The Faberge Heist

by David Leadbeater

  The arrogant man gave him a thin, assured smile. Drake wondered if he might get a chance to wipe it clean off his face. Dahl was already thinking on similar lines, looking for Paulson.

  “Two minutes,” he called out to the FBI agent. “Clear the room.”

  Paulson squinted at him. “You wanna beat it out of them? I don’t think that’s gonna work, big guy.”

  “It’s worked before,” Dahl told him. “Can’t hurt to try.”

  Paulson returned to stand before their captives. “First one of you to sing gets to walk.”

  A tension fell among those gathered around the table. Drake saw the first signs of disquiet among the three. They’re worried one of them’s gonna speak up, which makes them far from the tight, perfect crew we thought them to be. Watching them, Drake thought Steele might be the one he could make crack. He might be big and tough, but he was volatile too. Drake could work very well with volatile.

  “No takers?” Paulson prompted them.

  The arrogant one leaned forward. “My name’s Kushner,” he said. “This piece of meat is called Steele and that’s Faye.”

  Again, Drake was shocked and tried not to show it. He hadn’t expected this. What the fuck is going on?

  “Where are the eggs?” Paulson asked.

  “They’re on a bus. A red-eye to Los Angeles.”

  Paulson stared. Drake felt a surge of conflict inside. He didn’t believe it, but then . . .

  “But there’s a catch,” Kushner said.

  Dahl raised his SIG and pointed it right between the man’s eyes. “There usually is.”

  “Don’t be a dick, soldier boy. I know you’re not gonna shoot me.”

  Dahl pressed the trigger. The bullet exploded out of the gun, passing close to Kushner’s ear. Everyone in the room leapt out of their skins or dived to the floor. Paulson included.

  “Are you fucking mad?” Paulson raged, climbing to his feet.

  Kushner had failed to remain straight-faced. Fear twisted his features, and his chest heaved and fell.

  “That smile’s gone,” Dahl pointed out.

  “Leave!” Paulson cried. “Get out of this room. If you try to get back in, I’ll have you arrested.”

  Dahl didn’t argue. He’d known what would happen, Drake guessed. But now Kushner and the other two were far more agitated.

  “You said something about a catch?” Mai asked in a sugary voice.

  “Ah, yeah, yeah. The eggs are on a bus, like I said. But you’re not gonna be able to retrieve them.”

  Paulson leaned forward. The entire room was rapt, staring at Kushner. Drake couldn’t tear his eyes away from the man.

  “Why?” Paulson asked.

  “Because there’s a bomb on that bus. When the engine starts, the bomb is engaged. If the engine is ever switched off, it will explode.”

  Drake couldn’t believe his ears. There were gasps, cursing, cries of disbelief. Kushner had that smug smile back on his lips.

  Paulson was aghast. “Are you fucking mad? Get these assholes down to the police station.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Cara boarded the bus with twenty other passengers, a dozen steps ahead of Jax. Half the eggs nestled in her backpack. They’d left the drones back on the roof of the office building. It didn’t matter when they were discovered.

  After unstrapping the eggs from the drones and packing them away, she and Jax had made their way to street level, where they flagged down a taxi and traveled to a Greyhound bus station. They’d had to wait a short while for their connection. At this time of night, the service to LA was less frequent.

  “Not good,” Jax said now as he slid in alongside her near the back of the bus. “Not good at all.”

  “Plan B?”

  “Yep, this is definitely Plan B. Maybe even fucking C. I can’t believe they made the others so quickly. And those alarms went off early.”

  Cara nodded. “Chance,” she said. “Bad luck.”

  “Well, chance and bad luck is gonna cause a lot of people a shitload of pain.”

  “Jax. Relax. We did it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “The plan worked like a dream. You saw those drones flying from the Azure with their beautiful cargo. They were stunning.”

  Jax smiled briefly. “The most expensive cargo in the world,” he said. “Wait here.” He moved to rise.

  Cara placed a hand on his arm. “Do you really have to do this part?”

