32. April 16, 2023 #2
Suddenly, Demon felt his dummy phone vibrate in his pocket. Sliding it out of his cargo pocket, he looked down and saw an unknown caller.
“Holy shit! D, pick up that call,” Midas ordered.
Demon hit the answer button on the watch. “Who is this?”
“I only have a minute. You have approximately forty-five minutes before the ritual starts. Once it does, you won’t be able to get in, and she won’t be able to get out until it’s finished.”
The voice sounded familiar to him, like he’d heard it before and recently, but not often. “Who is this?” he repeated.
“It doesn’t matter. Esme doesn’t deserve this. No one does. You need to get her out of there.”
“It’s Andres,” Midas supplied.
The young man continued talking. “Take the pedestrian walkway all the way to the end. You’ll see some stairs.
At the top, you’ll see a service door—number seven—that says Emergency Exit over it.
Punch in the code 177170707077. That will get you through the door.
You’ll be in a narrow stairwell. On the third-floor landing, there’s another panel.
Type in today’s date, day first. 16042023.
It will open a door in the ceiling. Be careful.
It will be a blind spot for you because you’ll have an entire floor of stairs to get up before you can get in the room, and if the guards see or hear you coming, you’ll be a sitting duck in the stairway. Are you alone?”
Demon wasn’t sure if he trusted the kid or not. This could be a trap. He went with his gut. “No. I have two others with me.”
“Good. Have one person open the doorway while the other two wait at the top. You’ll still have to be fast once the door opens, but your odds will be better.
When you enter the main room, there’s an archway on the south wall.
There will be two guards there. Shoot first, don’t ask questions.
Esme will be in the second room with seven women.
The women won’t be a problem. They’re drugged and compliant. Just grab her and get out of there.”
“How did you get this number?” Demon asked.
“Hurry!” Andres urged, ignoring his question. “I’ll try and stall, but it won’t work for long. I know you’ll be safe for forty-five minutes as we prepare. After that, no guarantees.”
The line went dead.
“Andres? The kid?” TB asked.
“Yeah,” Demon said. “He developed a crush on Cherry while we were touring the plantation. Couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He must have just been where she was.”
“Do you trust him?” TB asked.
“Hell no,” Demon replied. “But do we have any other choice? Intel on this place and these people is as bad as breaking into government databases.”
“No,” Midas corrected him, “I can get in government databases. The Salieri are worse. It’s like 3D printers in reverse. I’m stripping microscopic layer after microscopic layer off and getting nowhere fast. You either trust him, or you run blind. ”
“I don’t like those choices,” TB muttered.
“Well, this restaurant serves nothing but shit sandwiches right now, so pick your shit and go. Time’s running down.”
“Wait a minute.” Demon looked blankly at TB and Steel. “What did he mean by ‘ritual’?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good,” Steel replied. “We better get moving while Midas digs so that we’re ready to go.”
“I still have no visual on you three, so keep me updated with what’s going on. The cameras still show they’re recording, so maybe when you get out of there, we’ll at least have a record of everything.”
They took off running down the hallway, not bothering to be covert.
Glances down hallways showed no one moving around.
It appeared that the strange tone they’d heard while in the warehouse was some sort of signal to immediately evacuate the area.
At least, he hoped that was true. Having to fight off security with a time limit was not on his to-do list right now.
When they reached the door Andres had mentioned, TB updated the time frame. “Minus thirty-eight minutes.”
Demon entered the code as Nova repeated it back to him.
When the door handle turned in his grip, it opened into a stairwell.
It was pitch black except for a glowing wall panel to the left as they entered, likely the only way to open the door and go back into the hallway.
Quickly and quietly, they put on their night vision goggles and took the stairs single file.
When they reached the landing where they would need to enter the code, Steel halted them.
“We’ve got time. Let me run point and verify Andres’ information before you enter that code.
” He headed up the remaining stairs. Seconds later, he came over the line again.
“Stairs continue up until they hit the ceiling. So far, the boy’s honest.”
“Kid said two guards inside,” TB cautioned. “Even if there’s no one right at the doorway, we’ll be dead before we even get our heads into the room to see what’s going on. We need to see what we’re walking into. ”
“How are we going to do that, TB?” Demon barked. “Midas can’t get us eyes in there. Said there are no cameras.”
“Midas, can Nova get into the door controls and open it a half inch? Enough to get a flexi-cam in there so we can get eyes on the room?”
“As I’ve said before, ‘Does the Pope wear a funny hat?’” There was mumbling over the airwaves about people asking him stupid questions. “Give us a second.” Keys clacked in the background. “Okay, it should pop free in three… two… one…”
There was a tiny click, and Demon could see that the groove showing the door seal now had a slight gap.
Steel dug a flexi-cam out of his kit, connected it to his watch, turned it on, and slid the thin lens through the crack in the door. After turning it three hundred sixty degrees, he removed the camera and packed it away again.
“Two guards, southern wall, all as described. I’ll take point, and TB will take the tail,” Steel offered. “Your only job, D, is to get Cherry and get the hell out of here. Let us take care of the rest. Don’t stop for us. Don’t wait. Just grab and go. We’ll meet you at the beach.”
“Affirmative.”