Surrounded

wouldn't be going out this way."
        "Well, then, aren't we home free, like Edgar said?"
        "I just don't like to hear a lot of talk about how we're out of it-until we really are out of it." He fished in his jacket pocket and found a roll of Life Savers. "Lime," he told them. "Anybody want one?"
        Neither Bates nor Meyers wanted one.
        Tucker popped the circlet into his mouth, put the roll into his pocket, then sat down on the edge of the drain and jumped down into the pipe. He turned and reached up to Bates who handed down the two large waterproof sacks that contained the bank bags full of money and uncut stones. The jugger followed, then Meyers.
        They had two flashlights, which drove back the darkness and the centipedes, and they reached the end of the tunnel in only three or four minutes. Meyers greeted the first sight of the exit with a loud sigh of relief.
        Sunlight slanting in behind them flooded the erosion gully and made the scrub land look washed out and dead. It stung their eyes and robbed them of the cover of night for the remainder of their escape route. But it plainly showed that there were no police hidden behind any of the boulders.
        Weary, stiff, and sore, the three of them climbed out of the drain and down the gully wall, dragging the two big sacks with them. Tucker called a halt at the boulders behind which the three cops had taken refuge last night, and he said, "We'll bury the Skorpions here."
        Meyers glanced quickly at the brush and the scattered palms, looked back in the direction of Oceanview Plaza, which was hidden from them by the rising land. "What if we need them?"
        "We won't," Tucker said.
        They scooped up the soft earth and laid the pistols in the depression they had made, then shoved the loose dirt over them.
        "What if they find them?" Meyers asked. He seemed ready to exhume his own gun.
        "So what if they do?" Tucker asked.
        "They'll trace them."
        "No."
        "You sure?"
        "Come on," Tucker said wearily. "Let's move ass."
        They continued along the gully, considerably slowed and burdened by the two sacks of money and gems but not in the least displeased to have to bear them. The six- and seven-foot banks on both sides kept them from being seen by anyone to the north or the south, while only empty land lay behind them. And the closer they got to the highway, the more they were hidden from the cars rushing up and down the coast, for the erosion channel dropped even deeper and fed into another man-sized drainage tunnel under the roadbed. They dragged the sacks through the drain and came out on the far side of the highway, on the last of the gentle hills above the beach.
        The air was pleasantly tangy with elemental odors.
        Sea gulls soared in from the whitecaps, crying shrilly and dancing on the air currents.
        "The ocean's beautiful this morning," Edgar Bates said as he followed the other two out of the drain.
        Although he ached in every muscle and joint, and although his eyes felt grainy and his mouth tasted of rubber, Tucker looked out at the rolling sea and the endless sky, and he had to agree. "It sure is," he said.
        They crabbed down the slopes to the beach and turned south through the soft yellow-white sand. In less than five minutes they came to a paved beach-access road. Above them now, overhanging the beach, were expensive glass, chrome, and redwood houses that glinted in the early-morning sunlight.
        "We'll need a car," Tucker said. He turned to Meyers. "Think you can find one up there?"
        "Sure."
        "Take your time."
        "Five minutes."
        "Take your time," Tucker repeated. "We don't want to blow it all now, not after what we've been through."
        Tucker sat down on the money sacks. He put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, and he watched Meyers walk away up the curving access lane and out of sight around a hillock of sand and yellow beach grass.
        Edgar put down his satchel and went out to the edge of the sea to splash water on his face. He was whistling again.
        Twenty minutes later, at 6:45, Frank Meyers drove down to them in a new Jaguar 2+2, a sleek black machine that purred much more softly than did its namesake.
        They put the sacks in the trunk. Edgar climbed into the back seat with his bag of tools, and Tucker sat in the front passenger's