  Jax frowned and scratched his thin stubble of hair. “You know we do. Kushner, Steele and Faye are headed to the cop station. We’ll be found by the time we reach LA. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

  Cara looked into his eyes, seeing a pain there. A pain she’d never seen before. “Are you okay?”

  “Look, I’m fine. Distracted is all. I’m thinking of a hundred ways this could go wrong and a hundred contingency plans.” He patted her hand. “Two minutes.”

  Cara watched him walk down the aisle toward the driver. Her stomach clenched. She watched him engage the driver in conversation. He’d probably be using the ex-army angle. Many civilians were sympathetic to that and enjoyed having a Marine aboard their bus. Less than two minutes later, Jax was on his way back, a hand thrust into his right pocket.

  “You got it?” Cara asked.

  Jax briefly showed her the driver’s phone. He’d distracted the man well enough to slide it out of his big jacket pocket. At that moment the bus was turned on. The engine roared.

  Jax looked Cara in the eyes. “We can’t stop this now.”

  She swallowed drily, fearful. The bus shuddered and pulled away from its berth outside the Greyhound bus station. She’d counted twenty-two other passengers, youths and old people among them. In her brain, she knew there was nothing to worry about. The bomb shouldn’t ever go off. But in her soul, she worried, not least due to Jax’s recent change in attitude.

  Privately, she vowed to make sure everyone escaped the bus. It wasn’t a great idea, but it did ensure their passage to LA. Plan Bs were never pretty, but this one was downright ugly. When they’d learned the cops had pictures of them all, and were using facial recognition, especially in Vegas, it had triggered the backup plan. Nobody liked it, but they had to fall back on it. If they didn’t, they’d get caught.

  She imagined the liquids mixing in the container underneath the bus. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. It was going to be a long drive through the night.

  Backpacks nestled by their knees. She didn’t want to calculate how much they were worth, not yet. All those eggs. Fabergé’s life work. Singh’s collection, obsession and life goal. All ripped away by the One Percenters.

  But she hadn’t done it for the money, or the notoriety. Cara was a consummate professional, obsessed by the artistry of the job. She’d done eight heists with this team, the greatest eight heists in history.

  But this one . . . apart from the initial robbery, it was a jagged plan at best.

  Why had Jax chosen it, and how had the finer details passed her by?

  She knew why. The initial plan—the rooftop descent, the gripper gloves, the security hack and the drone solution were brilliant. It had captured her imagination. In fact, it had so bedazzled her that she’d not been interested in anything else. They were a great team at that point. Eight out of eight and no real issues. Why would she be interested in a Plan B?

  It was only later that she realized the team wasn’t what it used to be.

  Sitting on this bus, being jounced away from Las Vegas, was the price she paid for complacency.

  The bomb was unnecessary. It was Jax’s idea, backed up by Steele and an unconcerned Faye. Supposedly, it guaranteed they wouldn’t be caught and, this time out, Jax appeared to need—to crave—that ultimate guarantee.

  Why is that?

  Something had changed, but Jax had always been a remote leader. The man in charge you couldn’t really approach. It had been his way of maintaining respect and loyalty. Now though, he was entirely withdrawn
.

  Cara gently tapped the bag of eggs with her boot. She stared out the window. Jax was staring at her.

  “What?” she said with bitterness in her voice.

  “You don’t agree with this?”

  “It’s not us, Jax. Not how we do things. This is the end for me.”

  “It means we’ll be free. All of us.”

  “It’s a dumb plan.”

  “It’s Plan B.” He shrugged.

  “Surely there was another option.”

  “There wasn’t time,” Jax said, pausing to think before continuing. “Everything just happened all at once. It went from planning to execution faster than any job I’ve ever done.”

  Cara watched him as he spoke. His eyes darted left, right, and to the front of the bus. “Is that really what the problem is?”

