The Chase by Clive Cussler Page A

Colt.
    â€œMake no resistance, and walk slowly behind the counter!” Ruskin ordered as he wrapped his gun in a battered, old heavy woolen scarf with burn holes in it. He quickly moved behind the counter before the clerks in their cages became alert and could make a grab for the shotguns at their feet. Never expecting their bank to be robbed, they hesitated in confusion.
    â€œDon’t even think about going for your guns!” Ruskin snapped. “Lay flat on the floor or you’ll get a bullet in your brain.” He motioned his cane at the frightened woman at the counter. “Come around the counter and lay down on the floor with the tellers and you won’t get hurt,” he said in a cold tone. Then he motioned the gun at Cardoza’s secretary. “You, too! Down on the floor!”
    When all were lying on the highly polished mahogany floor facedown, he rapped on Cardoza’s door. Unable to distinguish voices outside his office, the bank’s manager was not aware of the macabre event unfolding within his bank. He waited out of habit for his secretary to enter, but she did not appear. Finally, irritated at being interrupted, he stepped from his desk and opened the door. It took him a full ten seconds to comprehend what was happening. He stared at Ruskin and the gun in his hand.
    â€œWhat is the meaning of this?” he demanded. Then he saw the people lying on the floor and looked back at Ruskin in utter confusion. “I don’t understand. What is going on?”
    â€œThe first bank robbery of Salt Lake City,” said Ruskin, as if amused.
    Cardoza did not move. He was frozen in shock. “You’re a director of a respectable New York bank. Why are you doing this? It makes no sense. What do you hope to gain by it?”
    â€œI have my motives,” Ruskin answered, his voice cold and toneless. “I want you to make out a bank draft for four hundred seventy-five thousand dollars.”
    Cardoza stared at him as if he was crazy. “A bank draft to whom?”
    â€œEliah Ruskin, who else?” answered Ruskin. “And be quick about it.”
    Mired in confusion, Cardoza pulled open a drawer, retrieved a book containing bank drafts, and hurriedly scribbled out one for the amount Ruskin demanded. When finished, he passed it across the desk to Ruskin, who slipped it into his breast pocket.
    â€œNow, down on the floor with the others.”
    As if in the throes of a nightmare, Cardoza slowly lowered himself onto the floor next to his trembling secretary.
    â€œNow, then, none of you move, or even twitch, until I tell you to.”
    Without saying more, Ruskin walked inside the vault and began stuffing the bank’s currency into leather money sacks he’d seen earlier stacked on a shelf inside the huge five-ton door. He filled two of them, estimating the take at roughly two hundred thirty thousand dollars in larger denominations, none under ten dollars. He had planned well. From inside banking information, he knew that the Salt Lake Bank & Trust had received a large shipment of currency issued from the Continental & Commercial National Bank of Chicago for their reserves. The suitcase with his own money he left on another shelf of the vault.
    Laying aside the sacks, he closed the vault door. It swung shut as easily as a door on a cupboard. Then he turned the bog wheel that activated the inside latches and set the timer for nine o’clock the next morning.
    Unhurriedly, as if he was strolling through a park, he stepped behind the counter and ruthlessly shot the people lying on the floor in the back of the head. The muffled shots came so quickly, none had time to know what was happening and cry out. Then he raised the bank’s window shades, so people passing on the sidewalk could see that the vault was shut and would assume the bank was closed. The bodies were conveniently out of sight behind the counter.
    Ruskin waited until the sidewalk was clear of foot