Chapter 31 – Taking Over
London, England. 12:07pm, 8th November 2032.
Since she has temporarily sidelined Alex, in terms of being active in the world of thievery, Erin takes over to figure what the next move needs to be. As soon as Alex was inside, she began planning with Matt.
"What have you found out?" Erin asks.
"I'm not sure what to look for exactly, I mean; there's the Capitol building, various museums, the U.S Treasury, the mint, not to mention several private buildings which he could target." Matt says.
"He's not in Washington, all you proved is that his plane is there." Erin explains.
"Really, how do you know?"
"He came to see us."
"What did he say?"
"The usual." Erin says casually. "Wanting to work with him and all that, but he did say that if we wanted to join his heist, we had to be there by 6pm tonight."
"You didn't say yes did you?" Matt asks concernedly.
"I didn't say anything, he left shortly after."
"We have to find out what he's planning, or even where he is would be a place good place to start." Matt explains.
"I know where he is."
"You do?"
"Threadneedle Street." Erin answers.
"Do you have an exact address?" Matt asks as he begins to search for the place on his computer.
"No."
There is silence as Matt realises what Jeremy is planning to do.
"He's going after the Bank of England, he's on the same street as the bank." Matt explains.
"I highly doubt that." Erin responds. "It's a fortress, never been broken into, nothing has ever been stolen, it's a suicide mission."
"I'm just saying, it has to be more than a coincidence." Matt insists.
"Why don't we find out?" Erin asks. "You need to come down to London as soon as possible, I've got an idea."
5:48pm
"Like I've said before, you are insane." Matt comments at this latest idea Erin has thought up. They don't have long before the 6pm deadline is reached, after which they don't know what may happen.
"Plot twist, I'm sane and you're risk averse." Erin jokes back through an earpiece.
"You've got a point with that." Matt responds dejectedly.
"Just make sure you have that quadcopter in place for when I need it." Erin instructs, waiting on top of the building at the opposite end of the street to the bank in the night. She has taken Alex's custom backpack given by Matt for her own use and also taken his cane since she doesn't want to use the family heirloom. She sits casually underneath a solar panel angled at 45 degrees to shelter herself from the rain that's falling in the single digit Celsius temperature. She rests the cane horizontally on her lap and looks at her chosen thieving outfit. Erin does not care greatly about the Cooper's obsession with the colour blue; every article of clothing is black; from the lightweight long sleeve waterproof jacket, to the skin tight pants and right to her set of runners. Blue is not as stealthy as black in the night, nor is her highly unusual light tan fur colour, which is her prime motivation for covering up in stealthy black. She's even considered spray painting her tail in black when doing a heist and washing it out later, but it would be too difficult to do every time she wanted to do a heist, which was getting more frequent by the month. Matt brought down all of her clothing from her apartment and, once he arrived in London, began redistributing the equipment.
She puts on the glasses Matt handed to her so she can see the footage from the quadcopter as it flies down the street and covertly peers into buildings, looking for any sign of the skunk. If they do find him… that's the part where Matt thinks she's insane for trying to do what she thinks she can do. She turns on the glasses and sees the view the quadcopter is giving Matt back at Tim's house, which Erin allowed Matt to use whilst they do this.
"It's going for a first pass now." Matt announces as the drone banks onto the street, hovering 4 stories above the ground in the designated drone flight paths directly over the existing roads. In the dark, she can't see anything useful coming from the footage that is being transmitted to her; mainly because it's too dark.
"Do you have a thermal setting on that camera? I can't see anything." Erin asks.
"I wasn't looking for them visually." Matt explains. "I only needed the camera so I could make sure I could see what it sees, I could have just set it on autopilot and done that but I thought that perhaps you'd like to see what's going on."
"What are you getting at?" Erin asks, wanting matt to go straight to the point.
"I got their internet network names." Matt explains. "Now I just have to pinpoint each network's position and crack them open."
"That's going to take too long." Erin comments.
"The good news is that I got the network of every building on the street." Matt says.
"Even the bank?" Erin wonders.
"Yeah, anyone can get the came of a network if they get within it's range." Matt explains.
"You don't consider that he's already inside?" Erin jokes.
"Don't be stupid." Matt answers, not picking up on the sarcasm. "Most of the buildings are commercial, leaving the minority…"
"I was joking." Erin explicitly states.
