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Oh, and punters.
The place was near dead. There were scarcely a dozen people not in the crisp white shirt and monogrammed waistcoat uniforms and all of them wore that desperate, haggard look. The look of the winners who had made that one bet too many. Losers that just didn’t know when to call it a day.
I’d fit right in.
Keeping my head down, I walked right in, passed the empty coat check booth, down the red carpet and past the long lines of slot machines towards the tables. As I went, I spotted a corner that served as a bar with a scattering of tall circular tables and stools around it. Two more gamblers were there, nursing their woes and expecting to find all the answers to their troubles at the bottom of a glass. There was an elevator door nearby, but that was in the wrong place to connect to the staff’s garage entrance. To the bar’s other side, a little way down, there was a plain, reinforced door. Though unmarked, it had a simple key code and card reader where there should have been a handle. The security station.
The discovery got the wheels in my head turning.
So, when I got to the tables, I veered right, and went straight to the bar.
The bartender, a dour-faced man wearing the uniform’s monogrammed waistcoat, though his shirt was black, scarcely raised an eyebrow at my order for water. When he put my order down on the bar, though, I swear I denoted a snort of something derogatory when I handed him a crisp fifty-dollar note in return.
There were even more mutterings when he handed me my change, but I didn’t bother to count it. Just took my glass and moved down the bar to take the stool between the two other patrons. Lost in their drink, they only looked up when my change clinked down on the bar. The bartender had taken his revenge on me by giving it to me in the smallest possible denominations. Putting the water down, I busied myself with sorting the notes and coins, piling them up into respective piles, notes and then coins, one on top of the other.
I left them there. Pulling out my phone, I took a swig of my water and made a show of browsing through the notifications for a few minutes before putting it back. Then, getting up with my water, I casually walked away, leaving my change behind. I went right this time, towards the security door. Except now there was a step, and I stumbled like a drunkard, spilling half my glass across the floor. No one noticed, however, because at that very moment-
“Hey let go you bastard!” an angry voice shouted.
Another slurred back, “No it’s mine, give it ‘ere.”
“It’s mine!”
“Fuck off!”
The shouts and curses continued in a diatribe, but I didn’t need to look back to know what had happened. The two at the bar were fighting for my ‘forgotten’ change, just like I’d planned. In those few piles of silver dollars, the men saw their salvation. A chance sent by the almighty for them to win their fortune. They would fight like devils for those few coins and notes.
Except they weren’t devils. So when the security door opened, it should only have been a matter of time before the fracas calmed down. Which was why I’d taken my clumsy tumble. Instead, as a pair of gorillas in the casino uniform came running at full speed towards the commotion, their feet skidded out from beneath them. They went down hard in a heap on the floor. That would hopefully buy me all the time I needed.
In their haste to settle the disturbance in the bar, the security men had not stayed to make sure the door to their command centre shut securely. They’d just bolted, forgetting their drills in their rush to get to the scene. As they hurried out, I slipped around and inside, never a moment to spare, before the door slammed shut behind me.
Inside, the security room was little better than a closet. A walk-in closet that was barely ten feet by ten, including computing and storage space. There was a PC atop a desk in front of a bank of old-style monitors that made up one wall. A kitchenette sat opposite that, leaving just enough room in between for a locked metal gun cabinet with a live ammo sticker across the front.
I plonked myself down in one of the swivel chairs in front of the desk, pulled myself in while setting the remains of my water down, and got to work. Whichever one of the security team had been on monitoring duty hadn’t been in too much of a hurry, so hadn’t forgotten to put the system to sleep. When I fired it up again, a lock screen informed me I would need a login and password to proceed. Now why does that never happen in the movies?
Unperturbed, I took out my phone and a universal charger lead from my jacket pocket. Slotting the appropriate head into the phone’s charging port, I plugged the other into the computer’s USB port before scrolling my phone’s apps menu. On the second page, there was an icon of a carton weasel done up like James Bond. The caption beneath read ‘Sniffer’. Tapping it, my phone screen went black and a progress bar materialised. The weasel, still in his DIY Bond get up, snuck into the corner of the screen. He pulled a filing cabinet out of his pocket and began sniffing through the contents of a draw. On the computer screen, the log-in info and password appeared as the progress bar circled through, as if by magic. I was in.
Down on my phone screen, Weasel Bond gave me the thumbs up as I unlocked the computer, then another box popped up, again asking me if I wished to proceed. I confirmed with another tap, and the progress bar reappeared, only this time, as the weasel ferreted in the cabinet, long lines of code started scrolling down. That was exactly what I’d wanted to see. The list of all the files the Sniffer was copying to my predesignated cloud storage space via a VPN.
The only question now was, would it finish the job before my distraction got sorted out?
Fortunately, a quick glance across the monitors could tell me much of what I needed to know. The camera watching the bar showed the security men had gathered themselves up and were grappling with the drunkards and trying to manhandle them towards the door. Considering the difference in sizes, the offenders were putting up a better fight than anyone would have expected. Hard luck for the gorillas. They could call in backup to overpower the drunkards during the busy hours, but this was the graveyard shift. They were on their own.
Or perhaps the pair just weren’t very good at their jobs.
Either way was good news for me. I guessed I had maybe five minutes before they came staggering back in here and found me playing with their computer.
My phone produced a squawking sound that rather reminded me of Woody the Woodpecker’s laugh, only after he’d taken a kick to the balls, announcing the transfer was complete. Sure enough, a quick check showed James Weasel dancing a foxtrot with an imaginary partner in celebration. The designer clearly spent too much time watching cartoons. Shutting the app down before he started showboating for good measure, I disconnected the cable from the PC, then shoved both it and my phone back into my pocket.
After putting the computer back to sleep, I picked up my glass and poured the contents down the back of the PC.
This wasn’t mindless destruction. Like its human likeness, the sniffer wasn’t a subtle program. Its work was quick but messy, it left evidence of its presence. Evidence that wouldn’t be hard to spot if someone even a bit tech savvy looked. Then it would only be a matter of time before they put two and two together. They’d spot my face, notice what I was doing, determine I had hacked their system, and then they’d be on the lookout for me. And the next time I stepped foot on the premises, they’d be on me.
Now, the moment they fired the system up, it would short circuit, wiping out all evidence of the sniffer and any reason to suspect I was anything but another punter. There would be questions about how the water got there in the first place, but when the security men couldn’t answer, it would just get chopped up to human error. An incompetent staff member is always a more believable explanation than sabotage.
Glass in hand, I exited the security room without a backward glass, veering left and along the wall and around the slots, back towards the lifts. The trick when leaving the scene was not to draw any attention to yourself. It was easy enough, just move calmly with eyes front and head high, like you owned the place. Whatever you do, don’t run. That was the most important part of an escape. Never run. Not until you needed to, anyway.
Over by the bar, things were settling down. The security men had their charges under control and were half escorting, half carrying them towards the exit. Pausing next to a line of slots, I gave the scene a curious glance while casually placing the glass down on the nearest machine. Then I turned on my heel and continued towards the elevator like nothing had happened.
Five minutes later, I was in the Porsche and away. I’d got what I came for and I’d check it over back at the barn. Until then, I was in the mood for a burger.
