Stealth Attack

by John Gilstrap

  Tonight’s chariot was a three-year-old brown Nissan, and Gail drove.

  Northern Neck Academy boasted on its website of being set on “forty pristine acres of forests, fields, fun, and adventure.” While that was technically true, those forty acres were surrounded on all sides by private homes and subdivisions.

  Gail parked at the end of an undeveloped cul-de-sac in the Potomac Plains neighborhood. She’d pre-sited the parking spot with the help of a commercial satellite program that wasn’t in the least bit proprietary. It wasn’t necessarily current, however, so she’d double-checked through real estate records to make sure that the spot hadn’t been built on since the satellite photos had been taken.

  “Where’s the school from here?” Venice asked.

  Gail pointed across Venice’s nose. “Through those woods. We’ll have some hiking to do.” Gail opened her door, noting with pleasure that the dome light did not come on. “Don’t slam the door,” she said. “We want to draw as little attention as possible.”

  Gail got out and stood at her open door for ten or fifteen seconds, scanning every compass point. Dressed all in black, including black gloves, she hoped she was invisible against the tree line.

  “What are you looking for?” Venice asked as she scanned, too. She likewise wore black-on-black, but her coveralls clearly belonged to someone else. At least she had good outdoor shoes on.

  “Anything,” Gail said. “If somebody’s walking their dog, we might want to wait a few seconds before we kit up. Or, maybe we’d need to relocate. A lot of this business is just taking your time.”

  “You’re not bringing a gun, are you?” Venice didn’t like guns.

  “I never go anywhere without a gun.” Her choice had long been a Glock 19. Chambered in nine millimeter with a fifteen-round magazine capacity, it was easy to conceal and soft to shoot.

  “Why? Do you expect to shoot someone?”

  Gail had no idea that Mother Hen was so far separated from the operations side of what they did. “If I thought I was going be in a gunfight, I’d be carrying something a lot bigger,” she said. “I carry for what you might call an abundance of caution.”

  Convinced that she’d chosen a secure parking spot, Gail opened the Nissan’s back door and unzipped a range bag. “Come around to my side,” she said.

  Working by feel, Gail found two folded bits of fabric. She handed one to Venice. “It’s a balaclava,” she explained. “Pull it over your head, leave only your eyes exposed.”

  “My God,” Venice said.

  Gail donned her own balaclava, then reached back into the back for night vision goggles, or NVGs. For herself, she chose a four-tube array that provided a much broader range of visibility but cost about fifty thousand dollars more than the two-tube array that she’d brought for Venice. After she slipped the headband in place and settled the lenses in front of her eyes, she turned to face Venice.

  “Ever used night vision?”

  “I’ve seen YouTube videos,” Venice replied.

  “Close enough.” Gail slipped the cradle over the crown of Venice’s head and adjusted the two lenses so they were over Mother Hen’s eyes. “It’ll take a minute or two to get used to the tunnel vision,” she explained, “and things will feel a little two-dimensional till your eyes adjust.”

  “A simple flashlight wouldn’t do? How are we going to explain all this if we get caught?”

  “The trick is to not get caught,” Gail said. The sharp tone in her voice was intentional. Always presume success. “One of the reasons to use the night vision in the first place is to see complications before they can become problems.”

  “I didn’t mean to anger you.”

  Gail was beginning to think that it was a mistake to bring Venice along. She was projecting a troubling scaredy-cat vibe. But it was too late now. This was the op they’d planned, and now it was the op they were stuck with.

  “When do we call the guard?” Venice asked.

  “Not until we’re in position to see how he reacts.” Gail reached back into the car, pulled out her pack of burglar tools, and shrugged it onto her shoulders. “Don’t forget your laptop,” she said.

  Venice snatched up a satchel of electronics. “Got it.”

  After locking the car, Gail said, “We’re all set. Stay close behind, and if you need to stop or if you get stuck, let me know. Otherwise, we need to be as quiet as possible. Watch where you put your feet.”

