The Freeport Robbery Read online

Rickover continued. “No, really. There’s a stolen art object in a private vault out by the airport. I want you to steal it back. We return it to the museum and split the recovery fee.”

  Ron sat up in his chair. “Why don’t you call the police?”

  “The vault’s in the freeport. Not enough evidence for a search warrant. Lots of VIPs store valuables there, so there’s a lot of pressure for the courts not to interfere. The freeport is outside of customs, so it’s technically not in the country. Anything stored there is in transit, which is why it’s such a great place to store things you don’t want found.”

  “So what’s the object?”

  “A gold jewel casket designed by Benvenuto Cellini. It’s an important example of his early technique. It’s been officially missing since World War Two, but there’ve always been rumors as to its whereabouts. The trail got hot recently when the current owner had to take it out of a Swiss bank after a change in international banking regulations.”

  “And now it’s here.”

  Rickover nodded.

  Nicole held her hands out in front of her, as if she were measuring something in space. “So this is, essentially, a Renaissance jewelry box. How big is it?”

  Rickover looked down at his computer. “About ten inches by seven inches by four inches. But the foam packing and the crate make it somewhat bigger.”

  Nicole moved her hands around the invisible casket. “So it’s for a lady’s personal jewelry.”

  Rickover shrugged.

  Nicole looked up at him. “From what I’ve heard, the freeport vault is like a bank vault.”

  “I’ve got the alarm codes, the access codes, and the codes for the particular locker.”

  “How did you come by those?” Ron asked.

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “But they’re good? They’re the real codes?” Ron asked.

  “Guaranteed.”

  Ron rubbed his chin. “This is a lot of moving parts. We need to spend some time studying this.”

  “I need you to do it ASAP.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Tomorrow would be good.”

  “Sunday?”

  “The vault is open business hours Monday through Friday. The casket could be on the move Monday morning. Who knows when we’ll get another chance?”

  “And you’ve got all the specs?”

  “Peter Damascus Sculpture Museum in LA has the legal right to the casket. The last rightful owner willed it to the museum, even though it had been stolen. They’re offering a one-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee. That’s seventy-five thousand apiece with me handling the upfront cost.”

  “That’s ten percent?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it’s only worth a million and a half?”

  “Who knows what it will be worth after an expert evaluation, but, yeah, that’s the current figure.”

  “So what are the details?”

  “You go in through the airport, pick up employee credentials, go into the freeport vault via the loading dock, put in the codes, meet me at the rendezvous. All the info is on this memory stick.” He unplugged the memory stick from his laptop and held it up in his hand.

  Ron looked at Nicole. She nodded. “Okay,” he said, “you’re lucky we need the cash. We’re on for tomorrow. But I’m just telling you, if anything seems even the least bit wrong, we’re going to bail.”

  “You won’t regret this,” Rickover said. “For you two, this is easy money.”

  Ron took the memory stick and put it into his jacket pocket.

  “Oh,” Rickover said, “almost forgot.” He reached into his top desk drawer and brought out a cell phone. “Take this burner. If you need to get in touch, this is the phone to use.”

  Ron turned on the phone. There was one number in the contact list. He turned it off and passed it to Nicole, who put it in her handbag. “Okay,” Ron said. “We’ll call to set the rendezvous time. Probably be tomorrow evening.”

  “Super. I look forward to hearing from you.”

  Ron and Nicole walked down the hallway to the elevator. They waited in silence until it came. After the doors closed, Nicole said, “Something’s not right with Aaron. He was—it was almost like he was saying something he’d rehearsed.”

  “I know. He hasn’t been himself since his wife kicked him out, but he’s never led us wrong. We’ve always made money with him.”

  Neither spoke the rest of the way down. In the lobby, the lone security guard sat behind the information desk reading a newspaper. As they walked toward the glass front doors, Nicole said, “He shouldn’t have hit her.”

  “Shouldn’t have been pumping that FBI agent if he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

  “He was losing it. His game had come completely off the rails. A family man has got to do better than that.”

