The Downside

by Mike Cooper

  “Right.” Asher switched them down to fog. He approached at moderate speed, no hesitation, and bumped onto the ramp.

  Finn stepped back, and the delivery truck surged up the incline, engine roaring with sudden effort. The trailer shuddered and rocked, the ramp gouging through snow into the pavement.

  The Seaport truck forced its way into the trailer, loud squealing as its front edge scraped along the interior’s ceiling. A pair of loud cracks sounded like metal breaking. The truck’s rear wheels begin to skid, its engine roared—and then it was in. Six inches past the back door.

  Just enough.

  Asher shut it down and came out, leaving his own door hanging. Together, they pulled the rear door chain, spinning it through its pulley. The door crashed down. Finn slammed the latch and stepped back.

  The last matryoshka was ready to go. And Finn thought to himself, Asher’s clean.

  Like Corman, he could have skipped his rendezvous, driven off with the entire haul for himself. Like Corman, he didn’t.

  And that put it on Wes. New Mexico, here—every fucking betrayal.

  Wes.

  “All set,” Finn said into his mic. “Nicola, we still good?”

  “What I can see is clear.”

  “Excellent.” He gestured to Asher and they moved up toward the cab. “Let’s make sure Jake’s leg is good enough he can still drive.”

  “I just want a coat.” Asher strode forward, arms pressed across his chest, shivering. “And a hat.”

  From behind them, headlights swung into the road, a muted glare against the falling snow. Finn spun around as an engine whined, the vehicle roaring down at them.

  A dark, olive-drab Land Rover.

  “That’s it!” Nicola’s voice, stress breaking through. “The one following Asher earlier!”

  No time to react. The Rover braked hard, fishtailing to a halt ten feet away. Finn started to run, slipped on the snow, and stumbled. By the time he’d regained his balance, the Rover’s door opened and Wes stepped down.

  Carrying a handgun.

  He pointed the pistol at Finn and Asher, holding it with practiced familiarity.

  “Stay where you are, boys.”

  Finn slowly straightened up. Shock and dismay roiled his head. But another emotion slammed through also—anger. Anger at Wes, but also at the snow, the wrecked train, the police and the streetfighters, the protesters and the riot squad. Everything that had gone wrong.

  And under it all, anger at himself.

  Biting the words, Finn said, “I should have known.”

  “Oh, don’t—”

  But he wasn’t being rhetorical. “Corman practically described a Land Rover,” he said, disgusted.

  “He saw me?” Wes shrugged. “I thought it might be too obvious, but I needed something I could trust in the snow.”

  “What’s the plan, Wes?”

  In response, he lifted the pistol and fired three times.

  “Fuck!” Finn twisted around again, expecting to see Asher down—but Wes had shot Finn’s old pickup truck instead. Both tires. The truck sagged into the snow.

  “Sorry.” Wes moved forward, skirting them by fifteen feet. “Guess you’ll have to walk home.”

  He was headed for the tractor’s cab, clearly intending to drive away with the entire haul.

  Did he know about Jake?

  More to the point, Finn realized, was Jake capable of anything with his bum leg?

  “Fuck you,” Asher said.

  “You were keeping secrets.” Wes was energized, almost bubbly. “You told me the date was January fourth.”

  “Last-minute change.” But that was a good point. How had he—

  Wes backed to the cab and looked up, still holding the handgun pointed at Finn and Asher. The door swung open and Jake hopped out.

  Six feet to the ground, and he landed as lightly as a gymnast.

  “Well, shit.” Finn felt another wave of anger roll over him.

  “Sorry, man.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Asher growled.

  Wes immediately aimed the gun back on him. The tractor’s diesel rumbled beside them, fumes drifting down from the stack.

  “You did a hell of a job,” Wes said.

  Jake looked at Finn, his expression hard to read in the falling snow. Sadness? Regret? “I need the money,” he said.

  After Corman, then Asher, proved themselves, Finn had started to think he was wrong. Paranoid, worrying about betrayals that didn’t exist. Jake had been with him for more than twenty years. More than half his life. Ups, downs, for better and for worse, Jake stuck with him.

  Until now.

  No, Finn amended. Until New Mexico.

  “Need?” he said.

  “The machine shop is bankrupt.” Jake sounded bitter. “Whole damn world has moved on.”

  “So you’re out of business. So what?” Finn wanted to keep him talking. “Your share is still more than enough to retire on. You don’t have to do this.”

  “It’s not just that.”

  “What?”

  “I tried to save it. Thought I could turn things around. I got in too deep.”

  And Finn understood. From the corner of his eye, he saw Asher tensing up and put out one hand to restrain him.

  “You went to him, didn’t you?”

  Jake didn’t say anything. Asher grunted in surprise, turning to look at Finn.

  Wes grinned, still on a high. “He sure did. Of course, we’ve always kept in touch.”

  Finn ignored him, keeping his gaze on Jake.

  “Maybe you even put a little threat on the table? Wes gives you the money to keep going, you keep your mouth shut about New Mexico.”

  “I’m sorry, man,” Jake said again.

  “New Mexico?” Asher said.

