2 Moves Ahead

[meditions142]

I had thought this wonderful story was already posted but I cannot locate it. Also, I honestly cannot recall the author so if it is a Board member way can move it accordingly (or remove it if the author doesn't want is posted).

Be patient as the uniform steal doesn't occur until Part II. However, the beginning is a fun set up. Also, the story goes on and I could post if people want it even though there is no more uniform steals.

Two Moves Ahead

Part One

“Your problem,” explained Elena matter-of-factly from behind the sentry, “Is whoever planned out the security for this place didn’t really care about your wellbeing.”

The dark haired sentry tilted her head, listening with interest, although she was unable to comment through the wad of cloth that had been packed deep into her mouth and tightly secured with black tape. She had been sat in that dark, warm, slightly stuffy room ever since she awoke bound to a large and very comfortable office chair.

Elena pushed the chair up to the desk, switched on a nearby lamp and unfolded a map of the camp in front of her. The girl peered at it, her soft brown eyes widening in recognition as she saw that all the routes, all the times for watch changes were there, even some notes on the particular sentries themselves, each one given a codename as a reference.

“As you can see,” Elena explained, taking a seat next to the sentry and leaning over the map, “It was quite easy, with just a few days observation, to work out who was going to be where and at what time.” The agent picked up a ballpoint pen from the table to use as a pointer. The sentry was surprised by how soft and delicate her hands seemed, the slender fingers with their long and perfectly manicured nails gleaming red in the light looked as though they’d never done a hard day of work, let alone training, in her life. Had those been the same hands that had rendered her unconscious so easily? So easily that she had not even been aware of how it happened?

Elena pointed to one of the corners of the map where a sentry patrol route started.

“Here you see,” she explained softly, like a schoolteacher explaining a student’s mistakes, “You had a girl we nicknamed Red for obvious reasons.” The sentry knew, looking at the map, who she meant. A tall, lithe girl with bright dyed red hair, being new to the team she couldn’t remember her name, but she had respected her. She looked capable and she carried herself with confidence that made those around her feel at ease.

“Red,” continued Elena, “Red was easy. You know why Red was easy?”

The sentry shook her head.

“Because Red was confident,” Elena smiled, “You know who makes the best sentries?”

The sentry shook her head again.

“Cowards,” Elena tapped the spot on the map where Red had been, “Your friend Red she thought when she heard a noise that whatever it was, whoever it was, she could handle it. She couldn’t. And what is worse is because she was clearly well liked and considered responsible, when she fell out of sync with the rest of the patrols, nobody thought anything was wrong. People thought, hey, she’s late, no biggie, whatever it is she can handle it.”

“A coward, when they hear a noise in the dark, they call for help. Your heroic types, they don’t,” Elena smiled laconically, “And if they don’t call for help they’re practically begging somebody to just sneak up and put them to sleep.” There was something about the way Elena emphasised the word sleep that struck the sentry as a little curious, but then it had been a long and very curious night for her, so she thought nothing of it.

“With Red I just walked up behind her on the corner here,” said Elena pointing on the map, “Where you’ve got an unforgivable blind spot on the perimeter I should add, and grabbed her. Gave her a nice little squeeze, just like I did for you, but you might not remember. She struggled a lot but I don’t think she ever tried to scream for help, just tried to fight it, and so it didn’t take long. Lot of pressure on her neck took the fight out of her then I could finish her off easily.”

The sentry looked worriedly at Elena, who smiled back at her, “Don’t worry, she’s not dead. You know those little sterile cotton surgical masks? I popped one of them on her with just a little touch of chloroform, and that was that. She’s fine now.”

The sentry breathed a sigh of relief, deciding that she would take Elena’s word for it. After all it wasn’t like she was in a position to do anything about it. She looked the agent up and down in the half light. Elena was a fairly harmless looking young woman, wavy dark hair, pale blue eyes, average height and a curvy rather than lean build, not the sort of woman the sentry would have seen as a threat. She filled out her tight black leather outfit very nicely, but didn’t look especially menacing. The sentry figured in a fair fight she’d have given her a run for her money.

The sentry looked back to the map as Elena indicated the route of a second sentry, the agent pretending not to notice that the sentry had just given her a good looking over.

“You see here,” Elena traced the route with the tip of the pen, “Here is the route your friend we named Dallas took. The blonde one, very perky, looked like a cheerleader?”

