Carbonari glared at him, getting visibly angrier. “They said Burke was alone, except for two women, a child… and a cat.”
“A cat?” Benson shook his head and choked with laughter. “Priceless! I suspect the only reason he let your men live was the presence of the two women and the young child… or maybe the cat had a sensitive stomach.”
“I don’t find it very freakin’ funny!” Carbonari's voice boomed. “I met Burke in Martijn’s office a week or two ago. He’s a little guy, a runt, how was I supposed to know?”
“You weren’t,” Benson said as he sat up. “He doesn’t look like much, does he? But Pastorini was one of his top men, and he holds you responsible for his death, regardless.”
“Yeah, he said he’s coming after me now, and that ain’t very freakin’ funny!”
“Oh, Burke is anything but funny,” Benson said as he looked across at Carbonari. “He can be like a… force of nature. Lieutenant Van Gries here is one of the most lethal men I’ve ever seen operate on a battlefield. His other men here are pretty damned good too,” Benson said looking around at them. “For that matter, so am I. But I’ve never seen anyone as deadly as Burke. If he says he’s coming after you, you can count on it; and you are correct to be worried… very worried.”
“Sounds to me you’re setting up some bullshit excuse for when you fail,” Carbonari said as he turned toward Theo and glared at him. “Just tell me, can you stop the guy, or not?”
“In all likelihood, yes,” Theo answered. “We know he is coming, but he does not know we are here. That is a critical edge, and we need to keep it.”
“There’s another bright spot too,” Randy Benson said. “We know you are his target, and that makes our job a lot easier.”
“All right, what do you need to stop this ‘force of nature’ of yours?” Carbonari demanded to know.
“I see you have security cameras throughout the hotel and casino," Benson said. "I need to watch all the footage for the last few days to see if Burke is already here, and see how many of his people he brought with him.”
“Do you have any idea how much footage that is?” Martijn scoffed.
“There isn’t any choice. If he isn’t here yet, he will be.”
“Well, I guess you can watch them in my office,” Martijn told him. “Theo can set up there too. That way there will be fewer New York ‘distractions’ for you to deal with.”
“Then, if you do not mind, we shall get to work,” Theo said with a curt bow.
Carbonari dismissed them with a nod. “Martijn, stay here for a moment, you and I still have a few accounting issues to resolve.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Theo, Benson, and Theo’s five mercs were in the elevator on their way down to the first floor when Theo turned on Benson. His hard, cold eyes studied the American captain for a moment, and then he asked, “Where have you been? You haven’t returned any of my calls.”
“North Carolina, trying to track down Pastorini. As you heard, that was a waste of time. So, last night I drove up and got a room here using one of my cover IDs.”
“Where is Kowalski?”
“Dead,” Benson answered calmly.
Theo stared at him. “I sent you two over here to find Pastorini and the gold. Pastorini is dead, and now you tell me Kowalski is dead as well?”
“Pastorini was killed here in Atlantic City by these morons, but his girlfriend is living in their house near Fort Bragg. We figured that was where he hid the gold, so we broke in, intending to make her talk. Unfortunately, she had a gun, and Kowalski took three in the chest in the bedroom doorway. He was dead before he hit the floor. The little bitch got me too,” Benson said as he opened his shirt and showed Theo the bandage on his upper arm. “But don’t worry. Kowalski was clean when he went down, no markings or IDs.”
“And the gold?” Theo demanded to know.
“I went back two days later, intent on cutting her heart out, but she was gone. I spent all afternoon and evening searching the place. I looked everywhere. Nothing! I figure when we’re done here, we can go back down there to Fayetteville and make her talk.”
“You think she knows where it is?”
“Well, if she doesn’t, we’re really screwed, because I don’t know where else to look.”
“All right. When we are done here, we shall pay her a visit… all of us,” Theo told them, his eyes still hard and cold. “Now tell me what you know about this man Burke.”
“Everyone uses code names over there. We only worked together briefly once or twice, and assignments are secret, so I really don’t know much.”
