Chapter 8
EIGHT
Oh, the joys of working for the Masters of the Universe, even if they’d been taken down a notch or ten and their plumage was not as bright and as full as before.
Included in the contract was reimbursement for private jets to take him anywhere he wanted to go. And the good thing about private jets was that no one was going to ask any questions at all.
He was definitely dressed for the part. He’d studied his clients like it was a mission and just as he could camouflage himself for a sniping mission in the desert or a quick infil into the African jungle, he could pass muster among the rich. He’d learned the camouflage well.
The human eye is overwhelmed by input from the brain.
It won’t “see” a sniper in camouflage with mottled, disruptive patterns.
It perceives the sniper and his surroundings as a continuum and can’t see the contour around him.
A good sniper becomes invisible, whether in mountain terrain or in forests or in the desert.
The same here. He was dressed in the equivalent of his ghillie suit. A ghillie suit of the rich. He was dressed from the skin out in silk, Egyptian cotton, cashmere and new virgin wool. Look the part, be the part. What was underneath the $8,000 suit, a steel-tough, scarred body, couldn’t be seen.
The mission called for speed, otherwise Outlaw would have spent the day at a spa, to achieve that ruddy, pampered look. But there’d been no time.
It had given him enormous pleasure to put his Remington sniper rifle—he would use it only if he had to, to complete the mission—and his Kimber 1911, three magazines, tactical gear, body armor, powerful laser light, lockpick gun, K-bar, karambit knives and vial of acid all in matching Louis Vuitton carry-on hand luggage and briefcase.
No one would think to question it.
It was simply a different world, the world of the über-rich.
They were as invisible in their way as the homeless.
Outlaw had been both, under cover. People avert their eyes from the homeless, particularly if you were smart and pissed on yourself.
Eau de bum. But they avert their eyes from the super wealthy, too.
As if the rich gave off a special glare too bright for the eyes of ordinary people.
Outlaw had the bearing of the super-rich down, too. God knows he’d studied his clients enough and he knew the rules. You could never be too arrogant or act too entitled.
He drew up in a limo, which he exited without giving the driver a second glance. The pilot was at the top of the stairs and Outlaw passed by him with only a terse nod.
It was behavior so expected, he was invisible.
The flight was smooth, the weather excellent all the way into Southern California.
He’d spent the entire trip studying the Google Street View of the Morrison Building, hacking into the blueprints on file in the San Diego County office and the building management company’s files.
The office of Wordsmith was tiny, 500 square feet, and the rent was $4,200 a month.
Nicole Pearce had a two-year lease and had never been late in payment.
Outlaw then hacked into a Keyhole satellite and checked out the roof of the building. He spent an hour on close-ups of every inch of the roof and had a viable game plan for getting into and out of Nicole Pearce’s ninth-floor office, and a backup emergency plan, by the time they landed.
He rented a Lexus and drove himself to near the Morrison Building. An hour after landing, he was parking the Lexus on a side street.
The street view had been astonishingly clear, but the Google cameras hadn’t been able to penetrate the smoked-glass windows of the lobby.
Outlaw watched the entrance for a quarter of an hour from a trendy café across the street.
He monitored the ebb and flow of people, timed it and strode into the expensive glass-and-brushed-steel expanse of the large lobby together with an intake of men.
He wore large wraparound sunglasses and walked with his head down.
There were security cameras all around the walls, but their angle was such that if you walked straight down the middle of the 11,000-square-foot floor, chances were they’d only catch his feet.
He put himself in the middle of a crowd of excited business executives who’d just come back from some seminar.
Like many Special Ops soldiers, Outlaw wasn’t a big man.
He was of medium height and wiry rather than broad.
He placed himself between two big, beefy executive types, keeping pace with them across the large lobby, wishing men still wore hats.
A wide-brimmed fedora would have been perfect to cover his face.
No one paid him any attention at all. He was one more businessman who’d just come from the plane with his carry-on luggage, walking briskly to a meeting in the building.
