The Downside

by Mike Cooper

  No reason to worry the team with irrelevancies.

  Nicola sat on the bed and Finn took the chair again. They went over details. Timing, fallbacks, what she was figuring out inside Penn Southern’s mainframes.

  “And they are mainframes, too,” she said. “Some of that COBOL was probably written while Nixon was president.”

  “Huh.”

  “Lots of modern hardware overlaid on top, of course. But these huge companies just can’t let go of the big iron.”

  “So everything’s good. Ready to go.”

  “Uh, no.” Nicola looked at him a little quizzically. “We haven’t talked about Stormwall yet.”

  “Oh.” The vault’s rent-a-cops. “I thought you had that figured out.”

  “I can’t get in.”

  Finn sat straight. “You can’t?”

  “They’re a security company.” Nicola, who’d been cross-legged on the bed, slid off and paced over to the window, staring out into the night. “Unlike many, they seem to know what they’re doing. The NSA could probably force their way through, but so far, every attack I’ve made has been stopped cold.”

  Finn looked at her back. “If you don’t take out the cameras, we don’t go in. It’s that simple.”

  “I know.”

  “So … what? Should I call Jake and have him cancel the rock drill?”

  “Not yet.” She turned around with an annoyed glare. Finn felt himself start to frown but realized she was angry at herself, not him. “No, there’s one more thing we can try.”

  The pronoun didn’t escape him. “We?”

  “If I had physical access,” she said, “that would solve the problem.”

  “Access? To what?”

  “Their office.”

  “Ah.”

  “Stormwall has contracts with dozens of companies for, among other things, remote monitoring. All the feeds go to a central facility. They probably have some combination of pattern-recognition software and human screen-watchers keeping an eye on them all.”

  “So we need to break into a nerve center of a company whose entire business, whose whole reason to exist, is to keep us from doing exactly that?”

  She smiled briefly. “It’s not far away—Chalder, in North Jersey, one of those anonymous office parks. I drove by to take a look.”

  “And?”

  “They seem to have one building all to themselves, with open paving all around. Brick, two stories, mirror-glass windows, guards at the door. Given the nature of their operations, I’m sure it’s staffed around the clock. All power and cable comes in underground, probably through armored conduits.”

  “Oh, sure. No problem.” Finn rolled his eyes. “That sounds easy.”

  Nicola gestured out the window. “What you’re planning over there couldn’t be any harder.” She rode over the comment he started to make. “But don’t worry, there’s an alternative. They have a front office in the city. Midtown. I couldn’t actually read any of the traffic, but there’s a substantial dataflow. I’m pretty sure they can access the remote feeds at the corporate location, too.”

  Finn was seven years out of date on monitoring technology. He’d never dealt with much more than a guy at a bank of TV screens with maybe a VHS recorder running under the desk.

  “Like, separate cables all the way into Manhattan?”

  This time Nicola’s smile was broad. “No one uses dedicated copper anymore. It’s all done over IP.”

  “Right.” Finn pretended he knew what that meant. “Well, anyway, why would they pipe the cameras there, too? As a backup?”

  “I assume so they can show clients the service directly. I bet the Manhattan office is a lot nicer than Chalder—tropical hardwoods and Persian carpets, you know. They probably have thirty-grand OLED screens set up like a starship bridge.”

  “And you think clients are fooled by that.”

  “Impressions count.”

  “True.”

  “Believe me. I sell work to the same kind of people.”

  And, of course, she’d sold him on her skills, too. Finn had to grin.

  “So if we can get you into Stormwall’s posh headquarters, you can … put in a wiretap or something.”

  “Something, yeah.”

  “Okay, then.” Finn felt better. “How hard could that be?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When Finn walked into the warehouse midmorning, it felt like a real operation for the first time. The once-empty, echoing space had been transformed, most obviously by plywood framing that walled off a large area next to the grid-cut and broken floor. A full-length trailer was backed through the far bay and loaded with dozens of concrete pipes a meter in diameter. Neat stacks of lumber sat next to the Kei truck up on wheel stands with pieces of metal and the welding kit unpacked on the floor. The table and chairs, cluttered with paper and small tools. A radio—sports talk, probably the only station everyone could agree on—buzzy at the volume it had been turned to.

  And to complete the picture, two workmen arguing with each other.

  “How could you forget? You’re the fucking driller, for Christ’s sake.” Jake, arms crossed.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!” Asher’s permanent scowl went even deeper. “You never made a mistake in your entire life?”

  “I don’t think I ever forgot to put my pants on before leaving the house. You know? When I get in the bathtub, I generally remember to fill it with water first. That’s the kind of screwup we’re talking about here.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Good morning.” Finn pitched his voice loud enough to be heard over both of them, the radio, and a train rumbling past. “What’s going on?”

  Jake pointed at the new construction. “That. See?”

  Finn studied the curtain wall. It was simple enough: a two-by-four frame, sill plates bolted directly into the concrete floor, the far side faced with plywood and buttressed with diagonal braces every six feet. Crude but strong. All the spoil excavated from the jacking shaft would go behind it—otherwise, the pile of dirt would overrun the entire interior.

