CHAPTER 41
C HAPTER 41
T hey all crammed into Curtis’s SUV basically because they had no choice. The bulletproof Navigator was off on another gig. One Rover was carting the baffled attorneys to the hotel, the other was with Elena doing whatever. There was a considerable amount of whining and major-league complaining by the pair left behind on guard duty, while the others packed sardinelike into the overloaded Caddy. Something in the suppressed laughter, the sparkling gazes, the way Amiya clutched his arm while Holden supervised the bodies curled and piled into the rear hold, kept Curtis from demanding answers no one would give.
Elena and her shopping mate were already there when they arrived at Cape Fortune. As they clambered out, Elena declared, “Boss, that place had everything.”
“That’s good,” Holden replied, stretching his back. “Because that’s probably what we’re going to wind up needing here. Everything.”
The crewmember who had traveled with Elena added, “The lady ain’t lying. She told the warehouse boss what we were looking at, then he walked us through Aladdin’s cave.”
“He offered us four options, didn’t even blink an eye,” Elena said. “Oxy-fueled flame cutter, that was first on his list.”
“Nix on the flames,” Holden said. “We don’t know what’s inside.”
Curtis demanded, “Inside what?”
But no one was paying him any attention.
Elena agreed. “What I told the sales guy.”
Her pal said, “Next came this major-league plasma torch. We nixed that, too.”
“Ditto on the laser cutter,” Elena said. “Which left us with option four.”
Her pal said, “If we’d looked hard enough, we could’ve probably come back with a Stinger and a couple of Tomahawks.”
Curtis asked again, “Will somebody finally, please, at long last, tell me why we’re here?”
Amiya signaled to Rae as she pulled him forward. “Come with us.”
The entire crew followed as the ladies led Curtis onto the home’s foundations, over to just another stretch of poured concrete. The surface was moderately clean, though still streaked by the wire push brooms.
Curtis leaned toward where Rae pointed. “What am I not seeing?”
“Look.” Rae knelt and used one finger to sketch a line. “Amiya found it.”
Abruptly what he was seeing popped into electric clarity. “Oh. Wow.”
Rae said, “I stared at it for ten minutes before I saw it.”
Holden offered, “It’s steel plate, inch or so thick, set in place with a watchmaker’s precision.” He stomped a boot on the surface. “Covered with a sheet of more concrete. Meant to blend in with the foundation for as long as the house stood.”
Curtis traced a visual line around the square. “Amiya found this?”
“That is one amazing lady,” Holden said. “I’ve been force recon with some of the world’s finest snipers. I bet most would never have spotted a thing.”
Amiya said, “The hurricanes and the dislodged pillars must have revealed the cracks.”
Holden asked Elena, “How many crowbars did you buy?”
“Four.”
“That should do it.” He stepped back. “All my team who aren’t already hot and bothered, you’re hereby volunteered.”
* * *
It took them almost an hour to chip away the surrounding concrete so they could manage a two-sided grip. Even then, the steel plate remained a sullen and stubborn foe. Curtis took his turn with the others and agreed with Elena that the cover had to weigh half a ton. After his third gig on the crowbar, Holden declared he’d rather be back in Afghanistan.
Elena worked on it until she dislocated her forefinger. She screamed at the pair who held her fast and popped it back into place, waited until it was taped to the neighbor, then went stomping into the distance. Finally, though, with strained muscles and enough swearing to silence the birdsong, they managed to shift the menace over to one side, revealing a shadowy hole perhaps two feet deep.
Curtis dropped to his belly and used Rae’s kitchen broom to sweep away the surface grit.
Holden asked, “What do you see?”
“I can’t make it out.” He tossed away the broom and used his fingers. “More metal, for certain.”
One of Holden’s crew started off in Elena’s direction. “That’s it. I’m done.”
“Here.” Rae turned on her phone’s light and passed it over.
A long moment, then Curtis rolled over and stared at the passing clouds. “Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man.”
There was a general sweaty scrum as they all tried to cram their way into the hole.
“It’s a safe,” Amiya said.
“Yep,” Holden said.
“Rae was right all along,” Amiya said.
“Definitely,” Curtis said, speaking to the passing clouds.
“The safe they stole was a decoy,” Amiya said.
“Right again,” Curtis said.
“Elena?” Holden straightened slowly. “Where’s the lady?”
“Off kicking at stumps and nursing her sprained digit,” someone said.
“Elena!” When she reappeared, he called, “After you nixed the fire-and-brimstone methods, what did the warehouse guy give you?”
* * *
This was what Rae and Holden and Amiya had been hoping all along.
Desperately wanting it to be true.
Central to the equipment Elena had rented was a Bosch professional-grade BITURBO cordless power drill. They positioned the stubby steel frame around the opening and levered the drill down to within an inch or so of the safe’s dial. Two of Holden’s crew now held phone lights to either side of where Elena served as drill operator.
She sat with her feet on the safe and told the others, “Unless somebody objects, I aim to drill straight through the face of the lock. That will position me by the drive cam lever. After that, I’ll use the punch rod to shove them out of the way. That frees the locking bolts.”
Holden squatted down beside her. “They rented you a punch rod?”
“I told you,” her mate said. “That place has everything.”
“Two rods,” Elena confirmed. “And an assortment of titanium and diamond-tipped drill bits. You know, in case there’s a cobalt plate I’ve got to work through.”
Curtis and Rae and Amiya shared a confused look. Elena’s pal suggested, “Situations like this, it’s always best not to ask.”
Holden stared into the hole. “What’s the downside?”
“The safe might be shielded with relockers.” Elena pointed at the dial. “Those would be tripped when my drill breaks a sheet of glass that’s set over the locking mechanism. And that would trigger a set of auxiliary bolts. Then we’d have no choice but tear a bigger hole in the foundations and haul the safe out to where we can saw our way in.”
“She brought those, too,” her pal offered. “Two saws.”
Holden asked Elena, “But you don’t think that’s a major risk, do you?”
“No, chief. I don’t.”
“Tell us why.”
“Two things. The storms they told us about, the ones that ripped the pillars free, those kinds of vibrations would probably have cracked the glass.”
“Something this dude would probably have thought about.”
“Right. And two, the guy was after building himself a hidey-hole.”
“Which he did.”
“A good one,” Elena agreed. “I think then he went for an old-fashioned safe. No extra risks that might wind up with him unable to open the thing when it mattered most. No electronics that could go wrong.”
“Just a solid steel safe with mechanical locks, covered in more steel and concrete,” Holden said.
“Holding buried treasure nobody else ever needed to know about,” Elena said.
“Except us,” Holden said. “Thanks to the lawyer lady here.”
“Okay,” Curtis declared. “Major chills.”
Holden rose to his feet. “Objections, anybody? No? Okay, Elena, drill away.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, they were in.