“Jump,” he said, a confidence I couldn’t fully understand permeating his every word.
I looked around in dumbfounded amusement. “Are you crazy?” I forced out as I looked over the edge. The drop to the water was several stories. And I had plenty of time to hide before anyone caught up with me.
“No crazier than you,” he said, then with a sigh, added, “Look, when they get up here, what’ll they do?”
I closed my eyes. The mental clock was ticking in the back of my mind. “They’ll scour the rooftop for me,” I murmured. I hated it when he was right. Hiding up here wouldn’t work, because that’s exactly what a sane person would do. They’d search it thoroughly and undoubtedly find me in whatever niche or alcove I would’ve slid into.
“Clocks running,” he said to me, “Time to jump.”
With a groan and a deep breath, I hopped over the edge. Hurtling towards the river feet first, making my body into a needlepoint to pierce its surface, I braced myself. I was about to break my toes for certain, and probably my ankles as well. Hopefully not the legs, but at five stories, I wasn’t sure. Especially given the extra weight on my back.
With an audible crack, I hit the water. I held back the scream of pain, albeit just barely. It felt like I’d fractured my fibulae at the very least. That would be unpleasant for the next job, no doubt. Holding my breath, I forced myself across the river, remaining underwater. It was hard to swim with the pain my lower legs were in, but I pushed that out of my mind. I needed to focus on getting to the extraction point on time.
Once I’d reached the opposite embankment, I began to swim upriver, away from where they’d be expecting my body to end up. The river’s current wasn’t particularly strong, probably at least part of the reason my fibulae were broken, so it shouldn’t have been a difficult thing to swim upstream. Even with minorly broken legs, it was basically as much of a struggle as crossing the river had been.
Unfortunately, given my hinderance, I only made it to shadow of the bridge about forty meters from my entrance into the water, before I was forced up for air. I pulled myself up onto the bricks of the bridge, keeping a physical barrier between me and the rooftop that was swarming with people. I took several deep breaths, thanking god for my brother’s insistence I go through a limited version of the SEAL training regimen with him, so we could push each other like we had in high school. If only I’d pushed him harder, he might still be around. Either way, ever since that month when I probably should’ve been in college, I could hold my breath under water for nearly five minutes, in an ideal situation.
He chuckled. “See,” he said, “Jumping always works.”
In pain still, I waved him away. I didn’t need that kind of congratulatory thinking yet. I still had to make it to the extraction point. Stretching my arms and shoulders, I began to climb my way back up to street level. At the top, I seat myself at the bus station and wait.
I was late to the station. I missed the bus by exactly one minute fourteen. That meant I was going to be sitting in the open for four minutes. Pulling a hat out from my bag, I put it on over my bleached hair. Somewhere in my mind, I’d hoped that the one advantage of a swim tonight would end up being my hair returning to its proper auburn, making it harder to identify me from a distance. Unfortunately, it had just resulted in messing up my hair more than usual. The hat would do an inefficient job of the same concept. I’ve found that one of the best disguises, and my personal favorite at that, is standing out. You draw attention from aspects of your appearance to fabricated aspects, making it harder to identify the real characteristics. A large cheek scar can make people forget details about your eyes and nose. Colorful hair and large glasses can draw the eyes away from face shape and details. Flamboyantly colored clothing can help people forget the shape of the body under it. My bleached fauxhawk did the job well enough, combined with the hipster frames I’d worn to the party. My beanie would cover up the hair and the glasses had been lost in the stairwell, if I recall correctly. Once again, I closed my eyes. Time was ticking down. I took a deep breath, clenching and unclenching my hand to relax myself.
The bus was late by thirty seconds. That would put me behind schedule by nearly six minutes. I only had ten minutes baked into my escape plan. I got onto the bus and sat down near the door. He chuckled. “Don’t sweat it. Four minutes is more than enough.”
In an angry whisper, I stated, “Not if there are any other delays.”
The other passenger on the bus, seated near the front, looked confused at me. I shot him a gruff look of contempt and he went back to his beer. I had seven stops to wait. I could make back a minute if there weren’t any passengers at any of the stops. Else, it might add up to two minutes to my already short schedule. He laughed again. “Even if there are, you always work out something.”
Seven stops later, I pulled the cord to tell the bus to stop. We were one stop from the airport. The lack of passengers made up around forty seconds, meaning I was now just running behind on personal failings, not the failings of the mass transit system. Hopping out of the bus, I hobbled down the nearby alleyway. It was dark and loud, but more importantly, it adjoined to a second, quieter alley, that led directly to the fencing of the airport’s border. Getting over the barbed fencing without my legs functioning at peak capacity would be difficult. I grabbed a beach towel off from a clothesline stretching across the alley’s second story. Trash bag from the dumpster, emptying its contents onto the ground. Not like it makes the alley any dirtier. I turned into the second alley and grabbed an empty wine bottle off the ground. Walking, I tied the trash bag’s drawstrings to the wine bottle. Passing the towels corners into the drawstrings, then tying them around, I arrived at the fence.
