The Storm Maker Read Online Free PDF Page A

asked.
           “Maybe
they ran out the back?” another wondered.
           “We
have three cars there,” the chief said. He walked to his car, took out his
radio speaker and said, “Boys in the back, did anyone come out of that window?”
           “Nobody,”
a policeman replied.
           “That
is strange,” the chief said, “They have holed themselves up in the vault? But
why?”
           “Let’s
rush them,” someone suggested.
           “Alright,”
the chief said, “now that the hostages are safe, just keep them here till we
verify their identities and get their statements. Now let us get those
bastards.”
           A
minute later, twelve policemen rushed inside the bank. Their boots crunched the
broken glass as they entered the lobby and saw two dead bodies on the floor.
Then they slowly walked over to the back office where there was a big, steel
vault door on the left. It was closed, but not locked and they pushed it open
and then yelled for the robbers to surrender. They got no reply. They repeated
their warnings a few times then charged inside with their fingers on the
triggers. The vault was empty. Empty of money, empty of men.
           “Take
a look chief,” one of them yelled for the police chief who was in the bank
lobby examining the dead bodies.
           “Send
them to the morgue,” the chief said to a policeman next to him. “I am going
inside the vault.” He drew his pistol and walked in the vault and to his
amazement there was only his police force there, but no money and no robbers.
           “Do
you think they are hiding in this building?” the chief asked. “Second or third
floors?”
           “Unlikely,
the bank personnel said that those doors were locked and they haven’t been
broken,” one policeman replied. “But we will check anyhow.”
           The
police spent the next fifteen minutes searching room by room on the second and
third floors but they found nobody and told as much to the chief who was still
in the vault. He started tapping the floor with his feet as he walked all over
the vault.
           “I
doubt they went underground,” someone said. “Banks never build their branches
on the top of sewer or utility pipes for this very reason.”
           “They
have to have gone somewhere,” the chief scoffed. “They did not disappear in the
thin air.” Suddenly he realized that he had tapped a hollow tile. He ordered
that tile to be dug out along with a few others nearby. His hunch was proven
right when they discovered a tunnel—small but spacious enough for a man to walk
through.
           From
there on the Ironbridge town police quickly put two and two together and
discovered the details of the whole operation. The makeshift tunnel that the
bank robbers had dug went under the road behind the bank, under the next
building and came out one block over from the bank. The robbers had connected
the tunnel to a big sewer pipe on that road. The residents and storeowners
nearby informed the police that they had heard breaking noises every now and
then but had attributed it to the construction work happening nearby two blocks
to the south. The police estimated that it must have taken the robbers four to
six days to build this tunnel. They had also carried the bodies of the two dead
robbers back with them. The bank hostages could not provide any more
information than that the robbers looked foreign. Realizing the competence and
the capabilities of these bank robbers, the Ironbridge police chief decided to
kick the case over to the House of Police, the government department that
oversaw all the town police in the Starfire Nation. That House appointed its
own police teams to solve crime that was beyond a town police’s resources and
capabilities.
    * * *
           Somebody
else had also decided to contact the House of Police over this bank robbery.
Mr. Warwyk was a man in his early sixties, the