The sentry pondered this and nodded, it was not actually such an uncommon description in her line of work. Athletic bottle blondes were almost literally a dime a dozen for the recruiters. The sentry had nicknamed that particular girl The Ass, for two reasons, both relating to how pleased she was to see her walk out of a room.

“Her route was really bad, lots of shadows, places to hide near the route,” Elena scowled, “I think whoever assigned her to that route must have known it was a bad one, maybe she didn’t like her. Anyway I was able to get right up on top of her, no trouble at all. Then as she went by I just hit her, right here,” Elena lightly touched the side of the sentry’s neck, “With the edge of my hand, and she was out. Not for long obviously, had to give her some chloroform to keep her down, but it’s a lot easier to put somebody to sleep with that stuff when they are who is already halfway there I can tell you.” Again that emphasis on the word sleep, the sentry wondered if it was Elena’s favourite word, she certainly seemed to enjoy inflicting it on people.

The tip of the pen moved again, scraping softly across the surface of the paper, following the route to the guard hut near the gate.

“You had two in there,” Elena checked the list on the top of the map, “We called them Dee and Dum. Now they should have been a real problem, I mean sat there, right on top of a lovely big alarm button. They hit that it’s game over right?”

The sentry nodded thoughtfully.

“Wrong,” said Elena, “And this is what I mean about whoever planned your defences not particularly caring about how well they work. There’s a wire goes from that alarm button to the alarm system located deeper inside it,” she traced the exact route of the wire with a pen, all the way back to the barracks, the sentry was once again impressed, she should not have been able to know that much. “One snip and it’s out of action. Now the problem for our friends in that guard hut is that they think that alarm will save them, so they go for that first, they go for that before they just up and shout for help.”

“The dark haired one, Dee, she was near enough to the door that when I went in there I could hit her first, and I did, kicked her right in the stomach. But Dum, she goes for the alarm. That doesn’t work, and that in itself surprises her, derails her train of thought. Before she can think it through, well, I’m done with Dee and it’s her turn. I knocked her out clean, shot to the neck. Hurt her a lot more than it hurt me.”

The sentry looked at the soft hands in front of her, doubting they could deliver such a blow.

“Dee was trying to get up, so I put my foot on her throat, a little weight going down on the right part was all that it took, just using the toe, not the heel. I think she was so tired anyway that she almost wanted to go to sleep, such a long night.”

“Once they were knocked out, I gave them a couple of drops each of sedative, just to keep them out. Has to be taken orally, and it can be difficult to persuade a person to drink it in a fight.”

The pen trailed through the gate and up to the main barracks building. Elena tapped the tip of the pen against this building, looking at her captive with a glint in her eye.

“You’re wondering what happened to all your friends asleep in there aren’t you?”

The sentry nodded, trying to make out the notes on the map pertaining to the barracks.

“Well they aren’t dead, but they won’t be awake for a few hours yet,” Elena said proudly, “You see here and here,” she tapped the map, “You’ve got the unguarded air conditioner vents for that building. That’s unguarded access to whole building and everybody in it. It would almost be a crime not to pump the place full of something. In this case we had whipped up a neat little cocktail, a little benzodiazepine mixed with some fentanyl and a few other bits and pieces. There’s nobody in that building will be moving about under their own power for quite a while.”

“And here,” continued Elena triumphantly, “Is where you came in. Do you remember?”

The sentry shook her head no; she really couldn’t recall anything after starting her patrol.

“You had another one of those rambling, obscured routes that your boss seemed to think are a good idea, and which really leave you all just waiting to be picked off. You could have tripped over me given how close you got to wear I was hidden.”

Elena reached over the sentry and touched a point on the nape of her neck that throbbed dully from a small, new bruise there, “I hit you there when you went past,” Elena’s cool fingers were soothing through the tape, tracing around the edge of the bruise very gently, “Then I put you into a sleeper hold, gave you a good squeeze, and that was that. You didn’t make a peep, which was very considerate of you. You just relaxed and went to sleep. I don’t think you really even struggled, you were so tired. You must have been on duty for ages. I barely needed to chloroform you at all, but I did anyway. You looked like you could use the sleep.”

“Once you were down,” continued Elena, her hand continuing to soothingly stroke the back of the sentry’s neck as she returned to the map, “It was just a case of getting to your boss. Now she had only one guard, we called her Angel, because she seemed to be your boss’s guardian angel, always nearby, always on duty outside her room, rarely left her side.”

