THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HEIST, page 8
“Yeah, later. And thanks for the bar.”
“Sure thing.”
I waited a few moments until Hassan was gone, then went to work, Kane guarding the door. Simpson’s imminent visit to the restroom was a stroke of luck; it left me alone in the staff baggage room, hopefully with a few minutes to check through it all.
I started moving, fast and efficient. My first port of call was the big guy’s sports bag, although as I’d already surmised, there was precious little of interest inside. Changes of clothes, more food and sports drinks, and a couple of charging cables. He either didn’t have anything else onboard, or he was carrying it all on his person.
I left his bag and started on the others, immediately going for the next bag in line; Hassan and Simpson would have dumped their bags here together, I was pretty sure, and this one most likely belonged to the train’s second resident bad guy.
Again, I was disappointed; there was nothing of interest inside. It showed how good these guys were, how professional; even though it was unlikely their things would be searched, they hadn’t taken the risk in any case. It reinforced my earlier idea that if weapons or explosives were going to be brought onboard the train, it would be at a stop further along the route.
I searched the rest of the luggage held in the small room, and found exactly the sort of things you would expect – more clothes and toiletries, electronics and their chargers, books and magazines, packs of cigarettes and bottles of alcohol. There was a little bit of marijuana in one of the bags, along with a small plastic bag of what looked like amphetamines, but that was about the only thing of note. Nothing that was going to help a band of mercenary ex-soldiers take over a quarter-mile long passenger train, at any rate.
I finished my search and let out a long, heartfelt sigh.
It looked like I was going to have to get my intel the old fashioned way, and beat it out of someone. Luckily, I was quite good at that though.
I let Kane have half of my protein bar – hell, he could have treats anytime he wanted, and there was no such thing as “too big and strong” as far as he was concerned – then headed back for the passenger cars, checking my watch.
We were coming up on our first stop, in the town of Naperville, and I was curious to get my first look at our new guests.
Ten minutes later and I was working the platform again, although there wasn’t much in the way of new activity. Six passengers off, four getting on. I watched Simpson and Hassan the whole time, and there was no obvious reaction to any of them. Baggage was checked, and it was all clear. No explosives, no automatic weapons, no instruction manuals on how to seize control of a train. Not even a nice little drug bust to pass the time.
It wasn’t quite as simple as it first appeared though; although there was only a changeover of ten passengers, the policy was that anyone on the train could get off to stretch their legs, and a lot of people chose to do just that. Although it was nice for the passengers, it meant that everyone had to be checked again when they got back on, which took extra time. The checks were clearly not as thorough as they had been at Union Station though – we had less personnel available, and because the journey was already started, psychologically the staff were more relaxed. Everyone had been told to be on form, at the top of our game, but human nature didn’t work like that; and I knew that as the trip wore on, security checks would probably grow even more slack. And if one of the passengers got off to have a stroll and came back with something they’d picked up from someone else outside – weapons, let’s say – and then entered the train at the point where the checks were being made by either Simpson or Hassan, then who knew what might be brought onboard at some stage during the journey? Maybe it would even be a cumulative thing, little bits here and there being smuggled onto the train throughout the trip, new items at every station, until there was a complete arsenal in place?
It was a sobering thought, and I did my best not to miss anything, to keep my eyes on as much as I possibly could. Kane was clearly doing the same, along with the added benefit of his nose, but I knew that he probably wasn’t capable of sniffing out individual gun parts. Despite our cover story, he hadn’t actually been trained at a specialist facility in Detroit. He was good, but there were limits.
Soon enough we were underway again, continuing the long journey west to California.
I sighed.
The clock was ticking, and I was still no further ahead than I had been at the start.
Was it time for hopes and prayers?
Yeah, I figured. Maybe it was.
Chapter Eight
We had left the station in Creston, Iowa, just fifteen minutes before the sun started to set, an incredible orange fireball spreading its warm, beautiful light across the vast open fields that spread out for miles all around us.
I was watching it through the large windows of the Sightseer lounge, which was arranged to not only have windows down the car’s walls on both sides, but glass that curved a third of the way up into the ceiling too, providing excellent viewing conditions for what was one of the great cross-continental train journeys. The mountain scenery of the Rockies that would be coming up in the morning would be spectacular, I was sure.
That was one of the benefits of being the dog guy – I was allowed to move around the train as much as I liked, which meant I could always find my way back to the Sightseer lounge when something interesting was coming up. I’d already been there a short while earlier, at about five o’clock when the train had rolled across the Mississippi, passing from Illinois to Iowa via a huge steel bridge, wonderful views of Ol’ Man River on either side of us.
The car had been packed then – as it was now – with passengers literally on the edge of their seats as they took a relentless stream of photos and videos of the scenery with their smartphones, tablets and – occasionally – with actual cameras.
