The Survivor

Chapter 3

Nate lifted the Beretta, swung the barrel to the back of the big man’s head, and fired. The trigger hitched, a quarter-second delay, and somewhere between recoil and the flare of scarlet against the teller glass he registered that the first trigger pull had been double-action. From here on out, the Beretta would be single-action.

The gunshot was all but silent compared to the amplified screech of the saw within the vault. The big man’s knees struck the ground as he collapsed, shuddering his shoulders and clearing Nate’s view to the masked men on the main floor.

And theirs to him.

Both masks swiveled in puzzlement to take him in, the stillness of the moment stretching out in painful slow motion. The heads cocked slightly, an instinctive attack-dog tilt, sending an icy ripple up Nate’s spine. He realized what looked off about the faces: There were no eyes. Mesh had been stitched over the holes so that no flesh was visible, an insectoid effect that smoothed the heads to disturbing perfection.

With detached tranquillity, Nate watched their gloved hands rise, blued steel glinting inside curled fingers. A bullet lasered past his face, close enough to trail heat across his cheek. He was, it struck him, utterly unafraid. In his indifference he felt a weight lift from his shoulders, felt a smile curve his lips, felt imaginary manacles release. And then his hands, too, were lifting. He reminded himself with alarming calmness that he had to keep his wrists steady as he’d learned in basic, that he should not anticipate recoil, that he was, if not an ace, a decent shot. The air around his head took form as more bullets rocketed past, and he aimed across the teller partition at the first man and squeezed, and half the masked head went to red mist. The man toppled out of sight. His companion was shooting, the muzzle flashing but still inaudible beneath the earsplitting action of the saw. Nate was firing, too, the far wall giving off little puffs of drywall, spent cartridges cartwheeling across his field of vision. He stepped forward through the laid-open teller gate into the incoming bullets, to his death, his senses alive with the thrill of freedom-no, more than that. The thrill of liberation.

Number Two’s mask was stretched at the mouth-he was screaming-and his arms were trembling. Nate watched the bore winking into view like a black eye, and he stared back, his thoughts pounding a suicide urge:

Steady your hand. Hit me.

But the barrel jerked left, right, bullets framing Nate’s silhouette. Nate replayed the man’s growled threat-You’re gonna want to listen now, girlie-and anger sharpened his focus. He felt the Beretta kick and kick in his hands until the flight suit’s fabric did a little dance above the man’s chest and he fell down and away.

Sometime in the past second or two, the saw had paused, leaving the pop of the bullets suddenly naked, and Nate turned quickly to face the vault door. A man emerged carrying the circular saw, hood pushed up atop his head, wearing an expression of mild surprise. Nate shot off his ear in a spray of black blood. The man swung his head back, and Nate put a bullet through the puzzled furrow between his eyes.

Really? That’s the best you assholes can do?

The back-strap checkering on the grip had bitten into the web of his thumb. The scent of cordite spiced the air, dragging him almost a decade into the past, to burning sand and blood in his eyes.

He blinked himself to the present. Four down, two to go.

Moving again behind the teller line, he looked down at the automatic rifle on the floor, contemplating an upgrade. But he couldn’t spare the time untangling the sling from the body, so he walked swiftly toward the vault door, stepping across workers’ quivering bodies. “Sorry, ’scuse me, sorry.”

Sobs and gasps answered him. A wail of sirens grew audible, faint enough to be imaginary.

A pistol reached around the vault jamb, firing blindly. Nate drew a careful bead on the gun hand and kept on, swift and steady, not because of courage or heroism but because he hadn’t a thing to lose. He fired once, the round clanging off the vault door, and then he adjusted and fired twice more, a whirl of muscle memory, reaction, and instinct. The pistol flipped back, the fingers spreading comically wide, as if waving, and the hand vanished intact.

Five more steps brought Nate to the vault door, and he strolled through without hesitation. A man sat in the far corner, aiming at the doorway, locked elbows resting on the shelf of his knees. He took a clear-as-day shot at Nate’s head, but the wind of the bullet kissed the side of Nate’s neck, the slug bouncing around the vault more times than seemed plausible. Nate swung the pistol, figuring he was too close to bother with the sights, and unloaded two shots into the guy’s gut. Simultaneously he heard the scuff of a boot in the blind spot behind him. He sidestepped, the coolness of metal brushing his neck and turning to a dagger of flame in his trapezius. Twisting, he shot, but the hammer clicked dryly-marking the fastest fifteen rounds he’d ever spent.

The blade tweaked the muscle down the length of his arm, barbed wire tugged through a vein. Heat poured into his little finger. A half turn of his neck brought the handle of a sleek metal letter opener visible, sticking up out of him like an Indian brave’s feather.

He said, “Ouch.”

His eyes tracked to the man who had stabbed him. The ski mask was still on, the mesh patches of the eyes shiny under the fluorescent glow of the vault lights, but from the man’s bearing Nate recognized him.

Number Six.

Up close the crew leader seemed slight-slender-hipped and wiry, built for maximum efficiency. He couldn’t have been more than five foot nine, shorter than his associates. Nate’s eyes were drawn to a band of exposed flesh, the white skin striking against the comprehensive black getup. The man had peeled back the glove of his right hand, the meat at the base of the thumb pink from where Nate had shot the pistol from his grip. He held the palm up and at an angle, babying it, which gave Nate a flush of schoolyard pride.

