Surrounded

shadow-cloaked hills, down the rugged slope toward the inrushing night sea. Only two things moved out there: a thick cloud covering that drifted eastward from the ocean and a steady stream of automobiles on the main highway a hundred yards below.
        Then, arising suddenly, there were voices.
        Tucker stiffened.
        A hundred feet downslope two flashlight beams appeared at the edge of the gully.
        Tucker checked to be certain that the Skorpion was fully loaded. It was, of course.
        Behind the flashlights three cops came into sight. They stood on the bank of the narrowly eroded channel looking upslope toward the mouth of the drain where Tucker sheltered. Apparently they could not penetrate the darkness in the tunnel well enough to see him, for they made no effort to protect themselves or to conceal their movements. Instead they clambered noisily down the side of the gully, slipping and stumbling into the dry stream bed where they took up positions behind a series of weathered boulders not seventy feet from the drain pipe. At almost the same instant, the two flashlights winked out.
        The night fell back in like a collapsing roof.
        Carefully, quietly unfolding the wire stock of the Skorpion, Tucker locked it into place in its extended form. Now he could use the pistol as a submachine gun if the cops came up the gully and tried to gain entrance to the mall through the drain tunnel. He ardently hoped they would stay where they were right now.
        Their voices still carried through the night on the gentle sea breeze, but Tucker could not quite make out what they were saying. Several minutes passed as their conversation grew less boisterous and finally settled down to a constant murmur well beyond his understanding.
        Cars continued to streak by on the highway.
        In endless masses the gray-black clouds, like giant ships, came in from the sea.
        Without wanting to, Tucker thought about Elise. He conjured up a vivid mental image of her face and sleek body, thought of the way she walked and talked, the many ways they joked together and made love and shared their lives… He felt weak in his guts, cold and tired and terribly lonely. Losing Elise, he would be losing nearly everything that mattered most to him, a truth he had not often admitted to himself. For all his cool sophistication, for all their talk about wanting to be able to go their separate ways, they needed each other. And he needed her more, perhaps, than she needed him. When he contemplated the loss of her, the taste of that emptiness to come could almost paralyze him…
        Which was no good at all. He was not yet beaten, not if he got up and moved and tried. In fourteen other jobs he had made a name for himself, had proved the worth of the "Tucker" pseudonym. He was more proud of his false identity than of his real one. This was no time to throw all that away and let his life fall apart. He would get out of this somehow.
        On the highway below a symphony of horns sounded and brakes squealed; the traffic flow went on.
        After Tucker had watched the boulders and had listened to the three cops for almost five minutes, he was fairly sure they did not intend to come any farther. They were merely covering the drain to prevent anyone from escaping through it.
        Tucker smiled grimly. Whoever was in charge of this police operation was a shrewd and dangerous man, someone who thought of the unlikely and prepared for even the improbable.
        But it doesn't matter, Tucker thought, by way of an internal pep talk. Whoever the bastard is, he can be beaten. Everyone can be beaten, no matter how tough or smart he is. "Except me," he said softly, as an afterthought. He laughed quietly at himself, and that made him feel much better than the pep talk had done.
        He got up and turned, stretched as best he could to get the kinks out of his legs and back. Then he walked north, the way he had come, not daring to switch on his flashlight until he was a good twenty steps past the bend in the pipe and back in the stale air of the main drainage line.
        Frank Meyers was waiting for him at the hole in the warehouse floor, his harsh face peering anxiously down into the lightless pipe. "I was getting worried."
        "No need," Tucker said, handing up the flashlight and then his Skorpion.
        "Does it lead out?" Meyers asked.
        "Help me up," Tucker said.
        The