Pete ~ words
Leon Sprengelmeyer balanced precariously on the windowsill, one foot tucked
under him on the ledge, the other dangling and pressing against the wall below.
The night air was misty and still, and the heady perfume of bougainvillea from
a neighbouring garden hung heavy in the air. With a tiny noise similar to
*snick*, a perfectly circular piece of glass was detatched from the windowpane
at the bottom left hand corner of the window he leant against. The extracted
piece was attached to the suction cup he was holding in his right hand.
He placed this in the holdall by his side, and removed a miniature camera on
the end of a long gooseneck stem. Plugging the camera connector into his
viewer, he inserted the stem through the hole in the window and examined the
little black mechanism that nestled in the corner of the inside window ledge.
He could scarcely believe his luck. An Omron V4 microswitch, a simple
electromechanical device, and they hadn't even bothered to disguise the
catalogue number printed on the side of the mechanism. To Leon, this was
tantamount to hanging a little sign on the window catch saying, "burgle me!"
Carefully reaching through the window, he inserted needle probes into the wires
leading from the device's contacts, and read off the voltages contained within.
As expected, pins one and three were the normally-closed contacts, with pin two
holding nine volts d.c. in readiness for connection with the change-over
contact, should the window be opened. He applied tape to the underside of the
lever mechanism, and shorted out the two needle probes connected to pins one
and three by a short length of wire terminated in two miniature crocodile
clips, just to be sure. Reaching across to the middle of the window, he
unscrewed the catch, flipped it open, and raised the sash widow to its fullest
extent.
Entering the window he found himself, as expected, in the bank manager's
office. He looked around the room briefly, but nothing caught his interest
except for the condition of the office desk itself. This was topped by a
polished ruddy slab of hardwood, probably mahogany, but Leon couldn't be sure.
A blotter pad was placed precisely in the centre of the desktop, with a blunt
letter-opener to one side and a fountain pen to the other. A tidy desk means a
tidy mind, thought Leon to himself, but this guy's positively anal! I bet he
measures the distance between the blotter and his pen with a ruler every night
before he goes home. Sad muppet.
Crossing the floor to the office door, he began to undertake the slow and
painstaking work of the next half-hour. He turned the handle as if he were
immersed in syrup, every motion slowed down to a crawl. Opening the door
enough to pass through, he slowly made his way into the teller's area. He had
two PIR detectors to disable before he would be able to move freely within the
open-plan "business" area of the bank's front-of-house.
Passive Infra-Red detectors were triggered by motion, but they were relatively
stupid beasts and had a normal refresh rate of about a tenth of a second or so.
The trick to besting them was to move incrementally, so that at each refresh
they failed to spot any movement between one ping and the next. After five
minutes or so, he had successfuly made his way to the wall where the first
detector was located. The annoying thing about these particular beasts was that
they were wired "behind-the-wall", and it would have been more effort to hack
their wiring than it was to tackle them head on. He painstakingly reached down
into his holdall and removed the aluminium cover from it, slowly peeling the
backing paper from the sticky surface of its open edges. Another minute of
slow motion saw the box firmly attached to the wall surrounding the PIR,
rendering it useless.
It took another ten minutes or so to cross the area to the opposite wall and
repeat the procedure, but by the time he had finished Leon was finally able to
wipe the sweat from his brow and move more freely. He quickly covered the
distance between the far wall and the door leading to the vault corridor, and
extracted the necessary tools from his holdall. It was the work of minutes to
use the lock gun on the Yale, and the more traditional picks on the deadbolt,
and he swiftly had the door open. Donning frequency-shifting goggles he easily
made out the infra-red beams crosing the corridor, and stepped over and ducked
under these minor encumbrances.
Turning the corner of the corridor, he was finally confronted by the vault door
itself; a Schwab fd-10. Five steel pins per side, each three inches thick and
a foot long, connected the vault door to the jamb surrounding it. With a
group-II key-change combination lock with relocking device, coupled to an
un-overrideable timer mechanism, the vault door would present a formidable
challenge to anyone wishing to break in with a modicum of stealth and skill,
but Leon simply didn't have the time to spare. He began to place his shaped
plastic explosive charges around the door at the required positions.