  “Yeah.” Finn watched the gun. “Wes double-crossed us seven years ago. Figured out how to make more money from having the molybdenite theft discovered, in a very public way.”

  “What?”

  “Wall Street. Tell you later. But the thing is, Wes couldn’t have just called the cops. He didn’t know any of the details—which train, where, when.” Finn turned his gaze to Jake’s face. “He needed someone on the inside.”

  Talking about him like he wasn’t even there. Wes started to interrupt, but Jake overrode him.

  “No one should have gone to jail! It would have been barely more than misdemeanors if those damn narcos hadn’t shown up. Things just … got out of hand.”

  Finn sighed. “You are such an asshole, Wes,” he muttered.

  Asher was half enraged, half confused. “You’re saying Jake turned us in? On the train job?”

  “Wes was playing it sharp,” Finn said. “If we’d just taken the ore and sold it, he would have made a quarter mil. But when it blew open instead—maybe four times that.”

  “You two fucked us.”

  “Just business,” Wes said cheerfully. “Nothing personal.”

  Jake started to say something more, then just shook his head slightly. He turned and pulled himself back into the cab, leg working just fine now.

  “Don’t try to follow,” Wes said. He swung into the cab, keeping the pistol pointed steadily in their direction the whole time.

  Even before he pulled the door closed, the diesel rose in volume, gears ground, and the truck started to move.

  Asher roared and started to run. Wes fired twice, the shots loud, and Finn ducked toward the ground. The tractor trailer picked up speed.

  A few seconds later, they simply stood and watched it go, taillights dimming in the snow, engine noise racketing off the brick walls around them but fading quickly.

  “Those sheepfucking bastards! Cocksucking buttfuck—” Asher raged into the sleet, still chasing the truck.

  “Cal
m down,” Finn called.

  “What? That pile of shit—”

  “Let it go.”

  Asher kept yelling, but he stopped following the tire tracks and just stood, fists clenched, glaring down the road. Finn went to check his truck, clicking on his mic.

  “Nicola? Did you hear all that?”

  “Yes. What the hell did you let him go for?” Anger filled her voice, too. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “Later.” Finn looked at the shredded tires and decided his pickup was indeed undrivable. “We have other problems. But one thing first—the railroad police chief, what’s his name … Kruger?”

  A moment of silence, Nicola forcing herself back into control. “Keegan,” she snapped.

  “Do you still have his number?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Boggs finally arrived at the crime scene, his black Escalade almost running down several civilians and two officers as it slewed to a stop at the police line. He got out, followed by some underlings, and they all trotted toward David.

  The CEO was in a dark blue parka with Penn Southern’s logo emblazoned on the chest. He left the hood down, snow immediately beginning to accumulate in the collar.

  “What the fuck?” he shouted, waving both arms. “The vault was robbed?”

  “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions—”

  “Where the hell were your people? How could this happen?”

  David started to explain what he’d begun to figure out: the break-in and everything else happening that night mere distractions. He’d already dispatched two men across the road to see which of the warehouses the tunnel might have started from.

  “I can’t believe you were so incompetent—” Boggs sputtered. “Are they still in there?”

  David made a calming motion with both hands. “No, no, they’re gone. The vault’s empty.”

  “Empty?” Boggs’s voice was almost a scream.

  “Of people.” He saw Sean stifle a grin.

  “You.” Boggs couldn’t even get a sentence out. “You …”

  David’s phone rang. As he pulled it from his pocket, he said, “Police are establishing the crime scene. Detectives and a forensic team are on the way. The mayor’s been called. It’s under control … Yes? Hello?”

  For a moment, the men all were silent. Emergency lights strobed around them. People yelled here and there. Newark’s hazmat truck continued to spray foam on the locomotives. Sean, best attuned to his boss’s moods, picked up David’s increased alertness first.

  “What’s up?”

  David took the phone away from his ear and looked around. His officers, the few of them visible, were fully occupied with the crowd, but one of the Newark sergeants was nearby. He hurriedly gestured him over.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are your guys mobile? Or should we give it to the ESU?”

  “What?”

  David indicated his phone. “We have a description of their truck, a plate number, and a location as of two minutes ago,” he said. “What do you think? You or the NYPD?”

  Nicola broke down her equipment fast, pissed off and practically throwing stuff around. First, the operating-system thumb drives, straight into a degaussing box that was plugged into the wall, waiting. In the few minutes it took to thoroughly burn them clean, she yanked all the cables out and stuffed them into Ziplocs. Monitors, computers, and other equipment went into their padded carry-bags, then into a larger rolling suitcase.

  Another satchel for all the miscellaneous stuff—radios, headset, the scope.

  And one last step: She broke the newly demagnetized flash drives out of their plastic sheathes and fed the internal media into a small, portable shredder. It made a noise like a blender. The little confetti-size pieces, she dumped into a plastic bag.

  One last scan through the room, checking under the bed, in the trash can, the drawers, anywhere a stray, incriminating bit of hardware might have fallen.

  In the hallway, she stripped off her latex gloves and held them balled in her fist. They’d go into a trash can far away from the hotel.

