Saturday was the day
Saturday was the day. It was D-day; the day of the mission. Alex was woken up early that morning to the sound of coughing. His eyes opened and he lay on his back for a moment before sitting up and getting out of his bed. He quickly got dressed and walked outside to the kitchen. Grey Fox was half propped up on the worktop while Cane was reading the newspapers, seemingly uncaring of the wheezing woman a few feet away.
Grey Fox stopped coughing just as Alex entered and took a white handkerchief away from her mouth before putting it in her pocket. There were a few spatters of blood showing on the material but Alex decided not to say anything about it and instead opted for much less of a concerned greeting.
" You okay?" He asked as he made himself breakfast.
Grey Fox grunted and continued on with what she had been doing. This was not the first time Alex had seen Grey Fox go into a coughing fit, nor would it be the last; the question was, for how long would she suffer? As Grey Fox had already mentioned all that time ago when Alex had first entered the Spider's Parlour, she was dying and it was only a matter of time.
There was a chuckle from behind the newspaper, " Hey, listen to this," Cane said, indicating to the paper, " '…Due to the recent rise in smuggling of arms into the country, an additional two hundred police men and women will be stationed to the shipyards in order to prevent further contraband entering the country…'" Cane shook his head with a lopsided grin. " Geez, it's like you planned this."
Grey Fox returned the grin, " No. I just have good hearing—and luck; I've been making arrangements for the odd box of weapons for the past year, and I've been ordering my men to be sloppy, you know like dropping things, leaving boxes open—stuff like that… I thought it might come in handy some time to have the cops otherwise engaged."
Cane laughed again and Grey Fox couldn't help herself a little either. Alex was left furrowing his brow, clearly not in on the joke.
" I don't get it." He admitted with a shrug, feeling a little put off.
Grey Fox smiled. " It means that we'll have an easier time tonight; a lot of the police will be at the shipping yards and they won't be in a position to respond to—oh, I don't know—a bank robbery. It'll give us more time and better odds."
"Oh," Alex said with a frown, " That's quite convenient though isn't it? The timing I mean. Do you think it could be a trap or something?"
It was Cane's turn to frown. " He's right actually. Are you sure about this?"
Grey Fox stood up and finished the glass of water that was her breakfast. She put it in the sink. "Oh ye of little faith." She sighed in an amused voice. She turned with a smirk. " I'm the one who tipped them off in the first place. I've been their anonymous inside informant for months and I was also the one who rang them last night and told them that something big is happening tonight. Honestly Cane, you're making me look bad in front of my apprentice."
--
It was late now, in fact it was an ungodly hour and Alex was waiting in a car with Grey Fox a block away from Evergreen Bank. It was so late that even the usual weirdoes, who went around muttering about Judgement Day and government conspiracies involving aliens, were already fast as sleep and getting recharged for another day. Alex blinked and rubbed his eyes in order to stay conscious; he sighed and looked over at Grey Fox, whose i-pod was blaring loud enough for him to hear the crappy classical music she was listening to. Her eyes were closed and Alex wondered if she had gone to sleep even though she had strictly ordered him not to. Alex could not have imagined that he would ever feel so bitter about being in a car with Grey Fox and made the quickly decision that sleep was good and robbing banks was bad. And there it was; Grey Fox had cured him of any ideas (even subconscious ones) he might have had involving him and illegal acts.
The music stopped and Grey Fox let out a frustrated sigh. " Battery's dead." She said as she pulled the earphones from her ears and wrapped them around her I-pod. Alex might have been inclined to tell her that doing so would damage her earphones but decided that he was too tired and she could go stuff her bloody music.
The car was deathly silent for a long time.
Eventually, because he was so bored it was hurting him, Alex spoke; " When are we moving?" He asked.
Grey Fox glanced at him and stifled her own yawn. " Not for some time yet." She told him, looking at her watch.
"Oh." He said and returned to look out the window. Again there was a painfully long silence until Alex spoke again about something that had been on his mind a lot lately.
" Can I ask you a question?" He asked, still not moving his eyes from the window.
