Chemical Burn (15 page)
Authors: Quincy J. Allen
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary Fiction, #Dystopian
I walked to the back of the van, opened the windowless doors and hit a switch just inside. The interior lights came on a row of cabinets on each side of the van, with an aisle wide enough to crawl between. I stepped in, opened one of the cabinets and pulled out a fifty-foot length of coiled, gray cable that seemed to shimmer dully from within.
Next to that sat a small device that looked like a cross between an electric shaver and a screwdriver. It had a broad, rectangular head on one end and a double-set of prongs sticking out the other. I grabbed both the cable and the device and got out. Opening a panel on the end of the cabinet, I looked behind me at the old steel door. To the right of that, mostly hidden by the bushes, I spotted a faded, rusty NO TRESPASSING sign bolted to the wall.
“Perfect,” I muttered, delighted I wouldn’t have to jury rig anything.
I grabbed one of the standard palm-readers from the cabinet. It was rectangular, three inches deep and several inches narrower than the dimensions of the sign. Slipping the palm-reader under my arm, I walked over to the sign, pushed the branches out of the way and dropped the cable on the ground. Using the small device, I pressed one of the two actuators on it. The prongs glowed and hummed. Placing the prongs on each bolt, the tips glowed more brightly, causing a small metal hiss. I repeated the process on each bolt. When I cut the last bolt, the sign—with all four bolt-heads fused to the metal plate—fell to the ground.
I grabbed the palm reader, flipped it over and pressed a small gray button on the back, removing my hand quickly. The surface glowed, increasing in brilliance. Holding the reader in both hands, I centered it on the wall inside the pale outline the sign had left and pressed the reader against the concrete. There was a faint crackling of energy when the panel touched the wall. I pressed it into the concrete, watching it slowly sink into the surface with an electric hiss until the outer edge was flush with the brick surface.
Grabbing the dimly glowing cable, I uncoiled about twenty feet and pressed it into the corner between the wall and the jam. I ran my finger along the cable, tracing it all the way round. It adhered itself to the surface as I went. With the entire doorframe outlined in the cable, I grabbed the pronged device from my pocket and pressed the other actuator.
It began to hum, and the flat, rectangular tip took on a deep blue glow. I touched the tip to the end of the cable stuck to the doorframe and quickly ran it along the cable all the way around to where it touched the ground again. As I did, the cable flashed with pale white light. I placed my hand on the newly installed palm-reader and lifted my fingers in a new combination for this door, committing it to memory. The cable around the door flashed white again, accompanied by a soft, electrical crack. The cable returned to its normal dull glow, and I pulled it off of the frame, coiling it neatly.
I placed my hand on the panel again and ran through the combination for my loft. Pushing in on the door-jam on the opposite side from the handle, it swung inward. A wave of ninety-degree air washed over me. Swinging the frame all the way open, I looked in on my living room.
“Easy peasy,” I said out loud. I stepped over, picked up the sign sitting on the ground and pressed it onto the lip of the palm-reader. Releasing it quickly, it stayed in place, held there by a gravity field. Pressing with my thumbs, I pushed on the bottom of the sign, and it slid upwards, stopping at the upper lip of the reader. Sliding the sign back down in place, I gave a sharp whistle.
I put everything away, closed the back of the van, and stepped up to the driver’s side as Mag came trotting up out of the shadows. She leapt into the cab and slid under the seatbelt. I fired up the van and pulled out, turning right on Montlake. It didn’t take long to get back to the highway. I turned on the radio and “Space Cowboy” by Steve Miller came on.
“I love this song, Mag. It always puts a smile on my face.” We both nodded our heads in rhythm as I headed east out towards the desert.
It took me an hour to make it out to the VeniCorp facility. I drove about a mile past the plant and turned off the highway onto a dirt county road. A sliver of burgundy creased the eastern horizon, and a low, hazy pink glow swelled out of the deeper reds as sunrise began its ascent.
