Day of Reckoning

by John Katzenbach

  The younger man nodded and both laughed.

  “Just part a growin’ old fast,” grinned the older man.

  He bounced the truck to a halt in front of the bank.

  “Okay, here we go, I’ll handle the scattergun—”

  “Uh, Mr. Howard, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to handle the shotgun.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Well, I just never held that kind of money before, and it really makes me nervous. I think I’d rather just hold the gun.”

  The older man laughed. “No big deal. But next time, kid, you gotta lift those bags, not me.”

  The younger nodded, grinned, and chambered a round in the shotgun. Then he unlatched the strap holding his revolver in place.

  “I don’t usually bother with all that procedure,” said the older man. “All we do is grab the sacks, sling ’em on the handtruck, walk ’em through the door and into the vault, sign a paper, and we’re out of here.”

  “Jeez, Mr. Howard, in the training course they were real specific about procedures.”

  “Tell you what, kid. Just for you, this time we’ll do it exactly like the book says. Then you’ll see this is a milk run. No big deals, huh? Now, the guard inside is Ted Andrews. Former Frisco cop who took one in the leg a dozen years ago. I don’t know how you feel about blacks, but he’s an old buddy, so you be real polite.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You get him to tell you some stories sometime. Learn a lot about being a cop. What it takes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The older man unstrapped his sidearm.

  “All right.” He smiled. “By the book.”

  He hesitated, first searching down the street through the front window, then rotating the exterior mirror to look behind the truck.

  “Left side clear.”

  “Right side clear.”

  “I’m out. You cover.”

  “Right.”

  The older man got out of the truck and walked to the passenger side.

  “I’m clear. I’ll cover.”

  “Coming out.”

  The younger man exited the truck, holding the shotgun ready.

  “Going to the rear,” said the older man.

  “You’re covered. I see the bank guard heading this way.”

  “Doors open. I’ve got the money. We’re on the handtruck.”

  “Still covered. Let’s go, sir.”

  “Okay, son, here we go.”

  The older man, one hand on his revolver, the other pushing the small handtruck with three satchels of money, maneuvered through the first bank door. He looked up and started to wave to his friend, the guard inside, when he saw a small black man inside the bank moving toward him. He did not think, he did not compute, he merely allowed his instincts to grasp hold of him, and he shouted, “Maybe trouble!”

  The younger guard wheeled swiftly, spotting another black man emerge from around the corner of the bank and stand facing directly at him in a spot barely twenty feet away. This second man paused, reaching for something.

  Is this happening? the younger guard asked himself suddenly. But his voice shouted, “Alert! You! Freeze!”

  The black man in the street did not obey the command. Instead, the young guard saw him lift a shotgun from beneath a raincoat and point it at him.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thought. Then he screamed, “Gun!” as the air ripped with the sound of the weapon firing. He fired his own gun as he dove behind the truck. But he was not fast enough to avoid most of the blast from Kwanzi’s weapon, which tore into his thigh. He screamed, “I’m hit, I’m hit! Medic! Medic! Ohmigod! Mr. Howard! Help me! Medic!”

  The older guard did not turn to look, instead trying to push the handtruck all the way into the bank. He saw a pistol in the hands of the black man who faced him, and he drew his own weapon. He got off one shot before he heard the firing noises, and it was as if a great hand slapped him in the chest and he fell backward amidst the shattered glass of the bank’s front door. He was only vaguely aware that something terrible had happened to him, and he wondered why he was having so much trouble breathing. He could not connect this odd thought with the blood he saw washing over the front of his shirt.

  Inside the bank, Sundiata turned with his weapon toward the tellers, searching for the bank guard. Everything was noise and panic.

  At one counter, Emily swung a shotgun from beneath her coat. It caught on her pocket and she almost dropped it. She started screaming, “Freeze! Freeze! No one move!” She too started searching for the bank guard. Bill, waving his handgun at the bank officers, was screaming, “No one move! No one move!”

  No one obeyed their commands. People were jumping every direction, behind tables and chairs, counters, anything. Some were crawling into corners. The small bank branch filled with panicked shouting.

  The bank guard had leaped behind a desk in the first second. He had removed his weapon and, taking a deep breath, he rose, using the desk as cover, two hands gripping his gun. From a distance of less than ten feet, he fired four quick shots into Sundiata, who spun like a child’s toy and collapsed on the floor.

  The people inside the bank started screaming then, their terror mingling with a sudden cacophonous blare from the bank’s alarm system. To the members of the brigade inside the bank, the raucous sound seemed to scatter their thoughts and waste their plans.

  Emily, mouth agape, staring at Sundiata’s body, which had landed virtually at her feet, remembered the guard was her responsibility. She wheeled toward his hiding place and fired a blast from the shotgun. It knocked her backward and smashed through the windows above where he crouched. He fired his last two shots at her, then ducked down, frantically trying to reload his weapon. He had to pry loose spare cartridges from his belt. He had always thought he carried them more for decoration than anything else, and his fingers fumbled with the task. Hearing a noise a few feet away, he glanced up. A striking, tall woman was holding a .45 at him. She was totally pale.