The security cameras at the bank of elevators were all tilted at the same angle, calibrated to cover an area about seven feet from the doors.
Which just proved to Outlaw all over again how incredibly stupid civilians were.
Especially rich civilians. No drug lord or criminal worth their weight in cocaine would have set up security cameras like that.
The angles would have been staggered to ensure maximum coverage, to make sure not a fly got past security.
But those were hard men, who paid for lapses in security with their lives.
These rich civilians lived in a soft world, where just the idea of security cameras and guards was cool, and enough. In a glance, Outlaw had seen the guard in the big U-shaped desk made of maplewood and brass. Good haircut, good-looking guy, trim, with an elegant uniform.
Security as fashion accessory.
This was going to be a cakewalk.
Nobody paid him the slightest bit of attention as he rode to the seventh floor.
He walked the floor, head down, just another executive deep in thought about an upcoming IPO.
It was a matter of vibes. When he wanted to, among men who understood the signals, Outlaw was good at emitting “don’t fuck with me or I’ll cut your balls off” vibes.
But here it would be like broadcasting radio waves to a TV station.
No, in this kind of environment, the equivalent was I’m too busy and important to worry about worms like you, so don’t bust my balls. With that attitude, he was invisible.
It was going on 7 P.M. The building was emptying of all the clerical workers, the secretaries and gophers. Offices would have a skeleton crew, and only those busy on a big deal or wanting to show off for the boss would still be working. And most of them would quit by nine.
Outlaw met no one as he walked the length of the building to the fire stairs at the other end of the hall. Few of the offices had cameras outside their doors, and most of them were turned off.
Outlaw shook his head as he walked. Jesus Christ. Turning a security camera off? What the hell was wrong with these people?
In the huge, empty stairwell, he took the stairs two at a time to the ninth floor, pulling out his laser light, holding it in the cup of his hand.
Office 921 was halfway down. And, he saw at a glance—no security camera outside the door. So Ms. Pearce hadn’t coughed up the extra amount for extra security. Wonderful.
There was a security company right across the hall, though.
Its camera was definitely on, and it covered half the hallway.
Outlaw walked close to the wall on the other side, and just to be sure, flashed the laser light into the camera as he walked by.
Anyone viewing the tapes afterward would just see a blanked-out section, like a glitch in the tape.
Okay, he’d reconnoitered; time to go to his hide.
It was twenty-eight floors to the roof, and Outlaw took them at a run. He’d be sitting immobile for a couple of hours, so the small bite of exercise felt good.
At the top, on the landing, he changed into his tactical Nomex suit, readied his equipment and hunkered down next to the door leading out onto the roof.
He checked his watch. Seven twenty. Less than two hours to wait. He wanted to go in at nine. Nine was a perfect time. Almost everyone gone, not so late he’d catch the attention of the night security guards.
Waiting was never a problem. He was a sniper and patience was a big part of it. He was good at waiting. He could slow his breathing, bring his heart rate down, put himself into a state of vigilant rest, yet remain ready to kill at a moment’s notice.
Outlaw rested his head against the wall and shut down.
The whole afternoon was a washout. Nicole got exactly zero work done.
This was terrible. She had the bank deadline, ten texts to distribute to her network of collaborators and new texts to look at and quote prices for.
She couldn’t afford to take a day off, staring into space, thinking of Sam Reston.
However hard she tried to concentrate, though, his strong features swam into her monitor, crowding out the description of a new French manufacturing technology of airplane components, which was the text after the Luxembourg bank board meeting.
Every cell in her body squeezed tight as his image blossomed in her mind—dark face intent inches above her, focused on her so tightly she felt the lines of attraction between them could become visible.
Her body tingled with remembered sexual desire, but with a little time and distance, something else impinged on her consciousness. Something important about last night. There’d been something elusive, something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
She’d been…happy.
It had been so long since she’d felt that way, it had taken her a whole day to recognize it. Her entire being had been bathed in joy and, well, sexual delight. The sex had had a lot to do with it, but something about Sam himself, beyond his formidable power as a lover, was involved.