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“Do you hear that?” Stone asked.

Robie nodded.

Stone said, “Sounds like someone sawing.”

“And I don’t think they’re cutting into the vault. Not with a hand saw.”

“And if they were going to rob the vault they wouldn’t have closed it.”

Robie added, “And the blank credit cards are in cardboard boxes. You don’t need a saw to open cardboard.”

“Which means they are trying to go from here to somewhere else,” reasoned Stone. “And I wonder where that ‘somewhere else’ could be.”

CHAPTER 3

Stone looked at Robie. “Know the configuration of this mall well?”

“Not really, no.”

“I do. I’ve been coming to this bank for years. And while I don’t really have the financial means to shop at the stores here, I have walked around this mall many times.”

“So what’s in the vicinity?” asked Robie. “What’s the possible target?”

“There’s a jewelry store on the floor above. A fur shop next to it.”

“Jewels are easier to get away with than furs. But aren’t the stores open now?”

“The fur shop is closed on Saturdays. The jewelry shop closes at two today.”

“So it could be either one,” said Robie. He looked over at the door. “You think they plan to kill us?”

“I don’t want to wait to find out,” replied Stone. He peered closely at Robie. “You like your job?”

Robie stared back at him. “My job?”

“When were you assigned it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really? I thought it was obvious.”

“What do you mean?”

“You just picked today to do some banking?”

“Saturday is errand day.”

“But you claimed you’d never been here before.”

“No, I said I didn’t know the configuration of the mall.”

Stone smiled. “My mistake.”

But in that look it seemed that Robie could sense that he was the one who had made the mistake.

Stone looked away when the door to the room opened. It was Chase.

He said, “Just to reiterate, if you cause no trouble, you will not be harmed. The reverse of that is also true.” He glanced over at Robie and Stone when he said this. Then he looked at the bank manager. “You, come with me.”

The color drained from the manager’s face. “But I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve just been sitting here.”

“Now.” Chase pointed his pistol and the manager hastily rose to his feet. “And just remember, I don’t need a reason to kill you,” added Chase. He cut him loose from the woman he was tethered to, put his arm around the man’s shoulders, and propelled him out of the room. The door shut and locked behind them.

Robie said, “What do you think that was about?”

Stone shrugged. “Possibly he’s recruiting an informant. Or else the man has some more security codes that they need.”

“If they want him to be an informant I think he’ll finger us pretty quickly. The head guy is suspicious of us already.”

“Which means we probably should act with some urgency.”

Stone looked over at the fax and communications port.

“Got a way to turn that into a working phone?” asked Robie.

“Actually, I might,” replied Stone cryptically.

He took the pitcher of water and poured it into the slots of the electrical outlet. There was a loud pop, a flash of electrical current, the smell of smoke, and the lights went out.

There were screams and a few seconds later the door burst open.

Stone had by then set down the pitcher of water and stepped far away from the outlet.

A flashlight beam cut across them.

“What the hell is going on?” barked a voice. It was Chase.

Stone called out. “We don’t know. The lights just went out.”

Robie added, “And we smell smoke. There might be a fire. Did you guys hit something out there?”

They heard Chase mutter, “Shit.” Then he said, “Out this way, now. Follow the beam of my light.”

They did so and were soon back in the main bank area. It was dark out here as well. Stone couldn’t tell if the lights were still on outside in the mall or not.

One of the other men sidled up to Chase and whispered, “This is not good. We tried the circuit breaker but something got fried. Maybe we cut a line with the saw.”

“The plan goes on. We have portable work lights. Have somebody check out the other room. The last thing we need is the fire department showing up. Then I want them back in there as fast as possible.”

“But it’s going to take longer now.”

“We have a time reserve built in. Just do it.”

The other man said something else and Chase turned back to him.

While the pair had been speaking Stone and Robie had drawn close enough to hear enough of this to understand that the gunmen were on a tight timetable.

And Stone had been able to see enough of the room through the sweeps of the flashlight to become reoriented to the outline of the space. Now that he was out of the other room, he had to execute the plan that had started with him pouring water into the electrical outlet.

While Chase and the other man were still talking, he and Robie felt their way along the edge of the wall. Stone found what he was looking for, did a quick search entirely by feel until his hand closed around something, and then placed that object in his pocket. Then he edged back along the wall to where he had been originally. A second later the flashlight beam hit him in the face.

Chase drew closer to Stone and said, “I really hope you’re not trying something.”

“All I’m trying to do is stay alive, along with everyone else here.”

“Get back in the room, all of you,” Chase snapped.

They filed back into the room and the door was shut and locked behind them once more.

They sat in the darkness. Stone had turned away from the others and was working away on something he held in his hand.

“Calling the cops?” whispered Robie. He had seen that the thing Stone had taken was his phone from the basket in the other room.

Stone shook his head. He was doing his best to block the small amount of light coming from the phone screen so that the other hostages would not see it.

“A friend,” he said in a bare whisper.

“And this friend is better than the cops?”

“We’ll find out,” replied Stone. “But I have great confidence in my friends.”

Stone punched in the number and spoke quietly into the phone when it was answered. When he was done the person on the other end said simply, “On it.”

Stone put the phone away in his pocket.

Robie asked, “How could you tell which was your phone in there?”

“By feel. It was the smallest. Everyone else, including you, has one of those large-screen smartphones. I’m a little more old-fashioned. My phone is simply, well, a phone.”

“Who did you call?”

“A friend, like I said.”

“And what will this friend do?”

“Call my other friends.”

“You have a lot of friends?” asked Robie.

“Not a lot. But the ones I do have are quite capable. We’ve actually done some pretty extraordinary things together, my little club and I.”

“Club?”

“Yes. Didn’t I say? We’re known as the Camel Club.”

He took a moment to study Robie in the bare light of his phone.

“I’m surprised your briefing didn’t include that,” said Stone.

CHAPTER 4

Annabelle Conroy, tall, lean, and auburn-haired, was the newest, youngest, and only female member of the Camel Club. She was also a first-class con artist, though she had mostly retired from the field.

Mostly.

She had already reached all the other members, except for one.

Secret Service Agent Alex Ford had not answered his phone.

Reuben Rhodes, Caleb Shaw, and Harry Finn were already on their way to the mall in Georgetown.

Ten minutes later Annabelle was standing outside of the mall entrance waiting for them to arrive.

Reuben’s battered pickup truck screeched to a halt and he called out the window to her, “Any developments?”

She shook her head. Reuben eyed a car pulling out of a parking space on the street while a late-model Porsche convertible waited to pull in. Available parking spaces on the streets in Georgetown were unheard of and tended to be fiercely fought over.

Reuben timed it just right and slid into the parking spot before the Porsche could beat him there. The young man and his friend in the sports car immediately began yelling and cursing at him. The passenger jumped out and approached the truck. He was lean and buff and his hair was impressively tousled. He was dressed like a movie star trying to look hip. Everything he wore was expensive but tried desperately not to seem so.

With one look at him all Reuben wanted to do was knock him right into the waters of the nearby Potomac.

The guy stuck his face through the truck’s open window. “You took our space, asshole. Now move this pile of shit, old man.”

Reuben turned off his truck and stepped from the cab. At nearly six foot five and two hundred and seventy pounds he had the enormous size and breadth of shoulder of an NFL lineman. If he had had money he would have bought his clothes at the Big and Tall Men’s Shop, with the emphasis on big and tall.

He looked down at the far smaller young man, who had taken several steps backward when Reuben stepped from his truck. With a thick beard shot with gray and wild, tangled hair, Reuben looked more than a little unstable. And he could act crazy with the best of them.