Surrounded

big man put out a hand.
        Tucker grabbed it, struggled up, pulled himself over the edge of the hole, and flopped on the cement floor.
        "Does it lead out?" Meyers asked again.
        "Yeah."
        "We can use it then?"
        "No," Tucker said, catching his breath. "They thought of it, too. They put three men on it."
        Meyers's face twisted into a hideous mask of anger, hatred, and frustration. "Shit!"
        "My sentiments exactly."
        "Now, what can we do to-"
        Meyers was interrupted by Edgar Bates. The old jugger stepped through the door from the east hall where he was standing guard, and he shouted across the warehouse for Tucker. "One of the telephones is ringing out in the lounge!"
        "The cops?" Meyers asked.
        Tucker nodded and got to his feet. "It'll be for me."
        

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        Lieutenant Norman Kluger, the officer who, thirty minutes ago, had been put in charge of the police response to the crisis at Oceanview Plaza shopping mall, was pleased to be given full responsibility for the problem. He knew that his immediate superior on the night shift had passed the buck on this one, had tried to step out from under a job that was potentially both politically and physically dangerous. Certainly, people were likely to be killed before the night was out, cops and robbers together. And perhaps thousands of dollars of property damage would result in and around the classy mall building. In the morning there might well be a great deal of bad press for the police and the way they handled those hoodlums in there. But Kluger did not care to think about any of that. He had come a long way on the force in a relatively short time, gaining promotions precisely because he was willing to take chances and to jump into the middle of the ugliest situations. He had his eye set on the department head's chair, and he meant to be sitting there by the time he was forty, thereby becoming the youngest chief in the history of the force. And, he was confident, one of the best in its history, too.
        Kluger stood in a telephone booth on the raised platform of the mall's automated drive-up post office in the northeast corner of the parking lot. The phone box was at his left shoulder. On his right, beyond the booth, lay the large square housing for the stamp dispensers, scales, and mailboxes. Straight ahead, visible through the clear Plexiglas wall, was Oceanview Plaza and many of the twenty patrolmen for whom Kluger was now responsible. He watched his men, and he listened to the telephone ringing and ringing and ringing on the other end of the line…
        Thirty-five years old and looking even a couple of years younger than that, Norman Kluger nonetheless had an undeniable air of authority about him. He was six-feet-three, trim and muscular, with long arms and hands fit for a basketball star. His face was square and unlined, but hard and cold as ice. He had a Ronald Reagan jaw, and he knew it. He thrust it out as consciously and effectively as Reagan always did. His eyes were dark and quick, deeply shelved under a broad forehead that bore the only wrinkles in his face. Fortunately, his red-brown hair had already begun to turn gray at the temples; and it was this touch more than his size or his clenched jaw that made him look old enough and experienced enough for command.
        In the mall the phone stopped ringing. A quiet, steady voice said, "Hello?"
        "My name is Kluger," the lieutenant said. "I'm in charge of the police out here."
        "So?"
        "So," Kluger said, trying to conceal his irritation, "I want to know what you're going to do next."
        "That depends on you," the stranger said.
        "Oh?"
        "Yes. It depends on whether or not you act intelligently. If you pull any crazy heroics on us, try to force the issue-well, that wouldn't be at all intelligent."
        The lieutenant frowned. His heavy rust-colored eyebrows came together, forming one dark bar across the base of his brow. He had expected to hear a well-struck note of desperation in the man's voice. After all, this stranger and his hoodlum friends were trapped in there like snakes in a bag. But this one sounded unfrightened, almost serene. "Sergeant Brice tells me you have hostages."
        "Five of them," the man said.
        "Then you're going to want to use them."
        "I doubt it."
        "As long as you have them, we'll have to let you go,"