CHAPTER 2
Chase pointed at the tellers behind the glass.
“First, you keep your hands in plain view. If you hit any alarm button, silent or otherwise, everyone out here is dead.”
The two women and the man looked at each other and slowly lifted their hands.
“Good, now, the three of you come out here and join us.”
They didn’t move.
A second gunman strode forward and put his pistol against Stone’s head. “Now, or the geezer gets his brains blown out,” he said.
One of the female tellers unlocked the door and the three of them filed out.
“Thank you,” said Chase politely. He stepped inside the tellers’ cage and examined the set of alarm switches hidden under the counter. None of them had been activated. He looked at the tellers. “Very smart of you.”
The second gunman slapped Stone on the side of the head. “Congratulations, Grandpa, you get to live.”
“He was a grandfather,” replied Stone, glancing over at dead Charlie. “I’m not.”
“Then this is your lucky day,” said the man, slapping Stone’s head again.
Stone’s jaw tightened ever so slightly when the man struck him a second time. Robie noticed this. And he knew Stone would kill the man given the chance.
“Okay,” said Chase. “Everybody line up against that wall.” He pointed to his right.
Everyone did as he said and they were methodically searched. Out came all phones, electronic tablets, and other communication devices. They were collected in a basket. When Robie’s gun was found, Chase held it in his gloved hand.
“Why do you have this? You a cop? A Fed?” He nodded to one of his men, who searched Robie for a badge or creds but found none. He did hold up Robie’s gun permit.
“Just a law-abiding citizen,” said Robie.
Chase glanced at the permit and then wheeled around and clocked Robie in the jaw, nearly dropping him to the floor.
“I don’t like law-abiding citizens. Now get back in line,” said Chase, shoving Robie away. “You give me trouble I will shoot you with your own weapon.”
Robie staggered over and stood next to Stone, rubbing his jaw.
One of the gunmen produced zip ties. Each hostage’s hand was bound to another hostage’s. By virtue of their proximity, Robie and Stone ended up cuffed together.
“Now sit,” said Chase, waving his machine pistol at them.
They all sat on the floor, leaning against a wall.
While one gunman watched over them, the other three set to work. From the laundry cart several duffels were pulled. They had taken the key from the door lock and also confiscated the spare security door key from behind the tellers’ stand. There was no way out now.
Chase looked first at the open vault and then at the bank manager. “The vault has to be closed by twelve-fifteen or the central office will know something is wrong.” He waved his gun. “So do it.”
Stone glanced at Robie and then back at Chase.
The manager was tethered to one of the bank customers. When he rose, so did she. They were hurried over to an electronic pad next to the vault door. With a gun pressed to his temple the manager punched in the requisite numbers and the massive door slowly swung closed and then locked into place.
“Thank you,” said Chase.
“Just please don’t hurt us,” mumbled the manager, who was breathing heavily.
Chase slapped him. “You don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Now we have to go through the bank closing protocols so the central office will believe everything is just fine and dandy here. Let’s go.”
Chase led the manager and the tethered customer over to the manager’s cubicle. “Give us the protocols and the passwords,” ordered Chase, “and my colleague here will input them. You slip up on any one of them, you die.” He put his gun against the manager’s head once more.
Stone and Robie watched as another of the gunmen sat at the desk behind the glass cubicle and started clicking keys on the computer keyboard, following the instructions of the frightened manager. He was sending out preauthorized emails with special passwords that would confirm that nothing was amiss at the bank branch.
Stone’s gaze swiveled to the third gunman. Slighter in build than the others and shorter, the person was affixing some devices to the wall entry door. When the ski mask rode up a bit on the person’s neck, Stone saw the eagle tattoo there. When he glanced at Robie, he was staring at the exposed neck too. That had been a mistake, both men thought simultaneously. A big mistake. As good as a fingerprint, actually.
Chase escorted the two hostages back to the others.
“Okay, on your bellies and face the wall,” he ordered. “Do it now.”
Stone shot a glance at Robie, who returned it. The two men seemed to be silently sizing the other up and then communicating a message: offers and acceptances of an alliance that might allow them to survive this somehow.
The hostages scooted around and lay on their bellies. Though on their stomachs, Stone and Robie made sure to lie face-to-face.
“They closed the vault,” mouthed Stone.
Robie nodded and mouthed, “So what’s the target?”
Stone gave a brief shake of the head, which stopped when the muzzle of a machine pistol sliced between them.
“I don’t believe I said communicating was permitted,” said the voice.
Stone and Robie looked up to see Chase staring back down at them.
