A/N: Can someone remind me why it matters who owns Chuck?
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Casey dropped over the wall, hit the ground and rolled to the side. Chuck landed next to him a moment later. He was not as skilled as Casey and landed much harder with an audible "Ooooff", but that was the only noise he made. If the hard landing had hurt, he kept that fact to himself. He's learning, thought Casey. The fact that he'd been given a stern warning about keeping quiet on this black bag job probably had something to do with it.
Carina, from the top of the ladder on the other side of the wall, swiftly lowered each man's backpack. With a nod to her, they shouldered their bags and disappeared into the concealment of the shrubbery around the perimeter of Alahi's compound.
She hid the ladder, sprinted back to the van and joined Sarah inside. Sarah sat on a rolling chair in front of a bank of computer monitors, her face lit only by the light of the monitors. "They're off," said Carina.
"Good," said Sarah. Her voice was neutral and business-like.
"Why them, Blondie? Why not one of us? Chuck's not a trained spy."
Never taking her eyes from the monitors, she said, "Because just about all of Alahi's security is tech based. There's nobody better with tech than Chuck. Casey? Because he lived in night vision goggles for seven months in Falluja. If he has to thread a needle in one of those things he can do it. And he'll protect Chuck."
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Chuck and Casey, dressed all in black and with NVG's perched on top of their heads, made their way around one edge of the compound. Staying in the shadows as much as possible, and hiding in shrubbery. Chuck didn't move with the stealth of Casey, but he was trying his best. The fact that each man was a few inches over six feet tall was not helping matters. There were numerous security cameras covering that area, but the cameras weren't an issue for them.
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In the van, Carina pointed and said, "There. They're on that camera's feed."
"I know. I got it," Sarah said, pressing a button. As she did so, Chuck and Casey disappeared from the monitor to be replaced by empty bushes.
"So, whoever Alahi has monitoring is now looking at the empty bushes?"
"Yeah. We're not worried about the cameras. The feed first comes here and only then goes to Alahi's security guys. With the BB-88's we put in yesterday, Chuck accessed the cameras and redirected all the feeds here. Then he locked anyone else out."
"So, what are you doing? Why monitor?" asked Carina.
"Unless a feed shows Chuck or Casey, it's forwarded to Alahi's men after a slight delay. If it does show Chuck or Casey, I splice in an empty image from earlier camera footage. It would have been simpler to just insert the empty image from the start, but not as effective. Think about it, Carina. In this way, we won't be tripped up by the cameras failing to show a changed image that was expected by the man at the monitors. If he sent his partner for a cup of coffee, for example, and the man never showed up on any of the feeds, they would know something was wrong."
"Oh..smart. Did you come up with that?"
"Nope, Chuck."
After a pause Carina said, "Does it help that they're wearing black? Hard to see?"
"Not as much as you'd think. The cameras are also infrared detectors so their black clothes aren't going to help, as their own body heat would show up on the camera's monitors."
"Well, so far so good."
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Casey and Chuck made it to the garage area, off to one side from the main house and paused. Casey looked into Chuck's eyes. Chuck was scared (which Casey thought prudent – Casey was a little scared himself), but steady (which Casey was pleased to see, even if it was expected). Casey clapped Chuck on the shoulder and they approached the door to the garage-like building. Casey took out a card key encoded with the number 13680 that Carina had decoded yesterday for the room displaying the fakes. There was a click as the door unlocked.
As Casey did that, Chuck took a shoebox sized gadget out of his backpack, turned it on and hid it in the bushes. From now on, all cellphones in the compound would malfunction. He had blinded the cameras, and now he made the compound deaf and mute.
With a glance at Chuck, Casey opened the door and stepped inside.
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"What now?" asked Carina as the men entered the building.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean what are the boys up to now? I can't see them inside the building."
"There's a small anteroom and then a motion detector in the corridor. The motion detector can be deactivated with a retinal scan. As you neglected to bring out Alahi's eye, we can't deactivate it."
"So, what are they going to do?" asked Carina.
"This type of motion detector operates on infrared. An increase in infrared radiation within its zone of coverage will trigger an alarm. So, Chuck came up with a way to fool it. They're going to slowly cover it with an insulator..."
