Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) (17 page)

The patrol officers were all crouching down, so I did the same, taking a peek at what we were dealing with. The bank was a storefront at street level with two paned-glass windows that looked in and a stone facade that blended with the rest of the Financial District architecture. The glass was reflective, but not totally, and I could see that on the left side was an office that appeared empty. On the right-hand side I could see the teller line that snaked its way up to the counter, completely empty, with a little motion in the window that suggested to me a robber was waiting in ambush on the right side of the entry door to unload on anyone who came in. It was not a bad setup. If there was an alley out back, they probably had a man stationed there as well—if they were smart in addition to being well funded.

How did I know they were well funded? Because Ford Expeditions aren’t cheap, and if they went to the trouble to either buy or steal one for the purposes of this robbery, it suggested they were more than petty bank robbers who were just looking to make a quick buck and vamoose before the cops showed up.

I edged sideways, trying to get a better look in the front window on the right. The haziness of the pane’s reflection made it increasingly difficult to see the deeper I tried to look into the bank. I caught a glimpse of shadows that looked the heads of people, all in a line, with someone standing tall over them. I squinted, using my meta-enhanced eyesight to try and make something of the scene, and when I realized what I was looking at, I felt a little chill run through me.

There was a robber with a high-capacity rifle, probably of the AR or AK variety, and he had his hostages all kneeling in a line in front of him, from tallest to shortest. His barrel was extended to just a few scant inches from the first victim in the line, and the trajectory was perfect for him to fire through and get multiple kills with a single shot. If he was good on the trigger and quick to adjust his aim, he could probably kill them all within three seconds.

“Holy hell,” I muttered to myself. These were no amateurs. They’d planned this, and if they were setting up in-case-of-emergency plans for their bank robberies, it didn’t suggest good or happy things were looming in our future.

I ran at a crouch back to the command center, where I swept into the open truck and caught a dirty look from the officer in charge just as he was bringing his walkie-talkie down from his ear. “What?” he asked me, like he was put upon for even having to lay eyes upon me.

“I’m Sienna Nealon,” I said.

He stared at me dully. “No shit.”

I stared back. “… And you are?”

“Forsythe,” he said, flicking his badge, which was hanging out of his front suit pocket, with a long fingernail. “I’ve got a lot going on here, Nealon, so—”

“I agree,” I said, “so I’ll make this quick. Do you have a band of professional bank robbers working in the five boroughs right now with this MO? We’re talking at least five guys inside, maybe more, with probably AR or AK weapons platforms who regularly use expensive getaway vehicles?”

Forsythe gave me a glare. “We’re not idiots here, Nealon. No, there’s no gang like that working the five boroughs, or active in the entire state—the whole fifty states, as near as we can tell. Trust me, we’re professionals, and we’ve noticed all the same things you have, the abnormalities, the skill of their preparation—”

“Did you notice that they’ve got the hostages lined up tallest to shortest, with a rifle lined up to take them out with three to five shots in the event you decide to breach?” I asked, folding my arms in front of me.

He paused. “That … wasn’t something we observed. How did you—”

“I have superhuman senses,” I interrupted. “Did you get a match on the plate for their vehicle?”

“Are you gonna tell me how to run my scene and investigation?” Forsythe asked, more than irritated now. “I’m just curious so that I can start screaming to HQ now.”

“Have I given you an order yet?” I asked, firing right back at him. “I’m an observer with some experience dealing with a harder-edged, more prepared class of criminal. I guarantee I’ve killed more professional mercs and guns-for-hire than you have, and these guys? That’s what they are. They are professional guns, with probable military experience, carrying out an op. You want to piss all over this scene, mark your territory, go for it. I’m just trying to help, and I fully recognize I’ve got no authority here, so if you’d like, I’ll just see myself out.” I threw a thumb behind me.

Forsythe gave me a simpering smile. “We’re the NYPD, okay? Not the JV team out in Iowa, okay? We’ve got this.”

“You know what they have in Iowa that you don’t?” I asked as I started to step out of the van.

