Surrounded

Another alarm began to go bong bong bong, and smoke rolled out of the broken shop front,
        "Wonderful," Bates said.
        They went inside to get the stones.
        On three walls the jewelry store vault was lined with row after row of metal drawers, hundreds of them from the floor to within a foot of the ceiling. Each drawer pulled out about twenty inches, but each was only three inches deep. In every drawer there was a single layer of gems neatly arranged on sheets of dark blue velvet, ranked according to quality, size, and color.
        "There must be a couple of thousand stones here," Bates said. "It looks like we hit the jackpot again."
        They began pulling drawers out of the wall and emptying them into the two bags that already contained the cash. They did not bother to keep the diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other gems separated. They had no time for that.
        Twenty minutes later, while they were dumping the jewels from the last drawers, Frank Meyers came into the vault. "Everything's ready," he told Tucker. Then he walked over and looked into the open sacks at the green bills and the gleaming stones. "Tell me I'm not dreaming."
        "You're not dreaming," Tucker said.
        Tucker and Meyers each took a sack and dragged it out of the vault, through the jewelry store, and into the south corridor. Edgar, humming delightedly under his breath, followed with his Skorpion and his satchel full of tools.
        "Okay… As soon as we move Chet, Artie, and Evelyn-" Tucker began, breathing hard between the words.
        "I already moved them," Meyers interrupted.
        "You did? How?"
        "On one of those electric cargo carts in the warehouse," Meyers said. "You saw them."
        They were walking toward the lounge, and Tucker slowed as they reached it. "You mean you lifted each one onto the cart-"
        "Then drove the cart across the warehouse, unloaded him near that damned dog, and went back for another one," Meyers finished.
        "You're even stronger than you look," Tucker said.
        Meyers laughed. "It wasn't hard. The woman didn't weigh much at all. Artie was cooperative. Chet didn't like the idea, so he got dropped and bruised a few times."
        Tucker laughed. "Well… Then we're just about ready to go."
        "It's going to work," Bates said. He was floating along now, elated with his successes, as high as if he had taken drugs. Nothing could depress him for the next few hours.
        "I hope you're right," Tucker said.
        They walked down to the end of the east corridor, the alarms ringing wildly behind them and the red glow of police lights pulsing ahead. By the warehouse door they dropped the sacks and the Skorpions.
        "I'll switch off the rest of the lights and make my telephone call," Tucker said. "You two start getting ready."
        He opened the warehouse door and stepped inside as they went in the opposite direction. At the light-control panel he flicked four switches and turned out the last fluorescent strips in the corridor ceilings. Out there the mall would now be completely darkened. Kluger would be unable to see anything. And that was essential.
        

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        Lieutenant Norman Kluger was crouching behind an open squad car door twenty feet from the mall's east entrance when the last of the corridor lights went out inside. That didn't surprise him. When he had heard them blow the bank safe and had gotten confirmation from the alarm center at headquarters, he had known they would do something crazy. If they would still try to rob the bank when they had no hope of escaping, they would try anything. Turning out all the lights was only a first step in some cockeyed plan of theirs. Even though the lighting had been previously reduced, Kluger's men had been able to see shadows moving about in there. Now they could see nothing. With a bit of calculated bravery he knew would not go unnoticed by the other men, he stood up to his full six-feet-three and rubbed the back of his head in consternation. "Now what's that bastard up to?"
        "They're doing something they don't want us to see," said the young, pudgy patrolman beside him.
        "You think so?" Kluger asked sarcastically.
        The rookie, a kid named Muni, blinked and nodded. "Well… What else, sir?" he asked, utterly missing the sarcasm.
        For a while Kluger stood, intently watching the mall entrance. But nothing was happening