Grey Fox looked at Alex in surprise. " Yeah, I suppose so. What's it about?"
" My father." Alex told her.
Grey Fox stiffened slightly and looked cautiously at him. Her behaviour was not lost on Alex. " Go on." She said suspiciously after a second.
" You were speaking about him the other day. How do you know him?"
Grey Fox frowned, she opened her mouth to tell him that he shouldn't have been listening in but decided it against it and closed her mouth again. She bit her lip and then answered. " I didn't really know him, Alex." She said carefully with a slow pace, " But he and my father worked together a few times."
Alex felt his heart fall a little. Really though, he didn't know what he had expected to hear. " With Scorpia?" He asked, though it wasn't really a question.
Grey Fox shook her head with a shadow of a smile. " No, not Scorpia. MI6."
This got Alex's full attention as he turned to look at Grey Fox for the first time. " Your dad worked with MI6?" He asked, and before he could stop himself, " What happened to you?"
Grey Fox let out a soft breath of laughter, " Cheers Alex." She said, though she wasn't really offended. " And yes my father did work with MI6, for a time; he was a mercenary."
" Oh." Alex said because he didn't know what else to. " Did he work with Scorpia too?"
Grey Fox thought about whether to answer or not, for a moment. " No…" She said slowly, " My father was a mercenary, Scorpia are a group of assassins—the two don't tend to mix well."
Alex raised an eyebrow " Why not?"
Grey Fox shrugged. " Two different animals; tigers and lions, I suppose."
Alex considered this and deduced that there was some subtle difference that only insiders would recognise. Alex himself really couldn't see the difference between what Grey Fox and someone like Yassen Gregorovich did for a living. And because of his lack of insight, Alex asked (in a very slight disbelieving tone.).
" So what's the difference, then?"
If Alex was expecting a particular reaction to his question, it certainly wasn't the one he got. Grey Fox snarled and shot the palm of her hand out against the car's steering wheel in anger. Her eyes burned as she looked straight ahead of her and clenched her jaw. " Assassin's are pigs." She spit in a very thick Russian accent, " Mercenaries are not; they at least have honour."
Grey Fox slowly removed her hand from the steering wheel and crossed her arms. She pursed her lips and had a scowl on her face. She would say nothing more about the subject.
--
The phone rang three quarters of an hour later. Alex breathed a sigh as Grey Fox answered it without speaking. She hung up and looked at Alex.
" It's begun. " she said and as if on cue, a police car's siren sounded somewhere in the distance, although it was probably not related to the arranged incident.
It was a few more minutes before a sudden knock on the window caused both Alex and Grey Fox to jump. Cane's grinning face appeared in the window. Grey Fox pursed her lips but said nothing as she rolled down the window.
"You ready?" He asked.
Grey Fox nodded. "And Hawk?" She asked.
"Yeah, he's ready. Waiting for you two." Cane told her, with more than a subtle hint to get moving.
"Right then," She said, turning off the car's engine, "Let's go Alex."
"Sure thing." Alex sighed as he got out of the car.
They met up with Hawk a moment later. "Thanks for this, Fox."
"No problem, I'm glad to have you. You know that, Hawk." She said happily as they walked on.
Grey Fox turned to Alex. "By the way, if we do happen to get caught; tell them that your name Alex Manning and I'm your older sister Kit. If they ask, you don't know who anyone else is. Okay?"
Alex nodded, but with a frown, "Okay… But why?" He asked, "And I thought this was supposed to be safe; I thought that there was no risk of any trouble."
Grey Fox bit her lip for a second and then smiled. "There's not." She said happily. "But just in case. Now, I'll give you a quick over-view of what we're going to do. First of all, Cane's getting us in; he has someone on the inside, a part-time security guard who's going to let us in. It's cheating—I know, but you should never underestimate the value of a good inside man. A lot of the best and most successful heists have been the simplest and dullest. Most of the flashy stuff rarely works." She tapped her index finger on her temple, in the way she always did when she was parting with her knowledge. "Then Stevie comes in. By now he should probably have taken out the cameras, after that he's going to work on the computer mainframe. When we get into the inner sanctum Hawk's going to break into the vault."
