Mort's thoughts had led him to precisely the same consideration, for he said, "There's no use trying to get out by any of the back doors. They'll have split up by nowtwo in front, two in back."

The front and rear exitsboth the regular doors and rollup cargo bay doorswere the only ways out. There were no openings, not even windows or vents, on the sides of the enormous building, no basement and therefore no basement exit, no way to get onto the roof. In preparation for the robbery, the three of them had studied detailed plans of the building, and now they knew they were trapped.

Tommy said, “What are we going to do?”

The question was addressed to Jack Twist , not to Mort, because Jack organized any robbery he took part in. If unanticipated events required improvisation, Jack was expected to come up with the brilliant ideas.

“ Hey,” Tommy said, taking a stab at brilliance himself,

why don't we go out the same way we got in!"

They had entered the building with a variation on the Trojan Horse ploy, which was the only way to bypass the elaborate security systems that were in operation at night. The warehouse was a front for the illegal drug trade, but it was also a real, functioning, profitable warehouse that accepted regular shipments from legitimate businesses in need of temporary storage for excess inventory. Therefore, with the personal computer and modern in his apartment, Jack had tapped into the computers of both the warehouse and one of its reputable clients, and had created the file of electronic paperwork that would legitimize the delivery of a huge crate, which had arrived this morning and had been stored per instructions. He, Mort, and Tommy had been inside the crate, which had been designed and constructed with five concealed exits, so they could get out of it quietly even if it was blocked by other crates on four sides. A few minutes after eleven o'clock tonight, they had slipped out and had surprised the tough guys in the office, who had been quite confident that their multiple alarm systems and locked doors had transformed the warehouse into an inviolable fortress.

“We could get back in the crate,” Tommy said, "and when they finally come in and don't find us, they'll go crazy trying to figure how we got away. By tomorrow night the heat'll be off. Then we can slip out and make our getaway."

“No good,” Mort said sourly. "They'll figure it out. They'll search this place until they find us."

“No good, Tommy,” Jack agreed. "Now, here's what I want you to do......... He quickly improvised an escape plan, and they assented to it.

Tommy hurried to the master panel of light switches in the office, to kill every light in the warehouse.

Jack and Mort dragged the four heavy bags of money toward the south end of the long building, and the dry sound of canvas scraping along the concrete floor echoed and reechoed through the chilly air. At that far end of the building, instead of more stacks of merchandise, there were several trucks that had been parked in the interior staging area, where, first thing in the morning, they would be loaded. Jack and Mort were less than halfway through the maze, still half a city block from the semis, when the dim lights winked out and the warehouse was plunged into unrelieved darkness. They paused long enough for Jack to switch on his Eveready before continuing through the gloom.

Bearing his own flashlight, Tommy rejoined them and took one of the bags from Jack, one from Mort.

The clicking impact and susurrant slide of sleet upon the roof began to subside slightly as the storm entered a lull, and Jack thought he heard the screech of brakes outside. Could reinforcements have arrived so soon?

The warehouse's interior loading zone contained four eighteenwheelers: a Peterbilt, a White, and two Mack trucks. Each of them faced out toward a loadingbay door.

Jack went to the nearest Mack, dropped his sack of money, stepped up on the running board, opened the door, and shone his flashlight inside, along the dashboard. The keys dangled from the ignition. He had expected as much. Confident of their multilayered security system, the warehouse employees did not believe there was any danger that one of these vehicles might be stolen during the night.

Jack and Mort went to the other three trucks, found keys in all of them, and started the engines.

In the cab of the first Mack, there was a sleeping berth behind the seat, where one member of a longdistance driving team could catch a nap while his partner took the wheel. Tommy Sung stowed the four bags of money in that recess.

Jack returned to the Mack just as Tommy finished with the sacks. He settled in behind the wheel and switched off his flashlight. Mort got in on the passenger's side. Jack started the engine but did not switch on the headlights.

All four trucks were idling noisily now.

Carrying his flashlight, Tommy ran to the farthest of the four big rolldown doors of the interior loading zone and touched the control that started it moving laboriously upward on its track. Jack watched him tensely from the high seat of the big rig. Tommy hurried back along that outer wall, his progress marked by the bobbling beam of his flash, slapping his right hand against the door controls as he came to each of them. Then, snapping off his flashlight, he bolted toward the Mack as the four doors slowly lumbered open with much grating and clattering.

