Chapter 35 ECT
The sun had just set and the parking lot was relatively quiet. An occasional shopper passed, too busy thumbing a smart phone to pay much attention to the rest of the world. Salt and Pepper hoisted a long, black tubular device several meters into the air to the top of an entranceway of a Flo*rMart supercenter.
"What is this thing for again?" asked a store supervisor from the doorway.
Like the supervisor, Salt and Pepper were wearing Flo*rMart uniforms that the creativity team had tailored for all members of the action team. They also had counterfeit badges that identified them as global Flo*rMart employees.
"It's a new customer identification system that will scan everyone walking into the store and monitor their purchases," Salt said. Given that the men were installing a large black tube, it could feasibly be anything they said it was.
"I thought we already did that," the supervisor said in a confused tone.
"Yeah, but this is an upgrade," Salt said.
"So, why are all the security cameras offline?"
"That's part of the calibration process," Salt recited as Tulip had instructed him to do.
"But the cameras went offline before you even arrived," the supervisor complained.
Salt and Pepper finished securing the black tube above the entrance to the store and then looked at each other. With a few twitches of their facial muscles and other gestures, they exchanged some ideas.
Taking their silence as rudeness, the supervisor said angrily, "Gentlemen, this is unacceptable. I was not notified about this instillation in adva-ah!" The supervisor screamed as the two burly twins caught him off-guard. Pepper clamped his hand over the man's mouth while Salt secured a pair of padded electrodes around the supervisor's head. Pepper held the struggling man tightly while Salt plugged the ECT machine into a nearby outlet and flipped a switch.
The supervisor convulsed, and would have hurt himself severely if Pepper had not kept a firm grip on him. Even as it was, he bruised himself in several places.
When the shocking was over, Pepper hoisted the man over his broad shoulders and carried him inside the building. Salt followed with one of the ladders that they had used to set up Noel's project. The brothers set up the latter in the supervisor's office and made it look like he had fallen while trying to redecorate it. Since there were no security cameras in the office, it was the perfect place for an accident. When he woke up, he would probably be too embarrassed by his situation to raise an investigation into it.
Salt and Pepper went out to the parking lot where a light truck with more tubes sat waiting for them. It was a pitiful thing that the technology team had put together for them. The members of the action team who had gone to Mainland Asia and North America had used rental vehicles, but since Salt and pepper were assigned to the island that had once been Japan, the Noelites found it more convenient to provide them with a crappy white Schroeder Automotive truck that one of them already owned.
Pepper got in the driver's seat and tried to start the vehicle, but all it did was to sputter pathetically. "Shit," Pepper said.
"What's wrong?" his brother asked.
"Hell if I know."
"Figures. That's just what we get for taking this Schroeder piece of shit," Salt mused in agreement.
With a sigh and a nod, they both got out of the vehicle and started figuring out what to do. After a brief look under the hood of the truck assured them that there was nothing they knew how to fix, they walked back towards the store and weighed their options. Flo*rMart had an automotive section and a repair shop around the side of the building, but the mechanics did not arrive until 7am. Salt and Pepper still had a few more stores to visit before then, and if they did not meet their deadline the banners would drop and they would be caught red-handed.
For the security of Noel, all of the banners had internal timers rather than remotely controlled mechanisms with signals that could be intercepted or falsely triggered. While Tulip probably could have figured out a way to encrypt a remotely controlled mechanism, he already had his hands full hacking into every single one of Flo*rMart's security camera systems. The cameras would go down shortly before the action team members arrived and stay down for an hour after they left. The team members called Tulip and spoke in code to tell him when they were nearing each Flo*rMart facility, but stating their problems clearly over the phone could tip off Global Communications to their plans. If the men could not figure out a way to stay on schedule and cover their tracks, they might as well turn themselves into the authorities right then and there.
While Salt and Pepper were contemplating their dilemma, the solution pulled right in front of them on eighteen wheels. After a short, silent discussion, the brothers decided to go for it.
The truck driver rolled down the window of his vehicle and leaned out. "Are you boys here to unload 'er for me?"
"Yeah," Pepper called back, "Just pull 'er around the back and we'll take care of 'er!"
With their Flo*rMart uniforms and bulging biceps, the twins were easily mistaken for regular members of the docking and loading crew. However, once they finished waving the truck into its dock, they were noticed by the store's fulltime employees.
