Thief Trap

by Jonathan Moeller

  The website also noted that Duke Orothor had a private museum of historical artifacts. Access was by invitation only.

  Almost certainly the museum, and that optoelectronic rod we needed, would be somewhere on the upper floors.

  Murdo found the Grand Warrior’s parking ramp, and we paid an exorbitant fee for the privilege of parking the SUV. We got out and headed for the front doors to the casino, Hailey’s heels clicking against the pavement with every stride. Those things had to be murder to walk in, but I had to admit she did it with aplomb.

  We reached the gleaming glass doors to the Grand Warrior. A half-dozen grizzled looking men in suits stood guard there, and they waved us down with metal-detecting wands and had us walk through a scanner arch. Once they confirmed that we weren’t carrying any weapons, they gestured us through, and we walked onto the main gambling floor (excuse me, “gaming floor”) for the Grand Warrior Casino.

  “Good Lord,” I muttered.

  “Gaudy, isn’t it?” said Russell.

  It was a huge space, as big as a convention center, with rows of automated slot machines of all descriptions and dozens of tables hosting every kind of card game I had ever heard of and a bunch that I hadn’t. Sharp-dressed croupiers stood at the tables, overseeing the games, and though it was only 6:30 PM, there was already a good crowd at both the tables and the automated machines. There were hundreds of elderly people sitting in front of the slot machines and the video poker devices, their faces grim as they fed coins into the machines.

  Hell of a way to spend your retirement. Maybe literally.

  The ceiling was about thirty feet above the floor. I looked up and saw hundreds of cameras suspended from the ceiling, some of them pointing right at the gaming tables, others covering every conceivable angle of the huge room. I didn’t think there was a single square inch of the floor that wasn’t recorded and monitored at all times. That was a bad enough, but I could work around that.

  But a grid of narrow metal catwalks hung from the ceiling, and I saw Elves walking on those catwalks.

  They wore the long red coats of Elven commoners, and I was pretty sure that each one of the Elves was maintaining the spell to sense the presence of magical forces. That meant if anyone used a spell on the gambling floor, those Elves would know about it at once. The Royal Bank in Washington had used a similar security setup, a skillful blend of technological and magical security measures, which had made our job there all the harder.

  I really hoped that Duke Orothor didn’t own any golems.

  “Let’s do a circuit of the room,” said Morelli. “We’ll head for the bar on the opposite corner. Try to look like gawking tourists.”

  That part, at least, was easy. There were a lot of bright and shiny things to stare at on the gaming floor. I ignored them and made a note of the security personnel. There were a lot of them, all with the hard-bitten look of former men-at-arms. I also spotted a few plainclothes security men masquerading as guests and customers.

  Russell had no trouble gawking, thanks to the waitresses. Their uniforms were a bit on the revealing side.

  And by a bit, I mean a lot.

  Each waitress wore a black bustier that left her shoulders, arms, legs, and a significant portion of her chest exposed. It was like a swimsuit, but more revealing. Black pantyhose and black high heels completed the outfit, along with white cuffs around the wrists and white bow ties around the throat. Russell tried not to stare and mostly succeeded.

  We reached the bar, and Morelli waved over the bartender, a middle-aged man in an outfit a lot like a croupier’s.

  “What’ll it be?” said the bartender.

  “Whiskey and soda for me,” said Morelli. He looked at Russell and Hailey. “Soda for my son, and the same for my wife.” Russell’s lip twitched at that. Morelli gestured at Murdo. “My brother and his wife will both have coffees.” He handed over several twenty-dollar bills. “Keep the change.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the bartender, getting to work.

  “Hey, question,” said Morelli. He sounded just like a Midwestern tourist. “My son has to write this report for school about ancient Earth history. I heard his lordship the Duke has a big museum of that stuff upstairs. You wouldn’t happen to know how to get tickets, would you?”

