the Second Horseman (2006)

by Kyle Mills

  "What?"

  "You did it. You actually did it."

  He smiled broadly. "Was there ever any doubt?"

  "Yeah. There really was. Now can we get the hell out of here?"

  He shook his head. "With all the confirmations in, the security company will be shutting down its tracking operation pretty fast -- they've been at it nonstop for over fifteen hours after all. But let's give 'em a few minutes to make dead sure no one's still watching."

  She worked the accelerator to make the truck seem as though it was still warming up and Brandon rubbed his hands together vigorously, smile ever widening.

  "You're in a good mood," Catherine observed.

  "Are you kidding? If I was a football player, I just won the Super Bowl. If there was a Nobel Prize for larceny, I'd be composing my speech right now. In fact, I'd be right at the part where I thank all my lackeys."

  She didn't turn toward him, but her teeth flashed briefly in the sunlight. "I'm curious. Does this feel better than normal?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know, because you didn't do it for yourself. That you put yourself at risk for other people."

  "I don't know. Are you going to let me roll naked in the money?"

  "Maybe if we have time --"

  "Before you shoot me?"

  Her smile disappeared so suddenly, he wondered if it was ever there. "You still think I'd do that?"

  Brandon turned in his seat and examined the side of her face. "You know, I really don't anymore. I actually think you'll be surprised when they do it. But then you'll just put it out of your mind and keep marching on like the good soldier you are."

  "Time to go," he said, cutting her off.

  She glared at him for a moment and then shoved the truck into gear, easing back out into traffic. "You're a hell of a clever guy, Brandon. But you're paranoid."

  He nodded slowly. "You have no idea."

  The way he let the sentence hang seemed to worry her. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

  "I hope you believe me when I tell you that I wish it didn't have to be this way."

  "You're starting to scare me, Brandon."

  The concept he'd presented to her and Scanlon was that the security firm would just turn off the GPS monitors upon delivery confirmation and go home. After that there would be no record generated and so the truck would essentially be lost in space. They'd just drive to the warehouse he'd rented, turn on the signal jammers and unload the money at their leisure.

  Of course, it wasn't really that simple.

  "Remember what I told you about details, Catherine? It's all about the details."

  "Oh, no," she said quietly. "Brandon, tell me you didn't screw us on this thing."

  He shrugged. "Well, you do have a little problem."

  She turned left along the route they'd laid out and found traffic light enough to allow her to speed up a bit. When she spoke again, her voice had gained in volume. "What problem?"

  "Think about it, Cath. How long before the Fed guys realize that trailer is full of nickels, ones, and newspaper?"

  "We figured about two hours."

  He nodded. "And how long for us to unload?"

  "About five hours to scan all the bags for GPS transmitters and load them into vans."

  "So there are three hours that they know they've been ripped off and we're still digging around in the truck. What will they do with that overlap?"

  "They'll try to track the GPS signals in the money bags. But we've set up the jammers in the warehouse so there's no way they can get a signal."

  "And?"

  "And what?"

  He shook his head in disappointment. "I'm going to tell you the secret of planning great crimes, Cath. Are you listening?"

  She watched him out of the corner of her eye, but her expression was unreadable.

  "One word: perspective."

  "Perspective," she repeated.

  "Exactly. You come up with your plan and then put yourself in the shoes of everyone involved. An amateur will always run through things from the perspective of the criminal -- themselves. In your case, everything you see through the window of this truck. I, on the other hand, will run through the job a hundred times -- from your point of view, from the point of view of the cops, from the point of view of some guy walking by our broken-down truck on his way to Starbucks --"

  "What the hell are you trying to say, Brandon? That you screwed me on this? That you sabotaged the job?" Her voice was nearly a shout now, despite the open windows and their proximity to about a thousand ears. "You don't care anything about those warheads or the people they could kill. You --"

  He reached over and clamped a hand over her mouth. "So why don't you take a shot at answering my question again. When the security company people figure out they've been had and turn their monitors back on, they won't get a signal. What then?"

