Thirty minutes later, the scene awash with emergency service personnel. They discovered the six dead bodies reported. I was long gone by then, along with the five million dollars in drug money and the USB device.
Six months later…
New Years Eve arrived, thousands of people out in the city to see in the New Year. As the midnight hour approached, everything ready to go with a bang. Loud cheers sounded, drinks flowed and even strangers hugged and kissed, wishing someone they would never see again, a prosperous year ahead.
In the centre of the downtown metropolis, the bell tower chimed, seeing one year out and a fresh one in. Fireworks lit up the nighttime sky, a spectrum of colours, flashes and shapes holding everyone’s attention above. Deep underground, in the sewage tunnels snaking their way beneath the streets, a thunderous boom went unheard. Metal doors flew clean off hinges. No one heard it except for the three masked figures making their way inside First National Bank via an old, unused and long forgotten entrance.
With the door no longer standing in the way, they were inside one of numerous back rooms in minutes. Red and green blinking lights pierced the darkness, flashlights illuminated stacks of moulded plastic devices. Wires sprouted everywhere, connecting boxes together and running into other devices, reading and crunching binary data into tangible material. With power lines cut, the alarm disabled and the security cameras offline, they had free reign of First National bank.
The clock was ticking. Burns security firm was responsible for monitoring First National Bank. Unable to get a system reboot, it would take thirteen minutes for the police to arrive at the scene. Even after checking the front and rear doors, the police would still not discover what was occurring inside. In eight minutes, they would be in and out with all they sought.
The cameras inside did not need disabling. If they had recorded the events, it would have shown two females and one male. Jack, Faith and Kirsten were ghosts. Dressed all in black, the skin-tight clothing hugged body shapes. Faces hidden away. Each wore a gas mask covering the whole face in black rubber, leaving just two large plastic lenses for sight.
Jack’s gas mask decorated in white, taking on a skull image. The breathing apparatus positioned on the left side, gave the masks a strange and haunting style. Straps at the rear of the head pulled tight to the skull, the female’s hair bunched out, covering the straps. On Jack’s shaven head, the straps had already begun to leave red markings.
The heist executed with perfection. In and out of First National bank inside of eight minutes. From the control room they made their way through dark corridors and rooms via torchlight to the rear of the bank. There the vault stood before them. With the power down the vault remained locked tight. Set on a separate breaker for just an instance like this.
The circular vault door made from concrete and reinforced steel. Twenty-five metal cylinders set inside the six-inch thick door held the twin interlocking mechanism in place, accessible by its dual combination keypads, each with an individual ten-digit code. After that, there remained two fingerprint scanners, verifying identification. The data held on file belonged to two individuals, assistant and branch manager.
The dynamite used on the sewer door would be useless on the vaults door. Even a thermal lance – burnt iron rods in pure oxygen from an oxyacetylene torch – would not get them inside. A lesser man may have given up, but not Jack Starke. The vault was no match for him.
Stepping up to the first combination lock, his fingers hovered over the keypad. Breathing steadily, he inputted the first sequence of numbers from memory. The three red blinking lights at the top, signifying the lock in place, turned into a constant glowing three green light. Beneath the keypad, the blue touchpad scanner with crisscrossing white lines shone in the darkness. Jack touched it with an object pulled from his pocket. Loud clicks came from inside the vault as ten metal cylinders unlocked.
“How the fuck?” Kirsten asked.
“Beats me.” Faith whispered in return, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t even want to ask as I don’t think I’d like the answer.”
Moving over to the second keypad, Jack repeated the process. This time the blinking red lights continued to flash. Jack paused, deep in thought.
He ran his fingers over the numbers once again. No mistake. He put all ten digits in correctly. Trying it for a second time, the result came back the same. One try left before total lockdown.
There was only one reason the number failed; Martin Nutt had given him a false code. The bank manager had lied. Jack could have killed him, if he hadn’t done the act already.
Martin Nutt had not given up the code as easily as the assistant manager, James Billingham. Fear struck James Billingham. There was no doubt the number he spoke was correct. His voice wavered unsteadily as sweat glistened on his brow. Jack had no time or compassion. A bullet in the head was the thanks James received for the information. Martin Nutt was a different proposition.
His resistance was admiral in the face of the shotgun. For a man working in such a high profile job, his home was easy to breach. Jack sat in the living room, waiting for Martin to arrive home. The colour drained from his face upon seeing Jack sat in his armchair.
It took an hour of torture before Martin eventually relented and gave up the vaults code. By that time, Jack had beaten Martin senseless; swollen eyes, busted lips, broken nose, bruised torso, sexual organs that his wife would be getting no pleasure from for a while – if he had stayed alive.
There had been a glint in Martin’s eyes as he spoke forth the numbers. It passed Jack by at the time. Now as he stood before the vaults keypad with the memories of a time two months ago, he saw now, what he did not see then.
The bastard lied!
In a flash, an idea came to Jack. It seemed hopeless but was the best he could muster at the time. What did he have to lose? If it didn’t work, then Jack would walk away and return another day. He would not be without what truly belonged to him, after only securing it months before,
The lights changed from red to green. The ten-digit code inputted in reverse order, to what Martin Nutt had given up. The fingerprint scanner allowed access with ease.
The circular wheel door handle spun as the twenty-five pin locking mechanism opened. He was inside. As Faith and Kirsten concentrated on the money, Jack’s attention turned elsewhere. The money was all but a diversion to what he really sought. In safety deposit box number one-zero-two, was a treasure of immense wealth. Pulling the key from his pocket, the door opened easily. How he came across the key was another story. It had not ended well for its previous owner.
The metal box inside made from the same material as a flight data recorder on aircrafts; fire resistant, bomb proof, indestructible. In no time, Jack had the small USB device in his pocket. The data it held could be devastating in the wrong hands.
In less than two minutes, they were leaving. Four holdall’s placed on a dolly that they wheeled to the opening in the control room. With the bags dropped down to the sewer tunnels below, three masked figures exited the bank the same way they came in.
The plan a success. Or so Jack believed.
Jack Starke was a wise thirty-two year old man. Menacing in size, weighing two-hundred and fifteen pounds, muscles evident in all parts of the body. With a square jaw sat slightly askew to the left, matched by his broken nose from a street fight that had been a defining moment in his life, Jack remained an alluring figure to women. Jack bared the scars of that fight, his opponent not so fortunate. He never ate solid food for the rest of his life and walked with a permanent limp.
Jack Starke had been asleep for four hours before his cell phone rang. In thirty minutes he was showered, dressed, and sat before a good friend in Sarah Cartwright. For a woman in her early forties, she was nothing short of stunning for her age. Since her divorce from Doug a year ago, Sarah had played the field like any young single woman on the bar scene. She became a cougar in her prime.