AN ICE SURPRISE
Job 1: Frozen Features
4:07 PM
Somewhere Near the South Pole
The rounded, white, blocky walls of their safe-house let in tiny bits of light through the cracks. Murray stands in the center, holding up the table, while Sly and Tennessee spread rugs over the frozen ground; Carmelita and Bentley run extension cords from a hole in the ground near the back (Bentley, his computers; Carmelita, portable heaters) and check that everything's secure (and won't catch fire) before giving Murray the okay to thud the table down.
Sly's teeth chatter. He shakes his head at the warm hat with earflaps Bentley offers him but does wind a scarf around his neck, the same one he used in Holland during the Aces flight tournament, before stooping a little and going outside.
He emerges into an icy wasteland. The safe-house is an igloo; a second igloo bumps up against it in the back, connected save for the wall between them, holding the van. That's where the extension cords are connected. The roof is low enough to leap onto, just, so Sly does, then jumps off. A seal with a flashlight and an impressive fire-arm walks past; the roof of the safe-house is low enough that he can shine the flashlight on top of it. Sly waits for him to pass, then jumps back to the safe-house roof, and from there to the roof of another, larger igloo nearby and pulls out his binoc-u-com.
"Warmed up at all yet, Bentley?" Sly asks.
Bentley pulls his hat, with earflaps, down lower and shoves his helmet on over it. "No. But I will. But ignoring the weather, something about this area is sending shivers up my shell. We need more information."
"You know, maybe I should quit this job and the police work and become a photographer." Sly poses with his imaginary camera. "You can't tell me my works haven't been well received."
"Focus, Sly. And be careful; those flashlight guards can see on top of the lower roofs. You won't be safe from them up there."
Sly puts away his binoc-u-com, stretches, and gets to work.
The area is roughly square shaped. There's a steep cliff to the sea not far from the safe-house, and Sly stands at the edge of it for a moment, looking down: there will be no climbing back up from there, no safe climb down, just a very, very good reason not to fall. The other three sides stretch out for eternity into the snow. A 'road'-a beaten down path of slightly smoother snow, just big enough for the van—stretches from the side opposite the cliff into the distance, and leads to the only entrance to the central compound: a gate with four seals, armed with machine guns, and three spotlights trained on it. All the buildings outside are igloos in various sizes, and Sly circles the whole thing twice before taking a picture of that guarded gate.
"Those walls are too high to climb over, even if you could get past the barbed wire," Bentley mutters. "And drawing off all those guards, and dealing with the spotlights, will be difficult... if not downright impossible. See if you can find another way inside."
Sly's barely put away his binoc-u-com when he hears a faint buzzing noise overhead and looks up. A plane of some sort makes its slow way towards the compound; Sly snaps a picture. "Aerial patrols," Bentley mutters, "or a fast escape route. There must be a small airbase inside. Be careful, buddy."
"Come on, Bentley," Sly says, tucking away his binoc-u-com and starting to move once more. "Am I ever not careful?"
"Every time you move."
"Besides then."
Bentley groans, but Sly's found something else interesting. He climbs a stack of ice-blocks, waits for a snowy owl to turn her back, and snaps a picture: a security camera. "More of those?" Bentley mutters. "This is unusual."
"Come on, we've robbed lots of places with cameras," Sly says. "It's practically standard."
"Before you ever leave for recon, I hack every open system in range. There've only been two times I haven't been able to turn off or loop the cameras before we started. This time—"
"And the jungle," Sly murmurs. "I get your point."
"I didn't even know they were there," Bentley confirms. "I'll have to deal with those later. In the meantime, if you see one, try not to walk in front of it? We don't need to advertise our presence."
Sound advice, Bentley. And Sly's doing his on-the-job seriousness, so he doesn't even stand directly in front of one and make faces at it.
Really.
In any case, it doesn't take long for Sly to find a computer (hooked up to an igloo, what even is this place) and snap a picture of that. Bentley hums and doesn't say anything, but it's bound to come in handy later. If it even works. Seriously, igloos, what is with this place?
Sly's halfway around the giant walls when he sees what may be a way in: a small hole, like a drainpipe, he can crawl through. Only, it's blocked from the other side. Sly growls under his breath and takes another picture. "Sorry, buddy, but there's nothing we can do out here. I'm working on a plan to get someone in; we'll open it from the inside."
"How do you think you'll get in?"
"Well—"
Tennessee interrupts. "I'm tryin' ta tell him he can just airlift me over the wall with his tiny flyin' doodad, but he won't listen!"
"Because it won't work!"
"Why not? If'n it can yeet guards across a river, sure it can chuck me around!"
"Who taught you that word?!"
Sly decides it's in his best interests to put his binoc-u-com away and not continue listening. As best he can, anyway. Every now and then, as he keeps going around the area, looking for whatever other of interest Bentley's marked with a waypoint (there are two of them, of course, buth about as far away from the drainpipe as can be) will come a brief flurry of Tennessee laughing or Bentley demanding who gave him a smartphone.
Sly dodges around a snowy owl, waits for a penguin to flap to a different igloo, and comes across his destination at last. Both waypoints are close together. One is a park full of... ice statues? Six of them, five small ones evenly spaced around a large, almost fountain-sized one in the center. "Seems like an odd way to pass the time," Bentley says when Sly sends him a picture. "Wouldn't making things out of snow be easier?"
The second picture, on one of the igloos bordering the park, is a sign. MORTY'S ICE STATUES it reads in comic sans. The best parties have it all. See our Chinese location about fireworks!
"That does it, Sly. Head back to the safe-house, and we'll—GET OFF THE INTERNET!"
JOB COMPLETE
Sly takes a moment to turn off his mask-piece and laugh before heading back.