  “Pig,” she said. She fired the gun. The bullet exploded into the desk next to his head, singeing his ear, throwing wood slivers into his face. The guard was thrown back, as if struck, suddenly deafened by the bullet.

  Olivia screamed some incomprehensible curse, aimed, and pulled the trigger again.

  The gun jammed.

  She tugged on the trigger frantically, her voice wailing.

  The guard thrust cartridges into his revolver, snapped the cylinder shut, and raised the weapon at the defenseless Olivia. He aimed carefully, surprised in that instant to be alive, to have a chance, to be able to fight back.

  He did not see Emily across the bank vestibule lift her shotgun and, without aiming, fire a second blast, which caught the guard like a wrestler by the head and shoulders and threw him aside, tossing his body across a desktop where he remained, twisted and broken, killed instantly.

  Olivia threw her pistol down and seized the guard’s revolver. She turned to look for Emily, thinking: Not like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all.

  Across the street, Duncan was stymied by horror.

  He had seen Kwanzi come around the corner by the bank entrance just exactly according to plan, and he had dutifully put the van in gear. But he had traveled less than a dozen yards before the first blast from a shotgun had sliced away whatever normalcy there was on the hot afternoon. He had slammed on the brakes, screeching, as he saw the young armored-car guard fire his own weapon and dive to the side. He could not see inside the bank; the glare from the street seemed to suddenly intensify, erasing any possible vision.

  He turned and saw Kwanzi pitched by the blast against a sandy-colored building wall. As Duncan watched, Kwanzi slid down into a sitting position, leaving a great smear of blood behind.

  Duncan trie
d to make a sound, but couldn’t.

  He turned his eyes away and saw a window on the bank explode in shattered fragments. He heard popping sounds from within. The noise of gunfire seemed about to crush him.

  For an instant he gripped the weapon in his own belt, unaware of thoughts, commands, responsibilities. He threw open the van door and started to clamber out.

  Suddenly an alarm from within the bank started to ring.

  He hesitated, as if frozen by the horrifying sound.

  Then he became aware of first one, then another, and another distant noise, growing louder, growing closer.

  Oh, God, he thought. Sirens.

  They’re coming. They’re coming.

  He thought of Olivia and the others inside the bank, imagining the gunfire tearing into their bodies. He thought of Megan waiting a few blocks away. She’s alone, he thought. She’s all alone.

  He paused, half in, half out of the truck, his weapon still in his right hand, on the top of the steering wheel.

  He did not know what to do.

  Olivia screamed, “Let’s go! Let’s go! It’s over!”

  She heard the sirens approaching, and crossed the bank floor in a single leap. Emily was standing motionless, staring at the body of the bank guard. Olivia grabbed Emily by the arm. “We’re leaving,” she said. “Right now!”

  “Where’s Bill?”

  Olivia had no idea.

  “He’s coming! Come on! Now!”

  “What happened?” Emily asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nothing to understand,” Olivia said. “It’s over.”

  She dragged Emily for a few feet, steering her toward the exit, until the other woman’s sense of self-preservation took over and she started to run alongside. Both could hear police cars getting closer.

  They raced through the first set of bank doors and Emily looked down at the body of the older guard, and came to an abrupt halt.

  “Ohmigod!”

  She thrust her hand up to her face.

  “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” yelled Olivia, seizing her arm again. “We must get out now! Come on! Come on!”

  She threw Emily over the body and out onto the street. Emily fell to the sidewalk and saw Kwanzi’s body. “No,” she moaned. “Not him, too.”

  “Stop it!” Olivia cried. “Don’t look! Just save yourself!”

  She lifted Emily to her feet effortlessly. She could feel every muscle in her body tense, as if her entire insides were pulled tight. I must get us free, she thought. We will be able to start over.

  “Come on, now—time to leave. It’ll be okay.”

  Olivia dragged Emily into the street. She saw the van a block and a half away, Duncan poised half in, half out. For an instant their eyes met. Where are you? What are you doing? You’re supposed to be here! Olivia screamed to herself. Come on, Duncan! Save us!

  Olivia started to wave to Duncan, but Emily tripped and stumbled forward, and Olivia reached down with both hands.

  She looked up at Duncan again. Here! she cried to herself.

  The gutless creep, she thought. The coward! The word filled her with anger.

  She lifted Emily up again and said, “We’ve got to run. Come on, we can make it. We can get away. It’s not far.”

  Olivia had just started to haul Emily toward Duncan, when the first police cruiser, all four tires complaining, skidded around the corner, shuddering to a halt a dozen yards behind them. Olivia raised the gun she’d taken from the dead guard and fired at the shape of a police officer as the cop flung himself out of the car, taking cover. Then another cruiser raced into her view, this time blocking her route to Duncan and the van. A third car arrived, then a fourth. She turned back toward the bank, still trying to hold on to Emily. “Come on!” she screamed to her lover. “If we get inside, we can take hostages!” It was not until that moment that she saw the wounded young armored truck guard. He had crawled around the front of the truck, leaving a dirty trail of blood. She fired toward his face, seeing him duck, seeing the bullet smash into a headlight, exploding glass. He had his shotgun pointed toward them.