"Oh, I didn't know." Matt apologises as his computer starts to build a 3D map of the surroundings based on the geo-positioning of the WIFI networks in each building. As each network is progressively cracked, with easy to guess passwords beaten in less than half a second, he sends a program into the networks in each of these buildings. The program uses the WIFI to act like sonar, bouncing the waves off objects in the room and timing how long it takes for the reflected wave to return. This builds the interiors of each room inside the buildings.
"It's starting work now." Matt says. More than half of the networks have been cracked.
"What's left?" Erin asks, hoping to get into some action soon before the time ticks over past 6pm.
"Mainly businesses," Matt comments. "There's one residential apartment who's password is unusually strong."
Matt checks the readout on the progress of hacking into each network.
"The password is more than 50 characters long." Matt announces.
"Do you think that has to be it?" Erin asks, itching to get out from the cover even if it means getting wet.
"I won't be sure until I crack the password." Matt responds.
"Get the drone to come back here, I'm going to take a look myself." Erin says, getting up and staring down the street. "You won't be able to crack the password in less than 8 minutes anyway."
Matt is hesitant about proceeding with Erin's side of the plan, mainly because of what it involves is dangerous. Nevertheless, he sends the drone to near where Erin is standing amongst the solar panels. Erin can see the quadcopter even in the dark thanks to the mandatory red and green lights on the side of each of the rotor guards to determine which way it's facing.
"Okay, ready." Erin commands as she puts the cane into the grabber on the backpack, getting Matt to fly the drone over to the end of the building. It hovers over the middle of the street at the same height as the roof. She stares down the building and looks for the point from which to jump. She bounces on her toes twice before breaking into a sprint. She runs until she reaches the end, leaps off the edge of the building into a gap which she can't jump in one go. This is where the drone comes in; she has one foot out in front of her to plant squarely on the main body of the drone, which Matt keeps stable. As the drone begins to take her weight for the brief milliseconds, Matt has to increase the throttle to the maximum in order to provide a platform for her to leap off instead of falling into a street. Using the drone as a stepping-stone, Erin leaps as far as she can with her arms outstretched to grab onto the edge of the building; even with her ability and this help, it still wasn't an easy jump. She grabs onto the edge of the buildings and quickly scurries up onto the safety of flat ground.
"That was too close." Matt remarks, having seen Erin come close to falling.
"Close enough is fine by me." Erin responds back, looking at the buildings ahead. "Where's the place I have to go to?"
"Penthouse, 2 blocks along, windows around the edge." Matt explains as she looks up and sees what he is talking about. The pointed oval shape is nothing like the straight edged façade of the main building itself. It is several stories above her level; she estimates it's on the 10th floor of the building.
"I'm not going to be climbing that without some extra equipment." Erin notes, the dark tinted windows are all flush with the building, allowing for no crevices or spots to use for climbing. She thinks back to the drone.
"How powerful is the quadcopter?" Erin asks as she trots over to the edge of her current building.
"Not enough to lift you if that's what you're thinking." Matt reminds her. "I'm going to look at the building with the drone quickly and scout for a way in."
Erin sees the lights of the drone move gradually up into the sky as it hones in on the building. She watches the imagery through her glasses, the first and most obvious detail being that all of the blinds have been drawn; something is being hidden from them.
"I can't see anything inside." Matt explains as the drone strafes around the building.
"Go onto the roof." Erin commands, hoping that there's some way in from there. Matt flies the quadcopter up onto the roof as Erin instructed and instantly she sees something of interest.
"Look, there's a winch. If you can unhook it and drag it down, I can use it to climb up." Erin notices. Matt begins to find all of the frailties in this plan.
"That winch is for a window washing robot in case it drops off the building, it'll be automatically programmed to only go out at certain times and…" Matt worries. Erin is having none of his excuses, she doesn't need to be protected.
"Fling the robot off the edge and it'll drag the winch down." Erin calmly instructs.
"With what?" Matt asks.
"The drone."
"I don't have anything I could hook it under." Matt says.
"Fly the drone underneath the cable and pull up, that will dislodge the robot out of it's charging station. Then you'll do the same thing to get the robot off the edge." Erin explains, conscious of time. "We don't have any time to bicker about this."
