Dusk came and they headed out with their photography equipment, the case with the Lead Dispersal Bombs, and a bag of tools.
Lex drove, and as he saw Chloe snapping photos out the windows of the car, he had to suppress a smile. He wondered if she did manage to get any pictures of Western Meadowlarks.
They timed it well. Lex pulled the car over into some brush around the back side of the fence surrounding the Savage Inc. facility just as full dark was setting in. Lex got out of the car, then moved around to the trunk. He started pulling out the equipment they would need. Chloe stayed in the car with her laptop, and started the remote administration tool that she would use to restart the camera network. Once she had everything ready, Chloe climbed out of the car.
"Alright, Lex. All I need to do now is hit execute and the cameras will restart. That will give us roughly four minutes to get through the fence, across the yard and through the door before the cameras start turning on. There are also cameras inside, but I bought us a bit more time by triggering the outside ones to reload up first. Then the insides will start coming up one by one. I can't say which will come on first or how long we'll have since we couldn't do any inside recon. We'll just have to work with what we get. So we need to plant those devices and get out ASAP."
"Understood." He handed her a knapsack and one of the sets of binoculars. "Inside are the wire cutters, the wire twists, one of the breathing masks, and four of the devices." He hoisted the other knapsack to his own back. "I've got the badge, the trigger, a mask, and the other four devices. All we need to do now is wait for the patrol to pass and we can start."
A moment later they watched the patrol go by through their binoculars.
Meeting Chloe's eyes, Lex said, "Ok, let's go."
Chloe nodded and hit execute.
They dashed for the fence. Chloe already had the wire cutters out. When she reached one of the poles, she started snipping.
Watching her, Lex asked, "Why are you going along the pole? It would be easier to cut an entry point in the middle."
Without pausing in her snipping, Chloe replied, "It is easier to hide the cuts along the pole. That is why I had you bring the wire twists. I'll twist it loosely closed behind us. In the dark under careless inspection, they shouldn't see the cuts until too late."
Just then Chloe made her last snip and tucked the cutters into the side of the knapsack on her back. "Ok, go!"
Lex dashed through and over to the darkened doorway with the keycard panel. Chloe joined him a moment later after twisting the hole in the fence loosely closed. She had been right. He couldn't tell it had been cut, but the flimsy ties would be easy to tear apart again for a quick exit.
Chloe rose a bit higher still in his estimation. No wonder she managed to get into so many places she had no business being. She seemed hard-wired to be a cat burglar.
Lex swiped the key card Doris had been so kind to give them. He found himself holding his breath. If the badge had been deactivated...
But the panel turned green and he heard the lock click open.
He reminded himself to change the badge policy for Luthorcorp. Replacement badges would be free, but unreported lost badges would soon incur a stiff penalty. He wasn't about to let these same break-in techniques work for his company anymore.
As they slid through the entry, Lex held the heavy door so it closed behind them noiselessly. Scanning the room, he saw they had lucked out. There were several guards, but they all appeared to be engaged around a suite of monitors. Most likely trying to figure out what was wrong with the camera system. The pictures sent by their nameless benefactor were now proving invaluable as they oriented themselves in the room. All eight Luthorcorp barrels now stood empty, as did the giant earth mixer. As they had feared, all the tainted material had already been mixed with clean soil and loaded onto eight full dumptrucks. Judging by the heat still coming off the mixing equipment, they had just finished today. The soil was likely heading off to packaging in the morning.
They had cut it very close. If the material had already been packaged for retail, the dispersal bombs wouldn't have worked.
Using silent gestures, he indicated four of the trucks to Chloe. She nodded, and keeping to the shadows, made her way to the closest truck. Watching the four guards around the monitors, Lex observed they were blatantly over-armed for working inside a soil plant. Each guard wore a handgun strapped to their legs and an assault-style weapon - maybe an M-16 - either leaned against the wall or slung over their shoulders.
Why did they need so much weaponry at a soil plant? Even one that was dealing in corporate espionage?
Lex feared this plant, this plot to take out his company, and infect thousands...may only be part of something bigger. Something bigger and...nastier.
F***.
Shaking his head, he brought himself back to the present. He had to sneak around and toss the dispersal bombs into the truck. If they did this right, it wouldn't matter how much firepower the guards had. He and Chloe would be gone before they could get off a shot.
He made his way to the first truck and tossed the bomb in, then moved down the line.
Chloe kept waiting for one of the guards to turn. Or someone else to walk in and spot her. Or for one of her throws into the truck to miss.
Nothing happened. It all went perfectly.
Catching sight of Lex slinking back to their starting position near the door, she did the same. When she reached him, he placed his knapsack on the floor and pulled out the remote detonator and his mask. She dug her own mask out of her knapsack and donned it as well. Lex held up the remote in one hand and the fingers of his other hand up and open. As he started to drop one of his fingers, Chloe understood he was doing a countdown. Four. He curled down a second finger. Three. Another finger. Two. Timing the motion with his last finger, he popped open the cap that covered the detonator button. One.
He hit the detonator.
Greyish smoke started pouring out from the bed of the trucks, coating the heaped earth within.
On seven of the trucks.
One of them hadn't gone off.
Crap.
Lex watched as the lead gas quickly started to coalesce around the green rocks within the beds of the trucks. All except for the one truck at the end of his line.
The guards shouted at the sound of the gas, picked up their weapons, and moved towards the smoking trucks. This was his and Chloe's cue to dart out the door, while the guards were distracted looking into the truck beds.
Except one truck was still full of actively poisoned material...
Lex moved towards the truck, but Chloe must have had the same idea. She was smaller and faster and shot past him. He paused again, not wanting to attract attention with his motion, but quietly seething. The truck was on his line. He should have been the one to go set off the manual detonation. Stupid interfering snoop. He'd wring her neck when they got out of here.
He watched her climb into the truck, thankful that the guards seemed more interested in the trucks that were issuing gas as opposed to the one that sat quietly. A moment later, gas started to pour from the last truck as well and he saw Chloe slip out and make her way back along the wall towards the door.
Unfortunately, so did one of the guards.
"Wait! Stop!" he cried out, pulling out his handgun.
"Chloe! Hurry!" He heard the words rip from his throat, but he could see it would be too late. The gun was up and she was still yards from the door.
He didn't think, because if he had, he would have remembered that he was supposed to hate Chloe Sullivan. He would have remembered she was a meteor freak and an inherent danger. He would have remembered how much bullet wounds HURT.
But instead, he pushed her aside, interposing himself between Chloe and the guard just as a POP, POP, POP sound filled the air.
He shouted in pain as the bullets tore into his chest and shoulder.
Author's Advertisement: I'm doing another event in May for Smallville Sunken ships. It will be open to ALL non-canon ships (Chlex, Chlark, Clex, etc). The link to the event's livejournal is on my profile.