Chapter 8: Getting Ready

Akilah was a bit annoyed with the car she had been offered. It was nearly new, and it was on the surface nice. It handled ok for its size, and the 250 hp engine had decent enough grunt. But the car was not nimble. And it was noisy; for a car costing nearly $30,000, let alone costing $45 a day to rent. She longed for her tight turning, relatively light Volvo, which was probably totaled. She thought the new V70 was a touch ugly, but she was getting ahead of herself.

She was concerned about her relationship with Josh. She loved him; how she loved him. He was kind, gentle, so basically good. But ever since he was shot a few years ago, a divide had opened between them. Not trust, nor love, but ... a degree of understanding. Back when they first met, George and Jill had been involved in ... sorting out the Palo Verde wreck. She had urged Josh to not get involved, and he had agreed. She didn’t want him to turn into ... turn into what she had become.

Jill had told her privately after that horrible night that the allure of vigilantism was insatiable. In those days she had just been doing technical support with Josh. They did research, provided some tech support, and she had been the one running the computer in the support van when it was moving; it was a Ford Econoline back then, cramped and uncomfortable. They followed at some distance keeping track of the vehicles and mapping. It was harder then; the quality of GPS tracking and mapping software hadn’t been as good. They had to keep closer, too.

But she hadn’t been involved in the operations more than that. She hadn’t been the one driving. Jill sometimes crept along in the same car with George; sometimes Miguel would stand in as a second vehicle. They had a guy named Richard who had worked with them, but he got into too much trouble with the police and lost his PI license.

But since then, after Josh got shot ... she had to put that right. And Jill’s warning had truly been on point; that once you get a taste for this life, it becomes hard not to see the ills of society, to crave the action, to long for thrills. Josh hadn’t gotten the taste; he found those tense moments of fast driving, fights, and similar messes to just be moments of terror. They had talked about it at great lengths, but had been unable to find common ground.

Akilah pulled up to the entrance gate, waved at the security guard, and pulled through. This late in the evening, this time of year, there was nobody in the parking lot. She pulled into the first parking spot, backed out so she was facing the street, checked to make sure all the rail cars were stored dead, pulled forward almost to the gatehouse, shifted into reverse, and floored the throttle.

The tires chirped hard as the weight of the car got transferred onto the drive wheels, the car accelerated, and she jinked the wheel a quarter turn to the right, and then hard to the left. The car swung around 180 degrees, as she slammed into drive, and accelerated hard. She had to quickly brake again and pull the wheel left, pushing on and off on the parking brake pedal, to get the car to do a slower 180 degree turn around the parking spots. She pulled a number of laps around the parking lot, going as hard as she could.

This kind of work was hard to do out on the public streets of LA; she had driven pretty hard through the streets, and the car had felt quite big. Given it’s immense size, it really handled quite well in this test. It was 8 inches longer and 4 inches wider, as well as 150lbs heavier, it wasn’t quite as nimble. It was also front-wheel-drive, which was not her preference, and it was, of course, over a hundred horsepower down from her Volvo. But she was surprised to come to the conclusion that she could work with it. She pulled in next to Jill’s convertible, got out, and went up to her home.

She admired it, not for the first time. Gleaming in stainless steel, and wearing the paint scheme Amtrak referred to as Phase II, it had a certain beauty to it, a certain elegance. When she had moved in to Silver Penthouse five years ago, she had thought it strange, but it had grown on her. It was 4:00. She had a little time. Instead of going up to the public entrance, which she was a touch surprised to see open, with the stairs down, she went up to the closed entrance to Silver Bridle, stuck an Abloy key into the lock cylinder mounted next to the door, and turned it.

She had devised this system, which was an improvement to the more manual, multi-key system George had been using on Silver Penthouse that required separate keys to unlock the door, open the door, and operate the trap mechanism that lowered the stairs. She just turned the key in the slot, and a choreographed, microprocessor controlled sequence played out, first unlocking the door, then releasing the dog-latches, then swinging in the door itself, before unlocking the trapdoor, raising it while lowering the steps.

She climbed in to the vestibule, and pushed a button that reversed the choreography, locking and closing the trap and door. She then took out a Multi-Lock key, and unlocked an otherwise ordinary deadbolt for the vestibule door, closed and locked it, and walked into the hallway that contained her office and Simcha’s room, through the living room, down the next hallway, and into her bedroom, throwing herself down on the bed. She was tired; she had been up since six thirty yesterday morning without sleep.

She remembered dinner. She creaked her way back off the bed, and went to her closet. Musso and Franks was pretty fancy. She pawed through her fancier clothes. She wanted distraction yet freedom of movement. She found one. It was red, and went a bit above her knees, clinging to the body except for a bit of flow out; it had straps that gave it a sort of spiders web open back that went down to her waist almost. It gave the impression that it could conceal nothing, but gave just enough length to conceal a thigh-holster for her Beretta 950BS.

