Surrounded

Kluger said. "We won't have a choice. We don't want any innocent parties killed or hurt."
        "Bullshit," the man on the phone said. "If we tried to use them as a shield, and if you thought you saw an opening, there would be gun play. You'd count on marksmanship and luck to miss the hostages. And if you killed any of them, you'd do your best to pin their deaths on us. We wouldn't be alive to argue."
        That had been approximately what had been going through Kluger's mind for the last twenty minutes. He was unsettled by the stranger's perspicacity.
        "All we want from you at the moment," the man inside the mall said, "is the same thing that I told Brice earlier: We want you to stay out of here. Back off and stay backed off. Don't try to come in after us."
        "Oh?" Kluger said. "What are you going to do? How long will you last? Are you going to homestead in there?"
        The stranger laughed. He had a smooth, mellow laugh, like an actor. Kluger distrusted people who laughed too easily or too well. "At least," the man said, "it's nice to be dealing with a cop who has a sense of humor."
        Kluger scowled at his reflection in the Plexiglas before him. "I wasn't being funny, mister," he said sharply, the "mister" delivered in a most military fashion. "I asked you a serious question. How in the hell long do you jerks think you can hide in that place?"
        The man was silent for a moment, readjusting himself to Kluger's mood. "We'll stay here until we can get safely away. Maybe a few hours-or maybe a few days."
        "Days?" Kluger didn't think he could have heard him right.
        "That's what I said."
        "You're crazy."
        The stranger said nothing.
        "You're in a hopeless situation."
        "Are we?"
        "You know it," the lieutenant said.
        "I don't know it," the stranger said. "Currently, it looks as if we can't get out of here without running headlong into you people."
        "You got it."
        "But," the stranger continued, "by the same token, you can't come inside without running headlong into us. We. may be under siege, but we also happen to be in a fortress. Fortresses are built to withstand sieges. You'd die like flies trying to get through those doors, Kluger. And by the way, you better not send those three men in by the storm drain. They'd just get their heads blown off before they could reach the warehouse."
        Kluger felt a line of perspiration break out on his forehead. The conversation was not going anything like he had thought it would, was taking quirky turns that left him baffled. "How did you know about them?"
        "We have a couple of our own men down in the drains," the stranger said. "They saw your fellows enter the gully a couple of minutes before you called."
        Kluger wanted to strike the booth wall with his fist, but he restrained himself. "One thing I don't believe," he said, changing the subject as best as he could. "There aren't seven of you in there, like you said. No way."
        "That so?"
        "With all the lights on, we can look through the doors with binoculars and see pretty much what you're up to. We've only seen three of you. Three, not seven."
        "And the two in the drain, remember."
        "Maybe there aren't two in the drain," Kluger said angrily, his face flushed with blood.
        "Maybe there aren't," the stranger agreed, again confusing and frustrating the lieutenant. "Just don't test us."
        For a moment there was silence from both ends of the line. Then Kluger said, "I have an offer to make."
        "Make it, then."
        The lieutenant spoke evenly, slowly but tensely, straining his Ronald Reagan jaw to the breaking point. "I'll send in two of my men, two unarmed police officers. You'll send the innocent bystanders out and keep my officers as hostages."
        "No chance."
        "We aren't going to shoot at our own men!" Kluger insisted impatiently. Why wouldn't this stranger listen to reason? Why wouldn't he fall for anything? What made him so goddamned different from the hundreds of other hoodlums Kluger had handled so well in the past? "Two patrolmen would make a better shield than those five you have now, for God's sake."
        "I've already said no. Anything else you want?"
        Sweat was now streaming down Kluger's temples. The cords in his neck stood out like ropes. "Whatever you have in mind, it won't work. You're not up against a