  “Sorry, sir,” said the bartender. He began setting the drinks in front of us. “It’s the Duke’s private museum. He’ll invite guests, and he will sometimes have private parties or dinners there, but it’s never open to the public. Your best shot is to write to someone in the Duke’s office and ask for a tour.” He set coffees in front of us. “Otherwise, they’ve got some good pre-Conquest museums in Reno. Shows how bad things were before the High Queen took over.”

  “Oh, well,” said Morelli. “Thanks anyway.” He took a sip of his drink. “Hey, this is pretty good.”

  “Only the best for our guests,” said the bartender. He moved on to the next customers.

  “Like I would be your wife,” said Hailey once he had moved out of earshot.

  “Agreed. I never buy damaged goods,” said Morelli. Hailey glared at him, which had no effect whatsoever on Morelli. “All right, let’s split up and look around. Go play the tourist.” He looked from me to Russell and then to Murdo. “I assume the three of you will stick together?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t want to let Russell and Murdo out of my sight. “What do you want us to do?”

  “You already know what to do,” said Morelli, taking another sip of his drink. “Look around. Get a feel for how the security works, and note the position of the cameras.” He glanced around. “The boss has blueprints of this place, but we need to see how things work in action.”

  I scowled. “He didn’t mention that.”

  “I’m not the boss,” said Morelli. “I don’t make those decisions. Lucky for you, since I think you’re a dangerous liability.” I took a drink of my coffee. Morelli had paid way too much for it, but it was good. “We’ll meet outside the front doors at 11 PM and compare notes.” He extended his arm towards Hailey. “Come along, wife. Let’s lose some money at the craps tables.”

  She gave him the middle finger. Morelli waited without changing expression, and Hailey sighed, threaded her arm through his, and they set off together.

  “She’s not old enough to be his wife,” said Russell once they were out of earshot.

  “Yeah, she’s your stepmom,” I said. “Morelli traded up to the psycho trophy wife.” I looked at Murdo. “Well, darling husband, shall we go play at being tourists?”

  He smiled. Was it me, or was there a bit of sadness in his expression? “Let’s go.”

  The next four hours, while not particularly enjoyable, were at least interesting. I dropped a few coins in slot machines, lost a few dollars on dice games, and had a few more cups of coffee from the bar. Gambling was something that I had no interest in whatsoever, which was kind of funny because I gambled with my life all the time. Maybe this kind of game just wasn’t high-stakes enough for someone like me.

  But as Murdo and Russell and I pretended to be tourists wasting a few bucks on gambling, I kept an eye on the security arrangements, and I didn’t like what I saw. There were at least thirty uniformed security guards on the gaming floor, all of them carrying handguns, and some remained on continual guard near the doors while others patrolled the floor. I spotted at least a dozen plainclothes security men masquerading as guests. Then there were the cameras, and the Elves patrolling the catwalks overhead. The museum was somewhere on the upper floors, but every stairwell and elevator was guarded and monitored.

  I wondered if we could somehow go through the upper windows, but the Grand Warrior’s windows were made of ballistic glass, and I was pretty sure they had all been wired with alarms. It was impossible to blast through that kind of ballistic glass without making a hell of a lot of noise, and that would set off every alarm in the casino at once.

  I had seen harder targets, but not many.

  The next morning, we set out back
for Reno.

  I chewed over what I had seen, and I hoped that Nicholas had a hell of a good plan.

  Maybe it would be for the best if we failed. Maybe if Nicholas couldn’t get the data rod, he couldn’t claim the Sky Hammer.

  But I doubted it would be that simple.

  Chapter 5: A Night On The Town

  “So,” I said that evening, summing up my observations of the Grand Warrior Casino. “There are cameras everywhere, the security is professional and competent, the Elven commoners will detect any spells, and all the entrances to the elevators and the stairwell are under constant surveillance. For that matter, we don’t even know exactly where in the building the museum is. I could try to crack it alone, but if I made a single mistake, it would bring the whole building’s security down on my head. If we go in as a team, a single mistake will wreck the plan. Hell, Nick, if you even decided to have the Rebels attack the place, the security could probably hold your goons off until the Duke and the local Homeland Security branch mobilized to stop you.”