“Pigs and chickens?” Forsythe asked.

“Yep,” I said. “And also, humility enough to realize that they don’t know everything.” I gave him a smartass salute. “Best of luck, numbnuts.”

I started to fly off, rising into the air, fully intent on heading back to my hotel and picking up my suitcase, but something stopped me. And no, it wasn’t guilt, or shame, or some sense of obligation. Those were all overwhelmed by a flaming desire to go back to the command center and turn Forsythe’s head into a piñata for my fists. Sometimes restraint means having the wisdom to fly away before you commit homicide. Dr. Zollers taught me that.

No, the thing that stopped me was almost like a tug on my shoulder, like someone had put an invisible hand on me and dragged me backward. I spun to face the empty air behind me, and threw up my hands to guard against what seemed to me like an invisible perpetrator before I caught a glimpse of the responsible party, still a few blocks away over Wall Street but heading north fast.

“Neat trick,” I said as Gravity Gal—Jamie—lurched to a stop a few feet away. The way she moved over the skyline was weird-looking; sometimes it almost seemed she was walking on uneven, invisible legs over the rooftops, and other time she was zooming like she was flying—like me—just zipping toward a destination with the wind whipping through her hair. “What’s up?”

“You leaving?” Jamie asked as she settled into a hover mode right in front of me. She had some bags visible through the mask’s eyeholes, and her stomach rumbled loud enough that a meta in the Bronx could probably hear it.

“The guy in charge of the scene here is not a great reflection on the NYPD,” I said, pointing down at the command center. “He basically told me that they had this under control, and he didn’t even pat me on the head first.”

Jamie tilted her head slightly. “Is it more or less condescending when they do that? Because I’m honestly not sure.”

“Probably depends on the situation,” I said. “You here to throw a monkey wrench in the NYPD’s plans? Because they are facing some hitters here, guys who might actually be ready for the SWAT—” I looked down to where the SWAT van had been parked a few minutes earlier. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Well, the SWAT van is gone,” I said. “Maybe they decided to breach at the rear of the building.” I flew over the back alley and peered down. She followed behind me, but slower. There were patrol cops down there, but no sign of the SWAT team. I did a quick loop of the block while Jamie watched, but there was no sign of SWAT at all. “That’s just weird. Why would they leave?”

“Coming up through the sewers?” Jamie asked.

“I doubt it,” I said. “In spite of what they show on TV, most businesses don’t have easy sewer access, or tunnels, or anything like that.”

“Could they have dropped their guys and moved the van?” she asked.

“Maybe …” I said, and watched below as Forsythe stalked out of the command center, walkie in hand, suit coat flapping in the wind. I held up a hand to hush Jamie as I listened to him a few hundred feet below.

“Where the hell is SWAT?” he shouted at the nearest patrol officer, who shrugged and pointed to where the van had been a few minutes earlier.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Jamie said.

“Yeah,” I said, frowning. This was weird, no doubt, but I had other priorities at the moment than solving this mystery. “Without SWAT to breach and clear, my guess is they’re gonna have to sit on their hands for a bit, because these robbers have got a pretty sweet setup inside. They try and go in, it’s gonna end with a lot of bodies on the floor.”

“What if we went in?” Jamie asked after a brief pause. She sounded almost sly suggesting it. “Our way, you know.”

“You got a method for moving those hostages out of the line of fire?”

“I could probably do something about that,” and now she sounded really sly. “It’s not difficult.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, all right then. I think we might have just become these peoples’ best hope, cuz …” I looked down at Forsythe, screaming frantically at the cops around him and waving his hands like a madman, “… I’m guessing if we leave this to him, it’s not going to go well.”

Outlining a plan hadn’t taken long at all. Jamie was surprised, though she realized partway through their discussion that she shouldn’t have been. This was Sienna’s job, after all, and whatever else she’d heard about this woman, she was brutally effective at it.

