Cry Havoc

Chapter 9
Tricks

Chapter Description: the conclusion of Book One: Domination

friday 22 september - 11:15 PM

Equinox is an anglicized portmanteau of the Latin aequus, meaning “equal,” and nox, meaning “night.” It occurs but twice a year and is marked by the Earth’s lack of axial tilt. During an equinox, a hypothetically massive pane of glass that was to bisect both our home planet and Sol, our sun, would do so at both bodies’ equators. The day has held religious, cultural, and traditional significance for hundreds of cultures throughout humanity’s history.

In the year 2017, the autumnal equinox fell on Friday, September 22nd. And its significance was about to make itself abundantly clear to the Tigers of Maker’s Point.

The weather was brisk that night. Of course, clad in their jeans and heavy leather jackets, and with their blood pumping with warming adrenaline, the Tigers were as comfortable as they could have been, considering they were about to pull off the most lucrative (and downright cruel) heist in their gang’s colorful history.

It had taken both Impulse and Loudmouth some convincing, but Recon was nothing if not the consummate salesman. The “leader” of the group and the “cleaner” of the group had always been reticent to implement Recon’s contributions to the chaos game. This was no coincidence-- the leader built his reputation on results, and the cleaner went to great lengths to cover the trio’s tracks in the increasingly-comically unlikely event of capture. But both of them knew that Recon had the brains. Both understood that, like the chessmaster of crime, Recon always thought three moves ahead.

It was a digital audio recorder that had brought the Tigers to Kerry Benes’s house:

“Five hundred dollars.”

“Well, it’s in the garage, and I covered it with a tarp. I hustled it away to the corner where the lawnmower and the snowblower and all sorts of other things are just piled up.”

Impulse turned to his cohorts. “For chaos, men?”

Recon and Loudmouth nodded, the former replying, “For chaos.”

Rico “Recon” Velez had spent four solid days mapping out the entire property. It was the most challenging test of skills in his career. Firstly, the affluent Assistant Principal lived in a three-story house that almost certainly cost upwards of half a million dollars. Though that was partially due to Kerry Benes’s impeccable work ethic, most of the credit had to be given to his wife, who pulled down a very comfortable living as a corporate attorney. The property was surrounded by a white picket fence and conspicuous signs reading “This property secured by ADT” surrounded the landscape. It had pushed Recon’s accrued practice to the limit to find a way into the garage without being tracked by the myriad motion sensors and blinding spotlights that lined the top of the Benes’s mansion like rows of M&Ms on a gingerbread house.

Assistant Principal Kerry Benes was no fool. He loved his students, but his students hated him. The house of a high school administrator must truly be his fortress.

On Wednesday, shortly after Impulse had dismissed Recon from the locker room, the 17-year-old spy had gone directly for Tupper High’s administrative offices. He knew that Benes, his secretary, and their office assistants had gone to lunch at a nearby Chili’s. With a mail-order lock pick and several seconds of sweaty jimmying, Recon let himself into Benes’s office and thumbed through his daily planner, his voyeuristic gaze landing upon Friday the 22nd.

= File exam results with Principal McCarthy

= Tim at friend’s house for birthday sleepover

= Dinner party with the Gekkos, 9 PM to midnight

= Tim’s birthday on Saturday!!

So that was it. From about 8:45 to a quarter after midnight, the Benes property belonged to the Tigers. That gave the miscreants more than enough time to disable the garage alarm, snatch the bike, and allow Loudmouth to wipe the scene.

Recon worked diligently on the garage keypad, having carefully disarmed the alarm in advance. With a screwdriver, a few alligator clips, and a little bit of ingenuity, the techno-wiz had accomplished both jobs in a matter of minutes. The garage door opened, its mechanical whine as the chains to which it was attached did their duty echoing throughout the sleepy, darkened neighborhood.

And it was a darkened neighborhood. Which could mean only one thing-- a pitch-black garage.

Troy “Impulse” Delvecchio swallowed the lump in his throat, raised his Maglite outward and perfectly perpendicular to his body, and turned it on.

No car.

No one was home. The boys were beyond relieved. Both Impulse and Loudmouth gave Recon pats on the back for having had the foresight to check Benes’s daily planner.

In the far right corner of the oily-smelling garage was a temple to machinery. There was a lawnmower. A snowblower. A weedwhacker. All things with which the boys were familiar, but none of which were ever used by the teenagers by virtue of the strenuous manual labor they implied.

If Mom wants the lawn mowed so badly, Impulse often thought, good for her. She should reach for her dreams.

Beyond those contraptions was the Holy Grail. A lightweight, gray tarp, covering what was obviously a high-quality mountain bike of which most tweenagers would have dreamed. Impulse and Recon quietly made their way towards the tarp while Peter “Loudmouth” Kim stood watch at the threshold of the garage door.

The butt of his flashlight anchored in place by his mouth, his hands shaking with an amalgam of anxiety and anticipation, Impulse laid two hands upon the tarp, thrust it up into the air...

...and, suddenly, the Benes’ garage became a lot, lot brighter.

“Well, good evening, boys.”

It was Kerry Benes, standing at the door connecting the garage to his laundry room, beaming a shit-eating grin that could have shattered all the triangular plates comprising EPCOT’s iconic geodesic dome.

The Tigers dropped everything they were holding and ran for the garage door. Impulse’s Maglite clattered to the cement floor. Recon dropped the pouch of tools that had enabled him to gain access to the moderately-fortified garage. And, even with Loudmouth’s headstart, it was too late for the three of them. Already did a pair of Maker’s Point Police Department cruisers pull into the Benes’s driveway, their lights flashing.

“Well, you cretinous little fuckers,” Benes said, chuckling, “I gotcha.”

to be continued in Book Two: Submission