Darke Mission (37 page)

The team were on the move. JJ understood probabilities. As they were driving into the car park, JJ turned to Victor and asked in a low voice, “Victor, what would you have done had the camera system been one of the 15-20% that had its security password changed?”

“Cried,” said the young man, with a glint in his eye.

JJ, Jim, Ethel, Lily and Victor all got out of the dark blue Sprinter van. They were parked next to a black 4x4, a Pyeonghwa Pronto, according to Lily. It wasn't as big as the Sprinter van, more the dimensions of a Toyota Land Cruiser, the Japanese model on which the PP was based. If push came to shove, they'd probably get most of the ‘Toblerones' in that car/van with all but the front seats lowered flat. Before leaving their Sprinter van JJ had asked Ji-hun, via deep cover Kwon, if he knew the code for the keypad lock at the back entrance. Ji-hun said that this was the service lift and went to all the floors of the central bank. The code was 1,2,3,4.

“Jesus Christ,” blurted JJ, not in an unhappy tone, more an incredulous one. “Is there any code in this fucking dump that's not 1,2,3,4?” his blurt was within earshot of Victor.

“I don't think the code to the vaults will be 1,2,3,4, boss,” offered up Victor. JJ said nothing but acknowledged the safe cracker's unhelpful contribution with a small shrug of the shoulders.

The Iceman's job was to prep the PP jeep to ensure that it could fire up in a hurry and to lower the rear seats in preparation to receive the ‘Toblerones'. Hopefully, the car's owner would not turn up while the heist was underway, and it would be way more healthy for him if he didn't. Victor was impressed with Kwon's Xaver 600 mini tablet technology that he loaned Lily and the Iceman which could see objects through walls. Victor had seen one before in London, but here, in North Korea, it was sure a rare piece of kit. The Xaver's penetration intel, confirmed by the moaner Ji-hun, was that the main vaults were one level below ground level. Ji-hun had also told the Iceman that the security detail on this floor was based in a bullet proof, lockable office with total visibility on three of the four sides of the office's near square shape. The visibility was focussed on the vault's doors. Luckily, for the five in the service lift, its doors opened to face the one solid wall of the security office.

Lily was first out of the lift. He had borrowed Ji-hun's security guard uniform and cap. Each guard at the DPRK had two, identical uniforms. The one that Ji-hun was wearing on kidnap day was in his locker on the ground floor. The one that Lily was wearing, looking a little daft in it, as he was a few inches shorter than Ji-hun, had been in the wash at the moaner's apartment. Lily walked up to the security office door, knocked and waved at the two guards inside. Simultaneously, the other four heisters had dropped to a prone position and silently high crawled marine style to either side of the door. The two security guards weren't expecting Lily or, indeed, a legitimate colleague, but maybe something was up or maybe he was being very considerate to the night shift and bringing them a welcome snack. Unfortunately for the guards, the only mouthfuls they got were of smoke and gas. Both guards got off their chairs to meet and greet Lily. As the office door opened, JJ lobbed in a couple of tear gas grenades and a smoke bomb. The guards were coughing, spluttering and trying to wipe their eyes as Ethel entered the office in a full face mask with breathing apparatus attached. She whacked both the disoriented security men with her police baton, brought all the way from London for the ride, and left them prostrate on the floor. Lily had exited the office at pace and even though he had been near the entrance when JJ tossed in the tear gas he was still finding it difficult to catch his breath. A few minutes had elapsed before the tear gas dissipated, JJ had deliberately used a low concentration variant. Ethel removed her breathing gear and she and Jim were tying up the guards with duct tape. Lily re-entered the fray and injected both guards with propofol, courtesy of Kwon's collection. This would keep the guards out cold for at least four hours. If that wasn't enough time to complete their task then they were in big trouble, not least of which because Ji-hun had told them the relief schedule of the vaults' guards, i.e. the two on the ground were due to be replaced in four hours from now at 7am. Since entering the service lift nobody had said a word. Everybody knew their job and, so far, it had all gone to plan.

Jim Bradbury and the now breathing easily Lily set up position outside the rear of the security office. They had a clear view of the main lift, the service elevator, and the stairs. They were hunkered down behind their kit bags and backpacks. Jim had his semi-automatic SIG Sauer ready and Lily his Remington 870 pump action shotgun. If anyone or anything entered this level of the DPRK central bank that wasn't a buddy or a batch of ‘Toblerones' then they were in for a rude awakening.