  Her credit card was a burner, good for the cost of her stay but little more, and associated with completely false personal data. Once she drove away, they could go over the room with a microscope and never get closer to her than some useless surveillance video from the lobby.

  All standard housecleaning. But she didn’t feel good about it, not at all.

  They’d lost the entire haul. Finn hadn’t been able to take out a single ingot, a single dollar.

  What a fucking waste.

  It took time get the school bus moving.

  First, they had to wait while people kept running up, having decided they really did want to leave after all. Then a slew of emergency vehicles got in the way—ambulances, fire engines, police. More police. They were all going the other direction, and none were inclined to wait a minute while the groaning yellow bus eased around them.

  Finally, though, the driver got them pointed the right way and in a clear lane. The seats were only half full, but everyone had stayed toward the front, so Kayo stood in the well next to him. Millz had a seat of his own, no one inclined to ask him to share.

  “Fuck, that went to shit in a hurry,” Kayo said. Looking out the back, he could still see scuffles, though most of the remaining protesters had been efficiently rounded up and flexi-cuffed.

  “Just be glad we’re on our way.”

  They continued through dark, snow-covered streets, few other cars out. A half mile down, a black Suburban tore past, portable blue light on its dash. A few minutes later, a dark sedan, also with a removable lightbar, followed it.

  “What you think they’re up to?” Kayo said.

  “Ain’t nothing I’m interested in.” The driver kept them moving steadily down the avenue. “At all.”

  They stopped at a red light, no traffic on the cross street. The bus’s engine rumbled quietly, the wipers pushing snow off the windshield.

  Kayo noticed someone at the corner—no, two men. They wore plainly inadequate clothing, some kind of blue uniform, no coats. They watched the bus warily, half hidden under a bodega’s shuttered awning.

  The light changed, and the bus started to move.

  “Hey.” Kayo leaned forward to peer through the window glass. “Hold up.”

  “What?”

  But Kayo had already yanked the door lever. He leaned out into the snow as the driver, muttering, stepped on the brakes.

  In the open air, no mistake. He gestured as the two men looked up at him, one frowning, the other shaking his head and starting to smile.

  “Yo,” Kayo called. “Need a lift?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Jake started to feel better. The cab heater was on full blast, melting snow off the windshield right through the glass. The tractor trailer moved easily in the storm, heavy enough to cut through the snow on the roads. He had to keep their speed down, but that was all right. Finn and Asher were two miles from any of their other vehicles, Corman was gone, Nicola was stuck in the hotel. They’d be on the interstate in another two blocks, and that was as good as disappearing off the face of the earth.

  “That went okay,” he said.

  “Okay?” Wes looked at him from the passenger side of the cab. “Just okay? That was fucking perfect.”

  “I’m glad no one got hurt.”

  Wes wasn’t paying attention. “And I didn’t think we’d get the metal at all. This is like a hundred-million-dollar bonus.”

  Jake had never understood that part of it. From the beginning, Wes had wanted the theft discovered while it was happening. He didn’t know if Wes ever really thought Finn would go to all the trouble of breaking in and then not actually take anything—but for Wes, it worked out either way. The point was to tell the world that a significant portion of its rho
dium inventory was both counterfeit and vulnerable to theft. Somehow Wes had figured to make money off that.

  A boatload of money.

  No. Jake shook his head. The amazing part was that Finn actually got the goods out—and Jake took it away from him. They had millions of dollars in untraceable metal, a nine-hundred-mile driving radius, and a heavy winter storm to disappear into.

  He’d be drinking piña coladas under palm trees for the rest of his life, and he couldn’t wait to start.

  “Up ahead,” Wes said, pointing the gun through the windshield.

  “Can you put that away, for Christ’s sake?”

  But Wes was right. A sign announced I-78 and Jake could see the on-ramp. The road was deserted, snow blowing across the pavement, but headlight beams glowed from the highway. Traffic was moving. He downshifted and turned toward the ramp.

  Suddenly, flashing lights turned the corner a few hundred yards ahead of them. More lights strobed into his mirrors from the rear, momentarily dazzling.

  “What the fuck?” Jake’s confidence disappeared. A sick feeling stabbed through his torso. He tried to accelerate, but the vehicle was far too heavy to rocket forward.

  “Don’t stop!” Wes yelled.

  A dark panel truck appeared from nowhere, sliding across the road to stop a hundred yards in front of them. Another came up on the side, and more lights from behind suggested at least one or two vehicles in pursuit.

  Figures leaped from the panel truck. Jake saw assault rifles and helmets and armor—they looked like every special-ops soldier from every video game he’d ever played. They spread along the road, not in his path, but perfectly placed to fire zillions of high-power rounds through his windshield.

  No bullhorn, no sirens, no more noise than the usual—engine, wheels, weather. But it was obvious they wanted him to stop.

  “Keep going!” Wes shouted, waving the handgun.

  “What? Don’t be fucking crazy!”

  “I said keep going!”

  “They’ll shoot us!”

  Wes swung the gun around and put it six inches from Jake’s head. “We can break through. We’re not giving up now.” He jabbed Jake’s ear with the barrel. “Floor it!”