said.

  “Wait,” Porter said. “If this room only has a bunch of empty boxes in it, why have they fitted the door from Fort Knox?”

  “For that,” Thorne said, pointing at the air-con unit. “It protects the paintings in the gallery from the hot, dry, air outside. That's at least as important as protection from theft and they don't want anyone coming back here messing with the controls. There's no art stored in here which probably explains the lack of security inside the room.”

  Lynch was staring at him with open hostility.

  “This is all some kind of joke for you, isn't it Thorne?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well forgive us for not seeing the funny side,” Blake said, “but we need that painting. As I already explained to you, my sister's life is on the line.”

  Porter and Lynch exchanged glances.

  “Blake, it’s not here. We need to abort.”

  “I didn't tell you this before, Thorne, but this is Plan A. Plan B you're not going to like so much. We aren't leaving here without the painting.”

  “Please tell me Plan B doesn't involve us running into the gallery, pulling the painting off the wall and running for our lives?”