"An insulator? Why?"
"Infrared radiation is given off by heat...by hot objects. If they insulate..."
Carina interrupted, "Like if they wear some kind of thermal suit?"
Sarah continued, "No, if they insulate the sensor itself. Cover it so any infrared radiation won't get through. They are using half of a styrofoam clamshell box, like you'd use to keep a hamburger warm. If it can prevent the escape of infrared radiation around a hamburger, it can prevent the same radiation from getting to the sensor. The problem is, if they just clamp it on too fast, the change will set off the alarm. They have to do it slowly. That's the device Chuck built. They will let it do its thing. And, to make things just a little more challenging, there are light sensitive alarms in there, so they have to do it in the dark."
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Once the door was firmly closed behind them, they were in total blackness. Chuck reached into his backpack and took out the device he had fashioned to fool the motion sensor. By touch, he removed the backing from it and turned it on with the flip of a switch on the side. He tapped Casey on the arm and Casey opened the door to the main corridor. Chuck reached over to find the edge of the door frame using the same hand as was holding the device, ran that hand up to the top of the frame and across to almost the center of the doorway, all the while being very careful to keep his hand on his own side of the door. Once he held the device in the right position, his hand still inside the blind spot of the motion sensor, he stuck it in place on the wall next to the sensor with its adhesive backing. From his side of the door, using only his fingertips on the far side, he checked to make sure it was in the right position. Satisfied, he pulled his hand back and tapped Casey who closed the door. They turned on their NVG's so they could see each other and waited.
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"Hang on a second," said Carina, "why do they have to do that in the dark? I thought they had on night vision goggles."
"They do, but there are two kinds of those. One kind uses ambient light and amplifies it in the processor. If there was any ambient light in that corridor, the alarms would sound. The other kind uses infrared light and that's the kind they are using. Each of them has a strong infrared light to give them the illumination for the NVG's to work, almost like a spotlight or flashlight but invisible to the naked eye. But if that infrared light gets into the corridor before Chuck neutralizes the motion sensor, the alarms will sound and they are screwed. So, they neutralize the motion sensor first, then they can use the infrared lights and NVG's."
"Are they in by now? Has the motion sensor been blinded?"
"No. If they were to put the cover over it too quickly, it would register the change. Chuck hooked the cover to the minute hand on a clock. Over the course of fifteen minutes the cover will go from vertical to horizontal and cover the sensor. The movement is gradual enough that it won't register with the sensor. Then they will tape it in place. But by then they'll be able to see what they are doing through the NVG's."
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Casey peeled back the sleeve of his jacket and looked at his watch. They turned off their NVG's and reverted to blackness. He nodded to Chuck who opened the door and reached out to lightly touch the cover over the motion sensor. The sensor was completely covered by the styrofoam shell. Chuck tapped Casey that it was ok. They turned on their infrared lights and lowered their NVG's onto their eyes again. While Chuck held the cover in place, Casey taped it to the wall with strips of duct tape. Once it was done, Chuck removed his hand.
Together they moved down the corridor to the door of the vault and looked at the fingerprint scanner used to open the vault door. They didn't have Alahi's fingers any more than they had his retina.
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Carina said, "So, then what?"
"Then they have to get past the fingerprint scanner to open the vault door."
"And what genius thing did Chuck come up with for that?"
"Nothing too clever. You see there are two types of fingerprint scanners. Capacitance scanners which need an actual fingerprint to work. It registers the different electrical signatures of the ridges and valleys of the print. Chuck could have dummied up a gel mock-up of the prints, but it would have taken all last night. Luckily for us, Alahi bought the lower tech optical fingerprint scanner. That just needs a picture of the print to work."
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Chuck took a small slip of paper from his pocket. He placed it on the glass receptor of the fingerprint scanner and pressed down with the palm of his hand. As the optical scanner worked, it shined visible light onto the copy of Alahi's right thumb print. Chuck had covered the scanner with his palm to make sure no light bled through to trigger the photosensitive alarm. There was an unpleasant noise, as the scanner rejected the print. Chuck tried again with a copy of Alahi's right index finger. He had all ten prints from the man's visa application which he'd accessed through the Immigration and Naturalization Service files. Luckily, the index finger worked.