The sentry knew who Elena was referring to very well; the meek looking brunette was indeed the bodyguard to the boss, and also her secretary and occasional concubine. Though she looked meek the sentry had always found her to be irritable and highly strung, maybe even paranoid. Not particularly bad traits for a bodyguard, though somewhat inconsistent with her demeanour.

“Problem for us with Angel of course was that she was too close to the target,” Elena said thoughtfully, “I mean she was right there on top of her. One peep out of her and the boss could have got wise to the attack and made things difficult. Not saved herself, not with everybody in the barracks sleeping like babies, but definitely complicated matters.”

Elena sighed, still absently stroking the nape of the sentry’s neck as if she was a pet of some kind, “But this closeness, this was Angel’s problem too. You see, she was so eager to protect her boss, so diligent in her duties, that she was very, very tired. She’d been running on only a few hours of sleep a night since we’d been scouting the place. Her secret to running round the clock in this way, like good sentries everywhere, was coffee.”

“So when it came to her turn, all I had to do was reach in through the window and put a few drops of sedative in her cup, give her a couple of minutes, and there she was. She’d felt tired after the first sip and so she then guzzled the rest as fast as she could to keep herself awake. She just made it worse. Just a couple of minutes and she was fast asleep.”

The tip of the pen circled the boss’s room on the map. Elena watched the sentry follow it with her eyes, her eyelids heavy now. She could see she had her.

“Fast asleep,” repeated Elena her voice softer, “Not a care in the world.” She smiled as the sentry’s eyes gradually closed completely.

Elena swivelled the sentry around in the chair so that she was facing her, then she gently lifted one of her eyelids to check that the girl was hypnotised and not faking; sure enough she was under. Elena silently began removing the tape from the girl’s head and mouth, being very gentle so as not to wake her. Finally she was able to gently tug the handkerchief from her mouth. She reached over and gently began to rub the sentry’s temples with her fingertips, feeling the girl’s body almost melt as she did so. Her body and mind succumbing completely, all her mental resistance gone almost before the hapless henchwoman had known that she had needed to resist at all.

Elena watched the sentry with a small satisfied smile. It had been easy enough to infiltrate this base, and she had done it almost exactly as she had described it to the sentry. Even securing the commander had been easy. But Elena had her eyes on a harder target, one that wouldn’t allow her to stroll in as easily as she had here. To crack that target she was going to need somebody on the inside, somebody who would open the door for her, an infiltrator with a cover so perfect that even she didn’t know that she was an infiltrator. Elena patted the sentry lightly on the cheek and stood up; it was time to begin the programming.

[meditions142]

Part Two

At precisely midnight Elena strolled towards the security gate, the high heels of her boots clicking loudly on the moonlit road. The bank of intimidating lights above the gates shone towards her, causing the red latex cocktail dress she wore to gleam like a polished ruby. Her approach could not have been less subtle had she been a parade float.

Beside the gate stood the reinforced security booth; a squat box of bombproof concrete and glass from which the guard on the night shift could observe anybody trying to get onto the grounds. This small building was a fortress in its own right, no way to get in from outside the fence. No way over the fence unless you wanted to deal with alarms, razor wire and one hell of a climb. Without gaining access to the booth the gate could not be opened.

The sentry on duty in the booth watched Elena approach, wondering just who exactly this random blonde with the spectacular figure was to just be walking up on the labs this late at night, and more importantly what would be the best way to get her out of that dress. As the sentry watched, at precisely three minutes past midnight, the girl in red stopped, in the full glare of the lights, turning slightly to adjust the top of one of her stockings. The sentry watched, leaning forward in her chair, watching the girl’s gleaming red nails as they adjusted the silk, unable to tell what was wrong with the stocking but entirely fascinated by what she was seeing. She wondered if the show was being recorded on the security cameras.

It was not.

The sentry was still watching Elena when she felt a cold, damp wad of gauze pressed over her mouth and a strange chemical smell invade her nostrils. It took her a second to even react, she tried to turn, tried to pry the hand away from her face, tried to get out of her chair and reach for the alarm on the wall, but to no avail. A hand reached past her and pressed the gate control button. She was still held fast in the grip of her invisible assailant, she couldn’t turn away she watched as the blonde bombshell walk past, the gate already opening. She saw the girl smile broadly and blow her a smouldering kiss, and then she knew no more.

Elena walked around to the door to the security booth and went inside. She saw the two sentries inside, one asleep in the chair at the desk, the other asleep on her feet holding the chloroform pad. The standing girl turned slowly to look at Elena as she walked in, her pretty face almost devoid of expression.