  “No!” Olivia screamed.

  Emily turned and lifted her own weapon.

  “No!” Olivia screamed again.

  The young guard fired.

  “No!” she said a third time.

  The blast ripped Emily from her grasp.

  Olivia cried out, a great shout of anguish, suddenly alone, trying to catch her lover and hold her against the force that had seized her and flung her backward.

  She turned and looked down at the street. Emily, gasping, had been thrown down on her back. Her chest was gone, replaced by a great bloody mass of crushed bone and torn flesh. She looked up at Olivia quizzically, as if puzzling some unfathomable question, expecting Olivia to answer her confidently.

  Then she died.

  Olivia screamed “No! No! No!” and fell to her knees at Emily’s side. She dropped her weapon and cradled the other woman’s head in her arms. “No!” she cried over and over, pitching her head back like some despairing animal. Rage suddenly suffused her, the first concrete thought that had penetrated her mind in what seemed to her to be hours: Kill them! Kill them all!

  She reached for her gun.

  Then she heard a voice: “Don’t do it!”

  She turned and stared into the dark barrel of a policeman’s revolver.

  A guttural cry fled from her as she reached back down for the tattered remains of Emily. She lifted her head once, to try to spot Duncan and curse him, but she could not see past the ring of po­licemen that surrounded her. So instead, she closed her eyes and gave in to the blackness, agony, despair, and the first few slivers of unbridled hatred that penetrated her heart.

  Duncan watched all this happen.

  Then he slid from the van and put the gun beneath his shirt.

  He fought off the overwhelming desire to run.

  Walk. No one has seen me. Walk. No one knows. Walk, damn you. Walk!

  He went backward down the street, finally, at the end of the block, turning and pacing swiftly away. He ducked between a pair of buildings and started to jog. He could hear his breath rasping in and out through his open mouth, a sound that increased as his panic rooted and took hold. Finally he ran, down an alley, heart pounding, as fast as he could, expecting every second to hear the deep roar of a police cruiser accelerating behind him.

  Bill Lewis, too, watched what had happened from the relative safety of the bank office.

  He had seen Olivia seize Emily and drag her out.

  We don’t have the money, he had thought. We don’t have any­thing. He had looked around at the tellers and bank personnel, the people spread about, arms lifted in panic and surrender, others hiding their heads, as if they could hide from a bullet.

  What’s happened? he wondered almost leisurely.

  Everything’s wrong.

  He had taken three steps toward the front when he saw the first police cruiser shudder to a stop in the middle of the street.

  No, he thought. Not that way.

  He retreated, away from the sudden gunfire in the street.

  I’ve got to get out. Out! Out!

  Bill turned and grabbed a teller by the arm, thrusting his pistol up under her chin. He realized that despite all the shooting, he had not fired his own weapon. He wondered, curious, whether that would somehow make a difference.

  “Give me the money!” he screamed. He was surprised to hear his own voice, to realize that he was actually doing something other than sitting stunned by events. He let adrenalin-instinct take over. He dropped the teller’s arm and started shoving handfuls of money beneath his shirt.

  “Out!” he screamed at her. “Back door! Get me out!”

  She pointed and he drag
ged her toward the rear.

  He saw a door with a heavy firebar across it and the sign: EMER­GENCY EXIT.

  Well, this sure as hell’s an emergency, he thought. He hit the door and it flung open, activating yet another alarm that joined with the other noises. He dropped the teller, pushing her savagely away, and raced into a back alleyway. He could hear more shots from the front.

  He ran away, his first thought only of putting as much distance, as quickly as possible, between himself and the sound of those shots.

  Then he realized: They’re all dead.

  For a fleeting moment he thought of his wife and of Olivia and it almost made him stop in the alleyway. He felt a great rush of choking emotion fill his gorge. He breathed in heavily, as if by gulping down air he could restore his reason, reorder the world. He calmed. He saw the alleyway was empty. He thought: There’s too much con­fusion here. You can make it. Escape!

  Run, he told himself. Run. Run!

  Megan could hear the sound of sirens, and tears raced down her face. Seconds earlier, she had heard the distant noise of gunfire. It had been an odd, unfamiliar sound that had taken her a few moments to process and comprehend. Then, as it had continued, it had plunged her into despair.

  I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

  It’s over before we even had a chance to start.

  Why did I let him? Why did I allow it?

  She could not control her sobs.

  He’s dead. I know it, he’s dead.

  She wrapped her arms around herself as tightly as she could, rocking back and forth in agony in the driver’s seat. I want to go home, she thought. Oh, my poor little baby, I’m sorry. I let him rob you of a father before you even knew him. Oh, God, I hurt so much.

  She felt violently sick and managed to push open the door and tumble from the van. She leaned against the side of a building and tried to control herself.