The sun was already heating Jamie up in her costume and it wasn’t yet midday. She drifted closer to the ground, the cops on the pavement below glancing up and trying to wave her off. She got the gist; they thought they had this under control, and while she admired their enthusiasm, everything she’d seen and heard jibed completely with Sienna’s assessment—the cops were fine people, but the commander of this post was some kind of moron.

She stopped about fifteen feet off the ground, drifting against the wall of the building opposite the bank. From here she could see the hints of the layout that Sienna had mentioned. Shade was scarce, and the glare of the overhead sun was making it exceedingly difficult to see through the windows. There were shadows there, but only shadows, and it took her a few minutes to really discern what she was looking at.

She picked out the man with the rifle easily enough, and marked him. He did, indeed, have his weapon trained at the heads of the hostages, she could see that much. She did her thing once she’d picked him out, waving a quick hand and then checking again to make sure she’d done as she thought she’d done. Verify, verify, verify. She couldn’t be too careful here, not with so many lives at stake.

It took her about five minutes to set up, and another five to feel confident that she’d done everything properly. She took a few breaths of the stifling, warm air, and then yanked a patrolman’s cap off his head down the street, causing it to zip right to her fingers. Once she had it, she held it her hands for a few seconds, feeling the cloth bill between her fingers.

Then she raised a hand and propelled it up into the air, using channels along the way to send it arcing over the block in front of her.

Go time
, she thought, and then she activated all the gravity channels she’d spent the last ten minutes setting up and then verifying. The next sound she heard was breaking glass, followed by gunfire and screams.

I was hovering in the back alley when the
thump!
of a cop’s hat landing on the roof next to me caught my attention. I let out a long breath, then drew another, dropped several stories to the ground, and ripped the steel alley door off the back of the bank.

Something exploded behind the door, and I ducked away as a claymore mine peppered the wall opposite the door with steel ball bearings. A cloud of dust filled the air, and as soon as the explosion was finished I ignored the ringing in my ears and jumped through the half-destroyed doorframe.

Normally, when I’m breaching and clearing, I have a gun. In this case, though, I didn’t, and since I was presently being slightly rebellious in my following of the law, I just had a finger pointed in case I needed Gavrikov to swiftly fire a blast of superheated plasma the size of a bullet. It was a little more effective (read:
lethal
) than a handgun, but I wasn’t aiming to kill anyone here.

I just wanted to put these dogs down so the police could question them and find out I was right and Forsythe was wrong, wrong, wrong. Sometimes happiness and results go hand in hand.

The sound of breaking glass echoed through the hallway in front of me as I snaked through a long corridor. I passed a break room on my left then what I suspected was a vault on my right as I hurried ahead to a blind corner. I paused when I heard footsteps over the ringing in my ears. They stopped as the sound of gunfire blasted hard from the lobby of the bank, and I paused, hoping like hell that Jamie had done her thing.

There was someone right past this corner, probably an armed someone who had come to check on the alarm—the explosive—on the back door. I darted low and slid on my knees, guessing that whoever was waiting for me was momentarily distracted by the hubbub in the bank.

I came around the corner at a glide, using my flight powers to lift me a centimeter off the ground as I slipped past under the barrel of a rifle. The wielder of the weapon had made a rookie mistake; his gun was pointed like he was about to corner, but his eyes were facing the opposite direction.

Whoops.

I grabbed the barrel at meta speed and yanked, ripping it right out of the guy’s grasp. It caught, bound to his shoulders and body by a sling, and ripped him forward, taking him off balance. I raised a forearm and altered my course to get back to my feet, leaping up to his height and clotheslining him with a strong forearm. His legs flew from beneath him, and he made a gagging sound from the impact at his throat. I slammed him hard into the ground, his tactical helmet protecting his skull from splitting open on the tile.

I flicked out the pin holding the AR-15 assembly together, and then twisted the whole damned thing so that the rifle would never work again. Then I grabbed the guy’s pistol out of his holster as he was reaching for it, eyes glazed over behind his bulletproof visor, snapped up the Plexiglas and punched him in the face before I threw him back around the corner without a lot of ceremony. I heard him hit the concrete wall and slide, unconscious, to the ground.