  He didn’t answer. He wouldn’t even look at her. Cara thought about Faye, Kushner and Steele, who’d be sitting in that police station soon. They were a group of opposites who, when brought together, worked incredibly well as a unit. It wasn’t a case of opposites attract, more like opposites connect. For a little while at least.

  Between jobs, they never saw each other. They lived separate lives. Cara had no idea what the others did. For all she knew, they could be cops. They could be married to each other. Have children. Somehow, she doubted it though. Before today the authorities had possessed some grainy black and whites of them, taken by an informer who, later, Jax sent Steele to talk to.

  She didn’t want to know how that went down.

  And that was the issue. She’d accepted their shit, their over-the-top antics because, together, they worked like a dream. And she loved the dream.

  It was all over now.

  Cara had money stashed away. Enough property and other investments to live lavishly for the rest of her life on some warm beach, far away. She could soon change her appearance. It was her only choice now. But she knew she’d always crave the opportunity to pull off one more perfect heist.

  To sit down and fine-tune an already excellent plan.

  “Like I said,” she whispered, staring into space. “After this, I’m out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  At first, even Drake was at a loss. What had started out as a heist was fast becoming a national crisis.

  Paulson questioned Kushner some more, but got nothing more out of him. After that, he sent the three One Percenters to the local police station, accompanied by a plethora of men. Once they were gone, he called the most senior policemen and agents in the room to him.

  “Assuming he’s telling the truth, this shit just became a crisis. I want to know every bus that left this city in the last hour. It’ll be a red-eye, non-stop. The important thing is to identify that bus and then contact the driver. Get some choppers in the air.”

  He turned to Hayden. “Get your team moving. Separate cars. If we locate all those buses quickly, we can tackle the right one when we have confirmation. It’s a five-hour coach journey to LA and we might already be an hour behind, so get going.”

  Drake guessed there’d be several buses going to different terminals in LA. How could they find out which one had the bomb on board? His adrenalin was already up. He waited impatiently as Hayden turned to them and then thought for a minute.

  “I’ll stay here and help identify the bus with Mano, Molokai, Karin and Dino,” she said. “The rest of you get going, and don’t hang around. Find a ride. A cop car. A fast car. Anything, just catch those friggin’ buses.”

  Drake nodded and rushed off, followed by the others. It was a crush and a mess. Cops were everywhere. So were black-suited agents, but in truth there was so much chaos any one of them could be imposters. It was the way Drake’s mind worked. Never assume anything.

  Soon, they were back out into the night, bathed in the bright casino lights. Statues and fountains stood to both sides and the front of the hotel was an endless procession of newly arriving cars.

  Drake looked at Dahl. “That was an FBI order, right?”

  Dahl was on the same wavelength. “Any car,” he said. “A fast car.”

  Cops poured past them, heading for black-and-whites, unmarked sedans and powerful SUVs.

  “A fast car would be better,” Drake said. “We’d get there quicker.”

  “Absolutely.” Dahl watched the cars as they came up the driveway. Drake was checking those parked nearby.

  “What are you waiting for?” Luther barged past them. “Get a move on.”

  Predictably, he leapt into a big G-Wagon, pulled the driver out and flashed his ID. Mai ran around to the passenger side, caught up in the flow. Alicia found herself close to the rear door and jumped in.

  Drake glanced at Dahl. “Interesting.”

  “Yeah, if she’s not with you that kinda means you can go faster.”

  The G-Wagon roared away from the front of Caesar’s Palace, bullying the smaller cars out of the way. In just a few seconds it had merged with the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.

  “My ride.” Dahl spied a flash of blue and started running. Drake noticed Kenzie right behind him and didn’t know whether to grin or grimace. Dahl commandeered a Porsche 911 Cabriolet, following Luther’s example when dealing with the driver. The Swede looked surprised when Kenzie jumped in, but didn’t slow. Soon, he was burning rubber out of the drive. Drake found himself alone.

  Just as he thought he was going to have to make do with a souped-up cop car there was the blip of a throaty engine and something magical arrived. Drake couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he set off, stopped in front of the car and gestured at the door.

