Mr. Dark 4 (Tamed #4)(5)

The night was cloudy and there was only a new moon in the sky, which is exactly what I was looking for. Pushing off from the observation deck of the Financial Tower, the tallest building in the city, I rode the updrafts from the sides of the surrounding buildings pretty well in my glider. Made of the lightest materials available, it was one of my newest purchases, and came in non-reflective black. While not totally invisible, I could be assured of a very quiet approach.

"So how's it going back there?" I whispered. The contact microphone taped to my throat worked perfectly, and I knew that Sophie could hear what I was saying. "I mean, instead of doing this, I'd much rather be having a relaxing bath with you."

"Hmm, well, you get out of there in one piece, and you can have more than a bath," Sophie purred back. "In fact, if it wasn't that you'd probably crash, I'd tell you right now what you could be having."

The sound quality on the radios was perfect, it sounded like I was sitting next to Sophie, who was back at our home in the bell tower where we had one of our headquarters for surreptitious activities. She wanted to come with me on this mission, but Sophie hadn't learned how to fly a hang glider yet, although it was something we were planning on doing soon.

I hung a right, catching the updraft coming off of the Huddleston Subway Terminal to get my final approach on my target. Landing was really the only tricky part of the entire flight. The top of the Hamilton Building wasn't at all like a lot of the other skyscrapers around town, with helipads and open gardens dotting their roofs. Nope, the Hamilton Building was covered in pipes, conduits, and a bunch of other crap that more or less make landing a very tricky proposition indeed. To do it the way I wanted, I needed to come in actually lower than the roof, then quickly pull up and bleed off speed to gain altitude, hopefully just clearing the lip of the building before settling down. I'd done a similar landing before on the top of our roof, which was much more comfortably laid out and was about ninety stories shorter.

Pulling back hard on my control bar, I cleared the lip, and found I was still too fast. I was going to keep gaining altitude, damn! Reaching out with my arms, I let go of the control and pulled in on the wing deployment, cutting the surface area in half within a blink of an eye. With so much less fabric to support my weight, I dropped somewhat under control, landing with a bit of a thump along the conduit lines that fed the building's backup generators. "I'm in."

"That's good. So I don't have to worry about the muttered f*ck that I just heard then?" Sophie replied. That's the problem with throat mikes, if you want a truly hands free experience, you have to transmit constantly.

"Nah, just came in a bit fast. But I'm down and safe. How about you?"

"Oh, nervous, sweating, and wearing nothing but those pajama pants that you like so much," Sophie teased. "Want me to tell you about it?"

Her next chuckle made me realize that I had probably groaned deep in my throat, and I tried to put my mind off of the image of my beautiful fiancée sitting in loose cotton pant and nothing else. Trust me, it was more difficult than I had hoped it would be.

"I swear," I finally told her once I had my glider stashed and my small satchel ready, "when I get home I'm going to make you pay for all this teasing."

"I look forward to it," Sophie replied. "But on to business. Your target is five floors down. How're you planning on getting access?"

"Elevator shaft," I replied, pulling up a building schematic on the small tablet I had with me. I knew Sophie could see what I saw on her computer, which was hot-linked to my tablet. It allowed her to also send me data updates as well if she wanted to. "Just making my way down the stairs would be too big a chance of triggering some sort of alarm or getting caught by a patrol. And that whole rappel over the side and slide down a rope act may work in the movies, but I don't put a lot of faith in it myself. Nor do I plan on trying to cut holes in reinforced glass."

I went over to the elevator shaft, which hulked out of the top of the building. It's one of the classic challenges of an elevator system, namely, where do you put the motors and the cable? The easiest is to have them both stick out the top of your building in a miniature room. The bigger the building, and the bigger the elevator, the bigger a room you need. I found the elevator I wanted, which according to the schematics was marked as an executive elevator. I wanted that one because I didn't need anyone suddenly interrupting me while I was trying to work.

The cable descender I used is another one of the toys that I have come to enjoy about my new crusade against crime in the city. Made of a special type of braided nylon and Kevlar blend, it could support a full one thousand pounds while being flexible enough and small enough to wind onto a reel roughly the size of my hand. Really, more space was taken up by the ascender and descender mechanisms than by the filament itself. I used a carabiner to lock it onto the overhead beam of the shaft, then made my descent. It was easier than you'd think, I just had to hang and let my harness support me. Pretty soon I was five floors down, right where I wanted to be. Looking down the shaft, I double checked that I was still safe before jimmying the doors open.

It was strange, really. The place I was breaking into was one of the main computer centers for the Confederation, so security should have been tighter than Fort Knox. Instead, they went with hiding through deception, and made it no more noticeable than any other mainframe center in the city, just another one of thousands. If anything, I had expected that the elevator shaft doors themselves should have been rigged with an alarm. Instead, I was soon making my way down the corridor to the mainframe room, where I quickly picked the lock and went inside.