Holding the end of the trash bag in my left hand, I tossed the wine bottle the top of the fence, towel side down. The bottle got caught on the other end of the barbed wire, the towel covering it in the area. Giving the trash bag a couple tugs to make sure nothing was about to come loose, I pulled myself up the fence, relying on my legs only as balance and control, the trash bag acting as a rope to climb. I reached the towel and rolled over the top of the fence. Landing on my back, the breath was knocked out of me, but I was fairly certain nothing else broke. I untied the objects from the wine bottle and tossed the latter back over the fence. As far as anyone could prove, the towel and bag were just blown to the fence by the wind. Slowly I hobbled towards the commercial transport hangers.
“Told you four minutes was plenty,” he told me as I walked, “And that swimming always works.”
Between pained grunts, I retorted, “I still haven’t made it yet.” He always celebrated too early. Never waited for the job to be done to congratulate me.
“Well, you never congratulate yourself, so someone’s got to,” he replied to my thoughts. I hated when he did that. I made it to the inconspicuous commerce hanger. As I walked through the doors, a gentleman scanned me, looking for any outgoing signals. Once he was satisfied that I wasn’t traceable, bugged, or in communication with anyone, he waved me inside. I walked into the lowered cargo door of an airplane and sat down on a crate. I took a deep breath, in and out, then murmured, “Now I’ve made it. Anything wrong from here on out is on someone else.”
He laughed but didn’t say anything more. He’d said his piece. From deeper in the plane, my handler approached. She smiled at me. “Charlie,” she said, “You’re later than anticipated.”
I smiled back at her. “The escape did not occur quite as intended. I got cornered on a rooftop, had to swim. That made me miss the first bus, so I had to wait for the second.”
She furrowed her brow. “A five-story dive? Are you alright, Charlie?”
I shrugged. “I’m fine, Kate. A couple splints for my feet and legs would be nice, but I should be fine to work the next job.”
She cocked her head at me. “Really? You broke both your legs and want me to send you out next week?”
I waved her off. “It’s just a couple fibulae fractures, nothing a week of rest won’t heal.”
She laughed at my ridiculousness. “You got the info?” she asked.
“What am I, an amateur?” I asked, only slightly offended, but playing it up. From my backpack, I pulled out the small sealed baggie. Inside there were several hard drives. I then placed the plates beside the drives. “I also took liberty to switch these out with an exact replica of ours. They shouldn’t notice the switch, and our money should be legit from now until they change up the twenty’s printing.”
“Amateur you certainly are not,” Kate said with a smile again, “Crazy and cocksure, definitely, but not an amateur. Your cut’s been transferred to the accounts as usual.”
“Thank you, dear,” I said with a smile.
He sighed. “Thanks for taking care of them, man,” he told me.
With Kate standing so nearby, I bit my tongue. She may think I was crazy because of the risks I took, but there was no need to make her think I was actually less than perfectly mentally healthy.
Sitting down next to me, she leaned back against the mesh behind us. “I still don’t get how you do it.”
The plane began to roll out of the hanger. I turn to look at my handler. “How I do what?”
“These jobs,” she said, “We’d normally send in teams to extract this kind of thing, but you always insist on going alone. And you always succeed.”
“I’m just that good,” I replied.
She shook her head. “You’re good, no doubt, but its more than that. You’re such a meticulous planner, it’s quite awe-inspiring.”
I shrugged. “You know, I do love to be complemented,” I remarked.
She chuckled. “No, you don’t.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t. So, what about it? I plan everything, sure, but it always goes off the rails somewhere.”
“That’s just it,” she said, nodding, “Most planners, they’ve got a plan B, C, D, so on. You don’t. When your meticulous plan goes off the rails, you just improvise.”
I smiled at her. “What can I say, sometimes I need to take inspiration from my heart, not my head.”
“Exactly. You think with your head all the time, yet somehow you also think with your heart,” she said, “It’s truly amazing. My other operatives could learn a thing or two from you.”
I laughed. “That, I doubt. Your other operatives work with teams because they know better than trust themselves. I just, well, don’t know better.”
“You’re really not going to tell her about me?” he remarked, “Rude.” I clenched my fist, closed then open then closed then open again. It helped relax me.
Kate shook her head. “So, you’re saying that you only succeed because you’re an idiot?” she asked.
I nodded. “Pretty much. Ask anyone, they’ll confirm it.” The plane began accelerating rapidly down a runway. I leaned back into the mesh behind us as well and added, “So, do you have anything coming up for me?”
Sighing, Kate said, “Not your usual, sorry.”
I smiled. “Anything. If I’m not kept busy, I’m afraid I’ll do something stupid.”
“Tell you what, the moment anything, no matter how small or big, comes up, I’ll contact you.”
“You better,” I said with a smirk.
She smirked right back. “You’ve got my word, whatever that’s worth.”
With a laugh, I replied, “That a quarter can get you a gumball.”
She shrugged. “That’s a real cheap gumball,” she joked. As we leveled out in the air, I lay down in the mesh to nap for the flight home.