“The plan goes on. We have portable work lights. Have somebody check out the other room. The last thing we need is the fire department showing up. Then I want them back in there as fast as possible.”
“But it’s going to take longer now.”
“We have a time reserve built in. Just do it.”
The other man said something else and Chase turned back to him.
While the pair had been speaking Stone and Robie had drawn close enough to hear enough of this to understand that the gunmen were on a tight timetable.
And Stone had been able to see enough of the room through the sweeps of the flashlight to become reoriented to the outline of the space. Now that he was out of the other room, he had to execute the plan that had started with him pouring water into the electrical outlet.
While Chase and the other man were still talking, he and Robie felt their way along the edge of the wall. Stone found what he was looking for, did a quick search entirely by feel until his hand closed around something, and then placed that object in his pocket. Then he edged back along the wall to where he had been originally. A second later the flashlight beam hit him in the face.
Chase drew closer to Stone and said, “I really hope you’re not trying something.”
“All I’m trying to do is stay alive, along with everyone else here.”
“Get back in the room, all of you,” Chase snapped.
They filed back into the room and the door was shut and locked behind them once more.
They sat in the darkness. Stone had turned away from the others and was working away on something he held in his hand.
“Calling the cops?” whispered Robie. He had seen that the thing Stone had taken was his phone from the basket in the other room.
Stone shook his head. He was doing his best to block the small amount of light coming from the phone screen so that the other hostages would not see it.
“A friend,” he said in a bare whisper.
“And this friend is better than the cops?”
“We’ll find out,” replied Stone. “But I have great confidence in my friends.”
Stone punched in the number and spoke quietly into the phone when it was answered. When he was done the person on the other end said simply, “On it.”
Stone put the phone away in his pocket.
Robie asked, “How could you tell which was your phone in there?”
“By feel. It was the smallest. Everyone else, including you, has one of those large-screen smartphones. I’m a little more old-fashioned. My phone is simply, well, a phone.”
“Who did you call?”
“A friend, like I said.”
“And what will this friend do?”
“Call my other friends.”
“You have a lot of friends?” asked Robie.
“Not a lot. But the ones I do have are quite capable. We’ve actually done some pretty extraordinary things together, my little club and I.”
“Club?”
“Yes. Didn’t I say? We’re known as the Camel Club.”
He took a moment to study Robie in the bare light of his phone.
“I’m surprised your briefing didn’t include that,” said Stone.
CHAPTER 4
Annabelle Conroy, tall, lean, and auburn-haired, was the newest, youngest, and only female member of the Camel Club. She was also a first-class con artist, though she had mostly retired from the field.
Mostly.
She had already reached all the other members, except for one.
Secret Service Agent Alex Ford had not answered his phone.
Reuben Rhodes, Caleb Shaw, and Harry Finn were already on their way to the mall in Georgetown.
Ten minutes later Annabelle was standing outside of the mall entrance waiting for them to arrive.
Reuben’s battered pickup truck screeched to a halt and he called out the window to her, “Any developments?”
She shook her head. Reuben eyed a car pulling out of a parking space on the street while a late-model Porsche convertible waited to pull in. Available parking spaces on the streets in Georgetown were unheard of and tended to be fiercely fought over.
Reuben timed it just right and slid into the parking spot before the Porsche could beat him there. The young man and his friend in the sports car immediately began yelling and cursing at him. The passenger jumped out and approached the truck. He was lean and buff and his hair was impressively tousled. He was dressed like a movie star trying to look hip. Everything he wore was expensive but tried desperately not to seem so.
With one look at him all Reuben wanted to do was knock him right into the waters of the nearby Potomac.
The guy stuck his face through the truck’s open window. “You took our space, asshole. Now move this pile of shit, old man.”
Reuben turned off his truck and stepped from the cab. At nearly six foot five and two hundred and seventy pounds he had the enormous size and breadth of shoulder of an NFL lineman. If he had had money he would have bought his clothes at the Big and Tall Men’s Shop, with the emphasis on big and tall.
He looked down at the far smaller young man, who had taken several steps backward when Reuben stepped from his truck. With a thick beard shot with gray and wild, tangled hair, Reuben looked more than a little unstable. And he could act crazy with the best of them.
Sometimes it wasn’t an act.
He grabbed the front of the man’s shirt and jerked him off his feet. “Do you think I’m too old to kick your ass?” he growled, his eyes boring into the younger man’s. “Because if you do, then I suggest you and your punk friend give it a try. I haven’t had the chance to shit-kick some pricks since Vietnam and I’m getting damn tired of waiting.”
The young guy was shaking hard as he took in the old army jacket that Reuben wore and then stared back at the wild eyes and the huge frame.
“We can find another space, dude.”
“Damn good idea. Because I’m busy right now.”
Reuben hurled him away and hurried down the block toward Annabelle.
When he reached her, Caleb Shaw was just getting out of a cab.
Caleb was in his fifties, paunchy, with gray hair and a trim beard. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles and looked like a librarian, which he was. He worked in the Library of Congress’s Rare Book Reading Room. Although he was the most sedate and overtly timid member of the group, he had proved his mettle in action many times in the past.
Caleb said, “A bank robbery? In Georgetown?”
Annabelle said, “Oliver doesn’t think the target is in the bank. He thinks they’re going after something else using the bank as a launch point.”
“Well, that’s a bit odd.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” replied Annabelle. “But then odd is usually the only thing we get.”
A moment later Harry Finn came rushing up to them. In his thirties, lean and fit, Finn had first run into Oliver Stone because he’d wanted to kill him. Now Harry was one of Stone’s closes allies. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder.
“Nothing on the news,” he said. “No one must know yet.”
Reuben said, “So if not the bank what’s the target?”
Annabelle said, “There’s a jewelry store and fur place that the robbers might be able to access from the bank. At least that’s what Oliver said.”
Harry said, “Then we need to cover them both. But what about Oliver? Did he give you the lay of the land in there?”
“He’s one of ten hostages. Four bank employees and six customers. There are four robbers, heavily armed, and they put booby traps at the bank entrance in case someone tries to get to them that way.”
“Pretty well prepared,” said Reuben. “Doesn’t bode well.”
Annabelle nodded. “And he said they knew the bank’s protocols. The closing of the vault by a certain time and emails that had to go out to ensure the central office would believe nothing was wrong.”