cash was going to bury them. It was going to engulf them and choke them to death.
I heard the faint clang of Finlay’s feet on the fire escape. I crawled back out of the office and met him on the metal platform outside.
`They’re back at the car,’ he whispered to me. `How we doing here?’
`Two shotguns out and ready,’ I whispered. `Roscoe and Charlie look OK.’
He glanced in towards the bright light and the faint noises.
`What are they all doing in there?’ he asked me in a whisper.
`Come take a look,’ I said softly. `But hold your breath.’
We crawled in together. Crawled over the floor to the windows. Slowly popped our heads up. Finlay looked down at the fantastic scene below. He stared down for a long time. His eyes flicked all over the place. Ended up staring at me. Holding his breath.
`Christ,’ he whispered.
I nodded him back out. We crawled to the fire escape platform.
`Christ,’ he whispered again. `Can you believe that?’
I shook my head.
`No,’ I whispered back to him. `I can’t believe it.’
`What are we going to do?’ he asked me.
I held my hand up to make Finlay wait on the platform. Crawled back inside and peered down through the window. I looked all over the place. Looked at where Teale was sitting, looked at the office inner door, checked Kliner’s field of fire, guessed where Roscoe and Charlie might end up. I calculated angles and estimated distances. I came
up with one definite conclusion. It was a hell of a problem.
Old man Kliner was the nearest person to us. Roscoe and Charlie were working between him and Teale. Teale was the dangerous one because he was at the far end of the warehouse. When I came out at the top of the inside stairs, they were all four going to look up at me. Kliner was going to raise his shotgun. Teale was going to raise his shotgun. They were both going to shoot at me.
Kliner had a straight shot, sixty degrees upward, like a duck hunter. But Roscoe and Charlie were down there between Teale and me. Teale was going to be shooting on a fairly shallow angle. He was already perched ten feet up the slope. He would be looking for another thirty feet of elevation from a distance of a hundred feet. A shallow angle. Maybe fifteen or twenty degrees. His big Ithaca was designed to cover a much wider spread than fifteen or twenty degrees. His shot was going to catch the women in a murderous spray. His shot was going to kill them. When Teale looked up at me and fired, Roscoe and Charlie were going to die.
I crawled back out of the office and joined Finlay on the fire escape. Bent down and picked up the plastic bottle of gasoline. Handed it to him with the matchbook. Leaned close and told him what to do. We whispered together and he set off slowly back down the long flight of metal steps. I crawled through the office and laid the Desert Eagle carefully on the floor by the inner door. Safety off. Crawled back under the window. Eased my head up and waited.
Three minutes went by. I was staring at the far end of the roller door. Staring and waiting.
Watching the crack between the bottom of the door and the concrete, right at the far end, diagonally opposite me across the whole huge space. I stared and waited. Four minutes had gone by. The tiny figures below toiled on. Roscoe and Charlie stuffing boxes, under Teale’s careful gaze. Kliner clambering his way over the mountainside to kick a new river of dollars down the slope toward the women. Five minutes had gone by. Kliner had put his shotgun down. He was thirty feet away from it, scrabbling in the pile, starting a small avalanche which rolled down to Roscoe’s feet. Six minutes had gone by. Seven.
Then I saw the dark wet stain of gasoline seeping under the roller door. It flowed into a semicircular pool. It kept coming. It reached the bottom of the enormous dune of dollars, ten feet below where Teale was sprawled on the lower slopes. It kept growing outward. A dark stain on the concrete. Kliner was still working, forty feet across the mountain from Teale. Still thirty feet away from his weapon.