Interference

by Danielle Girard

  A ROOKIE CLUB NOVEL

  INTERFERENCE

  DANIELLE GIRARD

  Interference

  Copyright © 2016 by Danielle Girard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions

  Second Smashwords Edition: July 2016

  Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics

  ISBN-10: 0996308970

  ISBN-13: 978-0996308977

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  The Rookie Club Cast, in order of appearance:

  Mei Ling, Computer Forensics Inspector (also in Cold Silence)

  Cameron Cruz, Special Ops Team/Sharpshooter (Featured in Dark Passage)

  Hailey Wyatt, Homicide Inspector (Featured in One Clean Shot; also in Dead Center, Dark Passage, Everything to Lose)

  Hal Harris, Homicide Inspector, partner to Hailey Wyatt (Also in One Clean Shot)

  Ryaan Berry, Triggerlock Inspector (Also in One Clean Shot, Dark Passage)

  Sydney Blanchard, Senior Criminalist, Crime Scene Unit

  Jamie Vail, Sex Crimes Inspector (Featured in Dead Center and Rookie Club Book 5, Everything to Lose; also in Dark Passage, One Clean Shot)

  Roger Sampers, Head Criminalist, Crime Scene Unit

  Chapter 1

  Oyster Point was not where one expected to find a police warehouse full of guns. Over the past couple of decades, the area had actually become a rather attractive corporate park. The adjacent marina housed expensive yachts, and a well-developed trail system ran along the water. Natural grasses swayed in the wind. It was all very quaint and peaceful, not at all the way the place had been twenty years earlier when it was basically the cheapest available office space in the area.

  J.T. wasn’t there to enjoy the view and didn’t give a damn about natural grasses. The whole place could have gone up in flames. The only concern was that economic prosperity meant tight security, which translated into extra time to set things up. Eighteen years was a long time to wait for payoff. But maybe the waiting was done. J.T. smoothed the gloves one last time and followed the trail.

  Even in the dim predawn light, the phone box was easy to find. Phone companies hired human monkeys then gave them an impossible-to-screw-up set of instructions. In J.T.’s experience, the monkeys still managed to do things wrong, maybe half the time. Evidenced by the fact that the phone box wasn’t even locked.

  A pair of wire cutters and the lines would be down. Ten seconds tops, but first, Sam’s cell phone jammer had to be working. At this moment, Sam was in the small apartment adjacent to the garage, predictably huddled over his desk. He was likely working on the night’s third or fourth Big Gulp of Mountain Dew. The empties would be lined along the desk like fat children at the edge of the playground. Sam was waiting, something he did by playing Minecraft or breaking into small nonprofits and finding ways to occupy himself. Last week, he hacked into a San Jose animal shelter and changed the names of the residents. A six-year-old calico was now called Big Red Pussy, a golden doodle who had been named Betsy was now Curly Bitch and a Rottweiler that had lost an eye in a street fight had been renamed One-Eyed Dick. Sam thought this was hilarious.

  Thankfully, Sam was not a field guy. For one, he didn’t even have a driver’s license, but he was also about as stealthy as farming equipment. No, Sam was hardly even a behind-the-scenes guy. Sam was a train wreck, but Sam could also be managed. Mostly this was accomplished by keeping Sam away from other people, which wasn’t difficult because Sam preferred the company of other online nerds, sitting in their own dungeons, drinking their own Big Gulps and eating some similar diet to Sam’s daily feasts of Cheetos and microwave burritos.

  Now, to work. The backpack dropped gently on the ground. The cell phone jammer was in a small cardboard box, surrounded in bubble wrap. Sam tended to go overboard on packaging. The device was a silver box not much bigger than a box of Tic Tacs with a black antenna coming out of each end. In the center was a silver switch. In Sam’s girlish print, the left side read “Off” and the right side “On.”

  Only gloves touched the box as the switch was flipped from “Off” to “On.” The call to Sam’s number failed, which meant the jammer was working. The clippers made a satisfying snip through the wires, and in under a minute, the first step was done.

  At the front of the building, Hank waited in the black van. Hank was a monkey, too, but of a different sort. J.T. might have brought Karl instead, but Karl was smarter, and J.T. didn’t want any extra questions. Plus, all interactions with Karl had been electronic. J.T. had never seen his face nor the other way around, and J.T. was hesitant to change that. The fewer people J.T. dealt with in person the better.

  J.T. raised a hand, and Hank emerged excitedly from the van and slammed the door closed.

  “Watch the noise.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Hank said. He shouldered an oversized duffel that seemed mostly empty.

  Monkey. “You have what you need?” J.T. asked.

  Hank patted his bag and nodded.

  “Okay. It’s your turn.”

