John Sandford - The Night Crew

The corner of Gayley and Le Conte, at the edge of the campus:

Frat boys cruised in their impeccably clean racing-green Miatas and cherry-red Camaro ragtops, with their impeccably blonde dates, all square shoulders, frothy dresses and big white teeth.

Two skinny kids, one of each sex, smelling of three-day sweat and dressed all in black, unwrapped Ding-Dongs and talked loud about Jesus and the Joy to Come; celebrating Himand vanilla-creme filling.

At the Shell station, a tanker truck pumped Premium down a hole in the concrete pad, under the eye of a big-bellied driver.

And above them all, a quarter-million miles out, a buttery new moon smiled down as it slid toward the Pacific.

The Bee was impatient, checking her watch, bouncing on her toes. She was waiting at the corner, a Jansport backpack at her feet. Her face was a pale crescent in the headlights of passing cars, in the Los Angeles never-dark.

The Shell tanker driver stood in a puddle of gasoline fumes, chewed a toothpick and watched her in a casual, looking-at-women way. The Bee was dressed by Banana Republic, in khaki wash pants, a T-shirt with a queen bee on the chest, a photographer's vest with fifteen pockets, hiking boots and a preppy black-silk ski mask rolled up and worn as a watch cap.

When she saw the truck with the dish on the roof, she pulled the mask down over her face, picked up the backpack, and stepped out to the curb. The Bee had small opaque-green eyes, like turquoise thumbtacks on the black mask.

Anna Batory, riding without her seatbelt, her feet braced on the truck's plastic dashboard, saw the Bee step out to the curb and pointed: 'There she is.'

Creek grunted and eased the truck to the curb. Anna rolled down the passenger-side window and spoke to the mask: 'You're the Bee?'

'You're late,' the Bee snapped.

Anna glanced at the dashboard clock, then back out the window: 'Jason said ten-thirty.'

Jason was sitting in the back of the truck on a gray metal folding chair, next to Louis. He looked up from his Sony chip-cam and said, 'That's what they told me. Ten-thirty.'

'It's nowten-thirty-three,' the Bee said. She turned her wrist to show the blue face on a stainless-steel Rolex.

'Sorry,' Anna said.

'I don't think that's good enough,' the Bee said. 'We might be too late, and it's all wasted.'

Behind the Bee, the Shell gas-delivery man was taking an interest: a lot of people in a TV truck and a blonde in a ski mask, arguing.

'You better get in,' Anna said. She could smell the fumes from the gas as she turned and pushed back the truck's side door. Louis caught it and pulled it the rest of the way. The Bee looked at the two men in the back, nodded and said, 'Jason,' to Jason, said nothing to Louis and climbed aboard.

'Around the corner to Westwood, then Westwood to Circle,' the Bee said. 'You know where Circle is?'

'Yeah, we know where everything is,' Creek said. They'd been everywhere. 'Hold on.'

Creek took the truck around the corner, humming to himself, which he did when he was tightening up. Anna turned back to the Bee, found the other woman gaping at Creek, and grinned.

Creek looked vaguely like the Wookiee in Star Wars: six-seven, overmuscled and hairy. He was wearing a USMC sweatshirt with the sleeves and neck torn out. Tattoos covered his arms: just visible through the reddish-blond hair on his biceps was an American flag in red, blue and Appalachia-white, skin deeply tanned, with the scrolled sentiment, 'These colors don't run'.

'Hello?' Anna lifted a hand to break the stare. The Bee tore her eyes away from Creek. 'We need some facts and figures,' Anna said. 'How many people on the raid, where you're based, what specifically you object tolike that.'

'We've got it all here, but we've got to hurry,' the Bee said. She dug into the backpack, came up with a plastic portfolio and took out a sheet of crisp white paper. Anna flicked on the overhead reading light.

The press release was tight, professional, laser-printed. A two-color pre-printed logo of a running mustang set off the words 'Free Hearts' at the top of the page.

'Are these quotes from you or from the collective?' Anna asked, ticking the paper with a fingernail.

'Anything that's in quotes, you can attribute to either me or the Rat. We wrote the statement jointly.'

'Will we meet the Rat?' Anna asked. She passed the press release to Louis, who slipped it in a spring clip on the side of the fax.

'He's in the building now,' the Bee said, leaning left to peer past Anna out the windshield. 'Turn left here,' she said. Creek slowed for the turn.

'We'd like to get an action quote when they come out, as they release the animals,' Anna said.

'No problem. We can accommodate that.' The Bee looked at her Rolex, then back out the window. They were right in the middle of the UCLA medical complex. 'I'm sorry I'm so. snappy. but when Jason agreed to ten-thirty, we specified exactlyten-thirty. The raid is already under way.'

Anna nodded and turned to Louis. 'How're the radios?'

Louis Martinez sat in an office swivel chair that was bolted to the floor of the truck. From the chair, he could reach the scanners and transmitters, the dual editing stations, the fax and phones, any of the screens in the steel racks.

He fiddled with the gear incessantly, trying to capture a mental picture of after-dark Los Angeles, in terms of accidents, shootings, car chases, fires, riots.

'All clear,' he said. 'We've got that shooting down in Inglewood, but that ain't much. There's a chase down south, Long Beach, but it's heading the other way.'

'Track it,' Anna said. Cop chases had produced at least two famous video clips in the past couple of years. If you could get out in front of one, and catch it coming by, it was a sure sale.

'I got it,' Louis said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned at the Bee with his screwy nerd-charm. 'Why'd you choose Bee?' he asked.

'I didn't want a warm and fuzzy animal. That's not the point of animal rescue,' the Bee said. Her response was remote, canned, and Louis' grin slipped a fraction of an inch.

'And that's why Steve picked Rat,' Jason suggested.

The Bee frowned at the use of Rat's real name, but nodded. 'Yes. And because we feel a spiritual affinity with our choices.'

In the driver's seat, Creek grunted again, shook his head once, quick. Anna was watching him, taking his temperature: He didn't like these people and he didn't like the professional PR pointsthe press release, the theatrical ski mask. Too much like a setup, and Creek was pure.

A smile curled one corner of Anna's mouth. She could read Creek's mind if she could see his eyes. Creek knew that. He glanced at her, then deliberately pulled his eyes away and said, quickly: 'There's a guy on the corner.'

Ahead and to the right, a woman in a ski mask was standing on the corner, making a hurry-upwindmilling motion with one arm.

'That's Otter,' she said. 'And that's the corner of Circle. They must be outturn right.'

Creek took the corner, past the waving woman. The street tilted uphill, and a hundred yards up, a cluster of women spilled down a driveway to the street, two of them struggling with a blue plastic municipal garbage can. A security guard was running down from the top of the hill, another one trailing behind.

'Got them coming out,' Anna said, over her shoulder. A quick pulse ran through her: not quite excitement, but some combination of pleasure and apprehension.

Nobody ever knew for sure what would happen at these things. Nothing much, probably, but any time you had guards with guns. Did the guards have guns? She took a half-second to look, but couldn't tell.