“If you’re going to be problems,” said Chase, “we can deal with that right now.” He drew his knife with Charlie’s blood still on it and placed the serrated blade against Stone’s neck. He let the edge bite into the skin and a dribble of blood leaked onto the floor.
Chase withdrew the knife and stood. He stared down at the two for a few moments and then turned and left.
Ten minutes later Chase reappeared next to the hostages.
“Okay, everyone up and into the back room.”
The hostages managed to stand with difficulty and then were herded into the back room, which was outfitted as a small conference room. The door was locked behind them.
Stone and Robie looked around.
“Why in here?” Robie asked.
Stone said, “Because they’re doing something out there they don’t want us to see.”
He went over to the bank manager, who was obviously petrified and muttering to himself, while the female customer tethered to him stood awkwardly looking at the floor.
Stone said, “What’s worth stealing that’s not in the vault?”
The man looked up at him fearfully. “We’re not supposed to talk. They’ll kill us. They already killed Charlie.”
“I’m aware of that. But they can’t hear us in here if we keep our voices down. And it doesn’t appear that they care if we talk or not. Or else they would have fully bound and gagged us.”
Robie added, “Simple enough to do. They obviously brought a lot of equipment with them.”
“Are you a cop or something?” asked one of the tellers, a woman who looked to be in her late twenties. “You had a gun.”
“I’m not a cop,” replied Robie. “And even if I were they’ve got all the weapons.”
“But can’t you do something?” implored the teller.
“No,” snapped the manager. “We have to do what they say. If we try to screw around with this, they will kill us.”
“They’ve already killed one person,” said Stone. “They may not want to leave any witnesses behind.”
“We haven’t seen their faces,” countered the bank manager as the customer tied to him nodded in agreement. “So we can’t identify them.”
“Seeing someone’s face is not the only way to ID them,” Robie pointed out.
“We’re not doing anything,” barked the manager. “Nothing.”
He sat down in a corner, forcing the woman tied to him to do the same. He studied his hands and avoided their gazes.
Stone and Robie moved away and looked around the room. There had been a phone in here but it had been removed, as had a fax. There were a few pieces of furniture, and two cheap prints on the wall, and a pitcher of water and some glasses on a credenza. On the wall were some outlets and USB ports and a phone line and port for the fax.
Robie said, “They were thorough.”
“They obviously had plans of the bank layout beforehand.”
Robie nodded. “And they knew the bank protocols. With the closing of the vault and all.”
“Good prep all around. But they didn’t have to kill Charlie. That’s going to cost them.” Stone turned to one of the female bank tellers. “What could they want that’s not in the vault?” he asked in a low voice out of earshot of the bank manager.
She looked nervously over at her boss.
Stone said, “He’s entitled to his opinion, but it doesn’t mean he’s correct. I have some experience in these matters and I find it highly unlikely that they will leave here with us still alive.”
She said in a low, quavering voice, “We received a shipment of blank credit cards, about ten thousand of them.”
“Aren’t they in the vault?” asked Robie.
“Not yet. They just arrived today. We were going to load them into the vault after we closed. They’re in the storage room in cardboard boxes.”
“Blank credit cards,” said Stone.
The teller nodded. “You can steal them and then sell them. Criminals can input stolen IDs on them and they can be used as legit cards.”
“But if the bank knows they’ve been stolen won’t they simply put a stop on all of them?” asked Stone.
“If they can get the cards operational before the bank finds out, they can run up a lot of charges. They can also reencode the magnetic strip on the back with stolen account data. The bank has had problems with that in the past. They lose millions of dollars that way.”
Stone did not look convinced by this. “What else?”
“Well, we have customer account data on our computers. They could download that and sell it or use it to encode either homemade credit or debit cards or reencode stolen ones.”
“That might be it,” said Stone.
Now Robie did not look convinced. “But can’t they hack into the bank’s computer systems and do the same thing? Why come here and kill somebody? Now they’ve got a murder charge against them.”
“I have no idea,” said the woman, who started to shake and looked like she might be sick.
“Here, have some water,” said Stone. He crossed the room with Robie and filled up a glass with water and brought it back to the woman.
She thanked him and drank it down.
Stone and Robie walked off and stood in a corner.
“Do you hear that?” Stone asked.
Robie nodded.
Stone said, “Sounds like someone sawing.”
“And I don’t think they’re cutting into the vault. Not with a hand saw.”
“And if they were going to rob the vault they wouldn’t have closed it.”
Robie added, “And the blank credit cards are in cardboard boxes. You don’t need a saw to open cardboard.”
“Which means they are trying to go from here to somewhere else,” reasoned Stone. “And I wonder where that ‘somewhere else’ could be.”