Dark Rivers of the Heart

remained focused on the supermarket, try to get to a parked car, and hot-wire it. Not much of a chance. As thin as paper, as thin as hope itself. But it was all they had, better than hostages, so he clung to it.
        With the chopper landing virtually at the back door, the card shop was so hammered by the screaming of engines and the pounding of rotor blades that it couldn't have been noisier if it had been under an amusement-park roller coaster. The Valentine banners trembled overhead.
        Hundreds of novelty key rings jangled from the hooks of a display stand.
        A collection of small ornate picture frames rattled against the glass shelf on which they stood. Even the walls of the store seemed to thrum like drumheads.
        The racket was so ungodly that he wondered about the shopping center.
        It must be cheap crack construction, the worst, if one Helo could set up such reverberations in its walls.
        They were almost to the front of the store, fifteen feet from the women at the window, when the reason for the fearful tumult became obvious:
        The second helicopter settled down in front of the shop, beyond the covered promenade, in the parking lot. The store was bracketed by the machines, shaken by cross-vibrations.
        Ellie halted at the sight of the chopper.
        Rocky seemed less worried by the cacophony than by an unfurled poster of Beethoven-the movie-star Saint Bernard, not the composer of symphomes-and he shied from it, taking refuge behind Ellie's legs.
        The two women at the window were still unaware that they had company.
        They were side by side, chattering excitedly, and though their voices were raised above the clamor of the machines, their words were unintelligible to Spencer.
        As he stepped to Ellie's side, gazing at the chopper with dread, he saw a door slide open on the fuselage. Armed men jumped to the blacktop, one after the other. The first was carrying a submachine gun larger than Spencer's Micro Uzi. The second had an automatic rifle.
        The third toted a pair of grenade-launching rifles, no doubt equipped with stun, sting, or gas payloads. The fourth man was armed with a submachine gun, and the fifth had only a pistol.
        The fifth man was the last, and he was different from the four hulks who preceded him. Shorter, somewhat pudgy. He held his pistol to one side, aimed at the ground, and ran with less athletic grace than his companions.
        None of the five approached the card shop. They raced toward the front of the supermarket, moving quickly out of view.
        The chopper's engine was idling. The blades were still turning, though at a slower speed. The hit team hoped to be in and out fast.
        "Ladies," Ellie said.
        The women didn't hear her over the still considerable noise of the helicopters and of their own excited conversation.
        Ellie raised her voice: "Ladies, damn it!"
        Startled, exclaiming, wide-eyed, they turned.
        Ellie didn't point the S.I.G 9MM at them, but she made sure they got a good look at it. "Get away from those windows, come here."
        They hesitated, glanced at each other, at the pistol.
        "I don't want to hurt you." Ellie was unmistakably sincere. "But I'll do what I have to do if you don't come here right now!"
        The women stepped away from the storefront windows, one of them moving slower than the other. The slowpoke cast a furtive glance at the nearby entrance door.
        "Don't even think about it," Ellie told her. "I'll shoot you in the back, so help me God, and if you aren't killed, you'll be in a wheelchair forever.
        Okay, yeah, that's better, come here."
        Spencer stepped aside-and Rocky hid behind him-as Ellie guided the frightened women along the aisle. Halfway through the store, she made them lie facedown, one behind the other, with their heads toward the back wall.
        "If either of you looks up anytime in the next fifteen minutes, I'll kill you both," Ellie told them.
        Spencer didn't know if she was as sincere this time as when she had told them that she didn't want to hurt them, but she sounded as though she were. If he had been one of the women, he wouldn't have raised his head to look around until at least Easter.
        Returning to him, Ellie said, "Pilot's still in the chopper."
        He moved a few steps closer to the front of the store. Through the side window of the