  Silence answered my pronouncement.

  We had returned to the restaurant in downtown Reno where we had met Nicholas two days ago, and we had all resumed our previous positions at the table. For some reason, the restaurant had no customers. I wondered if one of Corbisher’s shell companies owned the place.

  I looked around the table. Morelli remained calm as ever. Swathe alternated between scowling at me and looking to Nicholas. Hailey sat by Nicholas with her arms folded over her chest, scowling at me and Russell and Murdo. Leonid Rogomil was taking sips from some kind of alcoholic drink. Both Corbisher and Nicholas looked a little tired, and I had the impression they had spent all day in meetings.

  Maybe they had spent the day talking to the Knight of Venomhold. That wouldn’t have been pleasant.

  “It seems,” said Nicholas, “that we have several problems to overcome.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What are you going to do about them?”

  “To begin with,” said Nicholas, “we can mitigate some of them. We have obtained the blueprints for the Grand Warrior.”

  I frowned. “How? Bribery?”

  “Yes,” said Corbisher in a dry voice. “The Duke relies a great deal on the organized crime syndicate of Las Vegas, and it turns out they’re susceptible to bribery.” He looked smug, but it always pleased him when bribes could solve a problem.

  “Martin,” said Nicholas, and Corbisher nodded and got to his feet. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a small metal cart containing a laptop and a fancy high-end holographic projector. Corbisher booted up the computer and fiddled with the projector, spending a minute or so plugging various cords into various ports, and then, at last, the projector lit up with an architectural blueprint.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I announced, “Martin Corbisher, AV technician.”

  Corbisher glared at me but stayed at the laptop.

  “Thanks to these blueprints,” said Nicholas, pointing at the hologram floating against the walls, “we know that the Duke’s museum is on the fiftieth floor of the Grand Warrior. Furthermore, we know there are only two ways to reach the fiftieth floor. Either the emergency stairwell in the northwestern corner of the building or the Duke’s private elevator in the hotel lobby. Both approaches are guarded and are under constant surveillance.”

  “Could we land a helicopter on the roof?” I said.

  “Possibly,” said Nicholas. “But the casino’s security personnel display a high degree of professionalism. Once the helicopter approached the casino, we would have maybe ninety seconds before they responded. For that matter, since the casino’s security works for the Duke, they would have access to the kind of weaponry that could bring down a helicopter.”

  “Then we’ll have to play it the way we did in Washington,” I said. “Wait until the casino is hosting a live event or a concert or a big party or something, and then try to slip in when security is overloaded dealing with that.”

  “Fortunately, this time we can take the initiative,” said Nicholas. “From what we’ve discovered and what you’ve observed, the casino’s security follows strict protocols. No, we’ll simply attack the casino and force it into lockdown mode. While they deal with that, you’ll slip into the museum and take the rod.”

  My stomach tightened. “You’re going to…attack the casino?” I thought of Madison and the Ducal Mall, of all the people who had gotten killed at both places. And there would be a lot of innocent people at the casino. By the time we left last night, I think there had been at least three thousand people on the gaming floor, with many more heading to some sort of late-night concert or comedy act or something.

  If the Rebels started shooting in there, it would be an absolute massacre.

  And Nicholas would do it, too. As he had explained to me, again and again, he had no qualms about targeting civilians.

  I glanced at Russell and saw that his eyes had turned flinty. He had followed the same train of logic. And he might decide to blow everything up by calling Homeland Security. He wouldn’t want the price of his cure spell to be a bunch of murdered people.

  “Fortunately,” said Nicholas, “that would be unnecessary. Homeland Security’s Las Vegas branch is exceptionally competent, and Duke Orothor is a capable commander. He utterly crushed the last few Archon attacks that targeted Las Vegas.”

  “A few bombs on the gaming floor would do it,” rumbled Leonid.