Outside, the Morlocks would know the doors were going up, would hear the trucks' engines. But they'd be looking into a dark building, and until they could throw some light in here, they couldn't know which rig was the intended escape vehicle. They might spray all of the trucks with submachinegun fire, but Jack was counting on gaining a few precious seconds before they opted for that violent course of action.

Tommy clambered up into the cab of the Mack, pulling the door shut behind him, sandwiching Mort between himself and Jack.

“Damn rollers move too slow,” Mort said as the bay doors clattered toward the ceiling, gradually revealing the sleetlashed night beyond.

“Drive through the sucker,” Tommy urged.

Fastening his seatbelt, Jack said, “Can't risk getting hung up.”

The door was onethird open.

Gripping the wheel with both hands again, Jack saw movement in the murky, wintry world beyond, where the few dim exterior security lights did little to push back the darkness. Two men hurried across the wet and icy blacktop, from the left, slipping and skidding, both of them armed, one of them with what appeared to be an Uzi. They were trying to stay low to make poor targets of themselves and trying to stay on their feet at the same time, squinting into the black warehouse under the rising bay doors, and as yet they had not thought of meeting the crisis with an indiscriminate spray of bullets.

The first door, the one in front of Jack, was halfway up.

Abruptly, angling in from the left, the same direction from which the two hoods had come, the gray Ford van appeared, its tires churning up silvery plumes of slush. It fishtailed to a stop between the second and third ramps, blocking those exits. Its front wheels were up on the lower edge of the third ramp, so its headlights speared into the fourth bay, revealing that the cab of that truck was untenanted.

In front of Jack, the door was twothirds up.

“Keep your heads down,” he said.

Mort and Tommy squeezed down as low as they could, and Jack hunched over the wheel. The heavy rolling panel was not all the way up, but he thought he could slip under itwith a little luck. In quick succession he released the brakes, popped the clutch, and hit the accelerator.

The instant he put the truck in gear, those outside knew that the break was being made from the first bay, and the night was shaken with the rattle of gunfire. Jack heard slugs slam into the truck as he reached the exit, drove through, and headed down the concrete ramp, but none penetrated the cab or shattered the windshield.

Below, another van, this one a Dodge, swept in at the foot of the incline, trying to block his path. Reinforcements had, indeed, arrived.

Instead of braking, Jack tramped down harder on the accelerator and grinned at the horrified expressions of the men in the Dodge as the massive grille of the Mack slammed into them. The rig rammed the van backward so hard that the smaller vehicle tipped over on its side and slid fifteen or twenty feet across the macadam.

The impact jolted Jack, but his safety belt held him in check. Mort and Tommy were thrown forward, against the lower part of the dash and into the cramped space below. They protested with cries of pain.

To execute that maneuver, Jack had been forced to descend the ramp faster than he should have done, and now as he tried to wheel the truck to the left, toward the lane leading away from the warehouse, the rig lurched, swayed, threatened to either tear itself out of his control or tip over as the Dodge had done. Cursing, he held on to it, brought it around with an effort that made his arms feel as if they were pulling out of his shoulders, and then he was headed straight into the lane.

Ahead of him, three men stood around a midnightblue Buick, and at least two of them were armed. They opened fire as he bore down on them. One man aimed too low, and bullets snapped off the top of the Mack's grille, sparking brightly where they struck. The other guy aimed too high; Jack heard slugs ricocheting off the brow of the cab, above the windshield. One of the two overheadmounted airhorns was hit and torn loose; it fell down along the side of the cab, thumped against Tommy's window, hanging from its wires.

Jack was almost on top of the Buick, and the gunmen realized he meant to hit it, so they stopped shooting and scattered. Handling the huge rig as if it were a tank, he broadsided the car, shoving it out of the way. He kept going, past the end of the warehouse, toward another warehouse, past that one, still accelerating.

Mort and Tommy pushed themselves back onto the seat, groaning. Both were battered. Mort had a bloody nose, and Tommy was bleeding from a small cut over his right eye, but neither of them was seriously hurt.

“Why does every job go sour?” Mort asked morosely, his voice more nasal than usual because of his injured nose.

“It hasn't gone sour,” Jack said, switching on the windshield wipers to clear away the glimmering beads of sleet. "It's just turned out to be a little more exciting than we expected."

