by Ted Weber
Dingo hobbled toward the bedroom light switch.
M-pat almost shouted. “Leave that off.” He pulled out his mini-light and shone it in Annlote’s face.
“Not right in his eyes.”
M-pat moved the beam. Pel tapped the frame again and kept still. Then he smiled and swiped fingers against the temple arms again. The lenses turned opaque, then displayed a set of eyes. Annlote’s eyes. The pupils were crisscrossed with bloody lines.
“Worked,” Dingo said. “As good as we practiced.”
“Only problem is, it’s hard to see now.” Pel dispelled Annlote’s eyes from the glasses. “Okay, let’s do the thumbs.”
Annlote mumbled something through the sock.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” M-pat flipped him over.
Pel fished a handheld comlink out of a pants pocket, entered his code, and started an app. He pressed its glassy front against Annlote’s right thumb, which poked through a web of tape.
When he pulled it away, a perfect replica remained on the screen. He brought up a menu, tapped something, and the thumb replica reversed. “It was a mirror image before,” he said. “Let’s do the other one just in case.”
When they finished the retina and thumb captures, M-pat looked at Dingo. “We need to secure them, real good.”
“You got it, boss.” Dingo removed a second roll of duct tape from a jacket pocket, but Pel held up a hand, rummaged through the duffel bag, and pulled out Annlote’s handcuffs. He tossed them to Dingo.
Dingo placed their captives back to back, snapped one cuff on Annlote, ran it through the bed frame, and put the other cuff on his girl. “Now there’s a way to keep a couple together.”
Pel set up a microcamera to keep an eye on them.
Where were the car keys?
M-pat found them on the dining room table, along with the apartment key, black-framed comlink glasses, and an open bottle of Jameson. He took them all, bottle included.
He returned to the bedroom and drew a horizontal circle with his finger. Annlote’s eyes promised vengeance.
“Sorry about this,” M-pat told their captives. “Be thankful you alive. You been stupider, coulda gone the other way. So just relax, sit tight. We’ll send someone to let you go, you just gotta be patient.”
After they exited, M-pat pointed to the door lock.
Dingo reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a tube of Gorilla Glue. He squirted it into the card reader and a little into the backup mechanical lock.
One down, two to go.
40
3:55 P.M.
1 hour and 35 minutes to kickoff
Dingo
Guised as security guard unextraordinaire Alvaro Jimenez, including the man’s data glasses, Dingo sat shotgun in Luke Annlote’s black Mazda.
“Thought a rebel like you would have no problem riding a chopper,” M-pat/Luke said from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, laugh it up, Skywanker. How’s I supposed to know Alvaro’d have a ‘cycle? Lucky I can even drive a car.”
“Even that’s a bold claim.”
Luke Annlote (now M-pat), Alvaro Jimenez (Dingo), and Nick Smith (Pel) had the 4 p.m. to midnight shift at the broadcast data center. Pel was five minutes behind them. Annlote and Jimenez worked as guards, but Smith was a computer guy. Pel definitely made a better techie than a guard. He couldn’t fight, and having a rock star girlfriend was the only thing preventing his coronation as King of the Nerds.
The MediaCorp campus rose from the barren trees ahead. The place looked like a fortress. Or a prison.
A double row of tall chain link fences stretched as far as he could see, razor wire on top, concrete pilings in front. A thick-barred gate blocked the road, with a bladed tire trap just beyond. To the left of the gate, a guard watched from inside a reinforced steel bunker, bulletproof windows all around. Cameras and scanners pointed ahead and to the side. Douchebags even had a red stop light at the entrance, as if the rest weren’t enough of a hint.
“Yo ho, yo ho, it’s off to work we go.” Inside, Dingo felt uneasy. Not ‘cause he was scared per se. But this was the big time and everything had to go perfect.
The guard in the bunker looked bored as they pulled up, but smiled when they stopped next to the side window. His head was bald as a baseball. “Hey, Luke,” his voice came from a speaker. “When you setting me up with Rose’s sister?”
