The Night Crew

John Sandford

The Night Crew

Chapter 1

The corner of Gayley and Le Conte, at the edge of the campus:

Frat boys cruised in their impeccably clean racing-green Miatas and cherry-red Camaro ragtops, with their impeccably blonde dates, all square shoulders, frothy dresses and big white teeth.

Two ski

At the Shell station, a tanker truck pumped Premium down a hole in the concrete pad, under the eye of a big-bellied driver.

And above them all, a quarter-million miles out, a buttery new moon smiled down as it slid toward the Pacific.

The Bee was impatient, checking her watch, bouncing on her toes. She was waiting at the corner, a Jansport backpack at her feet. Her face was a pale crescent in the headlights of passing cars, in the Los Angeles never-dark.

The Shell tanker driver stood in a puddle of gasoline fumes, chewed a toothpick and watched her in a casual, looking-at-women way. The Bee was dressed by Banana Republic, in khaki wash pants, a T-shirt with a queen bee on the chest, a photographer's vest with fifteen pockets, hiking boots and a preppy black-silk ski mask rolled up and worn as a watch cap.

When she saw the truck with the dish on the roof, she pulled the mask down over her face, picked up the backpack, and stepped out to the curb. The Bee had small opaque-green eyes, like turquoise thumbtacks on the black mask.

A

Creek grunted and eased the truck to the curb. A

'You're late,' the Bee snapped.

A

Jason was sitting in the back of the truck on a gray metal folding chair, next to Louis. He looked up from his Sony chip-cam and said, 'That's what they told me. Ten-thirty.'

'It's nowten-thirty-three,' the Bee said. She turned her wrist to show the blue face on a stainless-steel Rolex.

'Sorry,' A

'I don't think that's good enough,' the Bee said. 'We might be too late, and it's all wasted.'

Behind the Bee, the Shell gas-delivery man was taking an interest: a lot of people in a TV truck and a blonde in a ski mask, arguing.

'You better get in,' A

'Around the corner to Westwood, then Westwood to Circle,' the Bee said. 'You know where Circle is?'

'Yeah, we know where everything is,' Creek said. They'd been everywhere. 'Hold on.'

Creek took the truck around the corner, humming to himself, which he did when he was tightening up. A

Creek looked vaguely like the Wookiee in Star Wars: six-seven, overmuscled and hairy. He was wearing a USMC sweatshirt with the sleeves and neck torn out. Tattoos covered his arms: just visible through the reddish-blond hair on his biceps was an American flag in red, blue and Appalachia-white, skin deeply ta

'Hello?' A

'We've got it all here, but we've got to hurry,' the Bee said. She dug into the backpack, came up with a plastic portfolio and took out a sheet of crisp white paper. A

The press release was tight, professional, laser-printed. A two-color pre-printed logo of a ru

'Are these quotes from you or from the collective?' A

'Anything that's in quotes, you can attribute to either me or the Rat. We wrote the statement jointly.'

'Will we meet the Rat?' A

'He's in the building now,' the Bee said, leaning left to peer past A

'We'd like to get an action quote when they come out, as they release the animals,' A

'No problem. We can accommodate that.' The Bee looked at her Rolex, then back out the window. They were right in the middle of the UCLA medical complex. 'I'm sorry I'm so. snappy. but when Jason agreed to ten-thirty, we specified exactlyten-thirty. The raid is already under way.'

A

Louis Martinez sat in an office swivel chair that was bolted to the floor of the truck. From the chair, he could reach the sca

He fiddled with the gear incessantly, trying to capture a mental picture of after-dark Los Angeles, in terms of accidents, shootings, car chases, fires, riots.

'All clear,' he said. 'We've got that shooting down in Inglewood, but that ain't much. There's a chase down south, Long Beach, but it's heading the other way.'

'Track it,' A

'I got it,' Louis said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and gri

'I didn't want a warm and fuzzy animal. That's not the point of animal rescue,' the Bee said. Her response was remote, ca

'And that's why Steve picked Rat,' Jason suggested.

The Bee frowned at the use of Rat's real name, but nodded. 'Yes. And because we feel a spiritual affinity with our choices.'

In the driver's seat, Creek grunted again, shook his head once, quick. A

A smile curled one corner of A

Ahead and to the right, a woman in a ski mask was standing on the corner, making a hurry-upwindmilling motion with one arm.

'That's Otter,' she said. 'And that's the corner of Circle. They must be outturn right.'

Creek took the corner, past the waving woman. The street tilted uphill, and a hundred yards up, a cluster of women spilled down a driveway to the street, two of them struggling with a blue plastic municipal garbage can. A security guard was ru

'Got them coming out,' A

Nobody ever knew for sure what would happen at these things. Nothing much, probably, but any time you had guards with guns. Did the guards have guns? She took a half-second to look, but couldn't tell.