Weecho: First Shots

Cpapter 25 - Breaking Out

With an ultra-light touch, trying to keep steady, Weecho eased the primer cartridge out of the slot in the bomb’s top (picturing how Lynch would have to do it himself) and shoved the cartridge back under the safe – still wired but separate now. 

He picked up the disarmed bomb and took it around behind Lynch’s desk, where even if it did explode, the fragments would be blocked. Set it carefully on the floor, shooed Precious away from it, and stepped back to the safe. 

Asked Juna, “What’s the first number of the combination?” 

“Four.” 

Weecho poked 4 on the safe’s keypad – bam! – setting off the little primer cartridge he’d shoved out of sight. 

Juna jumped. Precious barked. But it was more just a pop than an explosion. 

“It’s all yours,” Weecho said. 

How he did that he couldn’t begin to guess. He was in a different zone.   

Juna tapped out the rest of the four-digit combination on the pad, the combination she’d memorized by watching Lynch do it. Weecho had wondered how a guy like that wouldn’t know he was being watched. Turned out he’d taken precautions. 

Juna hit the last digit, yanked the handle, swung back the heavy door and looked inside. 

“Here’s your laptop,” she said, reaching in and handing it out. 

Weecho noticing the dried blood still on the cover – Nina Galleon’s blood. 

“Let’s go,” he said. “That fire’s not going to wait. We’ll take the dog.” 

He could see the spreading flames through the open office door. Precious was whining. 

“You go,” Juna said. “I’ll be out in a minute. Here, whatever this is.” 

She flipped him a DVD she took from the safe. Weecho stuck it in his shirt pocket. 

Juna reached back inside the safe, took out a banded brick of hundred-dollar bills. Fluttered the bills with her thumb, reached in again and took out another brick. 

“Take them and let’s go,” Weecho said. 

Juna yanked a large plastic trash bag out of her back pocket, flapped it open, started scooping bricks of bills (there were a lot of them) out of the safe into the bag.     

“Juna, there’s no time.” 

Like she didn’t hear him, kept scooping the money. It sinking in to Weecho that this had been part of the plan all along. Probably was the plan, right from when she’d seen the stacks of bills when she was watching how Lynch opened the safe.  

But the fire hadn’t been planned. The flames were spreading from the burning cartons, starting to race through the racks of supplies. 

 Weecho went to try to pull her away. Juna pulled a big automatic pistol out of the safe and stuck it in his face. 

“Back off!” she snarled, and he saw for a second the Juna who took the baseball bat to that kid’s head back home.  

“It’s time to move on,” she said, waving the gun at the laptop. “You got your thing there, I got mine. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I really wanted it to. Us two, and Alexey and Burke and the gig.” 

She scooped the last of the money bricks into the sack, stood up and slung it over her shoulder. Weecho guessing there must be forty or fifty bricks in there, each with a $10,000 band around it – four or five-hundred thousand dollars.