Strangers

human movement in farther reaches of the building, but all they heard was sleet hitting the roof.
        The.38 in Jack's hand suddenly felt like a toy. Mort was carrying a Smith & Wesson M39 9mm pistol, and Tommy had a Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnum that he had tucked inside his insulated jacket after the men in the office had been securely tied up, when it had seemed that the dangerous part of the job had been completed. They were well armed, but they were not ready to face down Uzis. Jack remembered old documentaries of hopelessly outclassed Hungarians trying to turn back invading Russian tanks with rocks and sticks. In times of trouble, Jack Twist had a tendency to melodramatize his plight and, regardless of the situation, to cast himself in the role of the noble underdog battling the forces of evil. He was aware of this tendency, and he thought it was one of his most endearing qualities. At the moment, however, their position was so tenuous that there was no way to melodramatize it.
        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 now - two in front, two in back."
        The front and rear exits - both the regular doors and rollup cargo bay doors - were 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