Marcus “Mac” Cole loved the sound of machinery eating itself.
Back in the seventies, he worked diesel pits at the transit barn. When a torque converter seized, iron screamed before it tore.
“Listen to that engine seize,” Mac muttered.
Behind the brass teller wicket, twenty articulated extractor arms tore into Comptroller Lydia Vane’s vault. The black rubber cones clamped onto file cabinets, shredding freshly minted twenty-dollar bills.
The turbines roared at negative eighteen pounds per square inch: VROOOOOOOM!
[click-hiss]
“UNAUTHORIZED DISBURSEMENT!” Vane’s speaker shrieked from inside the maelstrom. “THE RESERVE VAULTS CANNOT LIQUIDATE SPECIE TO SATISFY PRIVATE LIENS!”
“The lien is certified, lady!” Mac barked over the din. “Eat your own paperwork!”
