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6
December, 1941
Dear
Herr Hitler,
AERIAL
RUN
The
flying fox was waiting for the intruder outside the blasted-open window.
After
the man—his call-sign for this mission was, appropriately, Robin Hood—had entered
the plush office via an elevator shaft inside the Empire State Building, he had
attached a radio transponder to the ceiling over by its corner windows.
It
was a homing transponder.
Sending
a signal to his companion—call-sign Little John—over on the flat-topped roof of
Horwicks Tower, an ordinary-looking 45-storey building two blocks to thenorth.
The
rope that now connected the two buildings was very, very steep.
As
he’d taken the rectangular case from the desk, Hood had heard a loud
whump!
—the sound of a rocket-propelled concrete-piercing hook slamming into the thick
concrete beam above the corner window. Attached to the hook was a rope;
attached to the rope was a state-of-the-art flying fox.
Robin
Hood grabbed the flying fox’s handlebar-like grips and slid like a rocket down
its steeply-slanted zip-line, soaring clear over 34th and 35th Streets and the
low city block in between.
As
he approached the roof of Horwicks Tower, Hood applied the handbrakes on the fox
and it slowed, bringing him to a sharp swinging halt a couple of feet above the
tower’s roof.
Little
John was waiting for him.
True
to his namesake, he towered over Robin Hood. Whereas Hood was small and wiry
and compact, Little John was big and barrel-chested and strong. At the moment his
bushy black beard was covered by a black ski-mask.
‘Thirty-eight
seconds,’ he said as soon as Hood landed. ‘I thought you’d be faster.’
Hood
said, ‘Sorry, but I didn’t want to break my legs on the landing.’
Little
John was already hustling toward the other side of the roof. Hood took off after
him. Rooftop wind whistled around them as they jogged.
‘The
Americans are on their way and they’re really
really
pissed,’ Little
John said.
‘Their
radio networks went berserk as soon as you lifted the pressure case from the desk.
They’re sending three teams from the
George Wahington
. ETA:
two-and-a-half minutes.’ He turned to Hood meaningfully. ‘SEAL teams.’
‘Oh,
shit.’
‘That’s
what I said. Aren’t we supposed to be doing exercises with them next week?’
‘Yep,’
Hood said, ‘which means the Yanks are
not
going be happy if they catch
us today. And what’s this about two-and-a-half minutes? I thought we had a
four-minute lead time.’
‘Intelligence
fucked up,’ Little John scowled as he ran. ‘The
Washington
is in Dock for
the weekend, not Dock 46. They’re closer.’
They
came to the parapet. The roof of another similarly-sized building sat across 36th
Street from them.
Little
John threw a pair of handheld suction cups to Hood. ‘Just in case you turn into
an unidentified falling object.’
It
was then that Hood saw that John had already connected these two rooftops with another
flying fox.
Little
John turned to face him. ‘So, my friend. You ready to get vertical?’
NOT
YOUR AVERAGE DOCUMENT CASE
Hood
and Little John’s rather irregular form of movement was governed by the pressure
case they had stolen from the Empire State Building.
Constructed
of superstrong Lexan glass and about the size of a slim laptop computer, the
case was manufactured by the WR Grauss Company of Switzerland, and it was
unique.
Novelty,
however, comes at a price. And with starting prices of $6 million for its custom-designed
document containers, the Grauss Company of Switzerland has a rather elite
clientele.
Their
cases are known to be used by the US and British governments, nearly every major
office at the UN, and not a few billionaires who like to accumulate socially…
unacceptable
…collectibles.
There
are two reasons why.
Firstly,
Grauss pressure cases are all but impossible to break open. They are protected
by four pressure-sealed locks which can only be opened using a highpressure
air-valve release unit—a machine the size of a small refrigerator. Such machines
are rare and very expensive.
The
second reason, however, is far more intriguing.
You
see, Grauss cases are capable of destroying their contents should they fall
into the wrong hands.
If
a Grauss case is taken too far—or for too long—from its resting place, a small amount
of highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid will be released into it, destroying the document
that it contains.
Collectors
of Nazi memorabilia are known to house them in Grauss cases. US embassy
employees carry highly classified messages in them. UN ambassadors are known to
use them to safeguard sensitive documents from foreign theft.
Truth
be told, the Grauss case that Hood and Little John had stolen held a document—a
very old document, written in 1941. And, indeed, as he’d taken the case from
its home inside the Federal Reserve member’s desk, Robin Hood had beheld the document
inside it—and even he had gasped at its contents.
‘Jesus…’
The
case, however, came with a singular feature, unique even by the Grauss Company’s
high standards.
Because
of its home inside the Empire State Building, this case had an altitudecsensor.
A
two-way altitude sensor.
If
the case detected that it was either
higher
than 1000 feet—the height of
the Empire State—its acid-dissolution system would be triggered. Similarly, if
the sensor detected that the case was
lower
than ten feet off the
ground, the acid would also be released.
Which
meant any would-be thief had to stay both out of the air
and
off the
ground.
