John Sandford: Storm prey

The three hard men burst through the door and were on top of the two pharmacy workers in a half-second. The woman had enough time to whimper, "Don't," before one of the men pushed her to the floor, gun in her face, so close she could smell the oil on it, and said, "Shutta fuck up. Shut up." Soul-patch huddled into a corner with his hands up, then sank to his butt.

The leader of the three waved a pistol at the two on the floor and said, "Flat on the floor. Roll over, put your hands behind your back. We don't want to hurt you."

The two did, and another of the men hurriedly taped their hands behind them with gray duct tape, and then bound their feet together. That done, he tore off short strips of tape and pasted them over the victims' eyes, and then their mouths.

He stood up: "Okay."

The leader pushed the door open again and signaled with a fingertip. The tall man stepped in from the hallway, said, "These," and pointed at a series of locked, glass-doored cupboards. And, "Over here…"

A row of metal-covered lockers. The leader of the big men went to the man on the floor, who looked more ineffectual than the woman, and ripped the tape from his mouth.

"Where are the keys?" For one second, the man on the floor seemed inclined to prevaricate, so the big man dropped to his knees and said, "If you don't tell me this minute, I will break your fuckin' skull as an example. Then you will be dead, and I will ask the fat chick."

"In the drawer under the telephone," Soul-patch said.

"Good answer."

As the big man retaped Soul-patch's mouth, the tall man got the keys and began popping open the lockers. All kinds of good stuff here, every opiate and man-made opiate except heroin; lots of hot-rock stimulants, worth a fortune with the big-name labels.

"Got enough Viagra to stock a whorehouse," one of the men grunted.

Another one: "Take this Tamiflu shit?"

"Fifty bucks a box in California… Take it."

Five minutes of fast work, the tall man pointing them at the good stuff, sorting out the bad. THEN THE OLD GUY on the floor made a peculiar wiggle.

One of the holdup men happened to see it, frowned, then went over, half-rolled him. The old guy's hands were loose-he'd pulled one out of the tape, had had a cell phone in a belt clip under his sweater, had worked it loose, and had been trying to make a call. The big man grunted and looked at the face of the phone. One number had been pressed successfully: a nine.

"Sonofabitch was trying to call nine-one-one," he said, holding up the phone to the others. The old man tried to roll away, but the man who'd taken the phone punted him in the back once, twice, three times, kicking hard with steel-toed work boots.

"Sonofabitch… sonofabitch." The boot hit with the sound of a meat hammer striking a steak.

"Let him be," the leader said after the third kick.

But the old man had rolled back toward his tormentor and grasped him by the ankle, and the guy tried to shake him loose and the old man moaned something against the tape and held on, his fingernails raking the big guy's calf.

"Let go of me, you old fuck." The guy shook him off his leg and kicked him again, hard, in the chest.

The leader said, "Quit screwing around. Tape him up again and let's get this stuff out of here." THE OLD MAN, his hands taped again, was still groaning as they loaded the bags. That done, they went to the door, glanced down the hallway. All clear. The bags went under the blanket on the cart, and the three big men pushed the cart past the security-camera intersection, back through the rabbit warren to the utility closet, replaced the orderly uniforms with their winter coats, picked up the bags.

The leader said, "Gotta move, now. Gotta move. Don't know how much time we got."

Another of the men said, "Shooter-dropped your glove."

"Ah, man, don't need that." He picked it up, and the tall man led them out, his heart thumping against his rib cage. Almost out. When they could see the security door, he stopped, and they went on and out. The tall man watched until the door re-latched, turned, and headed back into the complex. THERE WERE NO cameras looking at the security door, or between the door and their van. The hard men hustled through the cold, threw the nylon bags in the back, and one of them climbed in with them, behind tinted windows, while the leader took the wheel and the big man climbed in the passenger seat.

"Goddamn, we did it," said the passenger. He felt under his seat, found a paper bag with a bottle of bourbon in it. He was unscrewing the top as they rolled down the ramp; an Audi A5 convertible, moving too fast, swept across the front of the van and caught the passenger, mouth open, who squinted against the light. For just a moment, he was face-to-face with a blond woman, who then swung past them into the garage.

"Goddamnit!"

The leader braked and looked back, but the A5 had already turned up the next level on the ramp. He thought they might turn around and find the woman… but then what? Kill her?

"She see you guys?" asked the man in the back, who'd seen only the flash of the woman's face.

The guy with the bottle said, "She was looking right at me. Goddamnit."

"Nothing to do," the leader said. "Nothing to do. Get out of sight. Shit, it was only one second…"

And they went on.

Weather had seen the man with the bottle, but paid no attention. Too much going through her head. She went on to the physicians' parking, got a spot close to the door, parked, and hurried inside.

The tall man got back to the utility closet, pulled off the raincoat and pants, which he'd used to conceal his physician's scrubs: if they'd been seen in the hallway, the three big men with a doc, somebody would have remembered. He gathered up the scrubs abandoned by the big men, stuffed them in a gym bag, along with the raincoat and pants, took a moment to catch his breath, to neaten up.

Listened, heard nothing. Turned off the closet light, peeked into the empty hallway, then strode off, a circuitous route, avoiding cameras, to an elevator. Pushed the button, waited impatiently.

When the door opened, he found a short, attractive blond woman inside, who nodded at him. He nodded back, poked "1," and they started down, standing a polite distance apart, with just the trifle of awkwardness of a single man and a single woman, unacquainted, in an elevator.

The woman said, after a few seconds, "Still hard to come to work in the dark."

"Can't wait for summer," the tall man said. They got to "2," and she stepped off and said, "Summer always comes," and she was gone. WEATHER THOUGHT, as she walked away from the elevator, No point looking at the kids. They'd be asleep in the temporary ICU they'd set up down the hall from the operating room. She went instead to the locker room and traded her street clothes for surgical scrubs. Another woman came in, and Weather nodded to her and the other woman asked, "Couldn't sleep?"

"Got a few hours," Weather said. "Are we the only two here?"

The woman, a radiologist named Regan, laughed: "No. John's got the doll on the table and he's talking about making some changes to the table, for God's sakes. Rick's here, he's messing with his saws. Gabriel was down in the ICU, he just got here, he's complaining about the cold. A bunch of nurses…"

"Nerves," Weather said. "See you down there."

She was cool in her scrubs, but comfortably so: she'd been doing this for nearly fifteen years, and the smell of a hospital, the alcohol, the cleaners, even the odor of burning blood, smelled like fresh air to her.

No point in looking at the kids, but she'd do it anyway. There were two nurses outside the temporary ICU, and they nodded and asked quietly, "Are you going in?"

"Just a peek."

"They've been quiet," one of the nurses said. "Dr. Maret just left."