“Hello again,” said Elena to the standing sentry, smiling at the complete lack of recognition in the girl’s glassy eyes, “Did you do everything else that we discussed?”

“Yes,” said the sentry blankly.

“Very good girl, but you still have tasks,” Elena said, unzipping the eye-catching red dress, its purpose now served, as she spoke, “I need you to gag and cuff our friend here. Do that now.”

The sentry nodded and pulled the cuffs from her belt, cuffing the other guard to the chair and pressing a big piece of tape over her mouth.

“Now strip down to your underwear,” continued Elena, slithering out of the latex dress and moving past the sleepwalking sentry to her recumbent associate. The sentry nodded and began to remove her uniform, the short black skirt and matching blouse were almost the perfect fit for Elena, indeed the similarity in stature had been one of the reasons that this sentry had originally been selected as the plant.

While the sentry stripped Elena seated herself on the lap of the other sentry, straddling her in her silk underwear and stockings as casually as if the sleeping girl were no more than a curiously shaped seat cushion. From this position she took a small vial from the top of her boot and pulled out the tiny stopper with her teeth, spitting it away. Carefully Elena thumbed back the sentry’s left eyelid and then poured a couple of drops from the vial onto the surface of her eyeball. The guard blinked irritably and let out a muffled groan, Elena shushed her then repeated the process on the other eye, watching the girl blink rapidly again but this time she didn’t groan, she settled back deeper into the chair, going deeper and deeper into sleep with every passing second.

With the gate sentry out of action Elena quickly dressed in the uniform of her unwitting accomplice, finally slipping off the blonde wig and letting her own hair free.

“There,” she said, “Ready to go. Just need to sort you out, don’t I dear?”

The hypnotised sentry didn’t respond as Elena guided her into the second chair in the booth, seating her comfortably before clasping her face gently in her hands and firmly pressing her eyes shut with her thumbs, holding them closed.

“You have had a very tiring night,” said Elena, more as a command than an observation, “So tiring that you cannot open your eyes. Such a busy girl, all you can do now is sleep.”

Elena felt the sentry try to open her eyes, a little resistance left in her even at this late stage, but she kept holding them shut as she continued, “You are going to go to sleep here until dawn, and only when you feel the sunlight from the window will you awake and be able to open your eyes, do you understand?”

The sentry nodded as best she could and Elena laid her head back against the chair before giving her a kiss goodnight on the cheek.

“You ought to get a medal, honey,” Elena said softly as she headed out of the bunker, and she meant it. The list of accidents, omissions, betrayals and acts of sabotage that her unwitting partner had committed over the last few weeks was more than she could have ever hoped to do alone. It was thanks to her that Elena was going to gain access to the underground lab and thanks to her that nobody was going to be able to stop her from clearing out the database.

The door hissed open for Elena as she approached, her ID badge welcomed by the security system. This was hardly a surprise as she had enjoyed full access to this security system for the last month thanks to a backdoor program put into the system by her insider. Using the backdoor software Elena had been able to create a fake identity outside of the system with all the access privileges to all the systems at every level. As far as the system was concerned she was some new, secret, god. For all this access though she had not to get into the main database, which would still have to be done by plugging in a drive, the old fashioned way.

Her changes had not gone unnoticed within the laboratory’s personnel department, however the high level of security and bureaucracy at the facility actually worked in her favour. With so many of the key staff living and working at the facility she had been able to rapidly identify those individuals who might be able to detect her operations and take appropriate measures. A hotshot network security consultant found herself reassigned on her first day and the supervisor who maintained the personnel filing system was granted two weeks leave. One particularly suspicious member of the network maintenance crew had posed a problem at first, but she lost her appetite for investigating the mysterious network activity after an apparent clerical error at the medical centre saw her vitamin supplements swapped for mood elevators.

She crossed the lobby, walking past the reception desk towards the stairwell tucked away behind the main elevators. The large, imposing desk was unoccupied, the post normally manned by her infiltrator. She could see that the monitor on the desk still displaying the popup message which had activated the girl’s programming that night, a picture of a cartoon cat waving a wrench.

[esercito sconfitto]

this is a real gem from an ancient coffer

of course I have read the tale, many years ago ; unfortunately my folders are chaotic

meditions please post as many stories from the expired Yahoo groups as you want


PS wasn't sleepieabbie the author?

[meditions142]

PS wasn't sleepieabbie the author?

I don't think it was sleepieabbie. However, I really do miss her stories.