  Ron held the door for her as they walked outside onto the sidewalk. The sun had come out, and the day had turned humid. The panhandler on the corner had changed shifts. “Well, she’s got him by the short hairs now.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Honey, the only one I trust is you.”

  2

  The Freeport Vault

  Sunday evening at 7:15 p.m., Ron and Nicole walked into the Charles Bay International Airport. The outer departure lobby was bustling with people standing in baggage check lines at the self-serve kiosks, blue-uniformed airline employees directing traffic, friends and relatives helping travelers get their bags from the curb to the check lines. But Ron and Nicole didn’t have any bags to check. They both wore black shoes and dark blue pants that matched the security officer uniforms. Ron wore a black T-shirt and a gray pullover sweater, Nicole a black scooped-neck shirt and a jacket that matched her pants.

  They walked up the escalator and got into the security line. When their turn came, they showed boarding passes for a cheap, one-hop flight to Philadelphia and produced IDs that showed them to be James and Lydia Morrison. The TSA agent marked their boarding passes with a yellow marker and waved them through. They emptied their pockets into plastic containers and placed the containers on the conveyer and took their turns in the scanner, holding up their arms while the machine worked around them. Then they put on their shoes and turned left down the hallway to the C gates. At the second door, marked Restricted Access, Ron punched in the access code and opened the door, which led into an industrial hallway. At the end of the hallway, they turned into a room on the right, which was lined with rows of lockers. Ron opened locker number 259. Inside were two airport security officer shirts, IDs, and holstered pistols. They put their security officer shirts on over their shirts, attached their IDs to their pockets, and put their jackets into the locker.

  Nicole looked Ron over critically. “Button your top shirt button.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What about me?”

  “You look great.”

  She ejected the clip on her nine-millimeter pistol, checked the breech to make sure there wasn’t a round in the chamber, and pushed the clip back in. “So far, so good.”

  “Rickover has never let us down. There’s plenty of stuff to be paranoid about without being paranoid about him.”

  “A wise man once told me better safe than sorry.”

  “And I intend to take my advice.”

  They went out the other side of the locker-room and down a set of metal steps onto the tarmac, which was loud with the rumble of jet engines, the sound of baggage carts, and the steady beep of safety alarms. Night was coming on, but the airfield was brightly lit. To their right they could see a number of planes sitting at gates. To their left they could see an open area framed by a chain-link fence with barbed wire along the top. Just then, a small yellow utility truck pulled up, and a young, dark-skinned maintenance worker with ear protection hanging around his neck climbed out. “Hey,” he said, “I don’t know you. Where’s Blount?”

  Ron stuck out his hand. “I don’t know you, either. I’m Bill. I don’t kno
w Blount. I just go where they send me.”

  The man shook hands with him. “I hear you. I’m Terry.” He looked at Nicole.

  “I’m Erica.” They shook hands.

  “I guess you two don’t usually work Sundays?”

  “No, first time for both of us.”

  “It’ll get quiet around ten.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Well, I’m off. You two working tomorrow?”

  “Definitely.”

  “See you later.”

  The man went up the steel steps. Ron and Nicole waited until they heard the door bang shut; then they put on their latex gloves and hurried to the utility truck. The keys were in it. Nicole followed the yellow lane on the tarmac to get to the gate in the chain-link fence. The tarmac grew quieter and darker as they drove away from the terminal. The gate, which was wide enough for a semitruck, was set on rollers. A light and a surveillance camera were up on a pole to the right of the lock. Ron put on his black ski mask before he jumped out, put in the code on the lock, and rolled the gate open. Nicole drove through. He closed the gate and got back in the truck.

  “Which way?” Nicole asked.

  Ron looked at a map on his smartphone. He pointed to their left, toward a group of industrial buildings. “That’s a warehouse. The next one as well. The brick one is ours.”

  She drove over to the line of buildings. As they neared, they could read the signs: Clemens Storage, Elephant Transportation Solutions, Premium Security Transit.

  “That’s it.”