  Hank approached the warehouse’s back door with its 4-digit entry lock. He, too, wore gloves as he pulled a crowbar from the duffel bag and worked the end of it into the narrow opening between the door and the jam, rocking it up and down until it was wedged in far enough to begin to muscle it. The trim came off first with a loud snap as the thin metal broke away from the front of the building. Hank’s hands slipped, and he dropped the crowbar, which made a loud clattering sound on the pavement. It rang out like a bullet shot. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Sorry,” Hank muttered again. He removed a long pick-like tool and a rubber mallet from the back and created a dent in the metal door just above the knob until the latch was fully exposed. With the crowbar, he wrenched it open. Hank was built like a tank. It took all of seven minutes before the door fell open.

  They stepped into the warehouse together, and Hank let the door close behind them. Softly. A first. The space smelled of old paper and lemon cleaner. The smell meant someone still cleaned the place, so their footprints would be harder to track. That was good news. The lights were off across the warehouse and the temperature cool, not the kind of place where someone was working, especially not at this hour. Skylights lined the walls almost at the ceiling, which meant someone might notice if they turned on the lights.

  J.T. pulled a flashlight out of the small side pocket of the backpack and flipped it on. “You got yours?”

  Hank found his flashlight, and the two of them scanned their lights across the inside. The warehouse space was small and lined with shelves where boxes were piled high. Police case files. Overflow
. This was not the interesting part. That was in the far corner.

  “This way.”

  Hank followed, finally quiet, as they crossed the warehouse to the last aisle where a cage took up the far corner. J.T. stood back. Hank used his crowbar to open the locked gate in under a minute.

  The cage was lined with metal cabinets, some green, some gray, all old-style and flimsy. The first took Hank approximately fifteen seconds to jimmy open. Hank whistled at the contents, the shelves lined with semiauto assault rifles, each tagged with a case number.

  “Load those up. And the other cabinets, too,” J.T. said. “We don’t need all of them. You’ve got four minutes.”

  Hank pulled two empty black duffels out from the one that carried his tools and dropped them on the floor. He opened the first and started loading guns.

  There was a more important task to be done while Hank stole the weapons. J.T. exited the cage and returned to the main area of the warehouse, using twenty precious seconds to scan the rows before deciding on the placement. The second row seemed the best, most out of the way. Against the wall, certainly, to allow Sam the best signal. J.T. chose a box from the second shelf, two down.

  With the box carefully set on the warehouse floor, J.T. loaded the larger of two computers from the backpack into the box. The computer was an inexpensive one—an Acer—purchased at Walmart while dressed in a business suit and leather gloves and scarf for the chilly day. And a wig. With cash. Three months ago. Three others were purchased under similar circumstances in case Sam needed them. A disposable cell phone and an independent battery source were strapped to the computer with Hello Kitty duct tape. Sam’s idea of a joke. Sam had bought the tape himself.

  None of J.T.’s prints would be on anything. Sam had been warned. J.T. had gone so far as to bring him a box of extra-large sterile gloves to fit his big, chubby hands. But Sam was sloppy. Hackers, in general, were sloppy creatures, J.T. had learned. Careless criminals, they coveted bragging rights over anonymity. The process over the results. Easily manipulated, too, by the right person. Sam was no different.

  The second device was a Raspberry Pi, a computer that was no larger than a deck of playing cards. That needed to be higher. J.T. tested the shelves. The metal shelving was inexpensive. Empty, they would be easy to topple, but the weight of the old case files held them steady. Even spacing made scaling them relatively easy.

  J.T. set the small computer, with its own battery pack and cell phone, on the top shelf before climbing up and reaching to the ceiling. The acoustic ceiling tiles were loose; the first one opened up without any trouble. It was almost too easy. Lousy security for police storage.

  The bundle weighed maybe 20 ounces, mostly from the weight of the battery. J.T. slid it up into the ceiling so it sat against the building’s outside wall and rested on the metal crossbars between acoustic tiles. Checked it twice. The tile slid back down smoothly. It looked just like the others.

  Everything was as it had been. J.T. climbed down, retrieved the backpack and returned to the weapons cage where Hank was loading his last pack. As predicted, Hank had left nothing behind. The guns were superfluous, but Hank was a common thief and common thieves lacked awareness of when enough was enough. Without mention of his excessive exuberance, Hank loaded the remaining handguns into the duffle. Hank didn’t ask about the four minutes of absence. Lack of curiosity and brute strength were Hank’s best features.

  Hank wiped his gloved hands on his pants. “That’s all of it, boss.”

  The two made their way outside and pushed the door closed. Up close, there would be no missing the damage to the door. But, from a distance, it would be hard to see. J.T. flipped the cell phone jammer off before turning to the backpack to retrieve its packaging.

  “J.T.?”

  J.T. started and spun at the sound of Hank’s voice. “Jesus Christ.”

  There was the sound of metal on metal. The jammer fell between the phone box and the exterior wall of the building. J.T. tried to retrieve it, but it was wedged down out of reach.

  Hank backed up. “Sorry, J.T. I wanted to know if you wanted me to wait or go to the van.”

  J.T. said nothing. The jammer was off, but leaving it was a bad idea. This was supposed to look like a smash and grab. The jammer was too sophisticated for an average burglar. J.T. dropped the pack. “Give me the pick.”