M-pat shrugged. He’d said they shouldn’t talk much. He held his electronic badge in front of the shoebox-sized card reader.
A small LED lit green. He looked up at the camera above the reader.
Baldy peered into the Mazda. “You too, buddy,” the speaker said.
Dingo passed M-pat his badge.
He held it up to the reader and Dingo/Alvaro leaned over his lap and stared at the camera.
The stop light turned green and the gate slid to the side.
“Ride sharing, huh?” Baldy said.
What would a gearhead like Pel say? “Transmission’s shot on the bike.”
Baldy turned back to M-pat/Luke. “So, Rose’s sister?”
M-pat nodded, then pulled the car through the open gateway. In the rearview monitor on the dashboard, Baldy muttered something resembling “what the fuck?”
Dingo put his data glasses back on. Directional arrows and distances appeared over the roads. M-pat should have said something. Hope we didn’t blow it.
The broadcast building, six stories of featureless concrete atop a slight hill, was just ahead, to the left. A huge parking lot sprawled in front, less than half full. “Over there,” he pointed.
M-pat parked as close to the building as he could. He switched off the ignition button and looked at Dingo. “Follow my lead, ‘kay?”
“You got it, chief.” He had to admit, M-pat had a knack for this stuff.
They hopped out and headed for the only break in the concrete—a plastiglass protrusion with two revolving doors in front and a MediaCorp sign above.
Inside, a trio of receptionists crowded around a monitor behind the front desk, glued to the Super Bowl pre-game show. “…This year’s commercials promise to be the best ever,” an announcer prattled.
Dingo/Alvaro farted as he passed them, silent but deadly. With luck they’d blame each other.
M-pat/Luke stiffened but kept walking toward the employee entrance. He stuck his badge against the electronic card reader next to the twin metal doors, then looked in the camera lens above it. No biometrics here—would cause a traffic jam. The doors slid to either side and M-pat walked through.
The doors flew back together. Dingo held up his badge, stared in the camera, and they opened again.
The guard room was in the center of the ground floor. The data center was one floor below, filling the entire first basement. They passed employees in the hallway but no one spoke.
M-pat ducked into the men’s room. Dingo followed.
The bathroom looked deserted. M-pat entered the first stall.
Dingo looked in the mirror first and admired Kiyoko’s friends’ craftsmanship and Kiyoko’s touchups. I am Alvaro Jimenez, right down to the eyebrow hair.
He entered the stall at the far end. No cameras in here. He pulled a small oval piece of latex out of his pocket. It had an ultra-detailed thumbprint on one side, and adhesive on the other. Pel had created them on a portable 3-D printer and trimmed them with scissors.
He peeled off the backing and threw it in the toilet. He took a leak, pretending the floating paper was an enemy aircraft carrier and he was sinking it. “Face the wrath of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
The toilet flushed as soon as he backed away from it. He admired his mask in the mirror again, then joined M-pat in the hall. M-pat stretched his fake face into a frown, but resumed the march to the security office.
The security room had a plastiglass window to the hallway. Inside, the walls were covered by ceiling to floor display skins showing hundreds of camera feeds and status graphs. Three guards sat at consoles. Two o
f the three sipped burnt-smelling coffee out of mugs and watched the pre-game show. A middle-aged man he recognized as the shift supervisor paced back and forth in front of the wall skin. It included a view of the hallway by the security room door.
“They got the entrance monitored, yo,” he told M-pat as quiet as he could.
“They lookin’ at it?”
“Supervisor’s throwin’ glances.” He’d likely see them putting data glasses against the retinal scanner.
“Fuck.”
“Go on ahead, I’m gonna say hi.”
M-pat passed the window but stopped short of the door and its biometric controls and cameras.
Dingo waited for the hallway to clear, then knocked out a beat on the window.
Everyone turned around. He waved.
The supervisor stared at Dingo and jerked his thumb toward the door.
Dingo glanced at the camera feeds on the wall. He saw M-pat looking into the retinal scanner with data glasses on, the fake eyes as obvious as a clown on Christmas. He couldn’t see the fake thumb print, at least.
