Sex on the Moon (19 page)

Thad felt a thrill move through him, even as he continued to struggle with the unusually heavy bed, as he repeated the word under his breath.
Heist
. It sounded so cool in his ears.
The heist of the century. The heist of the millennium. The great moon rock heist
.

He laughed out loud, and with a final burst of energy managed to shove the bed the last few feet so that it was finally right up against the wall. Then he stepped back, working the cricks out of his shoulders as he surveyed the room. Now there was plenty of space for what might be necessary.

He crossed to the bureau and retrieved the oversized duffel bag that he’d placed next to the TV. He unzipped the duffel, and first pulled out a pair of folded-up tarplike sheets, which he spread out over the nausea-inducing carpet. Then he returned to the duffel and, one by one, laid out the tools he’d purchased from Home Depot along with the tarp—a pretty wide variety, because he wasn’t certain what he was going to need. After the tools, he retrieved a large fishing-tackle box, three pairs of rubber gloves, a notebook, and a folded-up mailing box.

After he’d laid everything out, he stood back, smiling. It was a nice-looking staging area. The tools themselves weren’t exactly high-tech; the most sophisticated of them were basically a saw and a handful of industrial-strength blades. But he had been working off a limited budget. And he was proud that he was planning to do this with such meager supplies. It was one thing to pull off a heist like this with the best supplies that money could buy. But to succeed the way Thad intended to succeed—that was going to be something truly amazing.

He grabbed the duffel, which was still fairly heavy, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed Rebecca’s number. She answered on the first ring.

“Is it as bad as it looked in the yellow pages?” she asked, by way of a greeting.

Thad glanced back over his shoulder as he reached the door. Bed up against the wall, tarp laid out across the floor, bristling with shiny new tools.

“Actually, Rebecca, it looks fucking beautiful.”

Phase Three was complete.

Houston, we have liftoff
…

28

“I don’t think anyone else is going to show up.”

Thad drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he peered up through the windshield. Even with the wipers at full blast, he couldn’t see much through the swirl of fierce rain that enveloped the entire parking area. The tiny cone of orange light from the Jeep Cherokee’s headlights was no match for what had now become a torrential downpour.

“Of course nobody is going to show up. It’s a goddamn hurricane out there.”

He turned to look at Rebecca, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him. She was hunched forward over the dash, rubbing a hand against the condensation that was slowly spreading across the inside of the windshield. He could see that her pale hand was trembling and there was a little bit of sweat forming on her upper lip.

“It’s freaking tropical, that’s for sure,” Sandra butted in from over Thad’s shoulder. “I mean if anyone else
was
going to show up, they’d turn right around as soon as we got to the observatory. Superman couldn’t see the stars through this mess.”

Thad exhaled, adding to the condensation on the window, then gave Sandra a look in the rearview mirror. She was right up against the back of his seat, sitting Indian style on the flat surface they had created in the back of the Cherokee by lowering the second row of seats. She looked almost as nervous as Rebecca, though her voice didn’t betray nearly as much tension. Behind her, Thad could make out the bulky form of the duffel, and the jutting metallic shape of a much larger object, which they had picked up on the way to the rendezvous point. The heavy metal thing had cost more than all the other tools combined—and the funny thing was, Thad was actually hoping they wouldn’t ever need to use it. But as always, he lived for the details, and at this point, he wasn’t taking any chances. Like the staging area in the cheap motel, preparation was all about planning for the things you didn’t see coming.
Like an unexpected tropical storm, exploding out of nowhere, screwing up their carefully planned alibi
.

It was Rebecca who had come up with the idea of putting together the observatory run the night before they planned to pull off the heist. And Thad had easily gotten more than a dozen commitments from people—mostly co-ops and interns, but even a few older scientists who had heard him talk about his popular Utah Star Parties—who were excited by the idea of spending Saturday night gazing at the stars.

Thad and the girls had loaded up the Jeep Cherokee, bought the final piece of equipment at a specialty store Thad had found online in downtown Houston, and then headed over to the meeting point, arriving a little early so they could be there when the other cars arrived. When, by nine-thirty, it had begun to drizzle, none of them had been all that concerned. In Houston, the weather came and went so quickly the meteorologists were basically throwing darts at a map. But by nine forty-five, the drizzle had become a storm, drops the size of lizard eggs crashing against the windshield and the fiberglass top of the Jeep like they were sitting in the midst of a goddamn meteor shower.

The tension inside the Jeep seemed even more explosive. Even though the heist itself wasn’t going to take place until tomorrow, they had all agreed that the Saturday-night excursion was going to make for a perfect beginning to their alibi.

