Chapter 2

            Three weeks after the wedding . . .

            Margo and Bobbi walked up the plank to the forty-foot yacht docked at the Tampa Bay Marina. A meeting with all four partners had been called by Aaron, their scout and master planner.

            The sun was shining, and it was about ninety degrees. The scent of the ocean filled the air. They walked to the patio area on the back deck. Anthony was already there.

            “Hey, girls,” Aaron greeted. At thirty-six years of age, he had dark blond, slightly curly hair that was a little long in the back like a beach bum. He lived and operated from the yacht, Christina. “I got mimosas already poured. I figured we could have a light brunch. The casserole will be ready in twenty minutes, and we’re having croissants too.”

            “Marvelous,” Bobbi said as she sat down next to Anthony on the green upholstered, cushioned booth. “I haven’t eaten all day.” She picked up a mimosa-filled champagne glass off the table.

            Margo took a glass off the tray, too, and sat down counter cornerwise from Anthony and Bobbi.

            Anthony was sipping his drink of choice, vodka on the rocks. “All right, my man, why did you call us here?” He was a tall, skinny, dark-skinned black man with a box-cut afro, and he was the fake ID and gun expert of their little crew. Anthony was also the youngest at twenty-seven years old. Aaron had scouted him out five years ago.

            Aaron sat down next to Margo and put his arm behind her, resting it on the back of the booth. “I called a meeting because I got another score.”

            “Aaron, we’ve hit our two-job quota for the year. Remember, we said we weren’t going to get greedy? It’s an ideology that has worked for us for five years,” Margo said.

            “Unless this job will take over seven months to set up, there’s no reason to risk it,” Bobbi stated.

            “What if I told you that this score will make us almost twenty-five million dollars apiece?” Aaron said with a small smirk.

            Everyone’s eyes bulged at the figure.

            “How?” Anthony asked with intense interest.

            “We hit the Federal Reserve Bank,” Aaron answered.

            Has he lost his mind?

            “Bullshit,” Anthony scoffed.

            “That’s way too risky. You’re talking about robbing the actual monetary system that backs up this country’s financial institutions and government,” Bobbi stated.

            “Risky my ass. It’s impossible,” Margo said.

            “Difficult? Yes. Impossible? Not necessarily. Not if we hit their mainframe at the right time.”

            “Hell, we’re thieves, not espionage mothafuckas,” Anthony stated.

            “All four of us have the intelligence and the skill to pull this off,” Aaron began. “Just hear me out. All twelve Federal Reserve locations in this country are vulnerable to cyberattack on New Year’s Eve, one minute before midnight. Of course there is still a firewall, but it isn’t as heavy when their computer systems start switching over to the new year. There is a sixty-second window. If we can hack it fast and discretely enough, we can siphon a big chuck of change out, and they won’t realize it until a few hours after it happens.”

            Margo was the main hacking expert. “Aaron, what you are talking about . . . I don’t think I can hack a system that fast by myself.”

            “Well, you’re not the only one who can build backdoors into a computer system,” he stated. He had hacking capabilities to sneak around any system on the planet. That’s how he scouted out banks and other financially beneficial institutions that were vulnerable to being robbed. “I’ll be helping.”

            Margo shook her head. “It will still be tight, and you’re not a seasoned programmer. Something like this will need someone who is up-to-date on all the coding languages. I’m the only one here who is. And you’re more adept at hardware, anyway.”

            “I’m not saying I’m interested — yet — but lay out exactly how this will go down with the four of us,” Bobbi requested.

            “Anthony will create fake credentials and IDs for you to get a job at the Federal Reserve. Preferably the Atlanta location. That’s the closest location to Florida. If not, we need to get you in one of the others. You work there for a few months, earning the trust of your coworkers and bosses, seeing how the place is laid out . . . camera locations, etc. We’ll need you to insert a flash drive into the system of a virus that will lay dormant until New Year’s Eve – which Margo will have to create.”

            “See . . . espionage,” Anthony commented and sipped his vodka.

