Chapter 9

That afternoon, Otto practically gloated as he described what he had learned about bomb making. It was pretty much the same as what Explosives Slave had told them, but the web site had gone into much more detail. Otto was now sure that he could make a simple bomb that would kill and wound dozens of slave owners.

George discussed his list of possible bombing sites, and they talked about which one they would hit first. George wanted to go out tonight, but Otto said that it might take him longer than that to build their first bomb.

Joseph wanted to go for some of the infra red detecting spray before they did anything else. He pointed out that they were better off if they protected themselves from interruption while they looked for the best place to put the bomb. It might take them some time to find a good place since they were rank beginners at the bombing game.

George agreed immediately with Joseph and Otto and backed down on his insistence for speed. They agreed that this trip would be to collect some of the detecting spray and to look at some possible targets if they had time after that.

They decided that Otto should stay home and work on the bomb while Joseph and George went on this outing. Otto got busy on the bomb right away, but Joseph and George had to wait until it got dark enough. They took their guns with them, of course, but they also took the wagon. They planned to pick up a case of the spray if they could find that much.

They went to the first place on Joseph's list; the Segways made the trip a quick one. Uh-oh, this was a warehouse with a small display addition at the front. It figured to have nothing but cases of stuff in the back that could only be moved by forklift, and the front figured to be saturated with detection beams. They decided to skip this place for now.

The second place was more like a conventional store with a relatively small storage room in the back as compared to the first place they looked. There was a human door next to the loading dock, and they chose that as their entry point. Of course, unknown to the invaders, they had tripped a burglar alarm as soon as the door was opened, so they didn't have much time to work.

Fortunately, the emergency lights that the city fire code required provided enough light for Joseph to find the case of spray very quickly. They decided not to fool around and pulled the box down and out of the building before the cops arrived. They were long gone before any of the reluctant policewomen showed up, though they did have a squad of MPs along with them this time. None of the cops or MPs had anyway of knowing what, if anything, had been stolen, and it actually was a week later that the owners of the store discovered what was missing. Of course, by then, it was too late to do anything about the theft.

George led Joseph to the entertainment district to look over possible targets. They had to wait for nearly two hours before the places closed. Cleanup was going to wait until the daytime, tomorrow, so they were not delayed beyond that two hours. They broke in through a back door of the first possible target and looked around. There was no burglar alarm on the door this time, so they got inside with no trouble. Joseph sprayed one of the aerosol cans about, looking for the sign of infra red beams. He found two immediately, but they were protecting the liquor stores. The cash register drawer was standing open, empty, as if to show would be thieves that there was no reason to smash it up.

Other than that, they could not find any sign of burglar alarms or even an acknowledgment that such might be needed. They looked around pretty carefully and did find one place to put a bomb, but it didn't look all that promising. Figuring that they had done all they could at this nightclub, they went to the next one.

They broke in the same way as on the previous occasion, but this time they tripped an alarm. Joseph's spray showed too many beams to take a chance with, so they left without spending much time in the nightclub.

Their third choice was impossible for them to enter because of a steel grate over all of the entry doors. A key would be needed to get in, and they didn't have anything of the sort.

George was really getting pissed at their lack of success at this point, and he was ready to chew logs and spit toothpicks! Unhappily for them, two cops came by as the pair was leaving the back of the last nightclub. They were just about to exit the alley they were in when they spotted the cops.

One of the cops tried the door of the second place they had entered and found it locked. She took an electronic card from her pocket and used it to open the front door. Joseph recognized the electronic master key for what it was, and he said to George, "That key is what we need to get into these places without tripping alarms. Let's kill those two and take their keys."

George was always in favor of killing cops, so he immediately agreed to the plan. The cops were about a block away, and well within range of their rifles. The two men got ready and waited for the cops to exit the nightclub. As soon as the cops showed back up, the men opened up with devastating fire from their rifles. Both cops were caught flat-footed, and died within moments. No telling how many bullets actually hit them, but both men fired off 12 rounds, and that was enough lead to kill almost anything in that size range.

The men ran up and dragged the cops and their Segways off the street and into a convenient alley. George did the butchering after Joseph had searched the cops for their electronic master keys and anything else that might be useful. In the end, they took a lot of stuff to hide the fact that they wanted the keys. Everything they took, except the keys, was dumped in a convenient dumpster two blocks away. It made no difference what the cops found if they even searched the dumpster; they would just assume that the keys were lost along with anything else they failed to find.

They went to one more nightclub before going home, and this time they went in through the front door after using the master key. The master key was also capable of turning off the door's alarm, so that the cops would not be pestered by that triggering while they were investigating a possible break in. The men didn't know that, but they were saved from being detected by that fact. In this case, the key also turned off the other alarms, so they were free to search through the whole nightclub without being bothered by alarms.

This nightclub was a bonanza of places for bombs. They had no trouble finding a good place for a bomb, so they decided that this was the place to be hit by their first try. They scurried home and reported their good luck to Otto. He had his bomb ready by then.

George cooked supper and they had a great time talking about what they expected from their first bomb. All three were tired from their exertions that night, and they slept well.

All of them woke up early in the afternoon. They were just so excited that they could not sleep. The anticipation of setting their first bomb in place was almost more than they could take. It was a bit of a wet blanket thrown over the good cheer when they realized that the bomb would not go off until tomorrow night, but they could put up with the wait when they considered the potential results.

At last, it was time to put the bomb into place. They loaded it into the wagon, but not before George had liberally christened the pack of nails with the pepper extract. That might not make any difference, but who knew what might happen?

The trip to the nightclub was uneventful. They had the cops so fearful of Jackie the Ripper that none were seen, even in groups. It looked like the cops were conceding the night to them when it got this late after midnight. They were going to have to work to find cops to kill if the trend continued in its present direction.

The electronic key let them in and killed all of the alarms. They positioned the bomb just the way they wanted it and set it to go off at 10:30 PM tomorrow night. That was when Joseph estimated that the nightclub would be the most crowded. They didn't do any more that night for fear of jinxing their bomb efforts, so they just headed home to play with their computers while they waited for the bomb to go off.