"I thought Stevie was going to do that. Wasn't the vault computer controlled?" Alex asked.
"Two man job." Grey Fox explained. "Don't quite know how it works myself." She said with an easy going laugh.
Alex couldn't hep but notice that the more Grey Fox worked, the more human she seemed to become. It seemed that every other time, she had a mask on and only when she was about to do something illegal and potentially dangerous did she act normal.
Grey Fox, Cane, Alex and Hawk literally walked up to the bank and around the back. The security stood there, holding the back door open with a welcoming smirk.
"Yo, Mike!" Cane greeted. "Thanks for doing this, man. I owe you one now."
The security guard shook his head as they entered the bank. "Not at all; we're even now. But I hope you realise your going to have to make it look like I fought, otherwise I'm out of a job and I'm suspected of being an accomplice."
"Sure thing," Cane assured him, "I could shoot you if you like?"
Mike grimaced. "No, I think a black eye would do."
Grey Fox turned to Alex. "Come on." She said as she began to walk further into the bank. "I'm sure Cane doesn't need our help in that department."
Both Alex and Hawk followed Grey Fox to a T-junction of sorts and Grey Fox stopped. She turned to Alex. "I've got something to take care of, you follow Hawk; I'll meet up with you later."
Both Alex and Hawk made their way through the maze of a bank. "Hawk?" Alex asked.
The big man looked down at Alex to see what he wanted.
"How come you're doing this? I thought you didn't do any, ah, field work, anymore. "
"It's my daughter." Hawk told him, in his usual French accent. "This job will pay for the next three years of her tuition. I'll earn more here tonight than I would after half a year normally."
"Don't you think it's a bit dangerous? I mean, what if you get caught?"
Hawk smiled. "Fox told me that this was low risk; I believe her. Besides, I've done tonnes of things that were more dangerous than this job. And anyway," He added as he shifted his black backpack on his shoulder, "Even if I did get caught; Grey Fox could probably bail me out."
Alex looked doubtfully at the man's blind faith but said nothing. He wondered why so many people trusted her so completely. She was just human after all; she was bound to mess up once or twice. Especially in dangerous situations.
They made it to the vault. Hawk kneeled down on the floor and put his backpack down too. He took out a sleek black laptop and turned it on. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a mobile phone.
"Call Steve." He told him, "It's seven on speed dial. Tell him that I'm ready." Hawk said as he began furiously typing on the laptop.
Alex nodded. He pressed seven and rang.
"Hello?" Stevie answered.
"Hawk says that he's ready." Alex told him.
"…Fine." Stevie answered and hung up the phone.
The computer bleeped a few times. Alex saw that there were a lot of wires coming from the back of it and going up to a small computerised mechanism beside the vault door. Now that Alex studied the laptop, he was pretty sure that he had never seen the make—or the style of computer; it certainly didn't look like your average everyday Dell computer with Microsoft programming.
Alex leaned over a little and looked into it. "What is that? I've never seen a computer like this one. It looks kind of crappy; homemade."
Hawk managed a smile from underneath a frown of concentration. "You won't find one of these in a shop. They don't make 'em. And if they did, it would be in the hacking department. A friend of Fox's made it, gave me a crash course a while ago too. Pretty cool invention actually; it's like a hacking for dummies guide. Not sure how it works but it can piggyback with other computers—in this instance Stevie's little network. Acts as a back-up; mirrors what the other is doing and cuts the time it takes to finish the job by up to seventy per cent. It's the only way this job would be possible; instead of hours, or even days, it takes only minutes." He sat back on his heels, pressing one or two more buttons and then the enter key. "And… Voilá" Hawk said happily with a satisfied grin. "Now we wait." He told Alex.
"That's all? God, if I'd known robbing banks was this easy, I'd have done it ages ago and said to hell with MI6." Alex joked.
Hawk chuckled. " I think that's what Fox might have planned."