I’d actually looked up the layout the of the VeniCorp chemical plant the previous year on a different case. That’s when I’d crossed paths briefly with Bennie. The job had never brought me to VeniCorp, but the location and the general layout were still tucked away in my head. I drove down the dirt road for almost a mile and finally spotted the tips of the highest heating and storage towers of DiMarco’s plant. A dune rose in the desert between the plant and me, and since the towers didn’t have catwalks that high up, no one would be able to see the van. I couldn’t see the highway behind me anymore, so I stopped the van, got out and let Mag slither past me.
“Game-face Mag. Range out and hunt all you want, but don’t get too far. If anyone comes calling, don’t let them know you’re here unless I say so.”
She looked up at me, nodded her head, and disappeared as her coat turned the same color as the terrain around us. She slipped out into the dawn, and I quickly lost track of her. I took off my tan trench coat, threw it on the seat and grabbed the black one. As I slipped it on, the surface shimmered slightly and faded from shifting black to hues matching the van and the desert. I stepped around to the back of the van and, opening several cabinets, grabbed a large backpack made from the same material as the black coat. I grabbed the cable I’d used at the reservoir, the device to set doors, four palm-readers, a pair of black goggles, a vlain, and what looked like a long, coiled-up zipper made of thick, gray, smooth plastic. It was called a splitter and had a fob to pull on but only a seam where the teeth would be. I clipped the vlain to my belt, on the side this time rather than the back, and slipped the goggles around my neck. Everything else got stuffed in the backpack, which slid easily over my shoulders. It shimmered and took on the surrounding colors as well.
Closing the doors, I bent over and grabbed straps attached to the bottom of my coat, securing them to my ankles so that the jacket wouldn’t flutter behind me as I moved. I checked my gear one last time and jogged across the desert towards the rise that hid the facility. I crossed the distance quickly, crouching low as I approached the top of the rise. I crawled the last twenty yards and stopped when I could see the whole thing. I put the goggles on, pulled the hood over my head, and lowered the facemask as the sun peaked fully over the horizon. The goggles allowed for considerable magnification, adjusting to whatever object I focused on.
I spent the entire day watching the plant as two pair of guards circled the facility slowly. Laying in the sand, moving from bush to rock, I looked just like another piece of the desert. The plant had a twelve-foot electrical fence around the perimeter with Warning High Voltage signs every thirty feet or so. There was a small, two-level office building on the east side, a wide variety of storage and processing towers inside a massive main facility, and a row of thirty-foot chemical tanks along the fence-line closest to me. The structures around the compound would make perfect places to move undetected. A large warehouse squatted in the far southwest corner of the property. Three stories tall, it had a twenty-foot concrete wall around it with a sliding, steel gate that faced north between the building and the main facility.
The entrance of the plant was on the west side and had a manned security building. The building had windows all around and several computer terminals that I could see. Two men occupied the building at all times, and there had been a switch of guards at ten a.m. I saw an M-16 come into view more than once throughout the day. Roughly every two hours a tanker truck would leave the plant and one would enter.
As vehicles came and went, the security guards would check IDs, taking note each time, and then hit a button in the security building to lift the gate. Most of the people I saw appeared to be regular workers—mostly hard-hats, gray overalls and boots—but a few suits and regular folks came and went. They were going about the business VeniCorp was known for, namely chemical production.
My initial vantage point was on the north side. I shifted my position several times throughout the day, quickly running from spot to spot and making a clockwise circle from the north side. I moved every couple of hours or so, and I didn’t see or hear Mag the entire day, but I knew she would stay within easy reach of me no matter where I went. She was a better hunter than I would ever be. When it came right down to it, I sometimes got the sense that I worked for her, and she only needed me for my opposable thumbs … well, that and to drive the van.
As the sun drifted down towards the horizon and most of the overall-clad employees had left, I found myself lying behind a tall, spiky agave cactus. I’d identified a number of locations inside the facility that looked promising for the work I had to do that night and committed them to memory. Details of the building in the southwest corner caught my attention. A catwalk ran along the upper level of the west side, with a door in the middle and stairs that lead up to the roof on the northwest corner of the building. Each corner of the roof had a raised portion of wall. I hadn’t thought much about it until I saw four men in desert cammies come out the door. Three of them had M-16’s and the fourth sported a German DSR-50 sniper rifle. All four weapons had scopes on them.