JJ, Ethel and Victor were still in the security office. Victor was checking that the loop he had sent the car park cameras on was still working. It was. JJ was checking that all the other screens in the office were on and showing a lack of activity. They were. Ethel was checking that the two unconscious guards were still breathing and still knocked out. They were. Checks complete, the three of them made their way to the main vault doors. Once the moaner Ji-hun had decided to squeal, faced with good incentives and little sensible alternative, he had told JJ and the Iceman about the main vault security. From his recollection and observation the vault had a dual combination lock and probably was on a timer.

“Looks like Ji-hun's information was spot on,” said Victor, surveying the massive vault doors with respect. “It's a steel reinforced concrete vault with a dual custody lock. Both dials need to be unlocked and it's very, very unlikely one will automatically release the other,” he added. “It's also got a time lock, which has been pre-assembled, and built into the vault's door. We have no idea when it is set to unlock, possibly not till at least 10am. It's probably a UL Class II or Class III vault,” he concluded.

“Is that good or bad, kiddo?” asked Ethel.

“Neither,” replied Victor. “The classification refers to the expected length of time it would take to breach a vault, set up for a mock break in by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) in Illinois. A class M one would take up to fifteen minutes. This one at least an hour, maybe two to three.”

“Three hours would be pushing it Victor,” interrupted JJ. “As well as getting into the vault, we've got to load a bunch of 12.5kg bullion bars and get the ‘Toblerones' down here to do that. As a rough calculation, if each of the ‘Toblerones' has thirty gold bars on it continuously, and it takes a rapid three minutes to transfer them from here to the van, we'd need the best part of three hours to do it. You've got one hour at best Victor,” said JJ, unhappy that the safe cracker could not be allocated longer to ply his trade.

“Good job I brought my thermal lance and my tablet then,” said Victor.

JJ knew enough about stuff to realise that thermal lances were capable of burning through steel and concrete. As far as he knew, though, their capabilities were often exaggerated. JJ would return to that point in a minute he thought.

“What good's your tablet, Victor, going to play a safe cracking video game?”

“No, Sir,” replied Victor, ferreting about in his large bag. “Time locks work because they've got mini computers inside them. They are programmed by the manufacturer and set in place before the vault is delivered to the vault owner. If the vault owner wants to change the time lock parameters, he has to get the manufacturer to remotely reprogram them. It cannot be done onsite and it would be prohibitively expensive and impractical to rebuild the vault if ever the owner wanted a different time lock span.” Victor was nearly consumed by his bag now, but seconds later announced, “Here you are, you little blighter.”

JJ and Ethel were still listening, not knowing whether they should be elated or deflated.

“Built into the hardware of this here tablet…” Victor said, waving a skinny device, no more than eight inches by five inches, “is a gigabyte P55 series motherboard. The manufacturers of this nifty piece of kit were aiming mainly at the domestic marketplace to allow parents to set time limits on their kids' computers to avoid overuse and consequent brain shrinkage.”

JJ and Ethel looked a bit happier, but they really didn't know why, they barely understood what Victor was babbling on about. However, the youngster was looking all pleased with himself so something good must be happening.

“And?” asked Ethel, impatiently.

“And if you're a smart enough cookie to be able to mess with the accompanying software then you can use it to accelerate or decelerate computer programmed time,” Victor finished. Indeed, he was a smart enough cookie. Surely there hadn't been a tastier cookie since Edd Byrnes in
77 Sunset Strip
.

“Won't you trigger an alarm if you break into the time lock?” Ethel asked.

“No. I'm not breaking in. I'm going to unscrew the outer cover and attach three leads to the lock's innards. This will bypass the clock as set and once I've keyed in a few commands on my tablet, you will see the digital time display speed up. When we hit the time that the lock was set to open then one piece of the puzzle will be solved,” Victor replied as his flashing fingers moved deftly about the keyboard.

“What about the dual custody locks?” asked JJ.

“They're the time constraint. I can probably unlock them, this gizmo is like an augmented hearing aid with stethoscope attached. I can magnetically attach the ends of it to each lock. This will then magnify the sound as I key in the numerical codes. A short high pitched tone signals the correct number and a long low pitched one means I entered the wrong number.”