  Not waiting for an answer, Gail stepped off into the woods. Past the first lines of trees, the undergrowth thinned out quite a bit, making her wonder if perhaps maintenance crews kept the creepers and bushes under control. She’d studied the topography as well as she could, using satellite photos and public source maps from the U.S. Geological Survey. She knew that the woods would give way to a creek and that a pretty little arched bridge spanned the banks up and to the right. The bridge would take them to more woods, which would then give way to the most concerning part of the evening’s journey—the wide-open athletic fields. The fields themselves were sunken, probably thirty feet lower than the level of the driveway and the school building to which it led. Access from one level to the other was gained via steep concrete steps.

  They were blessed with clouds over a tiny sliver of moon, so their shadows would be minimal, but there’d still be a wash from the lighted driveway up to the school. If this were a different op, she’d have started by killing the power to the school, granting them the advantage of true darkness, but this was supposed to be an in-and-out with no signs of forced entry.

  When they finally broke through to the fields, Gail led Venice to the base of the bleachers and stopped. “How’re you doing with the NVGs?”

  “They’re a lot clearer than I thought they’d be. Clearer than what you see on YouTube and the news.”

  “Good. Okay, here’s what I need you to do.” As she spoke, Gail gestured out to the fields with a bladed hand. “We have to cross this. Your instinct is going to be to run—or at least to move quickly—but you need to resist. If anything, we’re going to move more slowly than normal.”

  “Because the human eye detects motion in the dark?” Venice asked. Then she added, “Digger’s talked about that a million times.”

  It was time to go.

  Perhaps Gail’s words of warning were better targeted at herself. Moving slowly, without any cover, was agonizing. She felt as if she might as well have been wearing neon. The fact that she could see the world so clearly through the NVGs intensified the feeling of vulnerability. But she kept her instincts in check.

  Four minutes later, they were at the base of the concrete steps, and she dropped to a knee. Venice did likewise.

  “Lift the NVGs out of the way,” Gail instructed as she lifted her own. “The streetlight up on the driveway would wash out the images. Here’s what we’re going to do. You stay here at the base of the steps. I’m going to go to the top and scope out a shadowed spot where we can call from. When I find it, I’ll come back and get you. Keep your eyes on the top of the steps. I don’t want to have to come all the way back down for you. Any questions?”

  Now that Venice’s eyes were visible, the fear in them was clear. She shook her head no.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” Gail said, and she was off. This was probably their most exposed moment of the entire plan, the black figure against the white backdrop of the steps. She considered climbing the hill itself, but it was very steep, and a fall would make more noise than her footsteps, and the difference in cover wasn’t all that great. Sometimes, you just needed to roll the dice.

  She counted thirty-five steps to the top of the embankment. Once there, she could clearly see the circular driveway that served the next set of stairs—the grand ones that led to the inside. The driveway coming from the street was every bit of a quarter mile long, and it, too, was a giant loop, up to the school on one side, away from the school on the other. The design created an island that was well landscaped with firs and dogwoods. The firs in particula
r cast sharp shadows in the dim glow of the streetlights. She’d found the place where they’d stage for the next phase.

  Gail looked back down to the bottom of the steps and beckoned for Venice to join her. Mother Hen acknowledged with a wave and made the climb.

  With them together again, Gail explained the plan. They crossed the driveway one at a time and hunkered down behind a fir tree that towered over its neighbors. This had to be the one they decorated for Christmas. It would have been a sin not to.

  “Okay,” Gail said. “It’s time for you to shine.”

  Venice reached into her satchel and produced her laptop and a velour blanket that they’d brought along to cover themselves so light wouldn’t leak out. Shoulder to shoulder with Gail under the cover, Venice opened the lid and let things boot up. The screen showed two images, a phone app on the left and the security camera view of the school’s lobby on the right.

  “Where is he?” Venice asked. The desk that was supposed to be occupied by Carlos Palma was empty.