Money
, I thought. Whatever they kept in the building was worth having snipers on the roof. That meant drugs, money or both, unless Gino had gotten into government defense contract work, which was about as likely as me being elected President of the United States.
The four men walked along the catwalk and up the stairs. Three of them crouched and moved across the roof. Now that I knew where to look, I saw the camouflaged heads of three men on the roof peeking from behind the raised walls at the corners. As each new man got to his corner, he exchanged a few words with the guard already in position, and then they changed places. The replaced guards made their way to the stairs, descended, and disappeared into the building.
As the four entered the building, I saw a VeniCorp truck pull away from the main facility and drive over to the guard post at the front gate. As they had done that morning, two men went in and two went out. I looked at my watch to see it was six p.m.
“Eight hour shifts,” I said out loud. I heard a rustle behind me and reached for the vlain. Turning over slowly, I saw the faint outline of Mag and her exposed, grinning muzzle coming towards me.
“Hey girl. Having fun?” She nodded, her muzzle was tinged with the blood of some animal, and stepped up to me. I looked around, enjoying the heat of the day and the dry air.
“It’s kind of like home out here, isn’t it?” I said a bit wistfully. She nodded and rubbed her muzzle on my leg to comfort me.
“Thanks girl. I sometimes miss it, you know?” She pawed at my boot and started rasping. “You’re the best,” I added. I sat up and scratched her behind the ears, setting off another round of intense rasping. “Go on. I’ve got to wait here a while before we go in, okay? Think you can amuse yourself for another couple of hours?” She nodded again and ran off. I watched for another hour as the sun went down.
With dusk fading into darkness, I caught sight of three sets of headlights moving towards the main entrance. The three vehicles stopped at the security post, and I could finally identify them as white, unmarked vans illuminated in the bright island of light around the guard building. None of the vans had windows behind the cabs.
Both guards inside the building grabbed M-16’s and stepped out. One of them walked around to the driver’s side and said something to an obviously Hispanic driver and passenger. The driver nodded, and the guard moved around to the back of the van. He opened the back doors and then closed them a few seconds later. The other guard hit the button inside the building for the gate, and it lifted quickly out of the way, allowing the first van to pass through. They repeated the process for each of the remaining two vans, and I noted that all of the van occupants were Hispanic. I memorized license plates as they passed through the gate.
When all three were in, they drove through the middle of the facility, their progress illuminated by a row of dim streetlights that followed the road. One of the guards pulled out a walkie-talkie, said something, and put it away. I lost sight of the vans for a minute, but as I suspected, they drove up to the steel gate in front of the walled building. The driver of the first van waved at someone inside, and the steel gate rolled back. The vans drove in to the well-lit area behind the wall and out of sight. I saw the light of a garage door opening, and thirty seconds later it closed.
The desert cooled quickly as the sun went sun down, and I needed to move to keep warm. Pulling my hood lower over my face, I stood quickly and ran through the desert night, making my way towards the fence-line. As I approached I heard the garage door opening again. I lay down in the sand and watched as headlights lit up the steel gate. It opened slowly, and the three white vans drove out and through the compound. I noticed a larger gap between the tires and the wheel-wells, so this was a delivery, not a pickup. After a minute they reappeared at the guard post. They were stopped, searched quickly, and allowed to pass through the gate into the night.
“Let’s get to work, Mag.”
She silently stepped out of the night, virtually invisible, and I could just make out her tail twitching in anticipation.
***
Bump in the Night
I waited for the last white van to disappear down the road before I moved again. Nothing seemed to be going on inside the compound, but even with my coat and hood making me virtually undetectable across the spectrum, the snipers on the roof might see something when I went through the fence. I needed a better spot. I faded back into the darkness of the desert. Mag paced me about twenty yards off, and we skirted back around the way we had come. My goggles allowed me to see perfectly in the darkness.
