VECTOR IN DC

Few minutes after the phone call from Leo came to an end. Tom sat on the reading desk located at a corner inside the room as he studied the blueprints sent to him, which included every information required for this operation. 

He saw this job as a challenge because there were definitely others who must have attempted to steal from there and were not successful in their agenda. A challenge which would show him where he stood among the top criminal masterminds around. For someone to reach out for a person with his specific set of skills, then that man must have narrowed it down to the need of a mastermind in the operation. 

As he studied the information concerning the job, he discovered frankly that certain things didn’t quite add up and were too obvious. Almost as though leading anyone who studied how to successfully escape that estate with a stolen art, to a particular region which would seem like a blind spot to a normal thief driven by greed.

He took a closer look at the schematics, as he observed the angles at which the cameras were placed and the lay lines of what seemed to be a minefield. 

The art to be stolen is a very important painting which is known only to a selected few and it belonged to a mafia family in Italy, they had kept it in a very secured location where no one has ever entered to steal and lived to tell the tale.

The mansion housing the art is located in a remote location which was in the middle of a private property and was surrounded by armed men who guarded the premises. 

Corners which may serve as blind spots were being watched with surveillance cameras, the  region surrounding the mansion is a minefield which only people who are familiar with the territory can actually avoid the mines and move freely without activating them.

There were watch towers located at both the north and south of the estate respectively. Tom spent an hour studying the job and tried to figure out why no one has ever been successful in stealing any valuables from that estate. He noticed something strange about the schematics of the ground surrounding the mansion's region.

Tom dove deeper into thoughts trying to figure out why that region’s ground is that way in the schematics, like something was built beneath it. At first Tom thought they were mere mines, but yet there are people who walk about the regional premises, ensuring that there are no intruders lurking and yet they don’t get blasted into bits.

The mines only activate when an intruder exits the mansion and goes a certain distance from the mansion with the mentality that they’ve outsmarted the guards and have succeeded in stealing an art that will make them rich.

He looked closer and tried to devise a full proof plane with a success rate of ninety-eight percent, he noticed a route that is just too good to be true and eventually it will be seen as a perfect spot for an escape.

An escape route which isn’t being guarded but is being monitored by CCTV cameras. It was a very tempting route that any logical thief would take because it meets the requirements for a not only perfect, but a neat escape. It looked like a perfect bait which would draw a thief that way, like a moth to a flame. 

He sat back right in front of his study desk with the schematics of the estate on it and thought for a while, analyzing every bit of data and hoping he didn't miss anything they didn’t want people to see.

“FUCK!”

Was the only word Tom said that moment as he came to a realization that solves a crucial question which has been nagging at the back of his mind for a while now.

‘Why do the guards who go to patrol the minefield region leading to the escape route don’t get blown into pieces even as they keep stepping on mines? But an intruder steps on a mine and gets their legs blown off completely within a period of 0.9 seconds after they stepped foot on the minefield and released their body from it.’

“Holy shit!” 

“That’s just fucking diabolical,” Tom says with a tone of excitement as a smirk starts cracking on the side of his cheek. This indicated that  he had figured out what exactly was built into the ground and why it was impossible for people to get out alive.

Tom then looked at the plans from a different perspective, hoping to get a better insight and discovered that the CCTV cameras placed in that region are actually security sensors which allows only registered persons to walk upon the mines without it blowing up.

People whose identities haven't been registered or programmed in the system are blown to bits the moment they step foot on a mine, after being scanned and identified as an intruder by the system. That’s when the mines on the ground explodes and this all happens within a reactionary space gap of 0.9 seconds.

Tom then realizes that he’ll need something like a short range EMP that will produce a shut down pulse which would cause the system to malfunction along with the mines at the cross section between the two parts of the building, creating an entering and exit path that was not on any blueprint. 

The only problem was that the time gap it would take for the system to get back online is extremely thin and he calculated it to be an estimate of 45 seconds to a minute before the backup power for the part of the estate comes back up which will definitely alert the guards, a small window get out of the minefields.

The time period is extremely thin because it’s almost the exact amount of time needed for the guards to arrive at the scene and open fire on the intruders before leaving the minefield through the routes that he believed to be the actual escape from the minefield.

“The entire estate’s only escape plan is a fucking trap within a trap, wrapped and gifted to the intruder as another trap. It actually showed the thieves the escape route and suitable solutions to avoid the traps. Which would lead them to that particular situation but at that moment when they can almost taste the ecstasy known as success, that’s when they fall prey to the actual trap and end up dead even before they realize what had just happened.”

The thieves who succeed in countering the minefields and head for the escape route end up being killed brutally by a swarm of bullets fired by the guards overseeing that region, shooting them down when they are just moments away from escaping.

“Now I’m even more excited for this job, a grand theft auto experience which has never been successfully attempted. The feeling of outsmarting people who thought themselves to be smarter than everyone else should be very exhilarating.” Tom says this out loud as if giving a brief presentation about the progress of this operation to himself, he then complimented this feeling of excitement with a mischievous smile.

Considering how careful the client wanted to tbe with this job,Tom was sure that the men hired to carry it out would be the best of the bests. This was going to be the toughest job he had ever done yet, if he could come up with a perfect plan then the men the client must have hand picked himself would do the finishing. 

It was going to be a job which required stealth mode because any little mistake would alarm the guards and it might compromise the operation. 

…

He sat with his laptop on his study desk as he kept pondering on exit ways and camera rotation angles and time between each switch. It was a very novel experience being able to comprehend things he knew for a fact that he didn’t have any knowledge about. It felt as if the theoretical and mathematical aspects of what he was looking at came surprisingly easy for him, a feat he attributed to heightened intelligence which kept developing on a regular basis. 

“Finally.”

These words echo in the study of Tom’s house, with him having a satisfying look on his face.

He finally covered every inch of the blueprint he was given and even went a step ahead and tried calculating how the guard shifts would affect the speed of movement of any party undergoing the mission. If he was to be honest, he didn’t think he could do half of what he just did if he was in his past, regardless of the fact that he graduated with first class honors. 

With the completion of this crucial step, the remaining pieces will fall into place. ‘According to plan.’

He picks up his phone in an attempt to make a call, the name Leo appeared on his phone screen.

“Time to Tom Cruise this shit.”