Before the Dawn by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online

she prepared for the final assault on her prize. She popped a huge wad of gum into her mouth and started chewing slowly, methodically. Withdrawing from fatigue pouches two good-sized suction cups with pressure-release handles, Max attached one to each hand with inch-wide nylon straps and looked up at the ceiling. She had less than two feet of open air between it and the topmost infrared beam.
    The young woman leapt straight up, arms outstretched, suction cups sticking to the ceiling with a sucking kiss. Taking in a deep breath, then letting it out, Max pulled herself up until her neck was bent to one side and she held herself up with her arms akimbo.
    Even for a soldier with her unique talents, the strain was severe.
    Next she slowly pulled up her legs and stretched them out in front of her, as if in a ballet exercise. She now sat, head cocked to one side, hanging from the ceiling above the beams by no more than six or maybe seven inches. Moving across the room folded up like this would be no small feat.
    Glancing down at the necklace, she formed half a smile.
No guts, no glory,
she thought, and that blue rock was serious, serious glory not only for her, but for her whole clan.
    Releasing one suction cup, she held herself up, eased it forward as far as she dared, and attached it again with its tiny puff of a kiss. She repeated the action with the second cup and found herself a foot nearer the prize. The muscles of her shoulders bunched and burned, but with her breathing, she compartmentalized the pain, putting it out of her mind.
    Few on earth could have done this. Max had had this ability since childhood.
    Sweat trickled down her face, dripping onto her shirt front as she single-mindedly made her way across the room, still casually chewing the gum as she went. She had completed her action with the cups nine times now and not only did her shoulders burn, but her biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings, and glutes were each in the middle of a three-alarm blaze of their own.
    A voice in her head that sounded uncomfortably like Colonel Lydecker's reminded her that pain was the price of achievement.
    Shut up,
she mentally replied, and kept moving the cups forward.
    Finally, after what seemed like forever but had only been six minutes, she found herself directly above—if barely able to cock her head enough to see—the Heart of the Ocean.
    She had maybe a foot and a half of clearance on each side of the Plexiglas box. As if the trip over here hadn't been enough, now the job would get
really
tricky. In that tight space, she would have to remove the cubic foot of plastic, snatch the necklace without setting off the alarm, then suction-cup her way back to the door.
    No problem.
    Taking one hand out of a suction cup, Max snugged her knees up, then slowly rolled backward, letting her feet come up toward the ceiling as her head lowered toward the box. About halfway home, her body tucked into a sphere only slightly larger than a beach ball, she slipped her shoe into the empty strap of one of the suction cups.
    Satisfied the strap had her securely, she let go with her other hand and swung her other leg up and into that strap. She now hung upside down, her head barely a foot above the necklace with its glimmering stone.
    Working quickly, Max picked the locks on each side of the case, lifted the Plexi box straight up, withdrew the gum from her mouth and affixed it to the top of the lid. Then she rotated the thing so its top was down . . . and eased it toward the floor.
    This was the part that worried her most.
    Her arms were not long enough to reach the floor. She would have to drop the box the last couple of feet or so, and hope to hell the wad of gum held it in place and kept it from bouncing into one of the infrared beams.
    Letting out her breath, Max released the box with as light a touch as possible. It dropped to the carpeting with a dull, barely audible
thud,
then rocked toward the beam . . .
    . . . but righted itself, and stopped.
    Step