"Hey kids, you new here?" asked a seasoned employee on a forklift.
"Yeah," Salt answered dumbly.
The seasoned employee tossed him a clipboard. "Fill out that shit and take it to the office."
Salt looked down at the paper on the clipboard. It was full of tedious boxes to check, and obviously not the preferred task of the unloading crew members. However, he had a feeling that it would save his hide. It says to have the driver check in with the store supervisor, Salt communicated to his brother through a series of scratches, ear tuggings, and blinks.
Stall him. I'll meet you there first with the ECT machine, Pepper motioned back.
Salt gave a brief nod and started asking the driver all kinds of questions that were not actually on the form, but somewhat similar. Meanwhile, Pepper snuck away from the docking area and made his way back into the store. He picked up a 1.5 liter bottle of sake on the way to the supervisor's office for good measure. When he got there, the supervisor was just re-gaining consciousness.
"Hey, what happened? Who are you?" the supervisor asked.
Pepper set down the bottle of sake on the table and said, "I just finished installing some upgrades to your store. Let's celebrate."
"What upgrades? I don't remember anything about upgrades."
"You hit your head pretty hard when you were trying to put up your 'Supercenter of the Year' plaque," Pepper elaborated.
"Supercenter of the year? Why, that is something to drink to! Pass that sake over here, son!" He grabbed a smaller vessel from a nearby shelf, filled it from the large bottle, and set it in a microwave for a few seconds. "Say, where is that plaque anyway?"
"It broke when you fell. We're ordering a new one for you," Pepper said as he unpacked the ECT machine from the backpack he carried. He plugged it into the wall and added, "In the meantime, I have another surprise for you. It's a little electronic toy that just came out."
The supervisor brought the sake back to his desk and set it down. "I'm not one much for video games," he said with uncertainty.
Pepper walked behind the supervisor's chair with the headset and secured it around his temples. "This one is really easy. You just flip a switch and…"
The supervisor convulsed violently for the second time that day while Pepper held him down in his chair. When that was over, Pepper poured some sake on him and let his body slump forward onto the desk. Then he stood by the door and prepared to tackle the truck driver as soon as he walked inside.
The door opened, and Salt pushed the truck driver into the office first. The truck driver saw the supervisor passed out on his desk with a half-empty bottle of sake and started to say, "What the-" but Pepper sprang up behind him and subdued him with Salt's help.
The truck driver also received an ECT treatment. Then there were two men in the office who appeared to have drunk themselves silly. Salt grabbed the keys to the truck off the driver and put on his hat for good measure. Then, Pepper went out and got the tubes from their broken truck. They were a little cumbersome to carry all at once, but Pepper managed.
Salt pulled the truck driver's hat low over his face and set out toward the giant Flo*rMart truck. The crew had just finished unloading it and sealed it back up. Pepper gave a grunt and a nod to them as he climbed into the truck and inserted the key. His nerves almost got the better of him when he heard the mighty engine roar, but he had come too far to give up now. He cautiously drove the truck around to the front of the building and stopped. Without turning off the engine, he helped Pepper load the tubes into the back of the truck and hopped back in the driver's seat. The brothers took off down the road with their hearts pounding like mad, but refused to look back.
Pepper dialed Tulip on his cell phone and spoke to him in their established code, "We just planted another tree. Had to clear a few roots this time. The chainsaw came in handy."
"Good. Any problems with the chainsaw?" Tulip asked.
"Nope. It worked perfectly. We might need more potting soil, though. Our saplings are now in a much bigger pot," Pepper said.
"What?" Tulip asked in surprise.
"The old pot broke, so we had to transplant everything. The only pot we could find was about ten times the size, so we need about ten times the potting soil."
Tulip listened for a moment and realized that there was a lot more background noise than usual coming over the phone. "Oh my God. You're serious."
"Yep! We've got about twenty tons of terra cotta here."
"And you're still going to deliver on schedule?"
"Of course!"
Tulip was silent for a few moments. "All right. Just work quickly, OK?"
"Yes, sir!" Pepper replied.
The brothers completed the rest of their "plantings" with more ease than the first few. Having a Flo*rMart truck in addition to their uniforms gave them more credibility with the supervisors. By the time the original driver of their truck started to ask questions, it was securely hidden inside one of the massive garages at Rakitan Industries that had once housed obsolete military tanks.