  Hank rattled through the guns in search of the pick.

  J.T. focused on staying calm. Eyes closed. Deep in, deep out. No breaking necks. Not yet.

  “There it is.” Hank started to pull the tool free, but it caught up on a gun. Suddenly, a shot fired.

  They both ducked as a bullet struck the passenger side window glass on a utility vehicle parked in back. Glass exploded.

  Without hesitating, J.T. grabbed the backpack in one hand and one of the duffels in the other and started for the car. Hank was right behind with the other two duffels.

  The jammer was gone. There was no getting it now.

  “Shit, boss,” Hank said, panting. “I had no idea the guns would be loaded.”

  “Don’t speak.”

  “Did you think they would be loaded?” Hank went on, nearly whining.

  “Do not speak,” J.T. repeated, fighting for control. Hank was disposable but, at that moment, it couldn’t happen fast enough for J.T.

  Thankfully, Hank went quiet, although he continued to make little sighs and huffs like a high school girl, the need to talk obviously making him crazy. Despite the broken glass, the streets were quiet as they opened the back of the van.

  Hank was sheepish as he loaded the bags. J.T. slid in the side door and pointed to the driver’s seat. “You drive. I’m going to sit back here and see what we got.”

  The take couldn’t have been less interesting. That was not the reason J.T. chose the back. It was about not being up front with Hank. Especially if something went wrong. Something else.

  “We heading home?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Hank pulled away from the curb with a jolt that knocked everything, J.T. included, toward the rear of the van. “Sorry, boss.”

  J.T. did not respond. It was over. A mile away, the text came in from Sam. “I can see the networks. Working to get in now.”

  J.T. knew Sam would ask for the jammer. As much as J.T. would have liked it, Sam would not be distracted by the importance of his task. He’d want his toy back, and he would not take the loss well. J.T. would have to pretend the jammer wasn’t lost. Hopefully, Sam could be put off for a day or two while J.T. pretended to “find” it. Better to let him focus on one thing at a time.

  The worst was over. Now it was a matter of some cleanup.

  Out the windshield, a light turned yellow and Hank accelerated hard. Again, everything slid to the back of the van. Then, there was the loud honk of a siren turning on and the glow of flashing red and blue lights. A cop.

  Fuck.

  “Boss?” Hank called in a panic.

  “Pull over, Hank. Stay calm.” The cop car parked, and Hank twisted his hands over the steering wheel.

  “Take your gloves off, Hank. And don’t let on that I’m here. I’ll tell you when to go.”

  The plates on the van were stolen. It wouldn’t do to have them run. Things were about to get messy, but J.T. was good with improvisation. Hank, on the other hand, was not. The cop car cracked open, and a single officer started for the van. He had a blond goatee and a wide upper body, the kind of young officer who probably spent a lot of free time at the gym. His left hand hovered on the butt of his gun. A left-handed cop was at a disadvantage. J.T. was surprised he didn’t come around the passenger side. Instead, he approached the driver’s side with his gun on the outside. Inside, the Sig Sauer P250 complete with silencer was now aimed at his head through the van’s tinted side window.

  When the officer reached the back bumper, Hank started to rol
l his window down. J.T. released the Sig’s safety.

  The cop’s stride reached the middle of the van. The trigger eased back. One. Glass exploded. Two. Bullets lodged themselves in the cop’s head.

  Hank screamed.

  The officer fell to the pavement. There was a short twitch in his left foot, then nothing. Done and done cleanly.

  “Let’s go, Hank,” J.T. whispered. The police car’s camera would pick up everything. J.T. didn’t want their voices recorded, but it would be hard to miss Hank’s screaming.

  “Drive now,” J.T. hissed again, but Hank hadn’t heard.

  J.T. crawled up toward the driver’s seat and resisting the temptation to put a bullet in Hank’s head, too, whispered, “Come on. We have to go.”

  Hank lurched forward, and J.T. held tightly as the van swerved onto the street. At the corner, Hank turned right, driving in the opposite direction of home. He was hysterical. He made it around the corner and out of the view of the police car’s camera at least.

  “Okay, stop here,” J.T. said. “I’ll drive.”

  Hank stopped the car in the middle of the road. Obviously, he had never seen anyone shot before. And it was such a clean job, too. He ought to have been impressed.

  The two switched places, and Hank sank down against the wall of van and pulled his knees to his chest. He made moaning sounds for the remainder of the drive.

  “It’s okay, Hank.”

  There were no other incidents. The garage door slid open, and soon the van was inside with the door closed behind them. Only with the engine off did Hank pull himself from his fetal position and move toward the door.

  Hank had his hand on the van’s door handle, the back of his head cleanly exposed when the two bullets entered the back of his skull. The bullets didn’t break the glass, so the mess was contained in the van. At least that had gone right.

  It would all stay there for a few hours. Right now, the only pressing matters were a shower and a beer. Even at five a.m., J.T. was ready for a drink.