Authors: Kevin Leffingwell
“Yeah?” Tony said with a nervous voice. “Are you the
police?”
Darren turned and saw that Tony had bent down behind the
teller counter and had taken off his helmet so that he could talk on the
phone. He was visible.
Tony talked very strangely——like he was acting. “Hi,
Sergeant Randal, m’name’s Vinny. I’ve been hiding in one of the back
rooms. They never found me. Look, I gotta tell you something.
They’ve got all of the hostages locked in the vault. And they blew a hole
in the floor in one of the offices. There’s a tunnel under the bank. . .
.”
Tony, what are you doing?
Darren thought.
“. . . yeah, you heard me. A tunnel. They’re
dropping the money bags right now. They’re gonna get away.” Tony
paused, listening. “Yeah, everyone’s locked in the vault but me.
You want me to come out or stay hidden . . . come out . . . with my hands
up? Okay, man. Huh? Yeah, I’m telling you everyone else is
locked in the vault.” Tony hung up and put his helmet back on,
reactivating his cloak.
“That was very stupid,” Darren said.
“Are you kidding? What the hell is wrong with you,
anyway, Seymour? They’re not going to get away now. I bet the SWAT
will start popping every manhole cover for three square blocks. There’ll
be a short gunfight, couple dead here and there, then the bad guys drop their
gats and raise their hands. Robbery over. That’s what you wanted,
right? Let the cops do the work, and we sit tight and watch the show . .
. right, chicken-shit? I’m just following your chicken-shit
orders!” So much malice had filled his voice, it threw Darren back a
bit. Being scolded by a first-rate chaos-maker like Tony Simmons was just
too much. That was Darren’s usual job. And it stung. . . .
. . . stung because Tony was right. Tony had seen
further into the future, and had the battle plans already drawn. Just who
in the hell
was
leader here?
Darren’s suit sensors detected movement outside the bank
beyond the shattered drive-thru window. Five SWAT officers in body armor
had suddenly gathered around a manhole cover in the parking lot, their MP5
submachine guns pointed down. Still invisible, Darren approached the
front of the bank and looked through the busted glass. Every manhole
cover up and down the street had five SWAT officers each standing around
them. Then at the same time, one cop at each cover bent down and rent it
off, and they began pouring into the storm drains.
Darren didn’t like this. Something felt . . .
wrong. His ears were ringing strangely. Goosebumps were forming
under his sub-suit. Was he having a premonition? A sickening
feeling of the SWAT underestimating their adversaries churned in his gut.
He knew SWAT were highly-trained, but up against former Delta counterterrorist
operatives? This shit was going to get ugly.
That ugliness began about five seconds later when the sound
of muffled gunfire exploded from the hole in the conference room.
Intermittent blasts of submachine gun fire. Incomprehensible
shouts. A man screaming. Then a heavy detonation——grenade?
“Jesus, listen to that,” Tony said with a chuckle.
“Appreciating your handy work?” Darren asked.
Darren couldn’t see Tony’s expression under his helmet visor
but knew it had to be one fit for spite. “Just . . . following . . .
orders.”
“Why didn’t you tell that Sergeant Randal that they were
dealing with Delta Force troopers? That would have been a valuable piece
of intel for the cops to know, you think?”
Tony didn’t answer. Then, “I don’t know. I
forgot, I guess.”
“You forgot? That was convenient.”
“You think I did that on purpose? Like I wanted the
cops to get plugged?”
”I don’t know, Tony, but it sure is turning out to be a
costly mistake on your part!”
“What is your problem!”
Tony shouted at
him. “I told you, I forgot!”
The argument came to an abrupt end when something they
hadn’t expected suddenly happened: the bad guys were retreating back into the
bank.
“There goes your storm drain surrender,” Darren growled.
A scared voice: “They got Fowler! Fowler’s gone, man!”
“I know, I know!”
“I got three of them! Dumb bastards!”
*
Patterson shoved Arnold’s ass up and out of the way as he
climbed out of the hole. “Body checks!”
Everyone looked one another over, searching for wounds.
“Shit!” Hoyle shouted.
“What?” Patterson asked. “Where you hurt?”