Finally attaching the trigger mechanism to the centre of the vault door by
magnetic clamp, he retired back down the corridor, around the corner, and
extended the ariel of the remote-control unit. A split second after thumbing
the device, he heard a curious ripping sound as each explosive charge detonated
within centiseconds of the next. A small cloud of dust billowed out from
around the corner, and swiftly settled.
Returning to the vault door, Leon placed one foot against the jamb, grabbed the
door handle with both hands, and pulled for all that he was worth. The heavy
door swung open with a clatter of sheared pins dropping to the floor. Leon
stepped inside and immediately the vault lights went on. He was aware that the
sight which met his eyes did not conform to his expectations. In front of the
wall of safe-deposit boxes stood a nondescript office desk, with an empty chair
in front of it. Behind the desk sat an elderly man, bald, and wearing a khaki
shirt.
"Ah, Leon," beamed the stranger, "so good of you to join us; we've been
expecting you." Leon spun around and prepared to make a quick exit, but two
extremely large gentlemen in neat dress stepped from the shadows into his path.
Realising that he had been set up, he turned and confronted the stranger. "Who
are you, and what do you want?" He asked. "My name is James Bradley," the
stranger replied, "Colonel Sir James Bradley, actually, late of the Queen's
Own. As to what I want, why dear Leon that should be obvious by now. I want
YOU, dear boy, I want YOU."
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After inviting Leon to be seated, Bradley continued to explain: "My employers
are seeking to recruit a cadre of "professionals", not just men of your ilk,
you understand, but professionals from a military background such as meself,
and from the scientific establishment too. We are required to undertake an
operation that is hazardous, to say the least, but one which is, I assure you,
not only in the best interests of this country, but in the best interests of
our SPECIES, let alone the entire planet."
"Who are you really?" asked Leon, "NSA, CIA, What???"
"Oh, I assure you dear boy, that we are none of the above. We are a privately
funded organisation. Although we do occasionally accept contracts from some of
the aforementioned organisations."
"What makes you think I'd be willing to join your circus?" Leon spat.
"Well, let's just look at the alternatives, shall we?" retorted Bradley. "For a
start, we've got enough photographic evidence of this particular bungled
burglary to put you away behind bars for many years to come, but that would
just be a minor inconvenience to you, wouldn't it? Still, there remains the
remarkable similarities between this bank job and, say, the one in Birmingham,
nine months ago?"
"The Birmingham job..." whispered Leon.
"Glad you catch on so quick, old boy," said Colonel Bradley. "It was, after
all, the Birmingham bank job that brought you to our attention. You made quite
a bundle out of that operation, didn't you? Shame about the guard you killed,
wasn't it?"
"I didn't mean to kill anybody," said Leon, "I used a tazer, for God's sake!"
"Yes," replied Bradley, "A tazer against a retired police officer, who was
forced into early retirement due to a dodgy ticker, if I'm not mistaken. But of
course you didn't know that at the time. Nevertheless, retired or not the chap
was a cop, and that makes you a cop-killer. And I do believe I am right in
thinking that the death penalty is still in force in Alabama? I doubt whether
they'll look too kindly upon your plea of ignorance... Looks to me like you're
caught between a rock and a hard place, Leon. Either come and work for us, or
face a short incarceration followed by a date with old sparky... your choice."
"And if I do this job for you, you'll what, you'll let me go, not bother me
again?" replied Leon.
"Oh, for sure," said Bradley, "although by the time you've got through this
exercise you may well find you'll want to join us as a permanent member of the
team. The financial rewards are... substantial, to say the least, and as I
say, the moral imperative is... overwhelming. There's just one hurdle to
overcome. You must PROVE yourself, Leon, you must prove that you are willing
and able to kill in our cause. You must prove that you are able to kill
without remorse, unhesitatingly, without thought or moral quandry... To this
end, in a few days we will send you into a remote part of a nearby wilderness;
it will be your job to track down a man and simply kill him. End of story. If
you succeed, you will have earned the right to join us. You may take with you
any weaponry or equipment that you feel may be appropriate."