The door opened. Dingo left the window.
Still in the hall, M-pat pocketed the glasses and thumb printout. He stepped into the security room.
“You’re late,” a man’s voice said inside the room.
Dingo threw his data glasses on, assuming M-pat would provide a distraction. He tapped the side of the temple frame and the hallway dimmed to twilight, overlaid by huge brown eyes set in swarthy sockets, a network of blood vessels in the center.
He hurried to the door, held his badge against the reader, then stared into the twin lenses above it. A green light began blinking.
And kept blinking.
He moved closer, until his eyes were inches away from the lenses.
The light stayed green.
He found the thumb scanner and placed his printout-covered thumb against it. The door clicked.
He shoved the glasses in his pants pocket, then peeled off the thumb printout. It slipped out of his hand.
Fuck. He looked down but it wasn’t on the carpet. It should have landed right at his feet, but it disappeared. He scanned the floor further and further away but couldn’t see it anywhere.
Then he saw it stuck on the top of his shoe. You bastard. He bent down and pocketed it, then went to the door. The handle wouldn’t move.
Da fuck? It had worked fine for M-pat.
He tried jiggling it. It wouldn’t budge more than a millimeter in either direction.
They must have seen him searching for the thumb sticker. A shitstorm of guards could be on their way.
The door swung inward. M-pat had opened it from the other side. “Problems?”
“I got the green lights.” He pushed his way past M-pat into the room, not knowing what else to do.
“You took too long,” the shift supervisor said. “Just like you took too long getting here.”
They didn’t see. “Transmission’s shot on the bike,” Dingo said for the second time. “Luke had to pick me up.”
“Yeah, well I’m noting it in your file.”
Asshole.
“You sound different,” one of the seated guards said, eyebrows raised. Recalling the personnel files, he looked like Frank, a veteran here.
“Yo mama’s cootch must have rotted my tongue.” What does Jimenez sound like, then?
Frank pounced up from his console.
“Siddown,” the supervisor said. He glared at Dingo and M-pat. “You two, get to work.”
M-pat sat down at the furthest console.
Dingo parked in the swivel chair at the console next to him. The display, keyboard, everything, was virtual, like the Genki-San at the band house, only fitted over a C-shaped table with a screen all along the back. Power was off. Where was the button? He tried to remember the diagram Pel had shown them.
There. The power button. He pressed it.
A confusing jumble of video images, icons, and keyboards popped up on the back display and table surface. Where do I start?
He got up and walked to the coffee maker on top of one of the file cabinets on the far wall. It couldn’t be that hard. He used computers all the time, even if it was mostly for gaming. He was pretty damn good at that. And they’d gone over all the security and equipment manuals Charles had downloaded.
Not much coffee left. He didn’t drink the stuff anyway, but they had two and half hours to kill before game time. He emptied the remnants of the pot into a ceramic MediaCorp cup and hurried back to his console before someone asked him to make more, something he had even less expertise in.
Once in his chair, he leaned back and sipped the coffee. It tasted like toilet water. I can’t believe people drink this shit.
He looked over at M-pat, who was moving icons around on his table skin. First thing they had to do was disable all the cameras in this room, find yesterday’s footage, and use it to replace the live feed. Easier said than done, even with Pel and Charles’s best guesses.
“Jimenez.” Frank’s voice.
Dingo swiveled his chair around and saw him standing a few feet away, one of the other guards just behind.
“I swear, your voice is different.”
* * *
Pelopidas
When the MediaCorp entrance gate appeared ahead, Pel almost stopped Nick Smith’s electric Volkswagen and turned around. His hands shook against the steering wheel. Relax. I look just like Smith, know what he sounds like, I’ve got his access card. Just be Nick Smith. He’d passed as Greg Wilson at the Smithsonian fundraiser. And had played hundreds of characters in video games.
The entrance guard barely glanced at Pel as he held Smith’s electronic badge to the reader and looked into the camera. The gate slid open and he drove inside, parking the Volkswagen two rows from M-pat/Luke’s hybrid Mazda.
