“Anytime, sir,” one of them said. “We’re always here for you.” They asked to be excused to make the rounds so they could check the other hangars.
Once the door closed behind them, Lucky doled out ten grand each to Dukie and Nicky for their night’s work.
“Thanks, guys. Enjoy a night out on the town from me.”
Lucky was very generous to his loyal friends. He had already given Nicky and Dukie each a quarter of a million dollars for helping him during his extended hospital stay during his brain injury. Lucky had depended on those guys as they guarded the guards who stood watch over Lucky while he was in a coma. They, too, had been instrumental in helping Lucky recover those nuclear bombs that terrorists were smuggling into the U.S. That was the least that Lucky could do. He relied on them. He trusted them when he couldn’t trust the CIA, his own employer – the agency whose leader had tried to kill him. They were always there when he needed them and were the kind of friends who would help, even if there was never a dime to be made. Blood brothers they were – tough, street fighting, blood brothers from the same neighborhood, who understood each other without speaking. Rare it was to find this kind of friendship, much less friend
ships
, plural.
The boys, Dukie and Nicky, both had weaknesses, however, and one of them was money. Like Sal, they couldn’t hold onto it. When they did well financially, they would gamble, drink, party, or womanize until it was all gone. Lucky knew the routine. He had seen it happen many times before. So, unbeknownst to them, just as he had for Sal, he had set up trust funds so they would always have an income, even if something should happen to him. He had become a billionaire, thanks to his ability to slip into the past and return with valuable items that he auctioned off for millions of dollars, and he wanted to make sure that his friends never lacked for anything. But Lucky knew that supplying them with large deposits of cash on end would be disastrous. As a result, they received money from him, incrementally, a little at a time. Lucky cautioned them to be prudent and learn how to manage their lives and their finances.
Lucky bought each of the guys the car of his choice, paid all their present bills, and gave them, in essence, a new lease on life, an unencumbered life, debt free. Had he not done this, Nicky most likely would have landed in jail. Nicky was the most dangerous. The guys always said that Nicky had a death wish, always flirted with danger. If he got into a fight, it would be a fight to the last man standing, the last
live
man standing. He fought in the street as well as the famous Fred Astaire of yesteryear danced on the stage. Nicky was a thief. Jewelry store robberies were his specialty. Somewhere along the way, Lucky’s gifts, his financial contributions, took care of Nicky’s bills, provided him with a comfortable life and as a result, Nicky, at long last, turned away from his criminal ways. But, it was quite apparent that Nicky relished excitement and danger, adrenaline and drama, so he fit in perfectly with first, Lucky’s former CIA life, and now with his time travels, secret missions, and thrilling escapades that took him around the globe. Nicky had even caught the eye of Johnny Long, the Director of the CIA, during the nuclear bombs fiasco, so much so that Long offered both Nicky and Dukie a job, right on the spot. They declined, opting to settle for a life with their buddy Lucky and whatever he needed.
“Nicky,” Lucky had said, “give me a year going straight and I’ll set you up with a yearly income where you can live in style and never worry about money again for the rest of your life.”
“Look, Lucky,” Nicky said. “I said I’m goin’ straight, and I am. I’m done. The old life is over.”
Lucky sort of took it with a grain of salt because Nicky did what Nicky wanted to do. But trouble could come in other ways and Lucky knew that. In his free time, Nicky could always be found at the P & M Bar and Grill. His friends all hung out there and he enjoyed their company, but when he drank, which was often, and when he drank a lot, which was the norm, a fight could lead to an unpleasant evening . . . for the guy on the receiving end. Boredom was Nicky Bell’s devil; boredom and adrenaline and together, the combination was not . . . a pretty sight.
