Urban Outlaws (2 page)

‘It’s
Commander
Obi,’ came the reply.

Charlie snickered.

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Not that again.’

Obi was back at their headquarters, monitoring all the CCTV cameras in the area. He continued, ‘I think my title should be
Mission Commander
. Just saying.’

‘You’re a year younger than us,’ Jack said. ‘You can’t be Commander.’ Charlie was still giggling. Jack shot her an exasperated look and said to Obi, ‘Just tell me if everything is OK.’

‘Running hot,’ came the confident reply. There was a short pause, then Obi said, ‘We’ll talk about it when you get back. Commander Obi, out.’

Jack let out a controlled breath. He’d gone over it a thousand times with all of them – if they messed about, they’d get caught. That simple.

Annoyed, he refocused his binoculars on the building opposite.

The office at the centre of their attention was owned by Millbarn Associates, a group of accountants that worked for large corporate companies. Millbarn had an impressive list of clients but what they were unaware of was that their star employee – fifty-three-year-old Richard Hardy – was a crook.

Hardy’s gift was the movement of money. Illegal money. Leaving no trail.

Well, almost no trail.

Jack had read an anonymous message on one of the internet hacking forums, which in turn led him to find the electronic footprints. The path of dirty money was faint but that’s what had guided them to this moment.
This
rooftop.

Richard Hardy’s most important client was a man called Benito Del Sarto and Jack’s probing had revealed that – on the surface – Del Sarto was a successful businessman with his fingers in many pies, ranging from oil to clothing imports.

But that wasn’t all. Del Sarto was also one of the country’s biggest arms traffickers. He supplied sixty per cent of the UK’s illegal weapons. Jack’s eyes had almost popped from his skull when he’d discovered that nugget of information. But guns weren’t Jack’s main concern right now – it was something else that he wanted from Del Sarto.

All he and Charlie had to do was get Hardy’s username and password.

Jack and the others had spent months planning, following people, checking out the local area. He’d thought of every possible eventuality in excruciating detail. That was
his
gift. His curse.

‘Jack,’ Charlie hissed, breaking his thoughts.

He pressed the binoculars back to his eyes and returned his attention to the street below. Next to the building’s entrance was a ten-year-old street kid. Her clothes were torn and dirty. She wore a tatty coat with the hood up, a blue scarf and woollen gloves. She hugged herself and rocked from side to side, trying to keep warm.

Occasionally she’d hold out her hands to passers-by, but they didn’t even bother to glance in her direction. They knew she was there. Of course they did. They always knew. They’d learnt to block people like her out. The homeless. The destitute.

Jack looked at Charlie.

She had her own pair of pocket binoculars pressed to her eyes. ‘Oh, no.’

‘What?’ Jack said.

Charlie pointed. ‘He’s early.’

Jack’s stomach knotted, and he hoped Slink would be ready in time. He looked back at the street and watched their target march to the Millbarn building.

Richard Hardy had short brown hair and was clean-shaven. He wore a black tailored suit and a red silk tie. On his wrist was a Rolex President watch, eighteen-carat gold, encrusted with thirty carats of diamonds. Lastly, Jack’s eyes moved to Richard’s shoes. Tanino Crisci. Bespoke. Black leather. Expensive.

Rich git
.

Hardy walked with his nose in the air. Even his stride was arrogant.

He was a few metres away from the entrance when the homeless girl stepped in front of him. She said something and held out her gloved hands. Hardy flinched and tried to walk around her but the girl mirrored his move, blocking his path. Large pleading eyes. Hands still outstretched.

Hardy huffed his annoyance, obviously realising the girl wasn’t going to go away. He reluctantly fished in his pocket, pulled out a coin and tossed it into the girl’s waiting hands.

Her eyes lit up and she beamed at him.

Hardy hurried past her and pushed through the glass doors without a backward glance.

Jack refocused his binocular sights on the girl as she ran down the street and then stopped in a narrow alleyway opposite. She held the coin in her gloved fingers, as if it were a precious artefact. With her other hand, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out an object that looked something like a calculator.

The girl pressed a button and a white band of light appeared above the narrow display. She waved the device over the coin a few times, then looked directly up at Jack and Charlie. ‘Got it?’ her small voice asked in Jack’s earpiece.

Charlie set to work, and a few clicks later the image of the coin appeared on the netbook screen. ‘Applying filters.’ The picture changed colour, went from positive to negative, and the unmistakable lines of Richard Hardy’s fingerprint emerged. Charlie grinned and said into her mic, ‘Got it. Good job.’

The girl, Wren, beamed up at them. ‘Thanks.’

‘Go to the meeting point like we said, OK?’

‘OK.’ Wren turned and skipped down the alleyway, disappearing into the darkness.

Jack scanned the building opposite with the binoculars. ‘Phase three,’ he muttered. A full sixty seconds passed but there was no sign of him. ‘Where is he? We’re running out of time.’ Jack looked at Charlie and she shrugged. ‘Obi, patch us in to Slink.’

A sudden blast of deafening noise made Jack cry out in pain. Dubstep blasted his eardrums and he cupped his hand over the microphone, ‘
Slink
.’ The music dropped a few decibels and he heard Slink’s distinctive chuckle. Slink loved dubstep – something Jack would never understand. The screech, grind and whistles made no sense, didn’t even resemble real music. Perhaps you just had to be twelve years old to get it. ‘Where are you?’ Jack asked.

‘Almost there.’ Slink’s voice didn’t even sound out of breath.

Jack moved the binoculars up the facade of the Millbarn building, and a few floors from the top he spotted him.

