Dean Koontz - Surrounded

"Want me to come down?" Meyers asked.

"Not just yet."

"I'll wait here for you."

"Do that."

Tucker held the flashlight out in front of himself, looked first south and then north. In both directions the tunnel bored away into unrelieved darkness, an artery in the earth. Tucker remembered that to the south there was no parking lot, and there the well-maintained mall property gave way to abrupt and ragged hills, rock formations, sun-bleached scrub, widely scattered palm trees, and ugly erosion gullies like dozens of dry stream beds. There the land fell sharply away to the main road and then down to the sea. If the storm drains emptied anywhere, they would pour forth into that chaotic jumble of useless land.

He turned south and started walking, stooping just enough to keep from striking his head on the ceiling. His footsteps rang on the metal floor, echoed in front and behind him. When he had to splash through a puddle, the noise was amplified until it sounded like the incessant roar of the giant fountain out in the mall's public lounge.

The air was stale but not unpleasant, like that in a closet full of old clothes. And if it led to the fresher air of freedom, then it was quite easily endured.

Ahead the tunnel angled to the left.

When Tucker turned the corner, the tainted air was freshened by a cool night breeze, and he knew that he was suddenly close to the end of the drainage system's main run. He switched off the flashlight at once, stood dead still until his eyes could adjust to the intense darkness. Gradually he was able to discern an area of lesser darkness perhaps fifty or sixty feet ahead, an ethereal, shimmering circle of extremely dim gray light that contrasted with the pitch-black tunnel walls, caught the eye and held it like a far-off beacon.

Cautiously he went forward again, making as little noise as possible. At the mouth of the drain, which opened at the brink of an erosion gully six feet above the ground, he stopped and hunkered down. He tried to press against one wall and make a smaller target of himself, though he was painfully aware of how bullets would ricochet off the rippled steel all around him

He stared out at the shadow-cloaked hills, down the rugged slope toward the inrushing night sea. Only two things moved out there: a thick cloud covering that drifted eastward from the ocean and a steady stream of automobiles on the main highway a hundred yards below.

Then, arising suddenly, there were voices.

Tucker stiffened.

A hundred feet downslope two flashlight beams appeared at the edge of the gully.

Tucker checked to be certain that the Skorpion was fully loaded. It was, of course.

Behind the flashlights three cops came into sight. They stood on the bank of the narrowly eroded channel looking upslope toward the mouth of the drain where Tucker sheltered. Apparently they could not penetrate the darkness in the tunnel well enough to see him, for they made no effort to protect themselves or to conceal their movements. Instead they clambered noisily down the side of the gully, slipping and stumbling into the dry stream bed where they took up positions behind a series of weathered boulders not seventy feet from the drain pipe. At almost the same instant, the two flashlights winked out.

The night fell back in like a collapsing roof.

Carefully, quietly unfolding the wire stock of the Skorpion, Tucker locked it into place in its extended form. Now he could use the pistol as a submachine gun if the cops came up the gully and tried to gain entrance to the mall through the drain tunnel. He ardently hoped they would stay where they were right now.

Their voices still carried through the night on the gentle sea breeze, but Tucker could not quite make out what they were saying. Several minutes passed as their conversation grew less boisterous and finally settled down to a constant murmur well beyond his understanding.

Cars continued to streak by on the highway.

In endless masses the gray-black clouds, like giant ships, came in from the sea.

Without wanting to, Tucker thought about Elise. He conjured up a vivid mental image of her face and sleek body, thought of the way she walked and talked, the many ways they joked together and made love and shared their lives… He felt weak in his guts, cold and tired and terribly lonely. Losing Elise, he would be losing nearly everything that mattered most to him, a truth he had not often admitted to himself. For all his cool sophistication, for all their talk about wanting to be able to go their separate ways, they needed each other. And he needed her more, perhaps, than she needed him. When he contemplated the loss of her, the taste of that emptiness to come could almost paralyze him

Which was no good at all. He was not yet beaten, not if he got up and moved and tried. In fourteen other jobs he had made a name for himself, had proved the worth of the "Tucker" pseudonym. He was more proud of his false identity than of his real one. This was no time to throw all that away and let his life fall apart. He would get out of this somehow.

On the highway below a symphony of horns sounded and brakes squealed; the traffic flow went on.

After Tucker had watched the boulders and had listened to the three cops for almost five minutes, he was fairly sure they did not intend to come any farther. They were merely covering the drain to prevent anyone from escaping through it.

Tucker smiled grimly. Whoever was in charge of this police operation was a shrewd and dangerous man, someone who thought of the unlikely and prepared for even the improbable.

But it doesn't matter, Tucker thought, by way of an internal pep talk. Whoever the bastard is, he can be beaten. Everyone can be beaten, no matter how tough or smart he is. "Except me," he said softly, as an afterthought. He laughed quietly at himself, and that made him feel much better than the pep talk had done.

He got up and turned, stretched as best he could to get the kinks out of his legs and back. Then he walked north, the way he had come, not daring to switch on his flashlight until he was a good twenty steps past the bend in the pipe and back in the stale air of the main drainage line.

Frank Meyers was waiting for him at the hole in the warehouse floor, his harsh face peering anxiously down into the lightless pipe. "I was getting worried."

"No need," Tucker said, handing up the flashlight and then his Skorpion.

"Does it lead out?" Meyers asked.

"Help me up," Tucker said.

The big man put out a hand.

Tucker grabbed it, struggled up, pulled himself over the edge of the hole, and flopped on the cement floor.

"Does it lead out?" Meyers asked again.

"Yeah."

"We can use it then?"

"No," Tucker said, catching his breath. "They thought of it, too. They put three men on it."

Meyers's face twisted into a hideous mask of anger, hatred, and frustration. "Shit!"

"My sentiments exactly."

"Now, what can we do to-"

Meyers was interrupted by Edgar Bates. The old jugger stepped through the door from the east hall where he was standing guard, and he shouted across the warehouse for Tucker. "One of the telephones is ringing out in the lounge!"

"The cops?" Meyers asked.

Tucker nodded and got to his feet. "It'll be for me."

Lieutenant Norman Kluger, the officer who, thirty minutes ago, had been put in charge of the police response to the crisis at Oceanview Plaza shopping mall, was pleased to be given full responsibility for the problem. He knew that his immediate superior on the night shift had passed the buck on this one, had tried to step out from under a job that was potentially both politically and physically dangerous. Certainly, people were likely to be killed before the night was out, cops and robbers together. And perhaps thousands of dollars of property damage would result in and around the classy mall building. In the morning there might well be a great deal of bad press for the police and the way they handled those hoodlums in there. But Kluger did not care to think about any of that. He had come a long way on the force in a relatively short time, gaining promotions precisely because he was willing to take chances and to jump into the middle of the ugliest situations. He had his eye set on the department head's chair, and he meant to be sitting there by the time he was forty, thereby becoming the youngest chief in the history of the force. And, he was confident, one of the best in its history, too.