Geoff Manaugh

When grad students were asked to collect floor plans for buildings in Baghdad in the fall of 1990, were they helping to preserve Iraqi culture—or to find targets for smart bombs?

When promotion after promotion passed satellite engineer Gregory Allen Justice by, he allegedly turned to the Russians to solve his family’s dire financial straits.

In less than 10 months, a fledgling robbery ring smashed and grabbed its way to $6 million in stolen goods. But the leaders got greedy, plans got sloppy, and the police got smart.

Cops nicknamed the burglar Roofman, because he often came in through the roof, but even more predictable were his targets: food franchises and big box stores.

He was the best bank robber in the ‘bank robbery capital of the world.’ Then he got a new target: the world’s most notorious terror group. It’s a crazy story. It might even be real.

There’s a reason we’re all entranced by big burglaries like the Hatton Garden heist. It’s because we dream of skeleton keys that will unlock the hidden parts of our urban lives.

Formless and ancient things from the depths of our planet move beneath Los Angeles, unexpectedly setting fire to sidewalks and burning whole businesses to the ground. Welcome to urban life atop a still-active oil field.

South of Silicon Valley, an entire town is being deformed, slowly, by plate tectonics.