“It’s so beautiful,” a little girl said to her mother, face planted against the window next to me. “Take a picture mommy, take a picture for daddy!”
“Okay honey,” said the mom, picking up her phone and spinning it to the horizontal position to capture a landscape shot of the fiery sun, just half of it left above the horizon now. She clicked away, and when she finished, the little girl pulled it down to have a look through the pictures. “Ooh, that one, that one! Send it to daddy, send it to daddy!”
“Okay sweetheart,” she said, and tapped some more buttons, sending the chosen image.
And then it struck me.
The phones.
The sunset forgotten, I hurried with Kane out of the Sightseer, heading for the quiet of the staff baggage area.
When I got there, I made sure the door was shut, put Kane on watch duty, pulled out my phone and called Mickey.
“I told you already,” he said, his already short fuse noticeably shorter due to lack of sleep, “I’ll call you if I get anything.”
“I’m not checking up on you,” I said, “I’ve had an idea.”
“Ah, here we go.”
“Hey, just hear me out, okay?”
“Go on then, let’s hear it.”
“Everyone on the train has a phone, a tablet, some sort of internet-connected device, right?”
“Yeah, probably. We’re well into the twenty-first century you know, although I realize you’re against it.”
“Listen,” I said, ignoring the jibe, sure that I was onto something, “so I had a thought. If everyone’s online, blasting out whatever, can you track what they’re sending? Maybe we can ID the bad guys that way, maybe even locate who they’re talking with, use that to find the hostages?”
I was rewarded by the sound of laughter on the other end of the line, which dented my confidence in the plan somewhat.
“What,” I said, “is there a problem with it?”
“A problem?” Mickey sputtered. “A problem? You just want me to intercept – oh, I don’t know, let’s see – about three hundred or so different devices, remotely interrogate them all from thousands of miles away, to maybe find something of interest, all while they’re travelling at about sixty miles per hour in the middle of freaking nowhere?”
“Err . . . Yeah?”
“Yeah? Yeah? You wonder if there’s a problem with that? I’ll tell you the problem Colt, I’m an intelligent guy but I’m not a fucking magician, okay? And that’s what you’re asking for. Fucking magic.”
“There’s a Wi-Fi network on the train,” I offered.
“And what? You think the bad guys will be using it? If they were that stupid, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“So you’re telling me you can’t do it.”
“Oh, don’t try and appeal to my competitive instincts my friend, I lost those after a swim meet back in fifth grade and they ain’t ever come back. So yes, I’m telling you I can’t do it. But it’s not just me. Nobody can do it, because it can’t be done. Now, if you managed to get a physical hold on one of those phones, that might be a different story. But plucking it all out of thin air, that’s just absolutely –”
“You said you could do something if I got one of the phones?” I interrupted, another idea forming in my mind.
“Well yeah – you get a phone, synch the details over to me, and I can see who they’ve been calling or texting or emailing or whatever, start creating a nexus, see who calls who from where, develop a network, see how far we can spread it out, we can –”
“You just need the details from one phone?” I interrupted again.
“Yeah. You got a computer?”
“No,” I said, looking around at the bags, remembering what I’d found inside them, “but I can get my hands on one.”
“Okay, listen. Find me a phone from one of the bad guys, get it hooked up to a computer. Let me have the computer details so I can access it remotely, then I can start copying data across from the phone right away, override any security there might be on it. You think you can do that, hot shot?”
“I can sure as hell try.”
“Okay, ace. Then do it. I’ll be waiting.”
He hung up, and I looked around at the bags again. So, my initial idea might have been overly optimistic, but Mickey hadn’t shut me down completely. All I needed was a computer, and a phone from one of the bad guys – which meant either Simpson or Hassan, seeing as I hadn’t managed to locate any other accomplices yet.
I went to one of the bags, checking for the laptop that I’d seen there before. I pulled it out and flipped it open. Password protected.
I put it back, searched for another. It took me five tries, but eventually I found a slim notebook computer which didn’t have any sort of password, fingerprint or face ID protection. Just open it up and turn it on. Perfect, if a little foolhardy of its owner.
Okay, I’d got myself a computer I could use.
Now all I had to do was get one of those phones, without the target of my theft realizing what I’d done.
Simple, right?
Well, I guessed we’d just have to find out.
“Come on boy,” I said to Kane, “we’ve finally got some real work to do.”
Chapter Nine
One of the things you learned when you lived your life on the streets, hanging around undesirable people and getting into scrapes on a weekly, if not daily, basis, was how criminals plied their trade. I’d picked up plenty of skills over the past few years of traveling America which had complimented my military training. Breaking into vehicles and hotwiring them was one key skill which was now pretty much invaluable to me. Overcoming building alarm systems was another. And pickpocketing was one more useful talent I’d developed since leaving the army.