Chapter Fifteen
The professor pushed a button on his remote control and the spacecraft stairs slid silently out from the body of the craft and came to rest on the concrete of the hangar floor. He climbed aboard. Once he was comfortably settled in his captain’s chair, he pressed a button and the stairs slid back into the lower body of the spaceship. He pressed once again, extending the steps so he could deplane and join Lucky. Lucky and the professor then rolled the spacecraft out from the abandoned hangar and onto the concrete abutment in front of it. The stairs once again slid silently out of the ship. Lucky and the professor climbed aboard and settled into the deep, comfortable dark leather chairs, buckled in and prepared for liftoff. With the professor’s steady hand at the controls, the ship rose approximately six feet off the ground. The metal wheel coverings slid smoothly over the craft’s wheel, completely covering the wheel compartments, and the wheels silently retracted back into the ship. The ship rose quickly, turned sharply on an angle, and sped south. The professor was becoming proficient at this. Quickly, he maneuvered the machine up and dove right into a cumulous cloud in order to have the craft disappear, away from prying eyes, as he cloaked it. Once invisible, he pulled the craft out from the protection of the cloud and took it into a sharp, vertical dive until they were flying, invisibly, directly over the busy I-95 interstate. How odd it was to be flying on top of the heavily congested highway toward their exit. It was like something out of a sci-fi movie. There they hovered and flew, completely inconspicuous to everyone, all the way to Commercial Boulevard where they took the exit, just like any ground vehicle would, and continued on to a group of hangars that looked like a housing development.
There were large hangars located closer to the airport that housed the larger aircraft and smaller hangars for single engine and small double engine planes farther away. Their spaceship fit into the latter category.
Lindstrom carefully checked the surrounding area and as usual, it was mostly pedestrian free, and then landed the craft with the cloaking device still activated. Normally, the wheels were visible when deployed, but once the professor had taken note of this, he had quickly developed a solution. As the wheels came down, so did an oval shield with the same metamaterial used to render the body of the spacecraft invisible, thus cloaking the wheels as well. It took the professor a considerable amount of trial and error time before it dawned on him, the simplicity of it all.
Most of the planes in this end of the field were used sparingly and stored for long periods of time. It came as no surprise that the area was fairly empty. That was why Lucky had chosen it. Lucky opened the hangar door while the professor hovered only inches above the ground as he steered the ship into the empty hangar. On Lucky’s signal, he stopped all forward movement and the ship settled heavily onto its three wheels. The professor removed the activating rod and carried with him as they waited outside the hangar for Mickey, who arrived about twenty minutes later.
Back at the safehouse, Lucky told Sam that he had an appointment with the builder and could not leave the house for a while. He asked her if she would take Anastasia shopping with her in New York City.
“I want you to buy some nice clothes, both for you and for Anastasia,” Lucky said. “Spare no expense. Buy what fits, what wears well, and what you like,” he added. “Take a ride to Saks, Bloomie’s, Bendel’s, wherever you like, and pick up a few things – you know, everyday clothes and nicer things for the evening. After you’ve finished shopping, take Anastasia on a tour of the city. I think she might enjoy that. Pick out some interesting places to visit and ask Charlie if he’d like to go with you. He’s never been away from Alice Springs and I think he’d like spending the day touring the city with the two of you.”
Lucky could barely finish his words before the two women were out the door, with Charlie doing his best to keep up, probably trying to take off before Lucky had a change of heart. At least that was how Lucky saw it. Just to be on the safe side, Lucky had Mickey and Casey tag along. The Navigator was equipped with darkly tinted windows and both men, as usual, were armed, carrying the CIA IDs that Lucky had supplied, making their firearms possession legal.
New York City was the most unforgiving city in the world when it came to handguns. Out of approximately eight million people, only six hundred had carry permits when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. That figure dropped to four hundred when Michael Bloomberg became mayor. A mandatory jail sentence awaited those foolish enough to disregard New York City’s gun laws. That was why it was so important to have proper ID when carrying in the city. There was peculiarity about it all. It was very easy to get a carry permit in the rest of New York State, but the city itself was different. Those carrying guns in the city were limited to the police and the criminals. That was it. Not much in between. It was a city of extremes, true to character.