  “Shit. On rounds, maybe? We saw him earlier.”

  “Two hours ago. Maybe he saw us, and he’s coming out to get us.”

  Possible, but not likely, Gail thought. “If he saw us, dressed as we are, he’d be crazy to come out on his own. He’d call the police.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “But then he’d stay at his monitor, wouldn’t he? That’s what I’d do. Concentrate on the plan. Are you going to be able to spoof the call?”

  Venice went to work on her keys. “His caller ID is going to show a call coming from the Washington’s Rest Rehabilitation Center.” She placed her Bluetooth transceivers into her ears and typed in the number for Carlos’s cell phone. But her finger hovered over the touch pad.

  “What’s wrong?” Gail asked.

  “I feel terrible about doing this.”

  “How do you feel about finding Roman?”

  Venice clicked SEND. It took long enough for the call to connect that Gail began to worry that he didn’t have his phone with him. When the call finally did connect, Gail could hear only Venice’s side of the conversation.

  Mother Hen affected a sweet Southern accent. “Hello. Is this Carlos Palma? The son of Consuela Palma? . . . No, I’m sorry to say she is not . . . Consuela took a bad fall just a little while ago . . . I’m afraid I can’t say because I’m not a doctor, but the ambulance crew seemed to suspect a hip fracture . . . No, sir, we use a private ambulance service . . . They also seemed concerned about why she might have fallen. Was it her heart? A stroke? We don’t know . . . No, not here. They took her to Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg . . . About twenty-five miles . . . No, I’m sorry I don’t have their names, but they were both EMTs . . . You’re very welcome, Mr. Palma. I’m just so sorry I had to make this call.”

  Venice disconnected the call and turned to see Gail. “I feel like I need to go to confession.”

  “I have it on good authority that Father Dom’s heard a lot worse.” Gail chuckled, but Venice did not. “Let’s watch now and see.”

  Less than two minutes later, the security feed showed the double doors at the back of the lobby, under the stairs, burst open and a distraught Carlos Palma beelined to the desk, his phone pressed to his face.

  “Can we find out who he’s talking to?”

  “Easy,” Venice said. “But let’s keep watching this.”

  Carlos shoved some items into his pocket, fiddled with something on the desk that was out of view, and hurried out of the frame toward the front door.

  “Keep watching your screen,” Gail said. “I want to watch real time.”

  Taking care to minimize light spillage, Gail rolled out from under the blanket and took a position where she could watch the front door. Carlos damn near took a header down the main staircase as he hurried down, grabbing the rail in the center to save himself at the last moment.

  “He’s out of the building,” Gail said.

  Carlos disappeared around the green side of the building, on his way to the rear, where Gail knew there was a parking lot. Thirty seconds later, she could hear an engine rev, and just a few seconds after that, a white Toyota pickup truck screamed down the side of the school building and past her hiding spot. He didn’t even pause at the stop sign before cutting the wheel and heading left at the bottom of the driveway.

  “Okay, Ven. Time to go to work.”

  Venice pulled the blanket away and started to fold it. Apparently, she’d already put her laptop back in the satchel. “I might have some bad news,” she said.

  Gail waited for it.

  “That call he was on? It traces back to Desmond Pryor.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “He’s the third guard. The contingent. We figured him to be the swing shift filler-inner.”

  “Calling him in to work?”

  “I didn’t have time to tap into the call itself,” Venice said. She sounded apologetic. “But that’s my guess.”

  “Damn. Well, we’re in this deep now.”

  “I’m not leaving without what we came here for. I already killed the cameras.”

  “Then let’s get to it.”

  With the security guard gone and the cameras neutralized, the concerns about fast motion evaporated. Together, they hurried up to the front door, where Gail unslung her rucksack and placed it on the stoop. She opened the flap to the main pocket, but then paused.

  “Do me a favor,” Gail said. “Check the door to see if it’s unlocked.”

  Venice gave her a look but thumbed the latch anyway and pulled. The door opened. “How did you know?”