Hoyle stared at the wall. “I’m not hurt. It’s
just . . . . shit, man. I’m gonna get that San Quentin needle, now.
Shit!”
“Relax, Billy. We prepared for this possibility.
You know that. So we move to the back-up plan. Just like we
designed. We’re going to get out of here, okay? We got the SWAT
snipers where we want them and their entry teams bottlenecked.
Okay? Act like you knew this was going to happen. We are going to
get out of here clean. Mayfair, Arnold, Hoyle——get the bags back up
here. Everyone else in the lobby.”
*
Snipers where they want them? The entry teams
bottlenecked? That sick feeling was still rumbling in Darren’s
stomach. Backup plans of unknown design had been drawn, drastic steps
taken to ensure a successful getaway. Plan B. The robbers’
intelligence and audacity were chilling. These were pros.
“Tony, you got any ideas?” Darren asked with not a drop of
sarcasm in his voice but with genuine counsel.
Tony, of course, heard Darren’s tone otherwise. “I
don’t know anymore!” he shot back.
Darren let out a slow pacifying breath.
Gotta stay
focused, united. Tony doesn’t trust me. And I don’t trust him . . .
gotta work on the leadership skills.
The robbers’ leader, the tallest one they called
Major——Darren couldn’t see facial features because they were still wearing gas
masks——pointed at the man wearing the flowered shirt and khaki shorts. “Sergeant
Davies . . . assume the position.”
Davies gave a curt nod with an uncomfortable
expression. He raised his hands high above his head and walked toward the
tall floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the cops with a phony look of
terror on his face.
The major then pulled off his gas mask——long shaggy black
hair with a short mustache and piercing blue eyes, a long ropey scar on his
right cheek——and picked up the same phone Tony had just used earlier. A
moment later, “Glad to meet you Sergeant Randal. Are you looking at the
front window . . . ? Good. My demand is a simple one . . . you will
contact one of your pilots to land his Astar in the parking lot behind the
bank. If the chopper’s not on the deck in three minutes, we will plug the
hostage now pressed against the glass and proceed to kill one hostage for every
five minutes of your inconvenience. I will also impress upon you not to
send in the assault teams before the three minutes are up . . . I’m sure that
you’re now aware of our combat skills and any additional deaths of SWAT
officers today would sap the LAPD’s already crumbling morale . . . by the way,
tell your man on the roof of the Wei Hong that his .308 is exposed. I can
shoot out his scope from here.”
Click.
Darren really had no choice but to smile, despite his
contempt. They guys were good.
*
Sierra Three on the roof of the Wei Hong gift shop peered
through his scope and watched the five-man entry team approach the bank’s
windowless east side in wedge formation. They disappeared slowly around
the corner toward the drive-thru. Moments later, a second five-man team
approached the bank from the same line and slowly rounded the corner toward the
front, MP5 submachine guns out and primed.
“Sierra Three to TOC, principals are in position,” he said
into his throat mike.
*
“Here they come, major,” the man at the window said through
clenched teeth.
“Darren,”
Tony said with unmistakable dread in his
voice.
Darren already had two of his RCS’s outside the bank.
“I see them, Tony,” he whispered. Two SWAT teams. Ten
officers. Ten weapons primed for assault.
“That’s not it!” Tony whispered hard over their comm.
“What is it then?” Darren shot back with his own whisper.
He saw one of the robbers closest to him suddenly whirl
around, his weapon raised in Darren’s direction. He had apparently heard
Darren’s muffled words.
“Our cloaks!”
Tony said.
Darren’s eyes snapped to the four now very faint power bars
in the upper left corner of his visor display, each bar representing the power
level of each suit.
They all had just seconds of invisibility remaining.
Aw, shit!
They had completely forgotten about
the time limit to their energy-sucking invisibility cloaks. It just so
happened that he would be the first to appear in about fifteen seconds, then Jorge
followed by Nate and Tony. Robbers spoiling for a fight. Now SWAT
ready to storm the bank. No way out. The Doppler radar screen in
Darren’s mind showed a huge green shitstorm with flashing spots of yellow and
red bearing down on the bank.