"Oh?" Alex said with his eyebrow raised. "How do you mean?"
"We can always tell when Fox does or doesn't like a person by what type of job she gives them first. A sweet job like this; I suggest you hang around. You'd be privilege to things that most regular assassins or mercenaries would never know about. If you are at all thinking of life here, do consider it."
"Just don't let her hear you say that," Cane called out as he strolled down the hall towards them. "She might take it back just to spite you."
"True enough," Hawk agreed, "Pride always her greatest fault." As he said it, the computer bleeped twice and then the control panel by the vault turned on. The screen showed the cursor moving and then numbers being typed into it as if someone was standing in front of it, doing it themselves. Then suddenly, the control panel switched itself off and the vault door simply swung open.
"Yes!" Cane exclaimed as he strode forward with his empty sports bag and went into the vault.
Hawk's phone rang and he quickly answered it. Stevie was on the other end of the line.
"Did it work?" The hacker asked.
"Yeah, it just opened."
"Okay then, I'm getting out of here before the cops show up."
"I'll tell Grey Fox that. Thanks Stevie."
Stevie hung up without replying. Hawk just shrugged. "Help us get this stuff out, Alex." He said handing the fourteen year old another empty black bag.
"Sure thing." Alex said, taking the bag.
They walked into the vault and Alex couldn't help but stop for a moment, in awe at the sheer amount of money that was stacked up to the ceiling on all four sides. "Wow." He muttered before shaking himself and getting back to the task at hand.
Cane had already packed half the bag and was grinning idiotically. Hawk looked a little less pleased.
"I wonder where Fox went to?" He said softly, looking worriedly out the vault door and down the hall.
"She's fine, probably setting up something. You know her; she's always doing something." Cane answered, only half paying attention. Alex figured Cane wouldn't be any use to them at the moment; the man was in his own little Nirvana.
Hawk frowned but went back to work. It just so happened that Grey Fox did turn up a few minutes later, carrying an attaché case. She set it on the ground and wordlessly she went about stuffing money into her bag as well.
"Where were you?" Hawk asked, still working.
Grey Fox didn't turn around. "I had something I had to do at the other end of the building."
"What?" Hawk asked but Grey Fox was spared from answering as an almighty siren suddenly went off.
"Damn it!" Grey Fox snarled. "Who set off the bloody alarm!? We're leaving." She said as she slung the bag over her shoulder. Everyone ran towards the door but Grey Fox stopped and went back for the case.
"Come on!" Cane called from outside and a second later Grey Fox appeared.
The four of them ran through the bank. "How much time do we have?" Hawk asked while they ran.
"I'm not sure, maybe four minutes—we should make it." Grey Fox answered, but she sounded worried. They just about made it to the door when Grey Fox paled.
"Shit!" She exclaimed and stopped. Every else did too.
She looked like she was going to scream with rage for a brief second before she controlled herself again. "Alex, take this and all of you run. I left something out; I'm going to go back. I catch up later." Grey Fox left no room for argument as she shoved the case into Alex's hand and then sprinted back the way they'd came. She had barely turned before the group, now consisting of three, had started running again. They were out before Alex knew it and were sprinting back to the car in seconds. They all jumped in the car and started the engine.
"I'll give her one minute." Hawk said with a strained voice. "If she's not out by then, we're leaving."
"We can't just leave her!" Alex said, leaning forward from the back seat.
Cane shook his head and Hawk's shoulders slumped. " We have to. It's the rules." Cane told him.
"But—"
"—Minute's up; time to go." Cane told Hawk who in turn nodded. They were about to pull the car away from the curb when Grey Fox appeared around the corner.
Unfortunately for her, at that same moment sirens were turned on and the headlights of more than one squad car illuminated her like a Christmas tree.
They could just about see Grey Fox mouth the word. "Go." And no sooner had Hawk spotted it then the car squealed away from the curb with such speed that Alex was thrown back into his seat.
Alex just about had time to see Grey Fox slowly raise her hands with a major scowl on her face.
This, Alex decided, hadn't gone as expected at all.