  “Looks good to me. Corman put it up?”

  “Me and him, yeah,” said Asher.

  “Two thousand cubic feet,” said Jake. “That’s what we’ll take out of the pit. There’s just enough room back there.”

  “Okay, that works,” Finn said. “So what’s the problem?”

  Jake shook his head. “The tunnel bore. Where does that dirt go?”

  “Oh.”

  “A hundred twenty meters, one meter in diameter. We need another twenty-five hundred cubic feet of dump volume.”

  Finn grimaced. “The microtunneler pumps it out in slurry. Can’t we just leave it in the sedimentation tank?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jake looked at Asher.

  “No.” Glaring, like none of this was his fault. “Maybe a fourth of that before the tank has to be cleared.”

  They could heap some muck above the height of the wall, but not all of it.

  “At least you thought of it now. Be kind of obvious if we had to put it in the street.” Finn looked around. “Okay, here’s what you do. Build another wall, across that corner.” He pointed to the opposite side of the warehouse.

  “That’s not exactly convenient,” Asher said.

  “Well, if you hadn’t—”

  “Never mind.” Finn cut Jake off. “Look, the control unit goes here, right?” He held out both hands, indicating the area in front of the broken concrete. “Gantry for the pipe jack is going to stick out at least this far. Sedimentation tank behind it. That uses up almost half of the entire floor.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “The excavator can handle it if necessary.”

  Jake nodded agreement. Asher seemed willing to flounder on, arguing about anything, but
no one wanted to listen. Eventually, grumbling, he found a measuring tape and went to check whether they had enough lumber for the second wall.

  There was take-out coffee at the table. Finn sat, moving a coil of hose to the floor to make room. Jake leaned on the wall.

  “Who brought in the concrete?” Finn gestured to the flatbed. “I thought you and Corman went to get the boring rig.”

  “We split up. He can handle it.”

  “Okay.” The air had a faint, pleasant smell of resin and sawdust. Finn drank some coffee, staring absently at the jacking pipe.

  “That doesn’t look like enough,” he said eventually.

  “Nope. We’re going to need another trailer. I was waiting until the curtain wall was done before unloading this load.”

  “Good point.” The pipe would have to be stacked, ready for use, and close to where the gantry would sit over the entry shaft. “Actually, we might want to get the whole tunnel machine in place before that.”

  “I thought about that, but it’ll be easier to run the excavator back and forth beforehand.” The earthmover was not just for digging the pit; it would carry the pipes, one by one, in a sling attached to the scoop. At thousands of pounds each, the concrete sections were far too heavy to move by hand.

  “Guess we should wait on the laser, too.”

  The bigger the project, the more complicated the dependencies. Back when Finn was on the legitimate side of the business, planning was driven by cost. Now it was all about speed. Once they started the drill, it had to run without the smallest hiccup.

  Jake went to help Asher frame the second wall. Finn picked up the work area around the Kei truck. Another train went past, then some heavy trucks, loud in the street.

  They were having lunch, eating sandwiches and arguing about football, when Corman walked in empty-handed.

  “Hey.” Jake looked at the closed bay doors. “I didn’t hear a diesel rig.”

  “No.” Corman helped himself to some tortilla chips from the paper sack Finn had opened.

  Long pause.

  “No … what?”

  “No boring machine.”

  Finn sighed. “Okay. Why not?”

  “Because it hadn’t been returned yet. Crew renting it now, they were supposed to have it back already. But their job ran long.”

  “Fair enough. When can we get it?”

  “Guy said tomorrow.”

  Jake looked at the roof, calculating, for a moment. “Well, that’s not a problem. Still plenty of time to get it installed in the pit.”

  “Long as it’s running right.” Asher shook his head. “Who knows what condition it’ll be in?”

  Corman was eating a large handful of chips. When he’d finally swallowed, he wiped his hand on his jacket and said, “They’re doing maintenance after they pull it out of the ground today. Should be done by tonight, they’ll drive it back to the rental yard early tomorrow morning, we can pick it up then.”

  A lot of words at once for Corman.

  Finn started to talk, had a thought, and stopped dead for a moment.

  “Hang on,” he said. “They’re doing the refit on-site?”

  “Easier that way. Clean everything there, they don’t have to take it apart again at the yard.” Corman shrugged slightly. “Could just be making excuses.”

  Finn looked at Asher. “Does that sound right?”

  “Sure. Promise to bring it back all shiny and shipshape, sometimes they’ll discount the rental.”

  “Good enough.” Jake wadded up the paper wrapper from his tuna-with-everything and caught Finn’s eye. “No? Not good enough?”

  “Let me ask you something,” Finn said, turning to Corman. “Do you know where they just finished up? The current job?”

  He thought about it. “I think I saw the name of company that’s got it now on the paperwork.”

  “Because, it seems to me—” But he didn’t finish, because Asher started laughing.