The main element to it wasn’t so much the physical dexterity required – although that was important – but the more psychological art of distraction. It was similar to one of the principles of combat, in a way – in a military attack, or even during a one-on-one fight, you might make a feinting attack to draw attention away from the primary target. As the great Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu noted twenty-five centuries ago, “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
Clever guy.
On the pickpocketing level, that distraction could be something like asking for directions. You would present a map, so the target’s attention would be drawn to it, and as he looked for the correct route on the large piece of paper in front of him, he simply wouldn’t notice when your other hand went inside his pocket and lifted his wallet, or his phone, or his car keys. If the distraction was good enough, you could even make a mistake with the physical part; if the target’s attention was truly occupied, they might not even feel the accidental brush of your hand, or the movement of the item catching on the edge of a pocket.
The problem I had with Simpson and Hassan was that these guys were a lot more switched-on than your average Joe in the street. I didn’t know their backgrounds, but they definitely seemed to be ex-military; and because they were currently “operational”, on a mission, they would be extremely cautious, if not downright paranoid. They would be watching out for anything that could ruin their plans, anything out of place, any potential threat or danger. Stealing a phone off these guys was going to be a real ball-ache.
Then there was the fact that, even if the lift went perfectly, and I grabbed a phone without them realizing, how long would I have before they noticed? If they were using the things to communicate to their colleagues – whether those people were back in Chicago, in DC, or already in the Rockies somewhere – they would presumably be checking those phones for updates on a fairly regular basis.
I was pretty confident of the physical side of the equation, as my fingers were dexterous enough to get the job done swiftly and efficiently; I could get a phone out of their pants pocket in a couple of seconds, no problem. I already knew that’s where the men kept their phones – right front pants pocket for both of them, which was probably the most common location for such things. Wallets tended to go in the right rear pocket, which I always thought was pretty crazy; the amount of wallets I saw in the street, just peeking out of that rear pocket as if just begging to be stolen, was unbelievable. It was strange that such opportunistic thefts didn’t occur more often, in my opinion. I’m not excusing the behavior of the thieves of course; but knowing such people are out there, why do people make life so easy for them?
A phone in the front pocket was more problematic than a wallet in the rear of course – you had to perform the lift while facing the person, for starters – but it was still a prime target zone. They could have kept the phones in zippered compartments for instance, or in the inside pocket of a buttoned jacket. Not insurmountable, but definitely harder.
No, the problem here was the nature of the distraction, and making it work against a well-trained, motivated and professionally paranoid criminal. Whatever I came up with, it was going to have to be pretty damn good.
Night had fallen, and we were getting close to Omaha. We were scheduled to get there at 10.55, where we’d have a ten minute stop.
I checked my watch. 10.37. Not far away at all.
Should I make my move on the platform? It seemed like the right time to do it; Omaha was a fairly major stop, so there would be plenty of movement. There were twenty people disembarking there, and sixteen new faces getting on. It wasn’t late enough for all the other passengers to be in bed either, which meant that a lot of them would take the opportunity to stretch their legs before retiring for the night. There was going to be a lot of activity, and it might just provide the opportunity that I needed; Simpson and Hassan would be checking paperwork and IDs, so they would be naturally distracted anyway. There would be so much going on, they probably wouldn’t have the chance to check their phones for the full ten minutes.
The only problem with that was the fact that I had to be on the platform too; if they didn’t see me patrolling up and down, they might wonder where I’d gone, and get suspicious. But, I figured, if I got the computer set up before we hit the station, and I managed to lift one of the phones as early as possible, I could hurry back to the baggage room, connect it up, leave it for Mickey to do his thing, then get back to the platform not long after. Patrol up and down for a few minutes, then get back, disconnect the phone, stash the computer, and drop the phone back into its owner’s pocket before the ten minute rest stop was over. Job done, and nobody would be any the wiser.
Like any operation, I needed to consider what I would do if things didn’t go according to plan. Because typically in life, things never did. Murphy’s Law, we called it – anything that could go wrong, would go wrong, and normally at the worst possible time.
The guy I chose as my target – which would depend on location and position and a few other things, once I saw the lay of the land after the stop – might notice me going for the phone. If he didn’t, then he might notice the phone was missing at some other stage during the stop. Or, he might notice me putting it back in. Or the other guy might get a call or message, and wonder why his friend wasn’t responding to his phone; he’d draw his partner’s attention to it, at which stage they’d realize the phone was missing.
There was also the possibility that someone would catch me connecting the equipment in the baggage room. The chances of the actual owner of the laptop to be the one wandering in on me were slim, but it wasn’t impossible.
If I managed to connect it up, went back on the platform, and then got into some sort of situation – another drugs bust, let’s say – then the delay might mean that I wouldn’t be able to disconnect the phone and laptop before we set off again; then I’d have to not only hope that nobody found the items once the train was underway again, but that I’d be able to retrieve the phone and get it back to its owner before he realized it was missing.