Slink was dressed all in black and, legs and arms spread wide, he shimmied up the window frames like a spider. He was at least sixty metres off the ground and holding on by nothing more than his fingertips and the grip of his shoes. After a heart-stopping couple of minutes, Slink finally grabbed the ledge at the top of the building, and hauled himself on to the roof.

Jack let out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. ‘You need to hurry, Slink. Hardy is early.’

Slink looked around for a second. ‘Terrific.’ He crouched low and – like a bullet – darted across the rooftop. He sprang over a protruding air vent, vaulted a low wall and slid to a stop in front of a door.

He pulled a flat wallet from his pocket and unzipped it. Inside was a selection of picks. He removed two and set to work on the door’s lock.

Jack lowered the binoculars. ‘Where’s Hardy?’ he asked Obi. There was no reply. ‘Obi?’

‘In the lift.’

‘How long before he reaches his office?’

There was another short pause. ‘Hmm, I’d say two minutes tops.’

Jack put his hand over his microphone and looked at Charlie. ‘Is that long enough?’

She peered through her binoculars at the opposite roof. ‘How are you doing, Slink?’

Slink grunted. ‘It won’t work.’ He was raking the lock with one of the picks while using a torsion wrench to apply pressure.

‘You can do it,’ Charlie said. ‘Just like I showed you, remember?’

‘I can’t – It won’t –’ There was a snapping sound. ‘
No.
It broke.’

‘There’s a spare in the case,’ Charlie said, her voice strained but trying to keep calm.

‘Sixty seconds.’

Slink fumbled another pick from the case and started raking the lock again.

Jack felt his chest tighten, but he knew his anxiety must be mild compared to what Slink was feeling right at that moment. If he failed to get that door open . . .
Game Over
.

‘No, no, no.’

‘Stop,’ Charlie said.

‘What?’

‘I said stop, Slink.’

Jack lowered the binoculars and stared at her. ‘What are you doing?’ Time was almost out.

Charlie ignored him. ‘Slink, just trust me.’

Obi said, ‘Thirty seconds.’

Jack swore under his breath and raised the binoculars.

Beads of sweat stood out from Slink’s forehead. He pulled the pick from the lock, stepped back and wiped his brow with a sleeve.

‘Close your eyes,’ Charlie said. ‘Deep breaths.’

Jack heard Slink pull in a lungful of air. And another. Without thinking, Jack breathed with him.

‘Hardy’s twenty seconds out,’ Obi said. ‘What are you guys doing?’

‘Zip it, Obi,’ Charlie hissed. ‘You’re not helping.’ She composed herself. ‘Ready, Slink?’

Slink opened his eyes, stepped to the door and slid the picks into the lock.

‘Fifteen seconds.’

Jack heard the click in his ear as the lock released.

Slink threw open the door, reached into his back pocket, pulled out a u-shaped device and hurried inside.

‘Ten . . . Five . . .’

Slink said, ‘
Done.
’

Charlie grinned and slid the netbook to Jack.

A window popped up and a stream of numbers scrolled down the screen. The device Slink had just planted in the network control box was tapping directly into the building’s computers. Anything they did now, the system would think was coming from Hardy’s computer.

Slink couldn’t have put it there any earlier because when the system detected a drop in network signal it automatically called the engineer. Leaving it to the last minute bought them time. They had twenty minutes to get what they wanted before the engineer arrived, found out what was going on, and the alarms sounded.

Jack switched to the live video feed of Hardy’s office. Sure enough, Richard Hardy entered and sat at his desk, facing the window. He had a pompous expression and Jack wanted to see it wiped off his smug face.

When Charlie had explained how the hardware worked, Jack was not only amazed by her knowledge, but by the fact that she could build such a device.

In order to see Richard Hardy’s computer screen – which faced away from the window – Charlie had built a custom telescope. It captured precise laser measurements of the chrome vase and combined these with a high-resolution image of the reflection from the vase. Together they created a flat picture of the room, as though they’d placed a mirror behind Richard Hardy.

Charlie adjusted the telescope, zooming in as far as the optics would allow. Jack let out a breath as the software compensated with no errors. They now had a clear view of the keyboard and monitor over Hardy’s shoulder. Everything they needed.

A login screen appeared on Hardy’s computer display and Jack hit the Record button. Hardy first typed his username and then his password. Last, he pressed his finger on a biometric scanner.

Jack stopped the recording and played it back. The telescope had captured every keystroke. He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and connected it to the netbook. In another window, he brought up the same screen Hardy was now using and mimicked the keystrokes.

Username:
BLUE STRIKE
. Password:
DOLLAR.

A new box popped up.

Biometric authentication required
.

A cursor blinked.

Jack grabbed the image of Hardy’s fingerprint and copied it across.

Authorised.

Jack waited, his own finger hovering over the Enter key. He had to be patient.

After what seemed an eternity, Hardy finally logged off and left the office.

‘Thanks for all your help, idiot,’ Jack muttered, and he set to work. The bank account page flashed up and he looked at the balance: two million, three hundred thousand.

The money would’ve only been in the account a few days but that was an eternity because Jack needed less than a minute. He clicked the transactions tab, entered sort codes, account numbers, and left the reference name field blank.

He smiled when it was time to type in the amounts to transfer: one million and then fifty thousand. He was about to hit the Enter key when Charlie grabbed the netbook from him.

‘We can’t take that much, Jack. It’s greedy.’ She retyped the amount as one million and one thousand pounds, and hit the Proceed button before Jack had time to argue with her.

The browser returned to the main account page and they rechecked the balance. Hardy and his friend Del Sarto were now over a million pounds lighter.

Jack disconnected the phone, removed the SIM card, snapped it in half, and tossed the pieces off the roof.