Surrounded

watch.
        

    1:34.
        
        He had wasted almost five minutes, and he suddenly realized that they might have been the most precious five minutes of the night. That fifteen-minute waiting period which the man in the mall had demanded was a completely artificial time limit. Kluger was angry with himself for having fallen for it. If they had found a way out, then they would have used it by now. They would have left the five hostages behind and would be unable to reach and harm them. Each minute that Kluger delayed, each minute he stood here on his big flat feet, they might be getting farther and farther away. They might be getting off scot-free.
        "Hawbaker!"
        The rookie whirled. "Yes, sir?"
        "When I came out here, I brought one of the department's acetylene torches to cut through those inner gates if we had to."
        Hawbaker blinked at him.
        "It's in the trunk of my car. Get it and bring it to me-on the double!"
        "Yes, sir."
        "Don't forget the tank, Hawbaker."
        "No, sir." Hawbaker was off, running clumsily.
        Kluger looked at the mall building again, thought of the man on the telephone, thought of the promotions he needed, thought of the chief's chair…
        "Damn!" he said. He ran down toward the east entrance of the mall shouting at his men as he went. "Look sharp! We're going in!"
        

----
        
        Kluger grabbed the torch and the feeding hose in one hand, lifted the small tank of compressed gas in the other, and walked across the carpet of broken glass from the outer mall doors that two of his men had smashed with hammers. He was the only one up front now. The others had fallen back on his orders, had gladly taken up safer positions behind the squad cars.
        In the nine years and six months that he had been a policeman, Norman Kluger had never hesitated to risk his life if the occasion seemed to call for that. He had something of a reputation as a daredevil, but he wasn't like that at all. Naturally, there was a slight bit of grandstanding in it because he often took chances in order to be noticed by those above him in the department. However, for the most part he took risks and bulled his way through dangerous territory, because he did not know how else to get a job done-and because he had long ago decided that he was one of those people who would lead a charmed life, a guy who could walk through a pit of snakes and not be bitten once. He had spent two years in Southeast Asia in the thick of the fighting and had re-upped for two more years when his regular hitch ran out. In all that time he had not suffered a single injury, while all around him were dying, and he eventually came to feel that he could not be hurt. He was charmed, protected, watched over.
        He also figured that this special personal magic would keep him safe from legal prosecution and forced retirement if anyone ever seriously accused him of overstepping his policeman's authority and tramping too hard on the rights of those people with whom he had to deal. Long before the Nixon Court had begun to rescind the liberal decisions of the past several decades, Norman Kluger had done as he wished with suspects whom he was fairly certain he could prove guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. Sometimes, of course, he had knocked over a few people who were innocent, had bruised those who knowingly or unknowingly got in his way, but by God he had done the job every time. And though there had been grumbling and protests about his methods, no one had ever, in the final analysis, filed or made stick any charge or accusation against him. He was charmed. He was destined, he knew, to move up into the chief's chair in five years. Or perhaps even sooner than that. You just never knew when fortune might smile on you.
        At the steel-bar gate three feet past the ruined glass doors he put down the tank of gas. He squatted against the wall and, like a soldier putting together his rifle in the dark, hooked the hose to the torch and to the tank's feed valve, working with surprising speed in the dim red light from the police cruisers' rooftop beacons.
        Beyond him, beyond the gate, the mall's east corridor was absolutely lightless. Three or seven men could have been waiting there for him, machine guns aimed right at his head.
        Kluger never once looked inside.
        Breathing evenly, actually thriving on the danger, lie took a pair of