Grind That Axe

I looked around the room.  Carla and Sasha had been steadily losing at poker.  We’d been pacing ourselves and were less drunk than Mr. Rojas or the Lumberjack.  I sent the final go signal.  

On the third floor, Barbie walked down the hall and spoke to Luis.  “I’m heading back to the party.  Jozefien is going to rest a little more.”

The guard pushed the elevator button.  Just as the door opened, Jozefien walked down the hall.  “I changed my mind.  I think I will try to eat something.”

Luis looked toward Jozefien when she spoke.  He did not see the taser Barbie pulled out of her purse.

The women dragged the incapacitated man down the hall into the bedroom.  The Taser’s darts remained embedded in Luis’s skin and they gave him additional shocks when he started moving around.  

They cut lengths of rope and bound his arms and legs.  Then placed a noose around his neck, and attached it to a bedpost.  He wouldn’t be going anywhere.  Jozefien stuffed a washcloth in his mouth, then wrapped another length of rope around his head.  A tight knot secured the gag in place.  

Five pulses on the phone.  Things were about to get real.  The elevator opened and Barbie and Jozefien walked into the office.  The poker game paused while the participants inquired about my wife’s condition.  I took advantage of the distraction.

I stood, unplugged the guitar from the amp, and walked toward the kitchen area, behind the poker game.  Between the alcohol that had been consumed, and the conversation with Barbie and Jozefien, nobody noticed I was carrying the Stratocaster.  When I reached the edge of the table, I grabbed the neck of the guitar with both hands, like it was a baseball bat.  I lunged at the Lumberjack.

He had time to stand and raise his arm.  I swung as hard as I could.  A man’s forearm is no match for the momentum of a fast moving eight-pound guitar.  I heard a crunching sound when the instrument struck his face.  

He wouldn’t feel the shattered cheekbone any time soon.  His head took three hits.  One from the guitar, another when he bounced off the table, the last when he hit the floor.

Blood was flowing out of his ear.  Dead or not, he was down for the count.  With one blow from my axe, I had taken down the Lumberjack.

While this was happening, the girls were ganging up on Mr. Rojas.  Carla and Sasha had been sitting on either side of him.  Carla stood up and stepped back as I approached.  While I bashed in the Lumberjack’s skull, she wrapped her arm around Mr. Rojas’s neck in a chokehold.  Sasha went low and had her arms around his legs.  Jozefien had Luis’s gun.  She shoved the barrel into Mr. Rojas’s nose and got in his face.  

“It wouldn’t bother me at all to splatter your brains all over the floor.  If continuing to live is important, you’ll follow all of my instructions.  Starting with opening the safe.”

He made the mistake of saying “F**k you, b***h.”  Wrong answer.  Jozefien handed me the gun and punched him, hard, three times in the stomach.  Carla let him go when he retched.  He fell to the floor and vomited.   

Jozefien grabbed his hair and pulled his head back.  She began slapping him across the face.  Blood streamed out of his nose.  He raised a hand in surrender.  “Okay, I’ll do what you want, just don’t hit me any more.”

There were a few loose ends to wrap up before we led Mr. Rojas to the loot.  Unlike his office, the vault and the hallway leading to it had security cameras.

Candy had been spending her time learning about security systems.  She had a degree in information technology and this sort of thing came easy to her.  She sat at the desk and maximized the security system window on the computer.  Mr. Rojas made it easy for us.  He had left the application running and didn’t even have a screensaver password.  

She connected a cable from her phone to a USB port, downloaded an upgrade package, and ran it.  It contained code that would add an extra function to the security system.  After Candy clicked install, the monitors no longer displayed live images from the cameras she had specified.  If Luis or Esteban looked at the feed from the vault or the parking lot, they would see a loop of images from the previous 30 minutes.  

Next on the agenda was securing the front door.  Barbie and Sasha carried a plate of food with them.  They were giggling and acting drunk when they approached Esteban.  “We felt sorry for you all alone down here and Mr. Rojas said it would be okay to bring you some goodies.”

He had no idea that neither were drunk, or that Barbie had a taser.  And Sasha had the Lumberjack’s Walther, in case it was needed.  It wasn’t.  They hogtied Esteban.