  Jake looked at him, annoyed. “What?”

  “Because it’ll just be sitting there,” Asher said.

  “Yeah, so wh—”

  “All night long, clean and sharp and ready to go. Probably up on the trailer and everything. Right?”

  “Exactly,” Finn said. “Bootstrapping.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Late afternoon, sun already gone, long shadows and wind kicking grit off the streets. People on the sidewalks were hunched into their coats, most walking quickly, done with their workdays. Maybe a storm was coming—there was a bit of the manic energy that accompanies vertiginous swings in air pressure. The air had a winter snap.

  Nicola, however, strolled along like a contractor on break, eating something wrapped in foil. Emily caught an occasional waft. Eggs? Chili?

  “What is that, anyway?” she finally asked.

  “Breakfast burrito.” Nicola’s mouth was full. “There was a Chinese taqueria at Grand Central.”

  “Seems early for dinner.”

  “Breakfast, like I said.”

  They stopped at a corner. “Where’s mine?” Emily asked.

  “Oops, did you want something? Sorry.”

  “Hmm.” Emily pretended to think. “I guess I did have breakfast about ten hours ago.”

  “Sorry.” Nicola laughed. “Wasn’t thinking. I just got up.”

  “That’s a hacker schedule? Work all night?”

  “Nah, I’m just not a morning person.”

  They continued down Forty-Second. Rush-hour traffic, taxis weaving, buses coughing diesel.

  “Thanks for coming,” Nicola said.

  “Finn said you needed help with something.”

  “Uh-huh.” Nicola finished eating, scrubbed her face with a napkin, and dropped the crumpled ball of trash into a barrel at the entrance to Bryant Park. “Before we get to that, though …”

  Warning flags fluttered. Emily eyed her warily. “What’s up?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But I have to ask.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “Ah.”

  “For me and the guys, it’s nice and clear. We’re all on the same team. Done this shit before, do it again. But your situation is a little more complicated? Maybe?”

  “Wes signs my paychecks.”

  “Yeah. See, that’s what I’m wondering about.”

  Truth was, Emily had been wondering, too. She wasn’t going to lie—some of Wes’s assignments had put her on the far side of financial-sector regulation. Probably even the criminal code, depending on how ambitious the federal prosecutors might be. But breaking into a gold vault was quite a bit more newsworthy than some ambiguous insider trading.

  “The thing is,” she said slowly, “there may not be many more paychecks.”

  “I figured.” Nicola didn’t seem surprised. “Guy dreams up a scheme like this, it’s not exactly long-term strategic planning.”

  “He’s making bad decisions. Choosing bad options.”

  “And Finn is a better one?” Nicola studied her. “For you?”

  Clearly the smartest one on Finn’s team. “I could leave. Quit now and walk.”

  “Um, no, you can’t.”

  “No?”

  “Or I hope not. Because if you do, I’m out, and I don’t know about the others, but probably the whole thing’s off.”

  “I’m not doing anything essential.” But Emily shook her head. “Never mind, I know what you mean.”

  They stopped near the fountain, long since shut down for winter. Leafless trees clacked their branches in the wind. An out-of-season skateboarder pushed his way past, but few other people were around.

  “You’re not threatening me,” Emily said.

  “Of course not.”

  “But you could if you
wanted. And I’d take it seriously.”

  Nicola nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “But that’s not me. I make choices, too, right? Too much grunting and dick-waving in the world already.”

  Emily laughed. “Sounds just like Wall Street.”

  “Still, I’d like to know,” Nicola said. “I’d like to be … reassured.”

  “Fair enough.” She waited while the skateboarder circled past them again. “One, Wes has done everything but slosh gasoline around the office and set himself on fire. I need to think about where I go next. Two, I could use the money. Three, those first two points are not unrelated and I’m really, really tired of Wes right now, and if life happens to fuck him over, well, that might make me happy.”

  “Uh-huh.” Nicola paused. “And four?”

  “Oh, four.” Emily shrugged. “We don’t really need to talk about four, do we?”

  They left the park, followed by a few dead leaves blowing along the sidewalk.

  “Good enough for me,” Nicola said.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” And she was. She liked Nicola more every time they talked. “So what’s the big secret? What do you need my help with?”

  “It’s up ahead. Not far now.”

  They crossed Fortieth and continued two blocks south. At the corner, Nicola stepped under the awning of one of the city’s innumerable hardware stores and gestured slightly across the street.

  “The tower,” she said. “Eleventh floor.”

  Deconstructivist black metal with a half-exposed frame and a gash down the entire silver facade that would have been avant-garde twenty years earlier. It occupied the corner lot, butting up against the next building along. Eighteen floors was only halfway to the top.

  Emily counted windows. “That floor doesn’t look much different than the rest of the building,” she said. “Are we going in?”

  “Not through the lobby.” The traffic light changed, and Nicola led the way across the zebra stripe, then down the street along the building’s right side. They crossed over between taxis and radio cars bouncing over poor paving.