  "What do you mean what then, you son of a bitch?" she said when he pulled his hand away. "I mean, if you were them, what would you assume?"

  "That the signal was being jammed."

  "Right. Thank you. And by then they'll probably have figured out that the Budweiser truck broken down next to the Fed had something to do with all this. What will they do with that information?"

  Catherine was silent for a moment, turning the question over in her mind. "They'll calculate how far we could have gotten in the time we've been missing, then they'll call the phone companies, the trucking companies, and anyone else who uses satellite transmissions to find out where they're having signal problems."

  "I knew you had it in you," Brandon said.

  "How long have you known this?"

  "I don't know. A few years?"

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Fine. What now?"

  He shrugged. "The Bay Area is a signal transmission disaster -- what with all these mountains and valleys and buildings. All you need is a quiet natural dead spot to unload."

  "And I suppose you know just the place."

  "Coincidentally, I do."

  "What do you want?"

  "I want to survive."

  "Paranoid," she repeated, bringing the truck to a stop at a red light.

  "Look, my job is done -- terrorists and warheads inhabit your world, not mine." He opened the door and slid out onto the street. "Keep heading toward the warehouse. In a little while, when I'm confident I'm not being followed, I'll give you a call and tell you how to get to a dead spot where you'll have all the time you need."

  She refused to look at him, instead staring straight ahead through the windshield. It wasn't really how he wanted to say goodbye, but there wasn't much of a choice at this point.

  "It's been nice knowing you, Catherine. Good luck."

  Chapter THIRTY-ONE

  Steve Ahrens stood just inside the yellow police tape surrounding one of the bays at the back of the Federal Reserve building. If he had his way, he'd have shut down the whole block, but the bank was just too important. The flow of trucks, vans, and armored cars continued unabated, weaving through the investigators and lab techs inhabiting the fenced parking area.

  Not that it really mattered. There were no answers here. He glanced up at the top of the building and the deep blue sky beyond. Nice afternoon, though.

  The representative from the Fed was standing next to an empty semitrailer having a heated conversation with the assistant special agent in charge of the San Francisco FBI office, though they were too far away for Ahrens to hear what they were saying.

  He tried to match their grave, angry expressions, but after only a few seconds broke into a smile again. In truth, this was one of the best days of his career. The terrorism and white-collar crime that the FBI was so focused on these days, sucked -- a nasty combination of futile, depressing, and dull. But this was a whole different ball game. It would be entirely accurate to say that there was nothing in the world he would rather do than spend the next few weeks figuring out how Brandon Vale had pulled this off. God bless him.

  Ahrens sh
oved his hands in his pockets and strolled toward the trailer, stopping when he was close enough to hear the two men's conversation, but not so close as to be noticed.

  "... so when you couldn't get the lock off the back, that didn't raise any alarms?"

  "Not really. It wasn't the first time we've had to cut it off. You know, those things get old, they rust, they malfunction. It happens."

  The FBI man sighed quietly, taking on a vaguely depressed expression that Ahrens just couldn't understand. Maybe it was that the ASAC was so much older. Whatever it was, though, he seemed inexplicably blind to how incredibly lucky he was that someone had chosen his jurisdiction to walk away with the better part of two hundred million dollars. It was like winning the cop lottery.

  "And it took you another four hours to figure out the money was gone?"

  "Three and a half/' the Fed representative shot back. "The bags we offloaded first had a lot of change and ones, which isn't all that unusual. When we noticed we were a quarter of the way through the truck and the denominations hadn't gotten any larger, we started to get suspicious. That's when we dug to the back and found the bags full of newspaper. At that point we called the security company and you."

  Ahrens glanced toward the back of the bay and spotted the security company's rep talking urgently into his cell phone. A moment later, he hung up and started in their direction.