His hands started shaking again. He wished Waylee was there to say everything would work out, but she couldn’t get in until they owned the security system. Which he hoped M-pat and Dingo could pull off. They had stun guns, could fight, and they’d have surprise. But they were up against pros.
Pel put on his data glasses and opened the car door. Here we go. They had studied the campus thoroughly and watched days of footage from Hubert and hacked guards. He tapped the side of his glasses. “DG, call data center office.”
A Chinese woman appeared in a popup box. “Data center shift supervisor.” Damn, what was her name again? He brought up the employee database loaded in memory and ran the facial recognition algorithm. Hu Kwong. Yes, that’s it.
“Hi, this is Nick. I’m running late, but I’ve just arrived. Awfully sorry.”
“You always late, Nick Smith. You have big problems in review.”
“I’ll work late. I’ll work an extra shift. I’ll be there soon.”
“First shift already go home. You get here right away.”
Pel terminated the connection and entered the building’s plastiglass lobby.
Inside, three receptionists argued about which one ripped a noxious fart.
Pel ignored the stink and placed his badge against the reader by the employee doors. He looked in the camera and the doors parted. First stop was the bathroom, where he donned the fake thumbprint.
Nick Smith, older than Pel but the same general size, worked as an IT technician in the building’s data center. Pel had chosen him carefully. He was a loner, with no family or roommates to complicate his replacement. More importantly, he monitored transmissions and had administrator access. And with M-pat’s pistol held against his crotch, he had been 110% cooperative, telling Pel everything he wanted to know.
Nick was late, but Pel needed the go-ahead from M-pat before displaying eyes and retinas on his data glasses. He swished the right temple arm and sent a one character message: “?”
No answer. Come on.
Pel walked to the security room and peeked in the plastiglass window.
Everyone was staring at Dingo, who was seated at a console. One of the guards, stan
ding just to his side, slid his hand toward a holstered pistol.
Fuck. Hoping to distract them, Pel knocked on the window.
* * *
M’patanishi
The guards were on to them. Dingo, anyway. Even though he was mostly Hispanic, Dingo had a generic Ballmer street accent. Maybe Alvarez sounded like an immigrant. M-pat had heard Luke Annlote speak, and when necessary, tried to copy his voice. But Alvarez had gone down without a fight, and they’d gagged him before he could say anything. That was dumb, should have made him talk first. Too much shit to think about.
M-pat switched off the security room cameras, making them invisible to external monitors. He couldn’t find yesterday’s footage, though. Big, big problem.
Someone knocked on the window to the hallway. Pel. The guards turned.
Gonna have to advance the schedule. M-pat whipped his stun gun out of its shoulder holster and fired at the supervisor. His eyes widened and he crumpled to the floor.
Dingo leapt out of his chair. Frank and the guard behind him went for their sidearms. Dingo swung his boot full force into Frank’s nuts. As he doubled over, Dingo pushed him into the guard behind him. Frank sprawled backward to the floor and the other guard flailed to keep his balance.
The third guard rose from his console. M-pat fired the stun gun at him, last of its two charges. The guard’s knees buckled, he fell onto the chair arm, and both crashed to the ground.
Dingo pulled out his stun gun and shot the guard behind Frank. He dropped to the ground and hit with a crack.
The supervisor lifted his head from the floor. He’d only been out a few seconds.
M-pat jumped up and bolted toward him. In his periphery, he saw Frank pull out his pistol.
Dingo fired at Frank with the stun gun and kicked the pistol from his fingers. It flew along the floor into the middle of the room.
The supervisor was still rising from the floor when M-pat reached him. “Goddamn stun guns. Why the hell won’t you people stay down?” He planted his left foot and kicked with the right, landing just under the man’s ear. His head snapped to the side and his eyes shut.
M-pat grabbed the supervisor’s gun and comlink headset, then pulled the handcuffs off the man’s belt and snapped them around his wrists.