            “Are you nuts?” Bobbi asked. “It’s one thing to get a job at a bank to scope it out; it’s another to insert a virus into the system. They’ll know it was me in a heartbeat. I won’t even get a chance to run out of there.”

            “You will if you use the flash drive I created that doesn’t register when it’s put into a computer or mainframe. I’ve been working on it for two years now. I finally got it right,” Aaron revealed.

            “If it doesn’t register when it’s inserted, then how will she be able to upload this silent but deadly virus that you will have me create?” Margo asked.

“You need to program the virus to d******d automatically as soon as the flash drive is inserted. And you need to program it to d******d as quickly as possible,” Aaron answered.

            “Of course,” Margo stated with half sarcasm.

            “Where do I fit into this?” Anthony asked. “I mean, it’s obvious I’m going to have to create a phony persona for Bobbi to get a job at the Federal Reserve, but surely that ain’t all.”

            “Actually, you’ll be creating several identities for this job­ — and identities for after the job. We need somewhere to send the money after we funnel it out of the reserve. It’s best to split it up into two different accounts with two different names for each of us overseas,” Aaron explained.

            Anthony shook his head. “That’s a lot of work, man. It will take at least two months for me to create all that false history and documentation. Maybe three.”

            “Well, I’ll be helping, of course. Once we establish the identities for the heist, I’ll open the accounts overseas for the money to go,” Aaron said.

            “This sounds like it will take a lot of start-up money,” Margo said. “How much are we talking about here?”

            Aaron shifted in his seat a little. Then he mumbled something inaudible.

            “What?” Bobbi asked.

            “About a million dollars, so we’ll have to contribute two hundred and fifty thousand apiece,” Aaron confirmed.

            “Oh hell no!” Anthony yelled.

            “Hell, that’s almost how much my condo is worth!” Bobbi exclaimed.

            “Why so much?” Margo asked with a frown. “We’ve never had to put any more than thirty grand into a job, and that’s collectively.”

            “Guys, this will be the biggest heist we have ever pulled. It takes money to make money, and a hundred million dollars doesn’t come cheap. First, we need to establish a history of big money transactions into the overseas accounts that me and Anthony will be setting up. Second, Bobbi will need money to go and stay in Atlanta to work at the reserve. Third, we need to get a secure location that we can work from. This isn’t the type of job that we should do from our home bases. And fourth–”

            “We got the idea, I think,” Anthony interrupted. “I got the cash, but damn.”

            “I’m going to have to liquidate a few stocks,” Bobbi stated.

            “I can cover it . . . if we decide to do it,” Margo added.

            “There’s one more thing you guys should know before making a decision,” Aaron began. “After we get the money, we can’t buy anything big for at least a year . . . maybe two. And . . . we’ll have to dissolve BAAM.” BAAM was the name of their group that Bobbi came up with five years ago. She had insisted that they have a name. The letters stood for the first initials of their names.

            “For real?” Anthony commented.

            “And for the best of all involved, we’ll have to leave Florida. All of us. As a precaution, we have to split up. Never talk to each other again. Keep in mind, I am talking about twenty-five mill each. That’s permanent retirement money.”

            “If we can get away clean the way you think we can, then why do we have to stop contact with each other?” Bobbi asked.

            “I get that we won’t need to do anymore scores, but to separate permanently?” Margo inquired.

            “I believe we can get away with it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have presented the job to you. However, we are talking about robbing the Federal Reserve Bank. That’s something the government isn’t going to let go of in our lifetime. They will constantly be on the lookout for a feather of a clue as to who was responsible,” Aaron said.

            “I hear what you’re saying, but most of my family is in Florida,” Anthony said. “And my homies. I’ll have to go out alone with no backup. No one who will have my back.”

            Margo and Bobbi looked at each other. They had become best friends during the last couple of years. If they did this, they could never hang out again.

            “I’m not expecting a decision now, but we need to decide soon. We got six months before New Year’s Eve. We need every bit of that time,” Aaron explained.