The large containment tanks came into view as I made it around the southeast corner, and I cut a diagonal across the sand to reach them. Thirty feet of open dirt lay between the fence and the tanks. Fortunately, the few lights on the forty-foot structures only illuminated about half of the ground between the tanks and the fence. I walked up to within twenty feet of the fence and stopped, scanning the entire compound one last time to make sure it was clear. With the guards walking the perimeter, I had a pretty good window of time to get through.
Whoever ran their security was probably counting on the fact that no one on the outside knew what was going on at the plant. Add to that the tighter security on the walled building, and the guy probably wanted to keep costs down. Most people don’t know this, but bean counters are the biggest boon to cracking security than any other job title in an organization.
God bless ’em.
I slipped the pack off, pulled out the coiled splitter, and waited for the next pair of guards to walk by as I slipped the pack back on. When they turned the far corner, I sprinted to the fence line. Grabbing the loose end of the splitter, I snapped my arm, uncoiling the splitter like a whip. I carefully placed the top end of the splitter about seven feet off the ground and slid my thumb down the whole length, pressing it into the chain-link fence. Each time the splitter came in contact with the fence, it elicited a quiet crackling sound, and the gray material seemed to meld into the metal of the fencing.
Taking one last look, I grabbed a fob at the bottom of the splitter and pulled it up. It noiselessly came up in my hand, separating the fence links. The thing works like a phase-door, connecting two points in space regardless of how far apart they are. To the security system, electrical current flowed through it uninterrupted. Pulling the seam apart, I stepped through and held it open for Mag who leapt through the opening and dashed into the shadows between the two nearest storage tanks. I considered taking the splitter with me, but this area of fence-line was dark enough that someone would have to shine a light directly on it to see the thing. Closing it, I left it in place in case I had to make a quick getaway.
I dashed into the shadows next to Mag, and we crept between the double-row of storage tanks towards the two-story office building. The front doors of the building faced south towards the plant and away from the fence. Between the building and me lay a forty-yard open area of dirt with several pick-up trucks and a parking lot beyond that with a red Lexus coupe parked next to the building. I scanned the area for a few minutes and, certain no one was looking, sprinted across the opening at full speed. Mag followed close behind.
I ran straight for the back corner of the building and dashed behind some bushes where I waited for the next pair of guards to pass buy. I’d need every second to finish what I had to do before the next pair came around. My target was the back door of the building, facing the fence. The guards in the security booth couldn’t see it, although the snipers atop the walled building might see the light.
Two guards came into view as they passed the storage tanks and started their slow approach along the fence line. Like the previous two, they both had M-16’s slung over their shoulders. One smoked a cigarette, and they appeared to be talking as they walked towards the building. Just as they were about to pass me, the one with the cigarette stopped.
“Hold up,” he said, grabbing the arm of his partner. “There’s something wrong.”
His partner un-slung his machine gun and looked around quickly. “What’s could possibly be wrong?” He scanned the area, looking for trouble.
I held my breath.
The first guard took his nearly finished cigarette out of his mouth, held it up and then dropped it into the dirt, twisting it out with his boot. “I need another,” he said, chuckling at his nervous partner.
I stopped holding my breath and took my hand off the vlain.
“You asshole,” the non-smoker grated, then he laughed with his partner while the guy pulled out a cigarette and lit up. “You know, you’re not doing yourself any good,” he scolded.
“Fuck you. This place will kill me before these things do.”
“You’re probably right. Have you seen how much of that stuff they have stacked up in the lab?”
“Hell, yes. I don’t like even going near that building anymore. It scares the shit out of me. Someone’s going to fuck up, and this whole place will blow sky high.”
“Just hope it’s not on our shift.” The guy shouldered his M-16 again. “Come one. Let’s get going before Thompson comes around the corner. You know what a prick he is.”
“Yeah. He’s been like that since Marty gave him a promotion.” They started walking again.
“I have it on good authority that he’s actually spending weekends blowing the god damn foreman.” He made a fellatio motion with his hand and mouth.