“But you just told Carbonari…”
“Would you rather I told him Burke was a supply clerk? How much would he pay us then?” Randy Benson told him with a knowing smile.
By late morning, the Geeks had changed into their swimsuits and were lying in the sun on the white-leather upholstered benches on the aft deck. From the periodic updates they gave Bob, he knew they had worked their way through the half-dozen passwords that Lonzo and Chester brought back from their late-night foray into the janitorial world. One by one, they were taking a run at various personnel, customer support, and accounting systems, so far without much success. Bob spent most of the morning with Ace on the flying bridge. They had extended the low awning over it, allowing them to sit relatively unseen in the shadows.
“You ready for a beer?” Bob asked as he stood and stretched.
“God, yes!” Ace answered. “And I’m glad I’m not the only one.”
Bob turned in the chair and saw the Geeks were still busily working away on their laptops. He shook his head, thinking that swimming suits were like bell curves. A few people look fabulous in them, most don’t, and some should never go near one. The Geeks were in the latter category. In Bob’s experience, however, the all-time worst was a holiday crowd on a nude beach in southern France that was favored by large, multi-generational families — kids, teens, parents, and grandparents. They all arrived with their blankets, chairs, and baskets of food and wine, and promptly shed everything for an extended afternoon picnic. That was enough to convince him that in many instances, clothes had been invented for a very good reason.
Bob walked back to the aft railing, looked down at the Geeks, and laughed. They looked as pale as poached white fish, he thought, and had about as many muscles. What was it Koz called them? The “brainiac night-crawlers?” The benches they were lying on had pure-white, upholstered cushions, making it hard to tell where Geek began and leather bench ended. Patsy Evans was lying next to Jimmy with her body snuggled against his. She was reading a fashion magazine, while the guys were completely engrossed in their laptops. They might not look good in their swimming suits, Bob thought, but Patsy certainly did, even if the other two were too dense to understand much about the female figure.
“You know, the sun’s getting higher,” Bob called down to them. “If you’re going to lie out there for much longer, put on some sunblock. The sun will fry your brains if you don’t.”
Patsy looked up at him over the top edge of her sunglasses and grinned. “Already done, Major, sir, and I’ve been re-basting his delicate alabaster skin every hour.”
“Alabaster?” Linda called out from the galley below. “Just don’t forget poor Ronald.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Linda. I do Ronald too… No, no, I didn’t mean it that way,” Patsy laughed, and Linda laughed right along with her. Jimmy and Ronald finally looked up, glanced at each other, and frowned, not having heard the conversation.
Bob raised his hands in mock surrender and said, “I’m staying out of this.” He turned around, opened the small refrigerator built into the front console on the flying bridge, and pulled out two bottles of Budweiser. As he handed one to Ace, he turned back to the video feeds on his computer. Interesting, he thought. On the screen, the security guards had rotated again, as they did every two hours. Most of the regular ones were young and beefy like the twin Hulks who visited him in Arlington Heights.
They were private contract hires in gray slacks, blue blazers, white shirts and ties, like he saw in and around the casino on his last trip. For the first time, however, Bob saw that the blond-haired, blue-eyed cast from Gold’s Gym had been joined by the New York City lounge lizards who had arrived earlier. While the blue-blazers were posted at the doors or followed regular patrol routes around the perimeter and through the parking lots, the beer guts appeared to be roving, strolling at random through the hotel and casino entrances, through the garages, and across the parking lots.
Bob stared at the screen for a while longer, and then went back to the aft railing and called out, “Hey Jimmy, come up here for a minute.” The young computer wizard quickly pried himself free from Patsy Evans and scampered up the narrow, curving staircase. “How are you coming with the passwords?” Bob asked him.
“Well, not as well as we’d like, I’m embarrassed to say,” Jimmy answered, as his frustrations began to show. “The passwords the janitors brought back last night led us into a number of potentially useful areas, like personnel, the hotel and casino employment records, hotel reservations, and even their daily room charges and accounting, but they don’t let us get all the way into the upper finance levels where you want us to go. But you told us not to press it, so we didn’t.”