  “It would,” said Nicholas, “but you know as well as I do that no matter how well you prepare, a battle is always the flip of a coin. Something unexpected could go wrong, and we don’t need that at this stage of the game. No, a simulated attack should serve our purposes just as well.”

  “Simulated?” I said.

  Nicholas smiled. “As it happens, the security of the Grand Warrior Casino happens to have a serious flaw, one that we’ll only get to exploit once. Server-class computers all have to be licensed and registered with Homeland Security.” I nodded. “Several years ago, a Nevada company tried to get around those regulations by exploiting every available loophole. They pushed too far and got shut down for their trouble, and their founder was flogged on a Punishment Day video. Naturally, he wound up joining the Revolution. When he did, he revealed that his developers had installed several backdoors into their servers, which they had intended to sell to the highest bidder.”

  “Sounds like a swell guy,” I said. “Let me guess. When that company got liquidated and its assets auctioned off, Duke Orothor saved himself a ton of money by buying some discount servers.”

  “Precisely,” said Nicholas. “And those backdoors into the servers’ operating systems were never closed or patched. Once the Duke’s security people realize they exist, of course, they can be easily blocked. For that matter, the back doors themselves only offer limited access. Alas, the company that made those server systems was undone by its own incompetence as much as anything else.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, the plan is to hack into the casino’s servers, set off an alarm on the counting room or the vault or the gaming floor or whatever, and while security is chasing a phantom threat, I slip into the museum and steal the rod.”

  “Correct,” said Nicholas. “We’ll probably set up something physical on the gaming floor. We can use more traditional methods of distraction – smoke bombs, or something of that nature. That will give you the few minutes of chaos you need to get into the museum and grab the rod.”

  “But I’m going to need to be in the casino already,” I said. “I’ll need a reason to be there, a cover identity.”

  “We can’t access the casino’s financial records,” said Nicholas, “but we can reach the personnel database. We can insert you as an employee into the casino’s records and use that to forge you an access token. That, I think, should let us get you to the museum.”

  “Okay,” I said, thinking back to previous jobs. “You should probably get me into the system as a janitor. No one pays any attention to custodians.”<
br />
  “Only a specific group of employees has access to the Duke’s museum,” said Nicholas. “The ones who help host his private parties. We’ll have to add you as one of them, I’m afraid.”

  “Private parties?” I said. “Does…”

  Then I remembered the waitresses.

  “Hell,” I muttered.

  ###

  The next week was busy.

  If everything went according to plan, the actual job would only take about fifteen minutes. But a lot of work had to go into the plan, and a million different things could go wrong. To make sure that they didn’t go wrong, we had to prepare.

  First, Nicholas and his team relocated from that restaurant in Reno to a warehouse on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Russell, Murdo, and I went with them, and we set up in the warehouse as well, parking my van and Murdo’s SUV behind the building. The warehouse was a big place, and it looked like the Rebels had used it as one of their transfer points to move weapons and armaments to Venomhold because there were still numerous pallets of weaponry. It also served as a way station, because the Rebels had used prefab walls to convert a portion of the warehouse into a space that looked like a cheap hotel.

  I stayed close to Russell whenever possible, and when I couldn’t, Murdo kept an eye on him. That was necessary because Nicholas always had someone watching Russell. Sometimes it was Swathe, sometimes Hailey, and sometimes Leonid Rogomil. They never spoke or approached (though Swathe and Hailey glared daggers at me), and Leonid only hummed a cheerful song to himself, but the message from Nicholas was clear.

  If I tried to double-cross him, he was coming after Russell.

  Oddly, it was comforting to have Russell there, because I now had two people watching my back. I worried how Russell would hold up under the strain of having enemies nearby at all times, but he did well. Between myself, Murdo, and Russell, we could watch out for each other, and Murdo and I made sure to never let Russell go anywhere alone. It would be much easier for the Rebels to take a swing at him then at Murdo or me.