  “I watched him leave,” Gail said as urged Venice inside with a hand on her shoulder, then scooted in behind her and closed the door. “This is an old building, and typically, this kind of lock needs to be locked from the outside with a key. Our friend Carlos didn’t do that.”

  “I must have really unnerved him.”

  For good measure, Gail corrected the guard’s mistake. If Desmond Pryor had, in fact, been summoned, she didn’t want him to be suspicious. “You did great,” she said, then straightened and scowled. “No alarm warning?” She hurried to the guard’s desk and looked at the annunciator panel. Everything showed green.

  “It makes sense, I guess,” Venice said. “Why would he set the alarm when he has to come in and out all night? He forgot all the protocols, I guess.”

  “And the Academy Award goes to Constance DuBois for best actress in a burglary scam. It’s time for you to lead the way. You’ve been here before.”

  They climbed the right-hand sweep of the stairs to the closed door that led to the staff wing. Unlike the main entrance, this door was locked.

  Venice stepped out of the way to make room for Gail to take care of the lock. Despite the glare from the nightlights down in the lobby, Gail swung her NVGs back into place for a clearer view of the lock. Completely old-school pin-tumbler job, probably the original from back when the school was built. She used a Y-shaped tension bar to put pressure on the pins and inserted a rake, which she moved vigorously back and forth in the keyway. The cylinder moved a touch but didn’t release entirely. She put the rake back into her burglar pouch and replaced it with a half-diamond pick. She felt for the recalcitrant pin, found it, and pushed it out of the way.

  “We’re in.” She almost dropped the burglar pouch back into her ruck, but then realized that she might need to use it again.

  With the door to the staff wing closed behind them again, darkness returned, and Venice dropped her own NVGs back into place. “The finance office is down to the right. Third door, I think.”

  Finally, a door that at least pretended to take security seriously. Made of all-wood construction and mounted in what appeared to be a steel frame, it was secured with a hasp and a combination padlock.

  “Can you do one of those?” Venice asked. “That looks like a substantial lock.”

  Gail smiled. “Watch this.” She brought the burglar pouch out again. “Peopl
e don’t think this stuff through. You’ve got all this hardwood and steel, but ultimately, it’s mounted in standard Sheetrock construction. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks that if I didn’t mind making a bigger mess, I could kick a hole through the wall of the adjacent office and just enter the finance office through the hole I made. I call this security theater.”

  “But you’re not going to do that, right?”

  “Won’t have to,” Gail said. “Because it’s just this simple.” Opening combination locks by conquering the combination itself was a tedious task that could eat up serious amounts of time. But most padlocks purchased by consumers required nothing like that.

  A padlock pick looked a lot like a long, thin fingernail on a metal stick. Gail opened her stance so Venice could watch. “This thin piece is shaped to match the dimension of the lock’s shackle.”

  “That’s the loop?”

  “Right. Some people call it the shank.” She shoved the tapered end into the lock on the outer edge of the lock face. “This is a little tighter than most, but that actually works to our benefit. Now, watch this.” Holding the lock steady with her gloved left hand, she used her right to twist the fingernail around the circumference of the shackle, where it physically pushed the locking bar out of the way and allowed the lock to pop open.

  “It’s that easy?”

  “Makes you wonder why you lock your doors at all, doesn’t it?”

  The inside of the finance office was little more than a desk, a chair, and file cabinets. “Do you want the left side or the right side?” Gail asked.

  “When in doubt I always go left,” Venice answered.

  “Good for you. But wait, I have a present for you.” Gail reached into an outside pocket of her rucksack and unclipped a penlight, which she handed to Venice.

  “What about the windows? People will see the light.”

  “These are infrared flashlights,” Gail explained. “They work just like regular flashlights, but only for people wearing night vision.”

  “How cool is that?” Venice clicked the light, and a green circle of illumination hit the cabinets on the far wall. “What are we looking for?”