With a soft pop, the vault door unlocked. Casey pulled it back and open and they stepped into the room. Casey tapped Chuck on the arm and motioned to the right side of the room. Chuck nodded and began to look for the diamond along the right side as Casey looked on the left side.
It took a little more than three minutes until Casey tapped Chuck on the shoulder and showed him the diamond. Chuck grinned at him and offered a high five. Casey gestured towards the open door and left him hanging with the five. Chuck's grin faded. They closed the door to the vault, and made their way back through the corridor to the outside door.
Casey tapped twice at the earwig in his ear and heard Sarah say, "Right."
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"They're coming out. Go lower the ladder to the other side." She told Carina.
"Right." Carina left the van and ran to the spot on the wall she had previously occupied. She set up her ladder and climbed it with a second ladder in her hands. Reaching the top, she lowered the second ladder into Alahi's compound. A couple of minutes later Chuck and Casey came out of the shadows at the base of the wall. Casey climbed the ladder first.
Carina said, "Success?"
Casey showed her the diamond, the real one. She grinned.
From below, Chuck hissed at Casey. "I've got to go back. The cellphone jammer didn't autodestruct. I'll be right back." Chuck was right. An essential part of this mission was deniability. Alahi couldn't know that the government had stolen his diamond. If that particular piece of equipment was found intact, someone could trace it back to the NSA. If the government would have been authorized in stealing the diamond, they would have sent in an FBI squad to search the compound with a search warrant and avoided all this subterfuge.
"Stop. I'm going with you," Casey said in a whisper. He turned to Carina and said, "Here, take this. We'll be right back." He handed her the diamond and slid back down the ladder.
They disappeared from view as Carina ran back to the van. She found Sarah staring impatiently at the monitors. "Here's the diamond," said Carina, handing it over. Suddenly, all hell broke loose on the other side of the compound wall. An alarm sounded and spotlights snapped on. They heard shouting.
Sarah started flipping channels on her monitors, looking for the one that showed the problem. She saw Chuck and Casey near the jammer they had planted, with Alahi's security force swarming them. She saw Casey beat three men unconscious before a fourth knocked him down with a blow from behind. She saw Chuck fight one man and beat him, before a second man knocked him down. A tiny corner of her mind was proud of him and the hard work he had done over the last couple of months with her and Casey in learning how to fight. But a much larger part of her mind was swamped with an overwhelming need to go get him and God help anyone who got in her way.
The security force muscled Casey and Chuck away from the garage area and towards the main house.
She took out her phone and checked the signal. It was strong, meaning that Chuck and Casey had destroyed the jammer before being attacked. She entered Alahi's cell number (which they had from Chuck's research) into her phone, but didn't hit send. She put her phone in a pocket and reached for binoculars. Rising and moving to a weapons rack, she took down a high caliber rifle with a scope and attached a long silencer to it. She looked stone cold. There was no warmth whatsoever in her blue eyes, which suddenly resembled arctic sea ice. He movements with the weapon were practiced and efficient. Carina had seen this look before and it usually meant one or more bad guys wouldn't be walking on this earth much longer.
Carina asked, "Where are you going?"
Sarah said, "To negotiate. I have to get him back. Take the van and the diamond a couple of miles down the road. I'll call you."
"Them. You have to get them back."
"That's what I said."
"Ummm. And the rifle? What's the rifle for?
Her voice was as cold as her eyes. "Punctuation."
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A/N2: If this were another medium, I would have Sarah and Carina's conversation as a voiceover while Chuck and Casey were breaking in to the vault and stealing the diamond. So, just imagine it that way, please.
A/N3: The methods I describe to get past Alahi's security systems (photo sensors, motion detectors, and fingerprint scanners) are sort of basic textbook methods and should really work, but he bought a cheap security system even then. And technology has advanced. So, the bottom line is, don't think these techniques will get you into your dad's liquor cabinet, because they won't.
A/N4: Not to bang this particular drum too often, but infrared sensitive NVG's were invented by Doc Savage almost 90 years ago.