“Don't suppose 1,2,3,4 or 1,1,1,1 will be the answer?” said JJ hopefully.

“Unfortunately not, boss. For starters, each of these locks has a five digit code. I can't be sure but every time I enter a wrong number the electronic system will block the lock for maybe five minutes. If I get two numbers in a row wrong it may block it for a further twenty minutes. Even if I get the first lock undone swiftly, I will have only around fifteen to twenty seconds to open the second one. That's why I would need to use both the earphones to try to disengage the locks simultaneously. Each panel in the lock's window can have the number 0 to 9, that's ten digits. Assuming a number can be repeated, which in these types of lock they usually can, that gives us 10
⁵
or 100,000 possible combinations.”

“For each lock?” asked Ethel.

“For each lock,” replied Victor. “Giving us 200,000 possible combinations. I cannot be confident that I can do that in less than an hour.” Just as he reached this conclusion his tablet indicated that the opening mechanism on the time lock had been triggered. That was something. He showed JJ and Ethel and they nodded their appreciation.

“So, Victor, since you've got the biggest kit bag on the planet and there's only one weapon, my handgun, in it, I guess the other contents are your plan B?” asked JJ.

“Yes, it was always likely that this bank would have one of the best vaults in it. It's a central bank, it's new and it would probably house at least part of Kim Jong-un's personal wealth. I may be able to disengage the dual custody locks in an hour, but I might also take two to three. If we had overnight to do it then it would be a cinch, a sure thing, a done deal. We don't, so I brought along an old fashioned way as well.”

“The thermal lance?” asked JJ.

“The thermal lance,” confirmed Victor.

JJ and Ethel were moderately amused that Victor thought the thermal lance route was old fashioned. Clearly, anything that was not computer based, electronic, nice and clean did not qualify as state of the art for Victor Pagari.

“I thought those lances were not as efficient as made out?” asked JJ.

“That's true,” replied Victor. “They can take longer than is often depicted and they use up quite a few oxygen bottles in the process. You can't cut a hole in a steel and concrete vault door in five minutes.”

“How long, Victor, we probably need to get cracking?” asked JJ, not even remotely aware of his unintended pun.

“I'm hoping for 15 to 20 minutes, JJ. I've had the iron rods augmented with aluminium and magnesium. This will increase the heat at the tip of the work-piece. Once I've preheated the end of the tube, the temperature of the molten iron stream from the lance will be in excess of 3,000 degrees Celsius. I've brought three pressurised oxygen bottles with me and ten tubes. The tubes will need replacing every four or five minutes because they virtually disintegrate after that time. Basically, if I'm not through in thirty to forty minutes, we're out of options.”

“Fine,” said JJ. “Give it your best shot.” With that JJ patted Victor on the back and signalled to Ethel to move away from the vault door. Victor was laying out a fire resistant sheet on the floor and preparing to don his face shield and breathing equipment. There was more to the successful operation of a thermal lance than just poking it at a vault's door.

“OK Ginger,” said JJ. “Get Jim and Lily to go up in the service lift and they can begin bringing down the ‘Toblerones'. On your way check that those security guards are still out cold. Swap places with the Iceman in the van and he can help with the conveyor system too. I'll keep a look out and an eye on Victor. Get Kwon to ask Ji-hun if there are any mobile pallets in here. There must be some, to move any heavy goods around.”

Ethel nodded and went straight to the service elevator. It would take her a few minutes to get up, explain JJ's orders to the team in the van and for them to bring the ‘Toblerones' down. When Ethel was out of sight, JJ eased himself slowly to the ground. He was in a hot sweat and feeling a little nauseous. Not the
I'm about to puke
nausea that he used to feel if Cyrus convinced him to go on some stomach churning amusement park ride, but a little queasiness that made him a tad uncomfortable. The hot sweat was probably the result of his hormone treatment. It was a well-known side effect and one of the milder ones, so he shouldn't complain too much. In the mad panic to get here, however, JJ had forgotten to bring along his Beljanski pills and his mega cocktail of vitamins and supplements. Those little cancer shits better not be attempting some Lazarus-style revival he thought, drinking some bottled water and wiping his brow. After about four minutes his sweat and nausea passed.
Thank god for that
, he thought.