  “Out.”

  He showed his ID and jumped behind the wheel. The badge on the steering wheel in front of him was silver, a Jaguar. The F-type sports car let out an incredibly noisy bellow as he put his foot down. For a second, the back end swung, warning him that too much use of the right foot would make him the subject of some embarrassment, but Drake caught it and then peeled away from Caesar’s, joining the traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard for a short while before spying Spring Mountain Road ahead and a way onto the I15.

  He swung the Jag past traffic with the iconic Treasure Island hotel standing tall and dazzling to his left, its now redundant pirate ships outside. Soon, the I15 on-ramp appeared and he powered down it, booting the engine as much as he dared. Ahead, somewhere, was Dahl and the others all racing out of Las Vegas and toward Los Angeles, any amount of buses in between. He saw helicopters above, sweeping through the skies, and the enormous construction to the right that was the new stadium.

  Darkness closed in a little as he left the glitzy city behind, driving up toward the surrounding mountains and the passes in between. He checked his comms, his radio and his phone. All were working. It wasn’t risky to drive harder now, since they knew the bus was a good hour ahead. It was a matter of closing the gap. Hopefully the choppers would pinpoint the bus first.

  He passed two police cars at speed, saw the drivers stare at him and gave them a thumbs-up. He didn’t expect to get stopped. Tonight, it was chaos.

  They were all headed the same way. He passed a police van and a big cruiser. He heard them talking on their radios and answered before gunning the engine and disappearing into the dark night. He followed red tail lights, using them as guides. The road flowed onward.

  An hour later the police radio crackled into life. It was Paulson, the FBI agent, with an update.

  “Listen up. We’ve narrowed it down to eight buses. All heading for various Los Angeles locations. There are a further five close by. It could be any of them, but we’re concentrating on the first eight. We’re now asking the LAPD for help as those buses get nearer. I’m sending registration plates and aerial roof markings. Any of you seen a coach yet?”

  Drake hadn’t. He also knew it was unlikely. If a coach was traveling at sixty and you were managing up to seventy, flitting in and out of traffic, it was going to take hours to catch it up. You had a ten miles per hour advantage, maybe a little more, whi
ch would put the coaches in LA at the same time as their pursuing vehicles.

  Paulson was laying down his thoughts. “We can’t block the roads. We can’t alert the thieves as to what we’re doing, which makes helicopters risky. We can’t risk the passengers unnecessarily. We’re considering contacting the drivers, but even that could pose a risk. Keep driving and I’ll update you again soon.”

  Drake expected Hayden to send the plates and the aerial marking information through, as he had no direct contact to Paulson. He called up Dahl and Luther on the cellphone.

  “You guys hear all that?”

  “Yeah,” Luther shouted back over the roar of his engine. “We’re halfway to LA and no coaches.”

  “Shit, you’re way ahead of me.” Drake pushed his gas pedal down as far as he dared.

  Mai, who was riding shotgun in Luther’s vehicle, jumped on the line. “Give me your registration, Drake. I have to pass our IDs and car registrations along to LAPD so they don’t interfere with us.”

  Drake remembered and reeled it off. It was a short private plate.

  “They’re trying to pinpoint the coaches using their transponders,” Mai said. “Hayden just called me. The issue they’re struggling with is should they even try to stop the buses?”

  “I really doubt the One Percenters on board will want to kill themselves,” Drake said.

  “But nobody knows that,” Mai said. “Look at the other three. Sat waiting for us to arrest them.”

  “That wasn’t complacency. That was planned.”

  “Agreed. But the FBI won’t risk any civilians aboard that bus, and nobody can blame them.”

  “Are they contacting the drivers?”

  “No decision’s been made.”

  Drake came upon another bunch of cop cars, all with lights flashing, powering down the double-lane carriageway as fast as was reasonably safe. Steadily, he inched past them.

  “You in the Jaguar—are you with the task force?”

  One of the cops was challenging him. If he was with the task force he’d have a radio.