  The front of Premium Security Transit looked like a bank. Brick and limestone, large plate-glass windows, a row of car parking. They drove down the driveway between Elephant Transportation Solutions and Premium Security Transit, and turned into the alley behind the buildings. The back of Premium Security was a stark concrete wall with a loading dock and a gray steel access door. Spotlights and two cameras guarded the entry points. A yellow forklift sat on the loading dock. Nicole parked the utility truck facing out. She put on her ski mask before she followed Ron up the steps to the door. “The moment of truth,” he whispered.

  He input the door code, moved into a dimly lit bay half full of large cardboard boxes stacked on pallets, and input the alarm codes on the panel just inside the door. The computer turned off the sound and motion sensors, as well as the interior cameras, and turned on the emergency lighting.

  “We’re in business.”

  He looked at the building map on his smartphone. They went through a door into a short hall with offices on each side, and then through another door to the front of the building, where employees dealt with clients. The walls were marble, the desks were polished hard wood, and the chairs looked plush. Through the front windows they could see the client parking and, in the distance, the main gates to this area from the street outside the airport. They moved across this room to a shiny chrome security door. Ron input the code. They went into a large room lined with lockers, some the size of PO boxes, some the size of closets or storage rooms. The floor and ceiling were smooth concrete. Down the center of the room was a row of bar-height tables, some with stools. Ron took a pencil flashlight from his pocket and began reading off the numbers on the lockers. They found the one they were looking for about two-thirds the way back, in a group of closet-size lockers. He input the door code. On the floor of the closet was a wooden packing crate about one and a half feet by one foot by two-thirds of a foot. Ron squatted to get his arms around it. “Jesus, this is heavier than I expected. Casket itself must be twenty pounds, easy.”

  “I can see you’re starting to think crazy.” Nicole stepped out of the doorway so that he could carry the packing crate to the nearest table.

  “I know, I know. The kicker is that we can’t melt it down and sell it. Too much value is tied up in what it is. But just thinking about it gets my blood pumping.”

  She shut the door to the locker.

  He pulled a small prying bar out of his back pocket, levered the top off the crate, and lifted away a piece of two-inch, white foam. “Sweet baby Jesus.”

  Nicole put her hand on his shoulder as she stepped forward to look. The top of the casket glowed the color of honey. Intricate flowers were engraved over its surface, the centers of which looked as if they had once contained jewels of some sort. She shook her head as if coming out of a trance and glanced at her watch. “We’re running late.”

  “Got you.” Ron gently laid the foam back onto the casket and tapped the top of the crate back on with his fist. Nicole shook out a black duffel bag. They slipped the bag around the crate, and carried it out the way they came, each holding one handle, taking care to close the doors they had opened along the way.

  At the back door, Nicole stood with the bag on the loading dock and scanned the alley for trouble while Ron reset the alarm system. The forklift sat on the loading dock, the utility truck sat in the parking, two green dumpsters sat by the back doors of the building across the alley, and a pallet of concrete blocks sat to the right of the loading dock. Ron pushed the door shut and gave her a confident nod. They picked up the duffel.

  As they started down the steps, a man stepped out from behind the left dumpster wearing a Kevlar vest and holding an AR15 assault rifle. His red beard stuck out from the bottom of his black ski mask. “That’s far enough,” he said.

  Ron and Nicole reached for their automatic pistols. Four more men appeared in the alley, two to the left and two to the right, all masked and armed like the first man. The bearded man continued. “You don’t have to die here. Give us the bag, and we’ll be on our way.”

  Ron and Nicole shared a glance. They were still holding the bag between them and still holding their pistols.

  “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not worth it. You won’t get out of here.”

  “You can’t risk damaging the box,” Ron said.

  “Look, no hard feelings. This is just work. Do the math. The only way you leave here is if you give up that duffel bag.”

  “What’s to stop you from killing us after we give you the box?”

  “We don’t need to, for starters. We don’t need the noise, and dumping two bodies is a lot of work. We can’t kill you and just leave you here.”