“Get into position,” Darren said. “Hit the walls and
stay low.”
“There it is again!” roared the robber named Mr. Six.
“I’m telling you, there’s someone else here with us!” He swept his weapon
in wide arcs, slowly strolling closer toward Darren.
“What are you talking about?” one of the others asked.
“I thought I heard whispering earlier, and I’ll be damned if
I didn’t just hear it again.”
“Stay focused, Hoyle!” the major ordered.
That’s when Darren noticed that the major had something
which looked like——a detonator?——in his hand. He could clearly see the
guy’s thumb over a large black button and a long wiggling antenna sticking
out.
What has he got in his hand?
And then it came to him suddenly, aggressively, like a blade
through the chest. . . .
Booby trap.
*
“Entry Team One to TOC, we’re in position.”
“Entry Team Two to TOC, we’re in position.”
Seconds later: “TOC to entry teams, you are cleared
for action.
Go when ready.”
*
Patterson was prepared for this. Geared up for all the
green tea in China. For all of the hard earned currency and ten months
planning. He shivered all over with the anticipation for needed violence,
his thumb caressing the button. No way was he going to lose his
forty-seven million.
They had, during the course of their planning, not only
cased the bank, but likely SWAT sniper positions around the building, and they
had discovered only four angles from which to fire into the bank’s
interior. The four SWAT snipers outside were not aware that they were
about to depart this world painlessly, courtesy of four explosives carefully
hidden two nights ago. The entry team at the one-way exit near the
drive-thru, probably a five-man squad, likely had that door rigged with a C2
breaching charge. Washington and Mayfair were on them. Arnold and
Hoyle had the entry team outside the front windows, and Patterson had the
snipers’ testicles clenched in his fist. Fourteen dead cops coming right
up.
Suddenly, something dark took shape in front of him, just to
his left. It hadn’t been there before . . . had it? Some
sinister-looking . . . thing . . . black from head to boot had just
materialized impossibly before his eyes. His first fleeting impression
was
Star Wars.
Boba Fett had just appeared in the lobby of
the First China National Bank, he thought. Some absurd creature from the
future had violated the present with its existence, and it was pointing
something at him which upon the first shards of horror to enter his mind looked
like——
His right arm just above the elbow exploded in a cloud of
bone and flesh, the detonator flying like an unwanted toy thrown by a brooding
child. There came a second shot. Patterson reflexively inhaled in
surprise and then realized he hadn’t inhaled at all——his lungs failed to suck
air, and he looked down to see why.
Oh. . . .
The vision of lying on a tropical beach with a cold cocktail
suddenly came and went when Patterson saw that a ragged hole the size of a
softball had been punched clean through his Kevlar, into his chest, and out the
back. Patterson’s last sentient perception of the world was the sight of
his blood splattered across the wall behind him as he slowly spun around and
collapsed.
*
Darren swung his weapon around, went to one knee and pulsed
off a single laser shot into Mr. Six. The 50-kilowatt blast punched a
cavity clean through his chest and drove him into the air where he landed,
limbs flailing, hard into the teller counter.
Just as Jorge appeared, the remaining robbers returned
fire. A split second of hot panic seized Darren when bright sparks
suddenly erupted across his suit like angry insects trying to sting him, but
the 9mm armor-piercing rounds were simply shattering harmlessly off his alien
armor. Nate materialized over by the window. Tony appeared two
seconds later at the teller.
Mr. Five’s head and right arm disappeared when Jorge tore
into him with just two blasts from his rifle. That’s when the back door
blew in with a deafening explosion and a flashbang grenade arced into the area
behind the teller counter. The explosion momentarily stunned the last two
robbers who had been firing on the “aliens” in the lobby. Two SWAT
officers quickly duck-walked into the bank and took the two bad guys down with
short jerks from their submachine guns, more SWAT pouring through from the back.
A second flashbang went off, tossed through the shattered
front window from the other SWAT team facing the street. Their alien
suits absorbed the shock and flash, protecting them from incapacitation, but
Sgt. Davies still playing hostage against the glass hadn’t been so lucky.
He let out a funny grunt and fell to the floor.