Parker dropped him with one shot, moved out to his left, crouched, and made a run straight for the office door. Behind him, the van bumped into one of the crates, pushed it sluggishly a few feet, and stopped.
Al appeared in the office doorway, blinking in the smoky air, pushing his gun out ahead of himself. He and Parker both fired, both missed, and then Parker ran into him in the doorway and Al went crashing back into the customers’ counter. Parker shot him, turned around, and fired twice at the last one, running this way from cover on the opposite side of the garage door. The guy dropped behind a crate and fired back, but there was no reason to worry about him now; the street door was to Parker’s back, with nothing between him and it except Al, sitting dazed on the floor, clutching his stomach and looking at nothing at all.
The entire rear wall of the building was aflame, writhing orange ribbons up the face of the concrete block, fire leaping from bin to bin. There was a growing crackling roar, and a quickly building heat. Parker stared at the six crates in the firelight; the other fifteen had been given back with an anonymous tip, and now these six were gone for good. Forever.
Parker turned away. When he opened the street door a wind shoved it open the rest of the way, pushed against his body, rushed past him to feed the fire. He went out, looked both ways, turned right, started walking.
Two blocks later he heard the sirens, but they came to the fire from a different direction, and didn’t pass him. A block after that he found an empty cab to take him to where he’d parked his car.
Plunder Squad Page 18