Dean Koontz - Surrounded

He was considering all the ways it could be done, was trying to decide which was the best method of operation, when Patrolman Hawbaker-another rookie who was as gangly and clumsy as Muni was pudgy and paradoxically graceful-ran down from the telephone booth to tell him that a call had come through. "It's that guy inside," Hawbaker said, pointing to the mall. His prominent Adam's apple worked rapidly up and down. "He wants to talk to you right away, sir."

Kluger followed Hawbaker across the parking lot, through deep shadows and pools of purple light to the automated post office. He pushed into the first telephone booth in a row of three and drew the door shut.

Hawbaker looked in at him like a spectator at a zoo watching a caged animal.

Opening the door, Kluger said, "Hawbaker, go away."

"Sir?"

"I said, go away."

"Oh," Hawbaker said. He turned and walked a dozen steps and stood facing the mall, his back to Kluger.

Shutting the booth door again, Kluger picked up the receiver and said, "Hello?"

"Kluger?"

"What do you want?"

"How are you?"

"What?"

"Are you feeling okay?" the stranger asked.

"What is this?"

"I just want to be sure you're not getting jumpy," the man in the mall said. "I'll bet you're under a great deal of pressure to get us out of here."

"What of it?" Kluger asked.

In point of fact, though, he was under almost no pressure at all except that which he manufactured for himself, that inner pressure that always helped him to excel in police work. Right now, only two newspapers had learned of the situation, and only three reporters and two photographers were on hand. None of them had filed anything with their offices. Very few people knew what was happening. Most of the politicians and other publicity seekers were home in bed. Indeed, even the chief of the department had probably not yet been informed. The chief was a wounded bear when awakened because of a crisis, and he was usually not disturbed until someone had been killed. Therefore, Kluger had another hour and perhaps even a bit longer to get this thing settled his own way, on his own terms, without everyone interfering with his methods.

"I just called to tell you to relax," the stranger said. "It's just about all over."

"What?"

"You can come inside," the stranger said.

"Are you serious?"

"Wait fifteen minutes," the stranger said. "Then you can come in, and we won't resist you."

"You're surrendering?" Kluger asked. It sounded too good to be true, yet he was strangely disappointed to realize that there was not going to be a fight.

"Surrendering? Not at all," the man said. "You can come in because we won't be here to stop you."

"What?"

"We're leaving."

"You're what?" Kluger asked, feeling like a broken record but unable to speak intelligently. His mind was racing, trying to find something about the mall that he had overlooked.

"We've found a way out, Lieutenant."

"Like hell you have."

"If you don't believe me," the stranger said, "you will when you come inside fifteen minutes from now."

"We have everything covered!"

"You missed one thing."

"I did not!" Kluger said. His face was a furious shade of red, the blood pounding visibly in his temples and in his neck. He was straining his jaw muscles so hard that they ached.

"Sorry, but you did."

"Look, you-"

"Remember," the stranger went on, "fifteen minutes. If you come inside one minute sooner, we'll have to kill the hostages."

"I don't know what you're up to-"

"We're up to escape," the stranger said, laughing. Then he put down his receiver and cut Kluger short just as he had before.

The lieutenant slammed open the booth door, nearly breaking it, and went outside.

"Sir?" Hawbaker asked, turning toward him.

"Shut up!" the lieutenant ordered. "Let me think."

Kluger stood by the automated post office, his hands fisted on his hips, and he gave the mall building a thorough going-over. He let his eyes travel along at ground level around the two faces-north and east-that he could see from this vantage point. Two public entrances. Both locked. Two men on the east doors. Three on the north entrance. There were no windows. The only other potential trouble spots were the two big bay doors on the east wall, the truck entrances to the warehouse. But they were also locked; his men had checked them out at the start of this. To leave the mall that way, the men inside would have to make a lot of noise. And Kluger's men would see the doors going up long before anyone could come through them. Kluger had six men covering the bay doors, and he knew there was not going to be trouble there.

But where else?

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to recall the way the south and west faces looked. One double-door public entrance on each of those walls. No windows. No loading docks. He had enough men on both places to deal with any attempted breakout.

The roof?

He looked at the garish, peaked, imitation thatch roof and immediately ruled that out. Even if they could get onto the roof-and Kluger doubted that-where could they go? Nowhere.

The storm drains?

Kluger had not been among the first men sent out to investigate the cause of the alarm at Oceanview Plaza, and therefore he had not been plunged into this thing unprepared. He had been at the station house on a rest break, using his thirty minutes of free time to catch up on a backlog of paperwork. He was there when Sergeant Brice received the first telephone call from that man in the Plaza building, and he was fairly well aware of the nature of the case before he was put in charge of it. When he was assigned to it minutes after the call to Brice, he had sent a man over to the courthouse to dig up the blueprints to the shopping mall, and then he had come straight out here as fast as he could drive. Even before the blueprints had arrived, he had sent three men into the scrub land next to the mall with orders to search for and guard over any large drain openings. That had been good, sound, far-sighted police work. When the prints had come and he had unrolled them on the macadam behind a squad car, he had learned that there was indeed a way out of the mall through the drains: the same one his men were already guarding. That was the only outlet big enough to pass a man. He was certain that he had read the blueprints correctly.

Therefore, the drains did not figure in this

What else?

Nothing else.

What was this threat of escape, then? A ruse of some sort, a trick? A bluff?

A fat mosquito buzzed persistently around the lieutenant's head and tried to alight on his left ear. This time he did not kill it. He brushed it away without thinking, without really being aware that he was expending the effort.

All over the parking lot the harsh and eerily garbled voices of radio dispatchers were crackling out of ten police-band radios, rising on the night air like ghostly messages from another world. They came to Lieutenant Kluger, but he did not, at the moment, hear them. His thoughts were elsewhere, turning over facts, looking for worms underneath them.

A bluff, was it?

But what could he hope to gain by bluffing?

Nothing. Kluger was sure of it.

If, in fifteen minutes, the lieutenant did lead a force into the mall, and if those hoodlums were waiting in there, then they would start shooting at one another. A number of policemen would die. That was inevitable. Every battle had its casualties. But in the end, what could the thieves gain? They would be cut to ribbons. Unless they just wanted to go out with a bang… And he was sure that the man he had talked to on the phone was not the type to make a grandstand play only to see a few fireworks. That man intended to live.

A trick?

There was no trick, under the circumstances, that amounted to more than a bluff.