“You did the right thing,” Bob quickly agreed. “I don’t want to trigger any alarms.”
“However, I was thinking there might be another way. What we’ve been trying to do is break into their system remotely, using passwords from their outer office personnel where your guys are cleaning. Not knowing how Boardwalk Investments is structured, those people may not even have access to the higher-level accounting and records you want, no matter what password we use.”
“What other choice is there? Break into the Business Office and use one of theirs?”
“That’s an option, but there is adequate anecdotal information online to indicate that the higher up the corporate food chain you go, the more careless people get. It’s the people with the corner offices who make the most mistakes with their own internet security. So, if we can get into one of those corner offices…”
“ ‘Adequate anecdotal information online...?’ Whose office do you want to try? Carbonari’s or Van Gries’s?”
“Well, what if Ronald and I go down and get janitor jobs? If we could get into one of them for even a few minutes — I was thinking Van Gries’s, because he’s head of finance — I think I could get into the system. They might even be hiding their server or a small mainframe in there.”
Bob stared at him for a moment. “That’s way too risky. Look, Ernie will be back from Chicago in a few hours with his pickpocket friend, and we’ll turn him loose on the casino tonight. Like you said, I had hoped we could get what we needed by cracking into their computers remotely; but if we can get our hands on their master key cards, maybe we will try doing it the old-fashioned way.”
“What about going in his office window? Patsy and I were watching this Tom Cruise movie last night, and they cut their way into the window of a high-rise office building with a circular glass-cutting laser gizmo…”
Bob stared at him again. “I guess I missed that one.”
As they were talking, Ronald came up the stairs behind Jimmy and looked around at all the sophisticated navigational equipment in the command console on the flying bridge. “Man,” Ronald said, grinning, “this is like the bridge on the Millennium Falcon.”
Ace lowered his binoculars a few inches and looked at Ronald out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t say anything.
“Did you tell him about our idea?” Ronald asked.
“All right, ignoring the break-in and the laser gizmo ideas,” Jimmy said, “Ronald and I thought we might go back to the casino tonight. This time, instead of staying ‘low key,’ we could make it real obvious that we’re card counting.”
“Yeah, yeah, we could start winning big time!” Ronald snorted.
“And how long do you think that’s going to last before their security people grab you and thump your pointy little heads?” Ace asked. “You know they don’t like card counters.”
“That’s the whole point,” Jimmy answered with an alligator smile. “When they do catch us, they’ll do exactly the same thing they did at the Sun or the Bellagio. They’ll drag us up to their security office, shove us around, threaten to beat the crap out of us, and take all our money away.”
“I’m missing something,” Ace said, shaking his head. “How is that a good thing?”
“Because we’d be inside their offices, ‘behind the curtain,’ as it were.” Ronald snorted again. “Maybe we’ll see that guy Corliss you were talking about and those two big Hulks. Most importantly, though, it’ll give Jimmy and me a chance to see what kind of computer equipment and network set-up they have in there, and if there are any tech manuals lying around. Cool idea, huh?”
Bob frowned. “You’re only guessing what their reaction might be.”
“They can’t kill us!” Ronald answered nervously. “Can they?”
“It’s New Jersey,” Ace answered with a shrug. “I’m just sayin’.”
“Ah, you’re just trying to scare us again. Card counting is legal here. We checked,” Jimmy answered him.
“Like he said, ‘it’s New Jersey,’ ” Bob warned.
“They do have a point though,” Ace conceded. “As much fun as it is to just sit here and drink beer, time’s not on our side. We need to do something.”
“I guess I agree,” Bob told him. “But you guys know there are risks going in there, right? We can protect you up to a point, but you’ll be on your own once they grab you.”
“My assumption is we should be there when things get rocking around midnight. That’s when the most people will be there,” Jimmy suggested.