  Ron and Nicole walked down the remaining steps to the alley and set the duffel bag on the pavement. The man nodded. “Now you’re making sense. Set your guns on the ground.”

  Ron and Nicole crouched down, but instead of setting down their guns, they dove for the utility truck and scrambled up behind it as the hijackers opened fire and retreated to the cover of the dumpsters and the pallet of concrete blocks. “We’re outgunned,” Ron said. “But there was no way I was going to put my life in their hands.”

  “I figured as much.”

  Ron yelled to the bearded man, “Now you can take the duffel.”

  The men behind the pallet of concrete blocks kept firing, pinning Ron and Nicole behind the truck, while one of the men from the right dumpster ran over to the duffel and grabbed it up by both handles. As he started to hump it away, Ron got off a lucky shot and caught him in the leg. He stumbled to the pavement. Then the two men behind the concrete blocks stepped out, continuously firing as they moved across Nicole’s line of fire to get to the front of the truck.

  The bearded man yelled, “Grab him and the duffel and let’s get out of here.”

  The men at the front of the truck poured fire down both sides, while their partners collected their man and the duffel bag. Ron and Nicole were hunkered down behind the truck tires at the back of the truck, unable to return fire, bullets swarming past them and ricocheting off the concrete wall behind them like angry wasps. They were making themselves small, watching under the truck bed for approaching legs, waiting for the moment the two hijackers would appear on both sides of them with their assault rifles blazing. Suddenly, the firing stopped. Their ears were ringing. Ron peeked around the side of the truck. The hijackers were gone. Ron tapped Nicole’s shoulder and pointed. They came out of the loa
ding zone just as the last hijacker disappeared around the corner. “Let’s use the truck,” Ron said.

  “Are we really going to do this?”

  “You hurt?”

  “Just a few nicks.”

  “Luck is on our side.”

  They got in the utility truck, Ron driving, rolled slowly up to the intersection of two alleys, and turned. The hijackers were jogging toward a white Ford Transit, the front two carrying the duffel, the red-bearded man with his arm around the wounded man, and the fifth man covering their retreat. Ron stopped the truck and threw open the door. The fifth man opened fire. Ron crouched behind the door and returned fire. The men carrying the duffel looked over their shoulders.

  “Keep moving,” the bearded man said.

  He helped the wounded man to the pavement and started back down the alley, zigzagging from wall to wall, firing as he came. The fifth man was on one knee in the middle of the alley, his rifle at his shoulder. Their combined fire was pounding the front of the truck into scrap metal. Nicole lay on the floorboard. Her door was stuck. The windshield shattered, raining tiny chunks of safety glass down on her. Ron dove onto the floorboard, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her into the driver’s side. “We’re getting murdered here. Put it in reverse and press on the gas.”

  She reached up, shoved the shifter into reverse, and pressed on the gas with both hands. The truck started rolling backward on two flat tires, whap, whap, whap, no one holding the wheel. Ron hung from the door and kept firing on the kneeling man, who finally fell sideways. The front of the truck listed to the right until the left back bumper hit the alley wall. Ron dropped to the pavement and rolled under the truck door. As he came to his feet, the bearded hijacker punched him in the head, knocking him into the wall. He slid down to the pavement. The hijacker snapped open a lock-back knife with a flick of his wrist. Ron saw an eagle tattoo on the back of the man’s hand. The knife blade swooped down in a backhand motion, heading for Ron’s throat. Ron threw up his arms.

  Nicole fell out of the truck and scampered under the door. Just a few feet away, she saw the bearded man standing over Ron. She sprang up and charged, catching the hijacker off-balance in midswing. They fell in a tangle; the knife flew free. She landed on top, scrambled off him, and pulled her pistol as she stepped back. The hijacker was on his feet, starting toward her. She fired twice, somehow missing him. He pushed past her and ran back to where the fifth man lay. He grabbed him by his vest and dragged him down the alley. The other two hijackers were already carrying the man with the leg wound. They all hurried toward the Ford Transit.