"Okay." Matt says, taking a deep breath, knowing that this piece of technology is going to get some scratches at best and possibly lodged, stuck or even destroyed from doing this. Knowing that Erin is watching his efforts, he takes the quadcopter in close to the ground. The steel cable he's aiming for is horizontally level with the roof itself from the spooled winch near the edge of the roof to a small undercover hutch where the washing robot is charging overnight. He gets the drone to fly level directly underneath this section of cable. Matt is a picture of nervous concentration as he hovers his finger over a joystick attached to his computer to control the drone precisely.
He presses down on the trigger and the 4 propellers receive the extra electric energy to power them to their maximum levels. Initially, the quadcopter struggles to lift the cable up; but once the washing robot is out of it's hutch, it became easier to manoeuvre it to out over the side of the building. Erin watches as Matt tilts the drone violently downwards to let the cable slip off it's back, but it causes the quadcopter to drop violently as well before recovering and regaining altitude. The washing robot flies down the building, letting gravity do it's work. It goes down all the way past Erin's line of sight before she sees the cable stretch until it becomes tight before settling as the flailing robot stabilises nearly 2 stories above the ground. Erin checks her watch, only 3 minutes till the deadline is up.
"Bring the drone back around." Erin instructs. "I have to get to that cable."
Matt does what she says and flies the drone to bridge the gap across the buildings. She takes a run up before competing the same task, albeit clearing the gap completely to the other side this time. She waits for Matt to fly the drone across again before looking forward at the cable she has to grip onto. Once the quadrotor has settled, she takes aim at her target. She runs up and, for the third time, lands on the drone before leaping off the top to reach the cable and grip on tight, wrapping her legs around the cable to prevent herself from slipping. Once stable, she begins the climb up to the top at a steady but quick pace, reaching the top in less than a minute.
"I'm in." Erin says as she climbs onto the top of the roof, spotting a door leading inside. It's been locked from the inside with no visible lock on the outside for her to pick. So she couches down and quietly knocks the door with the back of her middle finger at various spots around the lock until she hears the deeper tone she was looking for; indicating the electronic deadbolt lock is situated there. She reaches behind her and takes out the cane with her right hand and spins it around so the shaft is facing up. Erin grasps it with both hands before lining up her shot. Using the cane as a battering ram, she thrusts it at the door, piecing a hole through the door as well as the electronics controlling the lock; rendering them useless. She twists the handle and opens the door before shutting it quickly to cover herself. Erin moves down the few stairs, taking off her glasses, before reaching a second door to the interior, which does not have the same security as the previous door; it has no security at all.
Erin waits for any sounds on the other side but hears nothing. Slowly, she twists the handle of the door and pushes outwards, peaking down the wooden floorboard stairs to her right which leads into what looks like to be a normal apartment building. Erin puts one foot in front and slowly puts pressure on the ground, making sure every single step is silent. A wry smile comes to her face purely from the enjoyment of performing such an activity, but it is quickly wipes away when the door on her right opens suddenly just as she's about to get to the bottom of the stairs. She presses herself against the wall and since the door opens outward, she is behind cover. The husky shuts the door without looking before moving into the main apartment where all of the lights automatically turn on and the blinds retract to reveal the London skyline through the rain.
Erin notes the door to her right before she begins to shadow the suited husky as he goes into the kitchen, getting a glass of water from the motion activated tap. Once the husky moves into the main lounge area, Erin sneaks into the kitchen, using the marble topped island as cover. She peaks around the corner and sees the lights being manually switched off as a giant hologram is displayed over the entire room. Schematics for a heist are the first thing that comes into her mind. All of the levels and floor plans for the building including below ground and into the vaults. Using a tablet, the husky adds a section to the schematics using a tablet. This purple coloured section shows what underground the aqua building above. He twists the building around to an angle to get a better view of his added section below before running a simulation of what is going to happen.
Several yellow coloured cubes load into two rooms, one on top of the other, which represent the gold. Along with the time in the bottom right, he sees the gold cubes become depleted as they pass through a hole in the ground before disappearing from view. Satisfied, he quits the simulation and grabs the picture over to his tablet, which combines the two images into a single file that is downloaded onto his tablet. Once completed, he deletes the underground section before turning off the hologram and walking back into the room with his glass of water. Erin meanwhile keeps her cover, and once he is gone, she informs Matt of what she's seen.
"I saw what they're going to do." Erin whispers as she presses into her earpiece. "They're robbing the gold from the Bank of England via an underground tunnel of some sort."