  "Special Agent Dolan?"

  "What?" the FBI ASAC snapped.

  "The helicopter pilot's still unconscious, but now they're thinking he's been drugged. The chase cars, the truck, and the drivers have all fallen off the face of the earth."

  "And the GPSes?"

  "We stopped monitoring them when the Fed called in a safe delivery. No way to retrieve the data now -- it doesn't record anywhere."

  "But they were working until then."

  "Five by five according to our people. They've turned everything back on now." "And?"

  "Nothing. No signal at all."

  Ahrens crossed his arms and leaned back against the trailer, watching an agent a few years younger than him jog up.

  "Have you gotten anything on signal jamming?" Dolan asked him.

  "We've talked to everyone we can think of and no one is aware of any strange dead spots."

  "So no one's actively jamming the GPS signals."

  "That's our read, sir."

  "Then they've set up in a natural dead spot. How many within a couple of hours of here?"

  "Hundreds," the young agent replied. "They also could have lined a building with signal absorbent material. We're checking with all the manufacturers about recent purchases."

  Another long sigh. "And the Budweiser truck?"

  "We've talked with every distributor and trucking company we can find. As far as we can tell, that truck doesn't exist."

  Ahrens wandered back out of the bay, ducking under the tape and scrolling through the address book on his phone. When he found the number he was looking for, he hit dial.

  "American Security Holdings."

  "Richard Scanlon, please. This is Steve Ahrens."

  "He's out of the office. Let me see if I can connect you to his cell."

  The phone went silent for a few moments before being picked up again.

  "Steve. What can I do for you?"

  "Guess where I am."

  "Where?"

  "Standing in the loading dock at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank."

  Silence.

  "Are you there still there, Richard?"

  "I'm still here. But I'm not sure I want to be."

  Ahrens grinned. "When you and I were talking this morning that brilliant little bastard probably already had the money hijacked."

  "The money transfer from Vegas."

  "Yup."

  Ahrens had to pull the phone away from his ear to bring the stream of obscenities that followed to a listenable volume.

  "We set that goddamn thing up so it would be impossible to get to! And then we rearranged all the procedures after he went to jail. Shit, I was just talking to some of the guys who have the security contract on that. They had the thing down to a science."

  "Apparently not enough of a science," Ahrens responded.

  "How sure are you that it was Vale?"

  "No evidence at all at this point, but come on. Who else?"

  "How?"

  "I'm not entirely sure yet, but I've got a few ideas."

  "Shit. Look, I've got to run, but call me when you put the details together. And if in the meantime you catch that son of a bitch, do me a favor and shoot him in the ass."

  Chapter THIRTY-TWO

  "Nice shoes."

  Brandon glanced down at his feet and fought back a grimace. They weren't shoes. They were work boots. Honest-to-god work boots. He'd found a secondhand clothing store that let him trade his expensive new threads for a basic jean sweatshirt ensemble and a few measly dollars.

  "Thanks."

  The man sitting on the other side of the tiny room had a thick, tangled beard and an insane glint in his eye that made him look like an unhinged member of the ZZ Top fan club. Combined with his ragged and malodorous clothes, he'd pretty much nailed the shopping-cart-pushing homeless-man thing. Brandon was going for more of a "hardworking guy down on his luck" look.

  "Nice pants."

  Brandon nodded noncommittally. "Thanks."

  They both jumped up when a plump woman in her late twenties poked her head in. "I'm ready for you now, Brandon."

  He walked hesitantly into the small, cluttered office and stood facing the desk. "I'm Jennifer Ralston," she said, sticking her hand out. "I hear you wanted to talk to me."

  She had an unnervingly steady gaze and a handshake that hovered somewhere between empowering and overpowering.

  "Brandon Ellis," he said. "But I guess you knew that already."

  Ralston, by all reports a tireless advocate for those who wanted to better themselves, ran the homeless shelter Brandon had slept in the night before. And though he really had no interest at all in bettering himself, he was willing to fake it occasionally.

