The guard stood away from the truck and waved. The traffic bar pivoted upward.

“Okay, desgraciados,” our driver said, “make sure eagle-eyes can read your badges.”

Everybody in the van opened their nylon jackets and flipped out the badges clipped to our neck lanyards.

The van pulled up to the guard and scrolled down the window.

“Good morning, sir,” the driver said.

The guard shined a flashlight into the driver’s face. He turned the interior lights on. The guard read from the paper the panel truck driver had given him, and counted faces.

I followed everyone’s example and avoided eye contact.

The guard pointed the flashlight at me. “You. Are you new?”

I glanced at him, then at the driver. I raised my eyebrows and feigned ignorance. “¿Que?” What?

The driver turned in his seat. Damn, what if he had tried looking for me in the mirror?

“The guard wants to know if you’re new,” the driver said.

“It’s my first time here, so of course I’m new,” I replied in Spanish. I looked at the guard, nodded, and gave him my most simple-minded grin.

The guard stepped back and waved us through.

We turned left where the road forked, and passed the front of the hotel. I saw guards paired up and on patrol. On the roof of the hotel two more guards watched us drive by.

The van continued to the service area and parked. The panel truck backed up to an open bay.

The driver got out. “Everybody inside. The dollar is calling.”

Step one. Check.

Step two. Check.

Now for step three.

My crew and I pushed laundry carts filled with fresh linen and towels out of the panel truck. We arranged the carts on the right side of the service bay. The left side of the bay had rows of carts piled with soiled laundry. We hustled those carts into the truck. I had the privilege of pushing a cart heaped with damp towels that reeked of stale perfume and the nastiest body odor I had ever imagined possible from a living human. If rich people thought their money made them smell better than the rest of us, then they ought to get a whiff of this.

Pablo joined two other workers pushing a train of carts with clean laundry out of the bay through the swinging doors into the hotel. I ran up to him and helped shove the last of the carts. We guided the carts down the hall to a storage room and sorted the towels and bed linen onto shelves.

Angelo came by and put me to work running a vacuum cleaner in one of the conference rooms.

I kept reading my watch. Finally it said two A.M. Time to move.

I pushed the vacuum cleaner down the hall close to the side exit where I would meet Jolie. I hid the vacuum in a closet and went out the door.

At this time of the morning, anyone moving on the grounds would look suspicious. The guards watching the monitors would be bored and certainly notice me. But in this uniform, I was just another of the workers tending the property.

Outside, I stopped in the blind spot between the video camera and the corner. Where was Jolie?

A Gator drove up the road toward the guardhouse. I took out my contacts and scanned for auras. Other than the two guards in the Gator, nothing.

I stripped out of my uniform and disguise. Underneath I wore black sweats. I rolled the uniform and wig into a ball and stashed it behind a hedge.

Two fifteen. Antoine should be on the way. What about Jolie? She was supposed to be here. Knowing her, I should expect an entrance. Like a meteor crashing. I told her this operation had to be stealthy. We’d get plenty of fireworks before the night was done.

I couldn’t waste more time. I had to get on the roof and scope the grounds. Two guards waited up there. I wouldn’t have a problem dealing with them.

I set my fingers and the toes of my shoes against the wall. I looked up and around again. A light illuminated the side door and another the front corner of the building. The path on the wall above me was in shadow.

I climbed up, as sure-footed as a spider. I stopped short of the roof and listened.

I expected to hear footsteps or conversation. Where were the guards? Why were they so quiet?

I couldn’t be too careful. What if the instant I poked my head over the wall, a searchlight nailed me and volleys of machine gun bullets clawed my body to pieces?

I raised my head and looked.

Jolie sat on the prone bodies of the guards piled on top of each other. “Hey there. In another minute I was about to do my nails.” Her aura glowed with triumph. “It’s showtime.” She stood, her lean body clothed in a trim black jogging outfit. She showed me her cell phone and tucked it back into a pocket. “Antoine’s on the way. We got a half hour.”

We surveyed the grounds. Sprinklers on the fairway to the right whooshed. Something heavy splashed in one of the ponds, probably an alligator lunging for its prey. A minute later, the sprinklers to the right fell quiet and the sprinklers on the left whooshed on. The red auras of tiny, nervous animals flitted underneath the brush.

Jolie and I walked across the roof toward the corner overlooking the annex. We levitated so that our feet barely scraped across the surface.

A video camera was fixed to the corner and swiveled to pan the annex and surrounding area.

“This has to go.” Jolie knelt behind the camera. She grasped the cable and yanked it from the camera housing.

We waited for a moment, to see what happened. The gate to the annex enclosure opened. A golf cart with two guards rolled through.

“That’s your cue,” I whispered. “They will be going through the basement entrance.”

Jolie stepped to the edge of the wall. She dropped and glided down, silent as an owl.

She landed on the grass between the hotel and the annex, where the guards couldn’t see her.

The cart rumbled toward the access ramp. As they turned to drive down the ramp, Jolie bolted around the corner and jumped into the cart behind the guards.

The cart disappeared from view. The door rattled open, then rattled again to close. Jolie was inside. My turn.

The annex roof had two lattice microwave antennas, five dishes pointed upward, and half a dozen whips arranged around a circular dish mounted flush with the roof. This dish sat right over the pedestal in the floor below. What was the purpose of this dish? It didn’t look like a hatch. Was it an antenna? Did it have something to do with the cylinders inside?

I spotted a large square hatch. From its position along the center of the northern wall I knew it lay over the freight elevator that connected the lab to the lower floors. This was my way inside.

I flexed my legs and leaped for the annex. I spun my arms to keep the momentum. As I approached the roof, I summoned my powers of levitation so that I landed on the roof as softly as a pair of women’s silk panties falling against a carpet.

I continued to levitate, and my feet barely touched the roof as I walked to the hatch.

It was made of steel, with two big hinges and a simple handle. No lock was visible. The hatch must be secured from the inside and rigged to the alarm. I knew the moment I pried the hatch open the circus would start.

Voices carried across the hotel roof. A guard called out: “Tom? Jerry? Why aren’t you guys answering the radio?”

Tom and Jerry? Who else was up there? Woody Woodpecker?

From this angle I couldn’t see the guard, but I could hear his boots creep across the roof.

I grasped the handle of the hatch.

He whispered, “Uh-oh.” Then he shouted, “Command Group, two guards down on the roof. Code 116.”

An electronic horn sounded and red lights flashed throughout the compound.