"All of it?" Matt asks with surprise.
"From what I saw." Erin whispers.
"That would make it the biggest heist ever by a long margin, bigger than your dad's Mona Lisa heist by many magnitudes." Matt responds.
"Let's not get carried away here." Erin modestly replies.
"Almost £41 billion worth of gold, not to mention anything in the other vaults like cash, government securities and other things." Matt explains. "That's over 380 tonnes or 31000 bars of gold inside the vaults."
"Ambitious." Erin notes.
"It's not possible, it can't be done in a single night; even in the winter." Matt explains. "They'd have to remove more than 1 bar every 2 seconds in order to do it fast enough, and that's without any noise or raising any alarms like pressure sensors, motion detectors, security cameras, silent alarms…"
"I get it, it's not possible to do in a single night. Then they'd have to use some sort of counterweight to act as a decoy." Erin replies.
"380 tonnes of it." Matt replies.
"They're all gathered in a room back on the east side, send the drone around there to see if you can get a peek inside and find all of the tunnels that go underneath the bank like the underground tracks or sewers."
"I'll avoid the sewers." Matt instantly says.
"Afraid to get dirty?" Erin replies.
"I…I don't want you to get hurt, you could slip and Alex won't be…" Matt tries to explain, but he's fearful that he will be exposed.
"Alex?" Erin asks softly. "Or you?"
Matt hesitates, pausing to reflect on what he should say next. The reflection turns to muffled laughter in Erin's earpiece followed by what sounds like… muffled sobbing. Emotions are getting into the situation, which is detrimental for Erin since she's in deep. In hindsight, maybe the best thing was for her not to ask the question, but it's all said and done now.
"I'm… I'm sorry." She whispers, now looking for a way out of this place so she can deal with this without the threat of being discovered by a highly dangerous criminal who will then almost certainly imprisoner her before delivering the news to Alex.
"You're beautiful Erin… and you're smart, funny, athletic, kind, strong… you're simply, perfect." Matt replies, expressing his feelings for her that have been so pent up since the day he first saw her. Now that he has this opportunity, he's not going to let it go. Erin would have wanted this to happen when she was not trapped. She decides to make a break for it, couching low and sneaking back to the where she entered from with the cane in her hand. She moves up the stairs but once she's at the top, she hears the sound of the door downstairs opening. She twists her head, her body like a statue, and watches as the skunk walks out of the door; followed by…
Erin knows she has to keep quiet and still despite what she is seeing, the four members of her own gang walking behind the husky with the last one coming as a surprise; Tyson is there as well. Betrayal is the first word that pops up into her head, but she quickly tries to get that out of her head as her conventional thoughts fight back against what she is seeing. Could this be a plot spanning months? Getting people to infiltrate her then leave just as the skunk shows up. It makes sense to Erin but she doesn't accept that outcome. The 5 hostages walk around the corner into the main living room with Jeremy returning inside as Erin waits for them to be out of sight before quickly turning around and leaving the way she came.
"Matt." Erin asks quickly through her earpiece. "Get me Tyson's real time location."
"Why? What's happening?" Matt asks concernedly.
"I don't know how, but they've got Tyson." Erin announces as she stands on top of the roof with the cane placed back into the grabber.
Matt places his hands over his head in disappointment with himself before re-focusing on the task as hand.
"Okay." Matt says as he takes in a breath and begins to search for his phone. A quick check shows him nothing.
"The GPS has been taken out of his phone, I won't know where it is." Matt explains.
"Then get CCTV, anything like that." Erin instruct as she moves back to the edge off the roof.
"What are you going to do?" Matt asks.
"Find out what they're doing of course." Erin says happily as she grabs the cable and jumps over the edge of the building, sliding down the cable with ease. Once she nears the bottom, she grabs harder on the cable to slow down in order to sum up the landing. She lets go at the bottom and lands perfectly on the ground. Just as she does so, her phone begins ringing.
"Erin." Alex greets.
"Done with work?" Erin asks cheekily, her own work not done yet.
"Listen, Antonio just called. He says the Diamond Heist is ready to go, he's got all the equipment ready and everything and that we have to go tonight. I want to know if you want in." Alex asks.
"Jeremy has Tyson." Erin explains.
"Jeez." Alex exclaims.
"And he has my gang as well."
