Prologue Part 2: Charlie the Poet

"I thought I asked you to get the rest of the crew together," Luke said as Dalton started toward the cooler to get some ice for his swollen eye. Dalton Lane shuffled his feet on the dusty floorboards looking more like a sheepish twelve year old boy than the six-foot-four bear of a man he was.

“I meant to tell you, boss,” Dalton said, wringing his hands together. “Just didn’t know how, is all.”

“They all upped and joined the Gravehounds,” Mickey said without looking up from whatever mechanical masterpiece he was working on at the end of the bar.

“They’ve joined my old high school rock band?” Luke said. “They on tour then?”

“Told you it was the name of his old band,” Mickey said to Dalton. A sprocket shot into the air and was swallowed by a crack in the floorboards. Mickey grimaced and turned back to his work.

“Well you see,” Dalton said, joining Luke at a rough wooden table, the ice seemingly forgotten.

“After you and Jack Holley had your... um... falling out.”

“You mean after he ratted me out?” Luke said flatly.

“Yes, well, after that happened, Jack cut a deal with the government and started his own mercenary group,” Dalton said, clearly anxious to get the bad news over with. “He’s a gun for hire now and most of the Pocket-change crew went along with him when they found out you were pinched. He's been calling his outfit, the Gravehounds.”

“So he stole my band name and my crew?” Luke massaged his temples with his forefingers.

While he was on the inside he met a man named Charlie who seemed to know everything about anything. He had heard through Charlie about Jack Holley starting his own merc group but Luke had naively assumed his crew wouldn't have jumped ship with him.

“So now everybody’s working for Holley’s crew?” Jack asked. Dalton left and returned with one of the few bottles of whiskey still intact and still no ice.

“No, not everyone. Me and Mickey didn’t sign up with the Gravehounds. And I hear the McMurchy brothers are on their own too, but I haven’t heard from them for more than a year now.”

Luke shook his head. Not including that backstabber Jack Holley, there were twenty-four other members of the Pocket-change Gang Luke had expected to be here. "We'll deal with Holley later. Right now we've got some planning to do."

During the next two hours, Luke laid out his plan. He adapted it as he went to make it work for a three-man crew instead of the twenty-three people he had originally planned for. Mickey had joined them at the table and he and Dalton listened intently, but skepticism was clearly painted on both their faces.

“Remember what happened last time you tried to rob a train using sketchy information?” Dalton reminded him as tactfully as possible.

“You went to jail,” Mickey answered for him, getting straight to the point.

“The information’s good,” Luke replied. The truth was, Luke didn’t know very much at all about his informant, Charlie. He had never seen the man but the word around prison pegged him as a government insider collecting a fat pay cheque while doling out sensitive information to representatives of Port Murkish’s seedy underbelly. Representatives like Luke.

Lately contact with Charlie had been through secret and cryptic messages. Luke wasn't sure if it was because he was overly cautious or just liked to play games. Despite the shroud of mystery Luke's gut told him he was a credible source.

“You pick me up a copy of today’s Port Murkish Post?” Luke asked.

Mickey walked to the bar and tossed Luke the newspaper. “Looking to get caught up on current events?”

“Not exactly,” Luke said, thumbing his way to the Arts section. Charlie informed Luke that he would send him the train’s security code in a secret message hidden inside the Post’s poetry corner. Luke quickly found what he was looking for. A small poem tucked away on a page filled with readers’ submissions.

Each line of the poem represented a number from one to ten - a clever way of hiding the code but hopefully not too clever for them to figure out. If they entered the wrong code on the safe the whole train car would go into lockdown and Luke’s freedom would be very short-lived indeed.

The throbbing in his head wasn't making the task any easier either.

Charlie – Solve the Cipher
Luke’s shady contact has left the security code to the train vault hidden in a poem in the Port Murkish Post. The code is four numbers long with each line of the poem representing one of the numbers.

If more than 1,000 people correctly submit the four-digit code, Luke will be successful in opening the vault without setting off the alarms on September 8th. If less than 1,000 people are able to solve the puzzle, however, then Luke Haggert and his crew will be in for a whole world of trouble as the train car housing the vault goes into lock-down. The deadline for solving Charlie's puzzle has past. Congratulations to everyone who successfully solved it!

Click here to see the archived puzzle.