The alibi was ruined, but Thad didn’t feel discouraged at all; in fact, the rain splattering against the windshield, as well as the obvious tension taking hold of his two young and pretty accomplices, was giving him a palpable thrill. Even the word
alibi
excited him as he added it to the list.
Alibi, accomplices, heist
.

As the excitement reached a peak—the rain slamming down above his head, the perfumes of his two accomplices mixing with the scent of adrenaline—Thad had a sudden thought, which he immediately put into words.

“Why don’t we do it now?”

The question echoed through the interior of the Jeep, for a brief moment drowning out the sound of the rain. Thad glanced over at Rebecca. She was staring at him, her hands clenched against the dashboard in front of her. God, she was beautiful. Even in the dark, broken only by the dim light from the headlights and the few blinking diodes from the dashboard—she was truly beautiful. The wash of love he felt when he looked at her filled him with strength, tripled his determination.

Sure, he had only known her a few weeks, but she was giving him an almost inhuman power, pushing him to do the impossible. But it wasn’t Rebecca who broke the silence; it was Sandra.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Think about it,” Thad said, his voice now a whisper. “We’ve got all the equipment with us. We’ve got the hotel room. And it’s almost ten o’clock on a Saturday night. That’s even better than a Sunday. Nobody’s going to be there.”

He was still looking at Rebecca—and then he saw a flash of brightness form behind her eyes.

“The rain is a perfect cover,” she whispered. “Nobody can get a good look at the Jeep. The exterior cameras will be pretty much useless. It’s kind of perfect.”

Thad reached out and put his hand on top of hers. He could feel that her entire body was trembling. He started to tremble too, but not because he was afraid.

He looked into the rearview mirror, matching Sandra’s gaze. Slowly, she nodded.

“Holy shit,” Thad said. “We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

And then he reached for the ignition.

…

Rebecca was right; the rain was a perfect cover. Thad’s heart was beating in tune with the oversized drops as he pulled the Jeep to a stop in front of the security kiosk at the outer gate of the JSC campus—but almost immediately, he realized that neither of the two burly guards inside was going to stick even a limb out of their warm, cozy nest. They certainly weren’t going to come outside in the downpour to inspect a vehicle with a NASA sticker emblazoned on the side window.

In fact, the closest guard didn’t even shine his flashlight in Thad’s direction as Thad dutifully held his ID card out his half-open car window. Thad knew from experience that the guards never really looked at the pictures on the IDs, but the rain was added security. There was no way anyone inside the kiosk would be able to tell that there were three people in the Jeep; nor would they notice the large, bulky metal object in the back. And even if one of the cameras affixed to the kiosk roof, or the camera attached to the gate—which was already in the process of swinging up to let them through—managed to get a shot of the Jeep’s license plate, it wouldn’t make any difference. The plate wouldn’t match anyone who worked at NASA, and if the authorities one day questioned the poor dude who had parked in the back corner of a strip mall the day before, they’d never connect him to Thad or his accomplices.

Once through the gate, Thad carefully pushed the Jeep to the 5 mph speed limit and began the long, crisscrossing ride to their destination. He’d always found the JSC campus speed limit annoying, but tonight, with his nerves jumping off and his stomach churning, it was almost unbearable. But the last thing he needed was a security guard pulling him over for speeding. He had a dozen stories ready in case they did run into someone—but once he’d been identified, the entire heist would be off. They were still in a place where they could turn back at any moment—they still hadn’t yet crossed that invisible line that separated thought from action. But the line was getting closer by the second.

None of them uttered a word until Thad finally pulled the Jeep around to the back parking area behind Building 31, finding a spot right up in front of the mechanical bay door that was used to bring heavy lab equipment in and out. Thad had never parked this close to the building before, and it looked twice as large from where he was sitting, its rectangular frame rising up into the heavy gray rain. He turned off the ignition, shut the lights, then listened for a moment to the rain pelting off the roof and windshield. He could hear Rebecca breathing hard next to him.

“Okay,” he finally said, pulling a small wrench out of the glove compartment. “Wait here.”

Now that it was after ten, the air had become remarkably cool for the middle of July, even in the midst of an intense rainstorm. Thad quietly shut the Jeep’s door behind him and hurried to the side of the building, pressing himself tightly against the wall so that he was partially covered by the slight overhang that extended out from the building’s roof. First, he sidestepped his way to the enormous bay door that was directly behind where they had parked the Jeep. He could tell by looking at the electronic controls on the door that it was fully functional, though locked from the inside. Satisfied, he sidestepped back the way he came, then went another ten feet to a small alcove built into the wall. Within the alcove was another steel-framed door, much smaller than the cargo bay, but just as locked.

