The entire plan hinged on the plan’s sticking point – they would need to fly. They could not fly without practice. Without mastering the plan, they would fail. Without practice, they could not master the plan. And so they’d been out here since dawn every day for five days, all to practice. And learn. And practice some more.
“Let’s go again.”
“Dunn, this thing’s pulling to the right.”
“Doesn’t look like it is.”
“I’m telling you it’s pulling to the right.”
“So lean left.”
“How’s that help me practice for the jetpack that will be perfectly balanced?”
Dunn sighed and nodded. “We’ll get the guy to look at it when we go in today. For now, let’s just rock with it.”
Cole shook his head, but offered no more resistance.
“On my mark. Three, Two, One, Go,” Dunn barked.
Cole and Lurch hit the big red buttons and rocketed into the air. Powerful streams of water propelled them clear of the warm, blue water below. For most people who rented the water-packs, this was an afternoon of vacation excitement. They would scoff at gravity’s momentary failure and scoot to the left and right as if performing some stilted dance. Eventually, they would try to ease themselves down and, failing that, splash with some force into the water below.
This group was not here on vacation. This was not a fun way to spend an afternoon before hitting happy hour at the swim-up bar. All too soon, they had a job to do, and if they couldn’t learn how to properly operate the water-packs, they would find their plan in shambles.
Dunn sat up on the jet ski. He counted off on his watch, dropping his hand in short motions with each second. With four seconds left, he pulled his thumb in. One more finger at each second. At zero, he dropped his closed fist all the way down with purpose.
Twenty-five feet above him, his partners began to make their maneuvers. Each steered out wide, away from each other, before dropping a few feet and zooming back in. A few more motions followed, and it went well enough for the start. But at the moment when Lurch had to cut in behind Cole, the left-leaning water-pack struck. Cole jerked just a bit out of line, and Lurch had to veer hard right to avoid crashing. Cole shouted his frustration and let himself drop with a gratifying, if unproductive, splash.
“It’s not the coordination,” Lurch said after landing with a deft touch. He cut the power and bobbed on the surface. “Our timing is fine.”
“Yeah, it’s the pack,” Dunn said. He pulled out a waterproof walkie-talkie and buzzed. He spent fifteen seconds on a quick back-and-forth with the shore.
“What’s the word?” Cole asked.
“They think he can come move the nozzle or something,” Dunn answered. “They’re finding a spare jet ski.”
As had become habit, Dunn looked down at his watch. At the bottom curve, just above the little Roman numeral VI was a small date window. That tiny window both haunted and pushed him.
Three weeks. In three weeks, they had a job to do. It was the biggest theft of their careers. If they managed to succeed, it would make them rich enough to never have to work again. And that would be very handy as they would become, overnight, the most famous thieves in history.
Twenty years ago, the astrophysicists working on new ways to launch rockets to the international space station amid dwindling fuel supplies began experimenting with the earth’s magnetic field. Mostly by accident, they discovered a way to piggyback onto the planet’s field.
It was a tremendous failure for rocket launches. It didn’t provide nearly enough oomph to get a massively heavy spaceship from earth to orbit. But it did provide a very interesting side business.
Floating real estate.
All over the world, the super-wealthy had used the offal technology from the rocket scientists to build floating homes. The science behind it was mostly beyond Dunn, but he know it combined the building’s own electromagnetic field with that of the earth to create some kind of buoyancy. These homes hovered anywhere from fifty to three hundred feet above the surface of the earth.
By five years ago, homes were not enough. A developer began an audacious plan to launch a hotel that floated above the clean blue waters of the Caribbean.
Almost one year ago, the hotel had its grand opening.
And in three weeks, on its first anniversary, the hotel’s owners would throw an enormous party to celebrate themselves and their achievement. Dunn appreciated the scientific advancement of the Floating Palace, but it held little interest to the world-class thief in him. He was after something much more mundane.
Jewelry.
The hotel’s party had been booked for months, and 63 of the world’s 100 richest people would be in attendance. Of those, 15 were women, and the others would bring their wives (and mistresses, or boyfriends, or secret boyfriends, and so on). All told, there would be over 200 unfathomably rich people showing up to the swankiest party planet Earth had ever seen.
And when unfathomably rich people showed up to swanky parties, they came prepared with jewelry so lousy with gems and gold, it made a pharaoh’s tomb look like a department store closeout rack.
The plan once his team arrived at the hotel was simple. In the way of the prideful rich for eons, the security system for the hotel rested almost exclusively on inaccessibility. There was a heliport on the roof that was brimming with security features. But there were several ignored access points, including some unsavory options related to the sewage system, that were hardly protected at all besides the 150 feet of air between them and the ground.
Entry into the hotel was the hard part. Once inside, their inside man would provide the skeleton key & admin safe code. And it was off to the races after that – raid rooms, grab jewels, fill bags to brim, jetpack out the way they came. From takeoff on the beach to the planned water landing a mile from shore, the whole thing was budgeted for 22 minutes.
And none of it worked without the jetpack entry. The enormous, grate-covered pipe they would use to enter the hotel was 176 feet in the air, and it was hidden behind a series of walls and infrastructure that would require careful navigation. None of them having been paratroopers in the military, they had no experience with jetpacks. Practice was essential.
Dunn counted off the seconds in his head. He looked toward shore, waiting to see that thin stream of water shoot up in the air to announce the launch of the repairman’s jet ski. Time ticked away. Three weeks and 23 minutes. And there was only one thing between him and success.
Practice.
The Tall Tale Year 