“I hate excitement,” Mort said, putting a handkerchief to his nose.

Jack glanced in the side mirror, back toward the fratellanza's warehouse, and he saw the Ford van turning around to follow him. He had put the Dodge and the Buick out of commission, and he only had the Ford to worry about. He had no hope of outrunning it. the roads were treacherously icy, and he had too little experience behind the wheel of a rig like this to risk pushing it to its limits in bad weather.

He was also worried about an unnerving chorus of small noises that had sprung up from the engine compartment following the ramming of the van and the Buick. Something rattled tinnily. Something else hissed. If the Mack broke down and left them stranded, they would very likely be killed in the ensuing shootout with the Morlocks.

They were in a vast industrial area of warehouses, packing plants, and factories, and the nearest major city street was more than a mile ahead of them. Though some of the factories had night shifts and were currently operating, the industrial park's main service road, along which they were speeding, was deserted.

Glancing at the mirror, Jack saw the Ford on their tail and gaining fast. He abruptly wheeled the rig to the right, into a branch road past a factory where a sign proclaimed HARKWRIGHT CUSTOM FOAM PACKAGING.

“Where the hell are you going?” Tommy asked.

“We can't outrun them,” Jack said.

“We can't face them down, either,” Mort said through his bloody handkerchief. “Not handguns against Uzis.”

“Trust me,” Jack said.

Harkwright Custom Foam Packaging did not operate a late shift. The building itself was dark, but the road around it and the big truck lot behind were lit by sodiumvapor lamps that colored the night yellow.

At the rear of the building, Jack turned left, into the truck lot, through drilling sleet that looked like molten gold under the big lamps. Two score of trailers, without cabs attached, stood in orderly ranks, like beheaded prehistoric beasts, all painted mustard by the fall of sodium light. He swung the rig in a wide circle, brought it in close to the back wall of the factory, doused the headlights, and drove parallel to the building, heading back toward the road that entered the lot and along which he had just come. He braked to a stop at the corner, close up against the factory wall, at a right angle to the branch road.

“Brace yourselves,” he said.

Mort and Tommy already knew what was coming. Their feet were pressed flat up against the dashboard and their backs were jammed against the back of the seat, as protection against the impact.

No sooner had Jack braked at the corner of the buildingthe Mack poised like a crouching cat anticipating a mousethan a glow appeared on the passing road. The light approached from the right, from the front of the factory: the most outreaching headlamp beams of the unseen but oncoming Ford van. The glow grew brighter, brighter still, and Jack tensed, trying to wait until the last best moment before pulling into the lane. Now the glow became two distinct parallel beams, lancing past the snout of the Mack, and the beams grew very bright. Finally Jack tramped hard on the accelerator, and the Mack lurched forward, but it was a big truck, not quick off the dime. The Ford, going faster than Jack had expected, shot past the corner, directly across the Mack's bow, and Jack surged forward in time to catch only the rear of it. But that was enough to send the small van into a spin. It whipped around 360 degrees, then again, on the icy surface of the parking lot, before crashing nosefirst into one of the mustardcolored cargo trailers.

Jack was sure that none of the men in the Ford was in any condition to come out of the wreck shooting, but he did not dawdle. He swung the Mack around and headed back past the side of Harkwright Custom Foam Packaging. When he reached the main service road, he turned right, away from the distant fratellanza warehouse, toward the entrance to the industrial park and the network of city streets beyond.

They were not followed.

He drove three miles by a direct route to an abandoned Texaco service station that they had scouted days ago. He pulled past the useless pumps and parked alongside the dilapidated little building.

The moment Jack halted the rig, Tommy Sung threw open the door on his side, jumped out, and walked away into the darkness. He was heading for a lowermiddleclass residential neighborhood three blocks away, where, on Monday, they had parked a dirty, rusted, battered Volkswagen Rabbit. The car was newer under the hood than it was outsideand fast. It would get them back to Manhattan, where they would dump it.

They had also stashed an untraceable Pontiac in the industrial park on Monday, within a twominute walk of the mob warehouse. They intended to hump the bags of money to the Pontiac, then drive the Pontiac here for the switch to the Rabbit. But alternate transportation had become essential, and the Pontiac had been left to rot where they stashed it.