From the voice, it was the leader himself climbing in over the passenger seat, coming this way. Parker waited, his left hand on Renard’s right arm, his right hand holding the gun.
“What’s the problem?”
Parker raised himself, extending the revolver out at arm’s length across the top of the crates to be sure the other guy saw it in the poor light in here. Barely above a whisper, he said, “The problem is, you’re dead if you open your mouth.”
The guy was a professional: heavy-set, medium height, wearing a dark zippered jacket and dark shirt. He was about forty, with a heavy jawline and eyes that didn’t waste time with surprise. He looked at Parker and said, “So there you are. You come along after all.”
Parker said, “Call to someone to come drive the truck forward. Say it’s so you can open the rear doors.”
“And if I tell you to go to hell?”
“You’ll go there first. Call to Harry.”
The guy looked puzzled. “Harry? Why?”
“Because it’s a name I know.”
The puzzlement lasted a few more seconds, and then he nodded and said, “Yeah, I see. I call a name that doesn’t match anybody out there, then they know there’s something up. I didn’t think of that, but it’s a good one.” He turned his head away and yelled, “Harry!” The sound was huge in the confined space back here, and Renard winced from it as though he’d been slapped on the forehead.
From outside a muffled voice called back, “What?”
“Come drive this truck forward a little, so we can open these doors!”
“Right!”
Parker whispered, “Don’t get yourself killed.”
The guy gave him a flat look. “Not me,” he said. “You.”
His voice trembling, Renard said, “I’m in the middle. I don’t want any of this.”
They both ignored him. They kept watching one another’s eyes, and a minute later Harry climbed into the driver’s seat and called back, “You need any help back there, Al?”
Al was facing the rear of the truck. Without turning, without moving his eyes from Parker’s, he called, “No, everything’s fine. Just move the truck.”
They all waited, Renard trembling, crouched back against the side wall like a reluctant referee between the other two. Harry started the engine, and the truck lunged forward, then moved more slowly, then stopped. “That okay?”
Parker could hear a whirring sound. The garage door. Going up or down?
Al called, “Yeah, that’s fine. Go on back out front.” He was still watching Parker, and he seemed to be smiling a little.
Parker fumbled behind himself for the inside latch, found it, pressed down, shoved backward. With a grinding sound, both doors popped open, and Parker jumped backward to the concrete, as Al ducked behind the crates, shouting, “He’s going out the back! Get him!”
The bottom of the garage door was a foot from the floor, and still going down. Parker fired at a moving figure to his right, wasted a shot at the interior of the truck, and leaped to his left. Coming around the corner of the truck, he found an open-mouthed Harry just climbing out. Parker fired, Harry fell on the body of Ed Mackey, and Parker jumped over the both of them, ran around the front of the truck, and found Al and two others blocking the only exit, through the office. Renard wasn’t in sight, but he didn’t matter anyway.
Two shots were fired at him, but Parker had ducked back against the front of the truck again. He spun back, swung around the open driver’s side door, put a foot in the middle of Harry’s back, and stepped into the seat behind the wheel. Harry had left the engine running; Parker shifted into drive, accelerated to the far end of the long room, slammed on the brakes to stop just before running into the bench saw, shifted into reverse, put the accelerator on the floor, and twisted around in the seat to watch the garage door rushing this way, seen through the open rear doors. Renard, still in the back of the van, was screaming and waving his arms the other side of the crates, but Parker ignored him.
Parker was braced, one arm around the seat, the other hand on the steering wheel for guidance, both feet pressed flat on the floor, but it was still a jolt when the van crashed into the metal door. Renard was flung off his feet into the door, and the six crates slid rasping after him, thumping indiscriminately into Renard and the door.
The corrugated metal had bent, but it hadn’t broken. Parker shifted into drive again, and the van spurted forward, the crates and Renard spilling out onto the concrete in its wake.
The garage door wasn’t going to give. And now that the crates were all over the place back there it was impossible to get another clear run at it anyway. And the open floor area was too narrow to turn the truck around in. Parker reached the far end, skidded to a stop an inch from the bench saw again, shifted into park, and looked back through the truck to see the three men running this way. He fired twice, hit nobody, and they all scattered.
They had the front, with the only way out. This was a solid concrete block wall back here, extending twenty- five feet up to the ceiling. There were lumber bins all the way up on both sides, with ladders and walkways. But he wasn’t going up; he wasn’t about to tree himself.
Directly ahead of him through the windshield was the bench saw, and to the left of it three cardboard boxes full of the bits and pieces of wood left over from sawing. Parker put his gun away under his jacket, opened the truck’s glove compartment, and found four pieces of paper in it: the vehicle registration, a Master Charge receipt for a gas purchase, and two rental forms on flimsy pink onionskin. He rolled the papers into a tube, lit one end, bent it down to get the flame going good, and then rolled the left window down and tossed the burning paper into the nearest cardboard box.
“Hey, you!”