Thad passed the wrench to his left hand, then dried his right palm and fingers against his slacks. Then he reached for the electronic keypad next to the door. From memory, he entered five numbers—and smiled as the lock clicked open. So far, so good. Getting the combo for the rear door to Building 31 had been ridiculously easy. If this had taken place a year ago, he would have known the combination himself—because often, the scientists who worked in 31 used the rear entrance to get in and out of the building after hours. It was especially convenient because it was located close to the astrophotography printer room; if you needed to run off a dozen pictures of the dark side of the moon, this was where you went.

Thad had simply called one of his old acquaintances from the Monday lunch meetings a few days earlier and explained that he needed to get some pictures printed up. The man had been happy to give him the code—and had probably promptly forgotten about the call. Even if he did remember that Thad had asked for the number, it was going to be scant evidence of any wrongdoing. Dozens of people would have used that door over the past few days.

Thad bent low, placing the wrench in between the door and the frame, propping it open a few inches. Then he quickly returned to the Jeep, leaning in through the driver’s-side door.

“Okay,” he said, sounding much calmer than he felt. “This is going to take me about ten minutes. If you see anyone—anyone at all—just take off. If alarms go off or you hear shouts or see lights—just go. Don’t wait around for me. I’ll be fine.”

Rebecca’s eyes narrowed, and she quickly shook her head.

“No way. I’m coming with you. That was the plan.”

Thad looked from her to Sandra. Yes, that had been the plan, but now that they were actually there—about to cross that line for real—he wasn’t sure he wanted either of them to leave the Jeep. Even if he were caught, Rebecca and Sandra couldn’t possibly get into huge trouble just for waiting outside in a Jeep. At worst, it was like a college prank gone bad, a couple of coeds cheering on an adventurous kid. Rebecca was his catalyst and his heart, but she didn’t need to be his cell mate if this all went wrong.

“Thad,” she said. “I want to do this with you.”

He stood there, the rain pelting his shoulders and back. He was caught between the fantasy of the moment and the real-world thoughts running through his head. She
wanted
to do this with him. But he shouldn’t let her. He
knew
that he shouldn’t let her. But the thing was, if she did this with him, he also knew that it would bind them together in a very real way, for the rest of their lives. When two people survived something crazy—and had a secret this big to keep for the rest of their lives—it connected them in a way that nothing else could. The money was one thing: it would change their lives, it would give them the opportunity to do many wonderful things, to be scientists, to go to Africa, to be happy. But beyond the money, the experience would change them.

He already knew that he loved her, totally and intensely, but if she accompanied him on this dangerous mission, she would be just as in love with
him
. He was sure of it. They would have this forever, no matter what else happened in their lives.
They would have this
.

“Okay,” he suddenly said, shocking himself—and she was already sliding across the front seat of the Jeep to join him out on the pavement. “And, Sandra—”

“Uh, I’m happy to wait in the car.”

Thad smiled at her over the backseat. He turned to face his girlfriend, and squeezed her hand. Then he led her to the back of the Jeep and opened the rear door. While she stood and watched he reached inside with both hands and hefted the oblong, oddly shaped metal object and lowered it onto the pavement. Then he went for the duffel, slinging it over his shoulder. He paused a moment, ignoring the rain that was pouring down over them, going through it all in his head. Everything seemed in order.

He turned to Rebecca and gave her a confident grin.

“Time to cross that line.”

A second later, they were inside Building 31.

…

There he was.

Up on the big screen.

Twenty feet tall in all his cinematic glory. Garbed in blue-gray overalls, his face mostly covered by a thin white surgical mask, his damp, curly hair hidden beneath a latex hospital cap, his hands gloved, even his shoes covered by white cloth booties. He was moving like a cat down one side of the never-ending hallway, his knees slightly bent to conceal his vertical motion, his bright green eyes keeping track of the revolving security cameras, making sure he was out of sight, again a ghost, a breeze, as invisible as air. His girl was right behind him, following his every move, mimicking his gait, dressed just like him, helping him drag the metal thing along the wall—its clinking, creaking wheels the only sound beyond their stifled breaths, the patter of their covered shoes against the cement floor.

A flurry of choreographed motion as they suddenly shifted to the other side of the hallway, passing from one security camera to the next, never slowing, never hesitating, moving like trained dancers across a Broadway stage.