Warren Murphy: Brain Storm

Andy could see that the two men—the young

blond man and the later arrival—were standing at the bank entrance. The others, a larger group, were circulating through the bank, sweeping in around the velvet-roped queue and up to the bulletproof teller windows.

A robbery!

Damn! Andy thought. I should have alerted the security guards.

He'd known something was up earlier. If he hadn't been distracted by the old man, Andy would have called the manager, maybe gotten the police involved. He would have been a hero, but instead he was going to become just another hostage if this thing played out the way most of these daylight robberies did.

Worse, if he was late tonight, his dad would slaughter him.

Andy started to sit back down, determined to remain as inconspicuous as possible and hopefully to get through this thing in one piece. That was when the sudden realization hit him. He couldn't move.

Andy tried forcing himself to sit down. His legs wouldn't budge. He tried pushing them into place with his arms. He realized with a sinking feeling that his upper torso was frozen in place, as well.

Andy was locked in an awkward squatting position just above the seat of his vinyl junior-executive's chair.

He tried harder but found that it was no use. He was a human rock.

And, he soon discovered, he wasn't alone.

As Andy's frightened eyes darted helplessly around the bank interior, he found that the only people who seemed to be moving were the thieves. Each member of the larger group had taken up a post at every teller window, most standing directly in front of bank patrons, who for some inexplicable reason remained as motionless as statues. Not only that, but all of the normal extraneous sounds of people talking, coughing, shifting from foot to foot—indeed, all sounds save those of the robbers themselves—had ceased at the precise instant the main thief had first spoken.

Everyone within the bank—employees and patrons alike—was as helpless as a mannequin.

At one window, an old woman was standing too close for a robber to access the teller window. The man simply picked the woman up as if she were nothing more than a piece of wicker furniture and set her down over near the head of the line. Though her eyes darted wildly in every direction, the rest of her might have been carved in stone.

"Of course, that was an unreasonable demand,"

the cheerful voice of the head robber said into the silence of the frozen bank lobby. As he spoke, he moved toward the center of the lobby. The blond man remained dutifully behind, a loyal sentry at the bank entrance. "For an operation of this kind to work, there has to be some movement, obviously."

As if his words were some sort of prearranged cue, the tellers began reaching into their cash drawers and stuffing bills into bags that were handed over by the thieves. They moved like automatons, with simultaneous motions. Hands entered cash drawers, money was removed, hands entered bags, repeat. It was a flawless series of movements, seemingly more precise than the most meticulously rehearsed Broadway dance number. When the tellers were finished, they shoved the bags through the narrow slots beneath the bulletproof partitions and snapped to attention behind the windows as if awaiting further instructions.

Watching the entire procedure from a squatting position behind his desk and unable to move a muscle, Andy, in some lucid part of his mind, was struck by the surrealism of the entire procedure. It was an eerie tableau, as if everyone inside the bank were some sort of dusty museum exhibit demonstrating modern banking techniques.

Andy caught a hint of movement before him and shifted his eyes—which seemed about all he could move—in that direction. He had forgotten about his customer. The old man was standing stock-still before his desk, frozen like everyone else.

Not entirely, it seemed.

Faintly, so much so that it was barely detectable, the old man was swaying from side to side. Also, as Andy watched, there seemed to be a slight trace of movement at the tips of the man's slender gray fingers.

Andy's attention was distracted in the next minute when his legs suddenly buckled. He fell roughly back into his chair, dropping the old man's passbook to his desk blotter.

All around the bank, patrons suddenly began to stir as if some huge unseen switch had been activated.

Tellers backed away from their windows. Bank patrons stood nervously in place, eyeing the robbers, who seemed themselves at a loss for what to do next.

The men looked suddenly panicked, as if the thought that anyone in the bank would be able to move had never occurred to them.

For the first time, Andy noticed that none of them carried guns.

Andy looked beyond the old man in front of him toward the street, where he fervently hoped that an NYPD SWAT team was positioned to take out the robbers. All he saw beyond the large white van was a pizza delivery truck stuck in late-morning traffic, a giant CB antenna bobbing impatiently from its roof.

Suddenly a command cracked through the air.

"Okay, hold it right where you are!"

Bank security. There were three green-suited guards standing around the lobby, their guns drawn and trained toward the largest concentrations of thieves.

The leader held his hands high above his head.

"I'm certain that this is just a misunderstanding, sir," he said tightly. He tried to force the cheerful-ness of a moment before, but the words sounded terse. He glanced impatiently out toward the parked van. Andy noticed that he wore a hearing aid.

"Shut up!" the head of the Butler Bank security force ordered. "Down on the floor, hands behind your heads! Now!"

The man looked back from the door, eyeing the guard balefully. "Do you have any idea how much this suit cost?" he asked. He shot another glance toward the bank entrance. The traffic seemed to be picking up. The pizza truck had moved a car length down the street.

"Down! Now!"

The robbers were beginning to comply. They dropped to their knees, all the while watching their leader expectantly. The man refused to move an inch.

The pizza truck drove away.

Andy felt an odd tingling sensation at the back of his head.

It was a sort of tickle, as if someone had brushed his neck with a feather. The sensation made his ears itch.

The robber turned victoriously back toward the guard. With a boldness that was surely suicidally motivated, the man strode purposefully up to the guard and, wrapping his fingers around the barrel of the gun, tugged the weapon from the guard's out-stretched hand. The guard didn't react, didn't move an inch.

With obvious relish, the robber tucked the gun back into the guard's holster. Frozen once more, the other two security men watched helplessly as the same procedure was repeated with them.

Andy tried to move but realized that he, too, was immobile. All around the bank, patrons and employees alike were once again rooted to wherever they stood.

Bags of money in hand, the robbers clustered around their leader in the center of the lobby. Some people were staring stonily off in other directions, but most were looking in the general direction of the thieves, their eyes darting helplessly from side to side. Drool leaked from one man's parted lips.

The lead thief grinned triumphantly around the lobby of the bank.

"And now, with your kind assistance, gentlemen..." With a nod from their leader, the thieves began to circulate through the frozen crowd.

This was it. They were going to start killing people. Or worse.

All thoughts of his dreaded commute were ban-ished from Andy's mind as one of the thieves—a sinister-looking man in his forties—approached his desk. He reached into the money bag he had taken from one of the teller windows and, stuffing his hand deep inside, proceeded to remove a handful of bills.