  "So what can I do for you, Brandon?"

  "I need a job and I heard you might be able to help me find one."

  Her expression wasn't suspicious exactly, but it was clearly designed to impart that she'd heard every hard-luck story ever devised. "I see . . . Tell me, what brings you to us, Brandon?"

  It occurred to him how much fun it would be to just tell her the truth. He was willing to bet that she hadn't heard anything like his story before.

  "I suppose the same thing that brings a lot of people here. I moved from the Midwest with barely enough money to make the trip, had some bad luck . . He let his voice trail off for a moment. "And here I am."

  "Do you have a drug problem? Please excuse my bluntness, but I've found speaking directly is the best way to communicate. Understand that I'm not being judgmental. We have all kinds of programs to help you."

  This really sucked. Couldn't Catherine have had the simple decency to leave her cash-stuffed purse open on the kitchen table instead of demanding a fistful of receipts every time he spent a quarter? Now he was out on the street with no money, no IDs, and no bank accounts. At least none he wanted to risk trying to get to.

  "No drug problem," he said, not meeting her eye. "Can't even afford to drink anymore."

  She drummed her fingers on a stack of notebooks, silently appraising him.

  No question, she was a tough nut. At one time or another, she'd probably been faced with half the con men, sociopaths, and grabby losers on the planet. But he wasn't asking for much -- just a way to make enough money to get him across the border.

  "I do have some contacts, Brandon. But I also have a lot to lose by calling them on your behalf. I've used my credibility with them to get a lot of people jobs -- to help a lot of people. And every time I send them someone who . . . who isn't up to it, I lose a little bit of my ability to help people in the future."

  He nodded. "I totally under
stand, Ms. Ralston. But I'm really smart . . ."

  That was true.

  "And I'm super hard working . . ."

  A bit of an embellishment.

  "I've just had some bad luck lately . . ."

  The understatement of the year.

  He hit her with his most earnest and subservient smile, but found it difficult to keep it plastered to his face. It was horrifying enough to have to get a job, but to have to beg for one? That was just cruel.

  Chapter THIRTY-THREE

  "Tree. Out. Yes?"

  Brandon wiped the sweat from his face, forgetting to take off his glove first and leaving his eyes full of dirt.

  "Goddammit!" he shouted, blinking through the tears as the tiny Mexican man looked on impatiently.

  "Brandon! Tree! Yes?"

  "Hey, don't mind me. I'm just going blind here," Brandon replied. The Mexican just shook his head in general disapproval.

  They were standing on the expansive lawn of some semi-rich guy who apparently hadn't been watering his plants. The trees in front of the house had dropped all their leaves and the shrubs were turning an alarming shade of black.

  Why was this his problem? Because that evil witch Jennifer Ralston had gotten him a job on a landscaping crew. Now he hadn't been expecting a job selling lingerie to supermodels, but he had been hoping for something air-conditioned. A cushy banking gig. Or a security guard. Yeah. That would have been sweet.

  "Tree," the man said for the third time, jabbing a finger at it and then a thumb toward the truck in the driveway.

  "Lunch," Brandon countered.

  "Como?"

  "Lunch! Uh . . . Almuerzo. Si? Almuerzo."

  The man glanced at his watch, a bit confused. "Son las dlez."

  "Bullshit."

  He held his wrist up as proof. Nine fifty-eight A. M. How was that possible? That meant he had ... six more hours of this.

  Another quick jab in the general direction of the tree and the man was off, leaving Brandon to sag against his shovel. His injured shoulder was killing him, though he knew that it was more psychological than physical -- his subconscious protesting this waking nightmare.

  There had been nothing about the heist in the local paper. The cops had apparently decided to keep things quiet. That wouldn't last long, though. Pretty soon, his picture was going to be on every television in America and the million problems he already had would double. At least.