It wasn’t a great weapon; she carried a Sig-Sauer P220 in her handbag for these kinds of equations; but when the Beretta was strapped to the inside of her left thigh, she could draw it with her right hand almost as fast and easily as George could draw his Ruger KRH-445 from his shoulder holster with his left. They had gone in unprepared last night. Now that they had a better idea of what they were up against, she wasn’t going to let that happen again.

She peaked out into the hall to make sure the door to the public areas of her car was closed, and stripped out of her clothes, and walked down the hall to the Rec Room, into which the bathroom opened. Some things about living on a rail car were strange, and this was one of them. Because of the dome, the hallway between her bedroom and the more public areas of the car, which contained the rec-room, bathroom, and kitchen, was on a lower level, and the nature of the car’s structure precluded them cutting another opening in it to directly connect the bathroom to the bedroom. The Rec Room had actually originally been a women’s room, and the bathroom had been carved out of some of the lounge space and the two bathroom stalls.

She showered and soaped under the refreshing sting of hot water; she didn’t have enough time to wash her hair and let it dry. She then turned the knobs so that she got blasted with needle like streams of ice-cold water, making her immediately awake and sharp. She heard the door open, and she poked her head out. George kissed her before she was clear on what she was seeing.

“Hello,” she said with a smile, “What if Jill came in?”

George was wearing a nice light grey suit and a blue shirt, but without a tie, neck open two buttons.

“She’d ask to join,” George said, “And I’d tell her we didn’t have time, which we don’t.”

“She would,” Akilah replied, shutting off the shower, and getting out into the bathroom, “Knowing her she would try to cancel our plans. You are going to be armed, yes?”

George followed Akilah out of the bathroom and down the hall into the bedroom, “Of course. I trust Frankie, but every other variable in the world concerns me. Didn’t someone say that forearmed is forewarned?”

Akilah put on her lingerie, and then strapped the holster to her thigh like a garter, “I believe the expression is the other way around, yes?” She said as she pulled the dress over her head.

“Probably,” George admitted, handing her the Beretta from her vanity, “You taking the Sig, too?”

“Of course,” Akilah replied, “The pea-shooter is not good enough except as the emergency measure.”

She grabbed an appropriate handbag out of her closet. She was not a pocketbook kind of woman usually; she preferred a pocketed men’s wallet, but her dress had no pockets, nor would it permit the holstering of the Sig. She slipped on pair of dressy flats that had enough tread on them to make running possible, and followed George out of the room, down the hall, through the living room, past her office, and through the connecting door into the vestibule, locking the door behind them. They crossed into Silver Blanket, went into the door that lead to the hallway, and George closed and locked that door, too.

George then went to the door of file room next to his office, used a medico key to unlock a keyhole, and then turned a heavy latch that undid four bolts- one on each side of the door going into both side walls, the wall over the door, and into the floor. He went in, and Akilah followed him.

It was a decent size room as rooms go in on a train. Like many businesses, there were both normal files, which were kept mostly in the filing cabinets in his office, and the sensitive files, which were kept here in both regular locked filing cabinets and fireproof ones. Inside the room was also a safe. It was a large safe made by a company called Access. Getting it into the train had been difficult, both because of its large size, and its over two-ton weight.

“You are going to take that hand cannon, George?”

“Just for in the car,” George said, “I don’t wanna be caught flat footed again. God damnit, Acky, I know I have to be the confident one, and getting upset doesn’t serve a purpose, but, but ... oh hell we fucked up.”

“You do not want my sympathy, I know,” Akilah said, “We went in with almost no idea of what we were dealing with. That was a mistake. But even if we knew ... how could we have guessed they would be waiting for us with the machine guns? It is craziness.”

George hesitated, “If craziness...”

He took out two more guns; a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, and a Stechkin automatic pistol.

“The Stechkin is illegal,” Akilah pointed out.

“So are whatever the hell they were firing at us with,” George replied, “That didn’t seem to stop them. I’m not going to play in a lopsided fight. Since when were you big on following the law, anyway, Acky?”

“I do not care about the law, George,” Akilah replied, “I care about the penalties they put on you for breaking it.”

“Like speeding?”

“There is a difference between the penalty they give for speeding,” Akilah replied levelly, “And the penalty they give for carrying illegal automatic weapons.”

“That is the beauty of the Stechkin,” George remarked, “It isn’t obviously automatic unless I have some reason for firing it, at which point I don’t really care about the law, do I?”

“Perhaps not,” Akilah admitted, “But you did request that I tell you when I think you are exercising poor judgement, because you and Jill often springboard off of each other.”

“Your point is duly noted,” George said, putting the Stechkin in his pocket, and handed the AR-15 to Akilah, “Pop this in the car, I’ll go say goodbye to Jill.”

She waited as he took a black leather satchel off a shelf, and filled it with 10 stacks of 100 $100 bills. $100,000.

“Sure thing,” Akilah replied, and they both walked through the office, past Jill’s desk in the waiting room, and to the vestibule. Akilah left the car, and George continued on into Silver Penthouse. As he continued down the hallway of the car he could hear talking going on between Larry, Jill, and Miguel. They seemed to be bonding.