“You’re just jealous,” the smoker said, pulling out the cigarette and waving it in his partner’s face. “Everybody knows
you
wanted to be the one to go down on him, princess.”
“Fuck you!”
They both laughed again and walked around the corner of the building.
Grateful the two comedians had moved off, I took a deep breath and focused. Sliding along the wall, I paced them as silently as a shadow, heading for the recessed back door of the building. I wouldn’t have much time before the next pair came around the far corner. I pulled off the pack and extracted the palm reader, cable, and phase door tool. I quickly got to work and went through the sequence with a feverish speed. I had the door installed in forty seconds and the palm reader installed in another thirty. I set it behind an Emergency Exit—Do Not Block Door sign on a side wall in the entryway. I tucked the cable and tool back in the pack then slipped it on just as the next pair of guards came into view. Both of them had their M-16s unslung, and one of them had his hand to his ear. Someone must have seen the light from the light form the phase door.
“
Freeze!
” I hissed, and Mag stopped dead in her tracks. “Slow and easy.”
We both glided across the open area like ghosts, making our way towards the tanks in silence. I checked the tower and spotted three of the snipers scanning the building behind me. I could finally hear one of the perimeter guards talking. He and his partner had stopped and hovered in a deep shadow on the outside of the fence not far from the splitter.
“No, tower, we don’t see anything. Quiet as a church over there.” He raised his rifle and peered through his scope. “The back area is clear. If there was someone, he could be inside by now.… Clyde, hold up on the south side. We’re gonna check the back of the offices while Jim’s team checks the building. Keep your eyes open.… No, Jim, I don’t give a shit if it’s not your shift. Take a couple of guys and check out the offices. Unless you’d like to call up Gino and cry to him. Maybe he’ll be feeling generous and let you get some more beauty sleep … That’s what I thought. Now get going … Copy that, tower. Heading to the back of the building.”
The two guards started moving again, and I heard a door slam open over by the front guard building. Light shone from a door set into a structure that was part of the main processing facility. Three men hopped into a car and drove across the compound.
“Now, Mag,” I whispered. Everyone in the area would be watching the car. We dashed to the storage tanks and slipped between them. “Now it gets interesting.” I looked at Mag. “You know the drill. Cover me from shadows and corners,” I whispered.
I peered out from the shadows, looking for any movement directly across from the compound. The three in the car were just getting out. Otherwise, the coast looked clear. “I have a general idea where I want to place these, but anything is possible once we get up into the superstructure.”
I patted her head, took a deep breath, and sprinted across the compound, my feet patting against the ground as lightly as raindrops. The superstructure of the chemical plant loomed above me, much of it illuminated in bright lights. I ran into a recessed area that had stairs leading up into the plant where I found a double-set of doors with an Authorized Personnel Only sign on one of them and a single door to the left with a High Voltage sign on it.
“Watch the yard, girl.”
Ensuring I wasn’t in the line of sight to the office building, I went to work on the High Voltage door. I installed that phase-door just as quickly as the last one and set the palm-reader directly into the door under the High Voltage sign. Mag didn’t make a sound as I worked. I gathered my gear and headed up into the infrastructure with two more doors to install. I spent the next two hours working my way around most of the facility, looking for the right spots. Mag and I easily avoided the few plant employees going about their business, and I found the next spot at an upper utility closet door. It was about halfway up the superstructure on the side facing the security building at the main gate. I installed the phase-door slowly, making sure nobody could see.
I placed the last phase-door in the highest location I could find. It faced east, and the sign next to it simply said Maintenance Access
.
I’d seen workers in gray overalls go in and out during the day, all of them wearing standard tool-belts. Looking down at the three-story building below me with the guards on the roof, I realized I would have to be very careful. If any of them looked up, they might see the soft flashes of light that a door-installation caused. I switched my goggles to thermal and scanned the rooftop below, easily making out the hot silhouettes of each guard. One appeared to be sitting with his back against the wall. His head at a slight angle, I figured he was asleep. The other three were sitting upright in the remaining corners looking out into the desert. I’d have to risk it. This spot was prime real estate for the plan that was taking shape.