"Woah."
"I'm not going to Belgium tonight Alex. I'm going after Jeremy, he's going after billions of pounds worth of gold; a lot more than what's going to be in Antwerp, okay. You can go if you want, follow his demands or we can do this, ruin Jeremy's plans and take some for ourselves; which do you think sounds better?" Erin asks.
"I'll do whatever you want me to." Alex immediately replies, being so loyal to his sister.
"Alex, don't just say that because you're my brother, say it because you actually want to do it instead of saying what you think I want to hear." Erin advises.
"Then, what do you want me to do? Working at the clinic wasn't half bad." Alex replies.
"I want you to make up your own mind." Erin answers.
"I want to help you, that's what I want to do." Alex replies more confidently than before.
"Okay. Meet me at Bank underground station as soon as you can, and wear something unrestrictive." Erin instructs. Alex knows what she means when she makes this statement.
"Okay, see you there." Alex replies. As soon as the phone conversation stops, the earpiece springs into life with Matt shouting wildly on the other side.
"Run! Police are coming!"
Erin looks for the nearest shadow to hide in next to the building before looking for a way to get some height on the approaching police. She looks across the street to the older building with more crevices and ledges to climb and instinctively runs towards it, already drawing up a path in her mind to get to the top. She jumps up the wall, scrambling up to get some extra height to grab onto the ledge. She picks herself up before strafing along the thin ledge, taking out the cane for the next move. Erin leaps perpendicular to the wall towards a horizontal flagpole, using the cane to swing on it before leaping onto the next thin ledge. Looking up, she jumps with the cane trenched upward to hook onto the second storey window ledge. She pulls herself up using the cane with her hands before reaching onto the ledge itself and pulling herself up. She repeats the same feat twice to get to the roof and to safety. Once up on top, she sees Matt's drone hovering nearby; watching her progress.
"That was close, they should be driving past right now." Matt says, relieved. But that relief is short lived as the power to his drone fails, causing it to fall out of the sky and down onto the roof of the building from about 5 metres up. It hits with an obvious thud but doesn't shatter on impact.
"I'm being hacked! The drone's gone. I fear I'm…" Matt quickly says before being cut off as well. Erin gathers her surroundings to look for any immediate threats but she can't see any. She's expecting one of the police or Le Paradox to interact with her but it doesn't come. She then hears a scuffle developing below her. She runs to the edge of the building to take a peak, a standoff is emerging between the police and what looks like a lot of hired help. The police are covering behind their vehicles whilst the others advance on their position. The quick movement of something attracts her attention; someone has thrown a concussion grenade at the group of henchmen who scatter like ants. Erin immediately moves away from the ledge and waits for the disorienting explosion.
After the loud bang, she peaks back over to look at the situation below. All of the guards are on their knees or on the ground covering their ears in agony as the police move in to arrest them. Before she can look much further, she catches a glimpse of the grenadier who took out a whole bunch of people at once. Dressed in a dark blue singlet, despite the freezing temperature and rain, and short cargo pants which holds up a utility belt which Erin quickly analyses to determine the arsenal of this attacker. Two guns on either side, two more concussion grenades hooked onto the right side as well as other things which Erin does not have the time to see. Their eyes cross paths briefly, but it's long enough for Erin to know who it is. Betrayal doesn't go through her mind first, more the need to run away now before they overwhelm her with their power in numbers. She sees the Fennec fox through a concussion grenade up to the top of the building whilst yelling, "She's up there!" Erin runs and dives over and air conditioning duct until the explosion passes before sprinting away to the other side of the building.
She spots something over the edge that could hide her, a steel sewer cap in the middle of the road surrounded by a traffic jam. She flings herself over the edge, holding onto the top of the building before letting go to fall down one level, then one more before she sums up the landing. Erin leaps out onto the street, aiming for the top of a truck. She performs a forward roll on landing before immediately jumping off onto the centre of the road right next to the sewer cap. Paying no attention to people who could stare at her from their cars, she lifts the heavy steel cap out of place before jumping down far enough to get below street level before pulling the cap over her head. She stays at this level as she searches for the glasses on in her pocket, careful not to drop them into the pitch-black abyss. She feels along the left side to change the view from darkness into a hue of green. After activating the night vision mode on the glasses, she slides down to the bottom of the chute and into the stagnant water inside the sewer.