They faced each other from a few paces, the masked man bare-handed, Nate holding a bulletless gun, Nate realizing with some disappointment that no one would be killing anyone else at the moment. He lifted his good shoulder in a half shrug, then drew back the Beretta and threw it at the guy’s face. Number Six barely flinched, the gun clipping his forehead. He touched a hand to the black fabric at the point of impact, then rolled his fingertips together, a man accustomed to checking for his own blood. He gave off nothing resembling emotion.

The sirens, now louder.

That dead-calm voice again, the faint accent. “He will be greatly angered by you.”

Nate said, “Tell whoever he is to take a number.”

The man pointed at him. “You have no idea what you have done.”

These words-even more, the gravity behind them-cut through Nate’s exhilaration, an arctic chill. For the first time since climbing in off that ledge, he felt fear, cold and pure.

The man took a step back and then another, those patches of mesh trained on Nate. “He will make you pay,” he said, “in ways you can’t imagine.” Then he slid past the vault door, his footsteps pattering off.

Dazed, Nate looked around, getting his bearings. Aside from the imposing wall of safe-deposit boxes, the vault was disappointingly ordinary. Concrete walls, file cabinets, the few freestanding Diebold safes no more impressive than airport lockers. A cardboard legal box on the floor held overflow holiday envelopes and stray staplers; Nate figured it to be the home of the letter opener protruding from his shoulder. One safe was cracked open, and the deposit boxes had been attacked. Thick metal hinges protruded in V-shaped ridges, bordering each column of boxes. Most of the hinges had been sheared off by the saw, leaving the metal door of each individual box embedded, its dead bolt still thrown. Red rectangular handle magnets, the kind used to lift sheet metal from a stack, remained adhered to the closest set of boxes, floating. Nate could see where someone had used them to pry off some of the little doors. A few freed boxes lay open on the tiles, foreign currency, jewelry, and legal documents scattered by the dead man’s boots. A neat little scheme-attack the hinges, yank off the doors, and voila-unearned wealth.

Muffled cries from the bank floor jarred Nate from his reluctant admiration. He thought of the kill order-Put her down-and his stomach roiled. One dead or twenty-it carries the same sentence. Human lives weighed against a cold efficiency. The terror that those people must have felt.

He walked back out to the bank floor. All of them still lying on their stomachs. Quiet sobbing. A few heads beginning to stir. The squeal of tires carried up from the street.

He cleared his throat. “It’s okay now, everyone. Those guys are gone. Or dead, I guess. You’re all safe. You can get up.”

But they all stayed on the floor.

Nate wondered briefly if this was actually real and not some bizarre dream. “I promise you,” he said, “no one’ll hurt you now. Please don’t be scared anymore.” He took a pleading step forward, a lightning bolt of pain electrifying his left side. Wincing, he tried to reach back to grip the handle of the letter opener, but the movement just made it bob away from his fingertips.

Now came more sirens, the chop of a helicopter, a megaphone bleat. The phone on the New Accounts desk rang and rang. Nate stared at the motionless tableau, all those people, too afraid to rise.

The little girl crawled over to her mother, still unconscious from the kick to her face. Nate crouched above the inert woman, laid two fingers on her neck. Strong pulse.

“She’s okay,” he told the girl. “Your mom’s gonna be fine.”

He stood again, his knees cracking, and announced to no one in particular, “I’m gonna … um, go get some help. Medics. Okay? Everyone okay?”

More stunned silence.

The girl held up her arms. He looked down at her, the familiar pick-me-up gesture twingeing his heart in a place he’d thought had long ago gone brittle and blown away. One of her pigtails had pulled loose, freeing a cloud of hair. The blood on her earlobe had hardened, a black crust. Both cheeks glimmered with tears, but her face remained blank with shock. He crouched and lifted her, grunting against the pain, trying to use his legs instead of his arms. Her wrist brushed the letter opener, sending through him a wave of nausea so intense that he thought he might vomit. But he kept on toward the door, blood warming the back of his shirt.

The security guard had landed faceup, his head corkscrewed unnaturally, white eyes aimed over at them. Stepping into the waiting elevator, Nate turned so the girl was pointed away from the death sprawl. She took his cue, bending her head into the hollow of his neck, the scent of no-tears shampoo bringing him back to Cielle at that age in the bathtub: We don’t splash!

The elevator hummed its descent. His skin tingled-the afterglow of that invincibility he’d felt staring down the hail of bullets. How long had it been since he’d felt like that? He’d cheated something in that room, sucked a last taste of marrow from the bone.

The elevator slowed, the girl’s weight pulling at the crook of his arm. Her face was hot against the side of his neck, and he realized he’d been talking to her, whispering a quiet mantra: “-everything’s gonna be all right everything’s gonna-”

The doors peeled back, exposing the empty lobby. His footsteps grew heavier as he neared the tinted glass of the front wall. Beyond, cop cars, SWAT vans, ambulances, and fire engines crammed the street. Barricades and gun barrels alternated, a pattern of impenetrability. Sniper scopes winked from awnings and balconies.

The girl made a fearful noise and buried herself deeper in his neck. Firming his grip around her with one hand and raising his other painfully overhead, he shoved through the revolving door, staggering out to a reception of countless muzzles and the bright light of day.