Читать книгу Face Of Terror - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

Susan McDonald could not have been happier.

As she stood proudly behind her shelf at the teller’s window, she felt the hard granite press lightly against her swelling abdomen. The baby—ultrasound images had already assured her husband and her that it was a boy—was kicking lightly. Susan’s doctor had warned her that soon he’d be kicking like a professional soccer player, that he’d wake her up at night and make her jump in the middle of sentences.

The baby was almost the only thing she could think of these days. Almost. But the other thing was too ghastly to think about, and so unlikely to happen at her branch of the First Federal Bank that she easily pushed it to the back of her mind.

Frank Dutton, the loan officer in charge of this branch office, walked to the front door, where several customers waited to conduct their early-morning banking. Frank selected a key from the large ring he’d produced from his pocket, unlocked the door, then held it open as the customers filed inside.

“Good morning, Mabel. Hello, Tim. Hey, Charlie, how’s the book coming?”

Frank knew every regular customer by name, which was one of the reasons the First Federal Bank’s outpost on South Western had more customers, and did more business, than any of the other branches.

Susan looked down the row of smiling women’s faces at the other tellers’ windows. Most were blond and all were beautiful. That was another reason the customers—at least the males—never seemed to switch banks.

The customer Frank had called Charlie limped toward Susan, leaning on his cane. He had a white beard beneath his well-worn brown fedora, and a tie-dyed T-shirt bearing a picture of Janis Joplin riding a motorcycle covered his chest. Susan knew he was a veteran of the Vietnam War, a former cop and still taught self-defense clinics on occasion. He’d recently taken a medical retirement from the police department because arthritis had set into almost every joint he had—most of which had been broken or dislocated at one time or another during his life of adventure. Now he wrote articles for magazines and was working on a book about his experiences in Southeast Asia.

Susan’s mind flashed back to the one problem that even her baby couldn’t force from her mind, and she knew the sight of Charlie limping forward had forced it to her consciousness. A rash of violent bank robberies had plagued almost all of the major cities surrounding Chicago. And it appeared to be the work of the same gang. The police suspected that the robbers were actually members of an Arabic terrorist cell. Any people inside the bank during the robberies who showed even the slightest sign of resistance were immediately murdered.

Charlie dropped a checkbook on the counter and began endorsing several checks. “Morning, Susie,” he greeted. He passed the checks and deposit slips through the hole at the bottom of the glass that separated them, and was about to speak when the front door suddenly burst into flying shards of glass.

Everyone inside the bank froze.

Susan watched in horror as, one by one, five men dressed in multicolored Army camou outfits with black ski masks covering their faces crunched over the glass inside the bank.

Susan and the others were still glued into position as Charlie produced a silver-colored gun from beneath his T-shirt and turned to face the robbers. He got off three quick shots—all of which looked like they’d hit their targets in the chest by the robbers’ reactions—before another of the men turned some kind of machine gun on Charlie and shot him three times. One of the bullets made the elderly customer drop his pistol, but he suddenly pulled a thin sword out of his cane and staggered toward the men in the Army shirts and pants.

It took only one more round to drop Charlie to the floor.

Susan screamed, which made the other tellers scream. Then the loan officers and customers began screaming, too.

The five robbers were trying to shout over the shrieks in some kind of foreign language. It was probably Arabic, Susan thought. She was about to drop down to her knees behind the counter when one of the men switched to heavily accented English. “Do not move! If you do as I say, no one else will be harmed!”

Susan’s eyes darted back to the three men Charlie had shot, and she saw that they were still on their feet. Bulletproof vests, she thought. She remembered that some robbers in California had worn them a few years ago, and the police had had a terrible time trying to stop them.

The man who had spoken in heavily accented English now fired a burst into the ceiling. “Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up now, all of you, or I will kill each and every one!”

Suddenly, the main lobby of the bank went silent. Susan had planned to drop to her knees a moment earlier, but now those same knees made the decision for her. She sank to the tile floor as if she’d been given a local anesthetic in both legs, and had to force herself to slide in beneath the counter.

From where she now hid, Susan heard the same voice ordering the tellers to come around to the front lobby. Each one who passed her looked down to where she hid. Some were crying. Others were in shock.

Susan realized that if any of the bank robbers came back behind the counter they would easily find her. But the time to surrender had come and gone. Something in her heart told Susan that if she slid out and got to her feet now, she’d be immediately killed.

And so would her baby.

Behind her, through the thin wall, Susan heard the man speaking English order everyone to the carpet. A few seconds later, she heard him speaking in that strange tongue again. A moment after he stopped, she heard the sounds of doors opening and closing from the part of the bank that held the loan officers’ offices and supply rooms.

The robbers were looking for anyone who had hidden, Susan knew, and that realization made her heart pound so hard she feared she might have a miscarriage.

The half door that separated the lobby from the tellers’ area swung open, and two of the men in Army clothes appeared in front of Susan. She pulled her knees tighter against her chest, but the baby inside her kept her from getting her legs out of sight. The two men walked past her and, unless the stress was causing her to hallucinate, neither of them noticed her feet sticking out from under the counter.

The men headed for the vault in the back of the bank. They disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared at the doorway leading back to the tellers’ area. One of them was looking at his wristwatch. A little later, an explosion sounded from the vault room.

Another man wearing a ski mask now hurried through the swing door and followed the first two back into the vault room. They spoke excitedly in their foreign tongue, then came back carrying large cotton money bags.

It took them three trips to get it all.

Behind her again now, Susan could hear the crunch of the broken glass beneath their boots as they began carrying the money out to whatever vehicle awaited them. Then, evidently finished and ready to leave, Susan heard the same man who had done all of the talking speak again. “Allahu Akhbar!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Death to all infidels!”

Then the room erupted with the explosions of all of the men’s machine guns, and Susan closed her eyes again and prayed. Dear God, she mouthed silently. Please spare the life of my child if not mine. Then she began to cry.

She was still crying five minutes later when the police arrived. It took a good minute after that for her to pry her eyes open and face what had happened.

Inside her belly, her baby boy was kicking like a well-trained rooster at a cockfight.