As
such, the document’s owner—a smug proud man who liked the idea of owning a document
that could rock the world to its very foundations—lived safe in the knowledge
that if anyone stole his precious piece of memorabilia, they could never use it
against his country. It would be destroyed as soon as it left the building.
He’d
only made one wrong assumption.
The
thief who went neither up nor down.
It
is with grave feelings that I write to you today.
Despite
our differences, our two great nations are in many ways, very similar.
Ours
are proud nations, strong nations.
In
any event, the case had a failsafe mechanism.
When
it was removed from its resting place—after all, its owner liked to show the document
to visitors every so often; as he had done recently to a diplomat from Hood’s
home country—a timer mechanism was activated, giving the owner twentyfive
minutes to return the case to its slot.
That
was the twenty-five-minute limit Robin Hood knew of.
The
time he had to get the case to a high-pressure lock-release valve.
The
only problem: he had to traverse 16 city blocks to get to a place with a release
valve, while staying off the ground.
RUN,
RUN, RUN, AS FAST AS YOU CAN
While
the rest of New York awoke to the usual morning news—everybody, it seemed, still
hated America: African warlords did; the British did, over America’s refusal to
share its oil reserves with petrol-starved England; there was even a cute
little protest in Washington by a dozen middle-economy countries like
Singapore, India, Sweden and Australia, protesting against America’s tendency
to protect its home market with high import tariffs—Robin Hood and Little John
made their aerial run across New York City.
Two
blocks in thirty-eight seconds was a good start.
The
next three went equally quickly because Little John had prepared well.
More
flying foxes were already in place, allowing them to run across the building tops
and just whiz down on each fox to the next roof.
It
also helped that in this part of their journey, each of the buildings was progressively
shorter than the last—it was downhill sliding. That was good. Later, they would
have to travel ‘uphill’, and then things would be different.
They
pushed on—following Fifth Avenue northward, crossing the chasms of 37th, 38th
and 39th Streets—moving fast.
Between
39th and 40th, they had to cut right. Ahead of them to the north was the New
York Public Library and it was too low and irregularly-shaped to traverse.
Besides,
they had to head eastward anyway, which meant crossing the imposing chasm of
Fifth Avenue itself.
Little
John had pre-laid another flying fox. Its rope soared across Fifth like a long swooping
power cable, anchored to the roof of the HSBC Building on the other side.
Hood
grabbed the flying fox—
—and
then he heard it.
An
ominous
thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
.
Both
he and Little John turned, and saw them.
‘They’re
here,’ Little John said.
They
saw three helicopters thundering down the skyscraper-lined canyonway of Fifth
Avenue, booming over the early morning traffic.
They
were SH-60B Seahawks. Troop carriers. Flying with their noses down and their
asses up. Twelve men per chopper. Thirty-six troops.
Mean
motherfuckers all.
‘Now
it gets interesting,’ Hood said as he and Little John kicked off the rooftop
and slid in tandem across busy Fifth Avenue, the three Navy helicopters roaring
down the glass-walled canyon toward them, bearing down upon them like angry
birds of prey.
CHANGE
OF PLANS
Robin
Hood and Little John hit the roof of the HSBC Building running.
They
saw the uneven rooftop landscape spread out before them, the diagonal
northeastern route that they had to traverse in order to get to their
destination—a building over on 1st Avenue that backed onto the East River.
Several
landmarks stood out: the Chrysler Building and below it, Grand Central Station,
both on 42nd Street; plus a building behind Grand Central that was under construction.
A
flying fox lay stretched across Madison Avenue on the opposite side of the HSBC
Building’s roof, waiting for them.
And
then the choppers arrived.
They
came thumping by overhead, rising up behind the two thieves from the chasm that
was Fifth Avenue, showing their sides, revealing armed men seated in their open
doorways, guns up and firing.
The
roof all around Robin Hood and Little John erupted with bullet impacts, cutting
them off from the escape fox on the other side.
Hood
and John ran.
Two
more lines of bullet holes chased them across the rooftop, catching up to them just
as they arrived at a small shack that housed the building’s internal stairwell,
threw open the door and dived inside, rolling down the stairs an instant before
as the shack’s thin plywood walls were ripped to shreds by the chainsaw-like
bombardment of the SEALs’ gunfire.
Hood
and Little John were on their feet in seconds, racing down the stairwell.
At
the same time, the first chopper landed on the roof, disgorging a team of
twelve Navy SEALs from its side doors.
The
other two choppers split up—one heading north, covering 40th Street; the other heading
east, covering the eastward run over Madison Avenue.
The
choppers knew where they were going.
In
times such as these, my country, like yours, has concerns about the future –
about current alliances, and of course, the Soviet issue.
CROSSING
MADISON AVENUE
Hood
and Little John bolted down the stairwell, taking the stairs four-at-a-time, swinging
around every turn, moving as fast as their legs could carry them.
As
they ran, they took off their combat jackets and ski-masks—revealing bulky woolen
jumpers and regular trousers. If they ran into someone now, it was better not to
look like a terrorist.
They
were nine floors down when they heard the SEALs’ rapid footfalls booming down
the stairwell above them.