Security tended to be a reactive profession, and basic principles predicted that there was only ever enough to prevent the last type of intrusion, not the next. Most businesses learned the hard way again and again and again. American banks, for example, had excellent security precisely because they had been targets ever since the first bank robbery in the 1860s. By contrast, the average Internet-facing business was vulnerable because they didn’t think of themselves as potential victims. At least not until a hacker splashed their customers’ credit-card data across the web. A state-police motor-pool depot in the middle of rural Virginia fell into the latter category. It, too, had a false sense of safety derived from its low profile. Since no one had ever thought to rob it before, it got by with a few fences, cameras, and rent-a-guards. It was sufficient because it always had been. Until suddenly it wasn’t.
For the thirty-six hours, Gibson and Lea had toggled the network connection at the junction box off and on at irregular intervals for a few minutes at a time. Long enough for the outage to be reported but brief enough that by the time diagnostics were run remotely, the systems were up and running again. By now, it would have been logged as an ongoing issue, but a low-priority one since the outages were short and intermittent. No doubt, it lay near the bottom of the to-do list of some overworked technician. Tonight’s outage would be interpreted as yet another inconvenient outage. It would be called in—again—but security wouldn’t panic.
Gibson checked his phone. Time to go. He slipped off his latex gloves. He’d put them back on when he was through the security checkpoint. He dried his sweating palms on his shirt. He’d broken into a lot of places in his life but always from the relative safety of a computer. It was a whole other thing to drive up to the front gate, where an armed guard got a good look at your face. Unfortunately, though, this thing couldn’t be done remotely. Time to get your hands dirty, he thought, and put those same hands carefully back on the steering wheel at ten and two. He would wipe the van down once they were inside the vehicle storage facility, but he didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Thanks to his childhood indiscretions, the Virginia State Police were already intimately familiar with his fingerprints.
Swonger pulled out behind him, and together the two vehicles crested a small rise. Up ahead Gibson saw it: the Virginia State motor pool, which serviced and maintained police vehicles from across the state. Apart from the chain-link fence and barbed wire, it looked no different from your average auto dealer: At the center stood an operations building that was 90 percent maintenance garage but also housed offices and a waiting area. Hundreds of vehicles fanned out across the two-acre lot. Row after row of white-and-blue Dodge Chargers and Ford Interceptors—the backbone of the force. Mobile command posts. Heavily armored BearCats and other specialized SWAT vehicles. A fleet of pickup trucks. In addition, out of sight on the far side of the garage, the facility housed an impound lot for seized vehicles. Inside of which lay Deja Noble’s prize and the price for her support. The line she needed Gibson to cross.
They rolled toward the front gate.
“Are you really going to do this?” he muttered to himself. How many laws was he about to break? Turn around. Turn around now, call it off, go home. But his inner voice sounded distant, no real conviction behind it, and he pushed his doubts away. He would do it for the judge. And if he didn’t do it, then Deja Noble would, and then people would get hurt, or worse. On some level, he recognized it as hollow rationalization. Nicole’s words came back to him from their fight at the house: Were you always this person? He wasn’t as sure of the answer to that as he once had been.
They’d chosen the midnight to eight a.m. shift because of the skeleton crew. A team of two security guards rotated between the front gate and the main building every two hours. Vehicles came and went at odd hours, so the depot never technically closed. The overnight mechanic who handled off-hours intakes would be asleep on a cot in the garage.
Gibson pulled up at the gate and watched Bill Michaels rouse himself from his chair, find his clipboard and hat, and slide open the door to his hut. Having done his homework, Gibson knew quite a bit about the man. Michaels had graduated from Norfolk State with a degree in criminal justice. He was an ex-cop and a deacon at the First Baptist Church in Amherst, Virginia, and had recently purchased a used Sea Ray pleasure boat. Gibson knew Michaels’s wife’s and children’s names. He had learned enough about Michaels that Deja Noble’s plan to take the depot at gunpoint had been a nonstarter for him. There were lines he would cross and consequences he would bear, but putting Bill Michaels in harm’s way wasn’t ever going to be one of them.
Deja had sneeringly called him soft. Actually, that was the Sunday-night version of what she’d called him, but Gibson had insisted on no guns. The current plan, Gibson’s plan—if it worked—would see them in and out with no one the wiser. The depot wouldn’t even know a crime had been committed. That part had appealed to Deja, and she’d grudgingly agreed to let him do it his way, but with one parting caveat.
If you go in there unarmed, and they roll you up, that’s on you. That’s your time to do. Now, you start making out like we know each other to reduce your time, and I’ll be sure to introduce you to some folks inside who really know me. You hear?
He heard.
Bill Michaels slid open the glass door of his hut and offered an amiable smile. He took Gibson’s paperwork and scanned the name off the Robert Quine ID.
“Heya, Robert,” he said, flipping through the yellow sheets of Gibson’s counterfeit paperwork, making notes on his clipboard as he went.
Deja swore it would hold up, but Bill Michaels was no rent-a-guard with a GED. He was ex-Bureau of Criminal Investigation with numerous commendations and had cashed out on a disability retirement because of chronic back problems. He’d been a good investigator, and a bad back wouldn’t have dulled his instincts. In truth, this was the riskiest moment of the whole job. The depot had only one layer of security with the cameras disabled. They should have no problem once Michaels waved them through.
“How’s the back?” Gibson asked.
“Manageable. Started a yoga class.”
“Yoga?”
“Yeah, it’s helping, I think. Me and fifteen girls my daughter’s age. They think I’m adorable.” Michaels sighed. “I may be the class mascot. But you gotta do what you gotta do.”
Michaels’s brow furrowed, and he started flipping back and forth between pages. Gibson’s heart climbed his throat as if it wanted to get a better look.
“Problem?”
“These forms are out of date. We switched over in January.”
“Sorry.”
Michaels shook him off. “You’re in good company. Half the stations are still on last year’s.” Michaels crossed out a box and made a correction. “We sent three memos, but you know cops, never throw away a damn thing. Pain in my ass.”
“I’ll pass it along,” Gibson said.
“Appreciate it. So, you dropping this old tub off?” Michaels slapped the side of the van.
“Yeah, it’s way past overdue. Afraid it was going to die on me on the way over.”
“Careful.” Bill winked. “Still gotta make it over to intake. Aldo’ll be pissed if you wake him up to get out the pickup to drag it the last hundred yards.”
Gibson chuckled agreeably—good old Aldo—and put a finger to his lips. The guard tore off two pink copies and handed the yellow originals back to Gibson.
“Who’s that?” Bill asked, pointing to Swonger’s car with his pen in between checking boxes on his clipboard.