“I think you’re right. Worst-case, they’ll try to minimize the disruption when they grab you and shut you down.”
“Yeah, with a big crowd, they’ll have to be careful about the blood splatter,” Ace said with a straight face. “Comping all those dry cleaning bills can get excessive.”
Bob gave him a look. “Then I’ll put you in charge of protection. You can take The Batman, Bulldog, and Dorothy along to keep an eye on them. Just be careful.”
As the men began discussing Jimmy’s idea up on the flying bridge, Patsy Evans put her magazine down, checked her tan, and bounced down the stairs from the aft deck into the main lounge. She saw Linda at the sink and intended to quickly pass through and make a quick pit stop in the forward head, when Linda intercepted her and steered her into the small kitchen.
“Linda, I really have to go, and this isn’t…”
“Yes, it is. I’m your best friend, and you need a little ‘reality’ check.”
“Don’t start on me again, just because you don’t like Jimmy.”
“I love Jimmy!” Linda answered. “So does Bob.”
“Well, you sure have a funny way of showing it.”
“You’re acting like two high school kids in heat.”
Patsy’s eyes narrowed. “Well, maybe you forgot how it feels to be young and in love.”
“Love?" she scoffed. "How old is he?”
“It may surprise you to learn that we are both twenty-one.”
“No, girl. He’s twenty-one going on fifteen, and you’re twenty-one going on thirty.”
“And Vinnie was thirty-three, going on forty-three,” Patsy snapped back, crossing her arms across her chest. “That’s what’s been bothering you two, isn’t it? You think I’m supposed to sit around moping because Vinnie’s dead, but I’m not going to do that. He was a great guy and a lot of fun, when he was around. I’m not saying he wasn’t. He taught me a lot, probably way too much," she said, sounding embarrassed, "but we were never in love. He was way too old for me, and the Army came first with him, anyway. I knew it, and he knew it too. So we were just having fun. Jimmy’s so different. We can talk, and we like the same music, TV shows, and stuff. When I say thi
ngs to him, he knows what I’m talking about. So, what’s wrong with that?” she asked, and then stormed out.
Linda watched her walk away and turned back to the sink. As much s she hated to admit it, Patsy was right. She was too young to wear black.
At 3:00 p.m., Ernie and Dorothy drove into the marina parking lot and walked down the pier to the boat, escorting a short, plump man between them. He was impeccably dressed in an expensive, camel-colored mohair topcoat, gray slacks, and a white open-collared shirt. His hair was badly thinning and he combed it straight back off his forehead. As he walked down the long pier to the boat, he looked up at the bright sun and out across the water to the numerous sail and powerboats moored in the marina, and paused to take several deep breaths of the fresh, tangy sea air. Halfway up the pier, he stopped in midstride as a large, dark-gray pelican dove and hit the water in the empty boat slip next to them with a large splash, and came up with a fish. The man pointed at it and laughed. It was obvious he was having the time of his life, but Dorothy and Ernie carefully kept their positions flanking him and nudging him along toward the big white powerboat at the end of the pier.
When they came aboard, Ernie steered the little man onto the aft deck. As he passed Patsy and the two Geeks, he gave her a pleasant smile and polite, old-fashioned bow. “Lovely, absolutely lovely,” he said, his voice carrying a faint Eastern European accent. “Can we not stay up here, Ernest?” he pleaded with a dramatic sweeping motion of his hand. “The bright sunshine, the water, the boats, the beautiful young women…”
“Downstairs, Dimi.” The big Chicago cop pointed to the narrow staircase and the main lounge below.
“You know I cannot swim, and I am getting much too old to run.”
Ernie pointed to the staircase again. The little man sighed, but did what he was told.
Most of the others had already gathered down there, including Bob. Ernie motioned for the little man to sit in one of the plush swivel chairs while Ernie took the one next to him.
“Oh, my!” the little man said as he ran his hands over the leather and rocked back and forth in the chair. “Can I take one of these back to my jail cell with me?” He laughed aloud.
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