The contractor that Jack Kinsey sent over for Lucky’s new saferoom turned out to be a man by the name of John Sutter. John Sutter was about the same age as Lucky. Lucky gave him a quick tour of the house and described what he wanted to have built. Sutter stopped to take notes and spent an inordinate amount of time checking various wall surfaces. After a complete inspection of the house, Sutter gave Lucky his recommendations. Lucky listened intently and when Sutter finished, Lucky just nodded and smiled, pleased that Jack had sent him the right man for the job. The contractor suggested that the wall on the left side of house be moved six feet into the house, across the length of it. This would provide the extra space needed for the additional room. Since the walls separating the room in the center of the house were not so-called “bearing walls,” they could be removed, thus giving the area a larger appearance and also compensating for the space taken from the interior of the house for the second safe room. It was clever – the use of design versus function was well thought out.
“I like it,” Lucky said. “Sort of like a magician’s home. What you see is not what you get, or at least not what you expect to get,” he said with a laugh.
Sutter asked Lucky which garage in the alley at the rear of the house belonged to him. Lucky pointed it out and Sutter nodded. That would be where he would set up shop. Lucky emphasized that he wanted the work to start as soon as Sutter’s schedule permitted and to end as quickly as possible. The less attention, the better.
Sutter smiled and said, “Jack gave me explicit orders to put my other projects aside for now and concentrate on this one. I’ll be here early tomorrow morning.”
Sutter wasn’t kidding when he said he’d start early, because right at six a.m., he showed up at the back door, materials in tow. He brought in extra workers to help build the room quickly. They worked hours on end, inside the garage, sawing, hammering, and then finally installing. In just shy of ten days, the new saferoom was complete. Its inner walls were lined with titanium. Oak paneling covered the part of the wall facing the room. Inside the paneling was a hidden solenoid device, incorporated into the design. When triggered, it caused a section of the wall to pivot inward, thereby rotating the wall so that it opened to allow entry to the hidden saferoom. On the wall, diagonal from the room, there were two shelves tastefully decorated with bric-a-brac, mostly odds and ends, but with a couple of statues.
The statues were of a man and a woman facing each other, their arms outstretched as though they were about to embrace. Switching the statues’ positions so that the girl was now perched where the man previously stood and the man now assumed the female’s position created a trigger of sorts, setting off an electronic magnetic relay that was incorporated into the bottom of the statues and on the pedestal on which they rested. It was when the female statue made contact with the pedestal and the male statue made contact with the pedestal, at a precise point, that the hidden button was exposed. The button, sequestered in the rear of the bookshelf, now needed to be pushed in order to activate the other electronic frequencies that opened the door leading into the saferoom. Once inside the saferoom, all it took was the simple push of a button on the wall and the door swung shut, steel bolts extended out from both sides of the wall, into a steel receptacle, and the door was secured into the wall so that no one could open it from the outside. There was even a trap door with a stairway to a cellar, completely undetectable from above. What might have seemed like overkill were additional layers of precaution to Lucky. He liked the extra touches that Sutter brought to the project. The builder had apparently discovered a crawl space during his renovation of that part of the house. What began as a crawl space, ended up a cellar. By digging it out deeper and expanding it, and by then pouring additional concrete, Sutter had created an underground secret. He motioned for Lucky to follow him as he lifted up part of the floor and descended below using a narrow spiral staircase.
Sutter smiled and said, “If you like the cellar, wait until you see what else we have.”
“What?” Lucky asked.
Sutter took Lucky to the area of the cellar that faced the backyard and showed him a door built into the side of the cement foundation. He tugged at the door, pulling it toward him and it opened up a folding set of stairs. Sutter went first and told Lucky to follow as they walked up the stairs and landed inside a small tunnel.
“This has been here a long time, Lucky,” he said. When I pulled some old plans, I found it. A lot of the old New York streets have them. So, seeing as how things are so serious with you regarding safety, I thought this might come in handy. You can make a quick getaway from the saferoom, to the cellar, up to the tunnel and here,” he said as he stopped. They had walked about forty feet to an old iron spiral staircase. They stepped onto it and walked upwards until Sutter stopped, pushed upward at square cutout at the ceiling, moved it aside and stepped right off the staircase into Lucky’s garage.