"What on earth makes you think I'd be willing to kill a complete stranger?"
asked Leon.
"Why, that's simple, dear boy," said Bradley, grinning, "because he'll be
trying to do exactly the same to YOU..."
-------------------------------------------------------
A fortnight later...
Dan froze over the corpse of Greg Lemar as he felt the touch of a rifle stock
graze against the back of his neck. "Hold it right there, me boyo," said his
assailant, plainly in control of the situation, "an' back off nice and slow..."
Dan used the momentum of his turn to drop his weight low, then spun his
trailing leg out in a hook, catching his assailant behind the knees and sending
him flying. A "whuff" followed his impact with the ground, and Dan prepared to
deal with the aftermath; a series of jab-punches, and maybe a few broken
bones... Instead he heard the whispering signature of a pistol slide being
drawn back and then released; and the words: "Just hold it right there, would
you old chap? I'd hate to damage you, after all the trouble we've taken to get
you...
Dan slowly raised himself into a kneeling position as his assailant grunted
behind him, "Murchesson, you OK?" The soldier on the ground before them
replied tersely: "Yar, the booger just winded me. I'll be alright in a minute
or so though..." He climbed to his feet and circled round behind Dan. The man
in command asked Dan politely if he'd like to rest his wrists behind his back,
so that his subordinate could bind him and call in a capture...
----------------------------------------------------------
In the hollow......
Both Jessie and Murray were snoozing. Jessie had his head dangled across his
forearms, which were resting on the desk in front of him, and Murray was curled
up in a bundle around Jessie's feet.
Glinda interrupted their peace...
"Incoming message... Dr. Jay... Incoming message... Dr. Jay..."
"Huh? waasat? Put it on th 'speakers, Glinda..." said Jessie, muzzilly, waking
from a bad dream... Murray woke in sympathy, and pricked his ears at the sound
from the speaker grille.
"Frankson reporting," said the voice, "We have a non-registered combatant,
repeat a non-registered combatant, secured in quadrant alpha-zero-niner. He's
already taken out one of the helicopter crew; Gawd knows what he was
thinking, and he almost took out murchesson as well!!
"Well, if he's that good, we may want to "retain his services", said Jessie,
always one to look on the bright side of any situation, even given the dire
nature of the threat that overshadowed them all. "Bring him in on the
meat-waggon, and I'll interview him here. Control out."
--------------------------------------------------------------
Leon stumbled through the forest, blazing an obvious trail of crushed
undergrowth and broken branches toward the clearing that he had selected.
Quickly unwrapping his hardware, he positioned his explosive charges
appropriately, then began to lay out his trip-wire conduits: two inches above
the forest floor; enough to be effective, yet still low enough to be obscured
by the undergrowth. He spread the camouflage tarpaulin across the middle of
the clearing, and settled down underneath it, preparing for a long wait.
Surprisingly, it didn't take long. After only a few minutes a voice called out
into the clearing: "Hey Bwayh! Your Mammah must've raised some kindah fool,
'cos Ah c'n'see the stupid kindah trap you had in'mind fur meah...How stupid do
you think i am when you's hunkerd down beneath that tarp? Now you just kinda
come out, nice and slow... what...?
Leon's assailant had the merest split second to look down at the wire that had
snagged across the toe of his boot, with a puzzled look upon his face, before
the shaped charge that had been mounted on the tree trunk beside him at waist
height erupted, neatly scything his body in two.
As Leon watched, the pieces of the body slowly tumbled towards the forest
floor, almost as if in slow motoion, intestines squirming, blood gouting. Leon
looked upon the scene of carnage for a few seconds, then turned away,
staggering off in weak strides of leaden legs. After half-a-dozen or so paces,
he stopped, leant over, and was violently and noisily sick.