I moved quickly, installing the door in record time. I checked the guards several times, but none of them ever looked upwards. I hoped this would be the only door I needed, but I’d put the others in as a safety precaution. Packing up my gear, I figured I was done for the night. I moved down the stairs along the west side of the tower. A glimmer near the highway caught my eye, easily seen from my vantage point. The vehicle came down the road and stopped at the gate as one of the guards came out to greet what I could now see as a stretched limousine. I enhanced the magnification and zoomed in. I briefly saw the coarse features of Gino DiMarco flash in the streetlight as the mobster said something curt to the guard and disappeared back into the car. I ran as silently as I could down the steel steps, Mag a silent shadow trailing behind me.
The guard hollered to his partner in the booth, and the gate swung up just in time for the already moving limousine to pass through. Before the gate had come down, I covered three of the eight flights of stairs to the bottom. “Mag, get back to the storage tanks,” I told her as I rounded another flight of steps and raced down. “I want to see if I can learn anything from DiMarco.”
It took us another twenty seconds to make it down the rest of the stairs. We leapt down the last flight, hitting the dirt and running without breaking stride as the limousine pulled into the parking lot next to the Lexus. I paused, crouching in an island of darkness in the middle of the compound, and waited for DiMarco to get out. The driver got out, moved to the back door and opened it. DiMarco stepped out, lighting a fat cigar as he stood up straight. Two of the perimeter guards disappeared around the corner of the building. DiMarco didn’t acknowledge them, and they didn’t wave. I’m sure they knew better.
“I don’t know how this fucking guy does it,” DiMarco said to the driver. “He never sleeps. Good thing I ain’t paying him by the hour … and he sure has made me a mint, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir, Mister DiMarco.”
“Leave the motor running. I won’t be long, and I want to get back to the house. I don’t want to miss
CSI
. I fucking love that show. Who says T.V. can’t be educational?”
“Yes, sir.”
DiMarco walked towards the front of the building, and I bolted from my spot, sprinting as silently as I could. I ran around the trucks in the dirt lot and slipped into along the darkness near the fence-line. The driver neither heard nor saw me as I passed by. My objective was in sight. The guards were out of sight around the corner of the building now, making their way along the north side of the compound.
Running parallel to the back of the building, I cut a sharp left as I approached the dumpster. I’d have one shot. I leapt up and in one stride cleared the edge of the dumpster. My left foot came down on the edge hard with a loud
BANG
as I jumped up. My momentum carried me forward and up. I hit the wall with my right foot and pushed up as hard as I could. Reaching up with both hands, I caught the edge of the building and pulled, my momentum carrying me the rest of the distance. My feet cleared the edge of the building by a foot. I came down, rolled forward and stopped in a low crouch. The guards on the north side stopped when they heard the noise and stared at the building.
“What the hell was that?” the driver yelled.
I heard the limo door open and close as I approached a roof access door. It stood near the edge of the roof on the parking-lot side, leading down into the building.
“I’ll take a look, guys,” the driver hollered at the two guards.
“Roger!” one of the guards shouted. I heard him say something quietly, undoubtedly over his radio, and I could feel sniper-eyes scanning the rooftop for any signs of life.
I had to move slowly around several patio lounge chairs and a picnic table as I crossed the roof. If they saw any part of my outline, they might shoot first and apologize to DiMarco after. I heard footsteps below walk up to the corner of the building and stop. I peered down over the edge. I saw the driver peek around the corner with a Beretta in his hand. I moved back to the door, reached into a pocket, pulled out my lock-pick set and prepared to work on the lock. Fortunately, the stairwell entrance lay between me and the snipers. I pulled out a torsion wrench and S-rake and then paused, turned, and looked at the patio furniture then back at the lock. Doing a double-take, I turned again to the patio furniture, thinking about why they were there. I cocked my head to the side, reached out my hand slowly, and pressed down on the door lever. It twisted easily in my hand, already unlocked, and the door swung open for me.
