The Night Crew

As she looked, she reached behind her, lifted the lid on the steel box bolted on the back of her seat, pulled the Nagra tape recorder from its foam nest. Jason was looking past her, through the windshield at the action, and she snapped: 'Get ready.'

'Yes, Mom,' he said. He fitted a headset over the crown of his head, plugged in the earphone. Creek was driving with one hand, pulling on his own headset.

'Everybody hear me?' A

Creek said, 'Yeah,' and took the truck over the curb, one big bounce and a nose-down, squealing, full stop. Jason had braced himself, and Louis had swiveled to let the chair take the jolt. The Bee toppled over and yelped, 'Shit.'

Ahead of them, the women carrying the garbage can were jerking and twisting down the driveway, doing the media polkalooking for the cameras, ru

The raiders had gone into the back of the building, over a loading dock; the dock was contained inside a fence, with a concrete patio big enough for fifteen or twenty cars. At least a dozen women, all masked, milled around the patio; then a man ran out of the medical building, carrying a small, squealing, black-and-white pig. Then another woman, carrying boxes, or maybe cages.

As the truck settled, as Bee yelped, A

Then Creek lit up and A

The security guards saw the camera lights and the first one turned to the man trailing, yelled something to the other, who ran back up the hill. The first one continued down, and shouted at Creek, 'Hey, no cameras here, no cameras.'

A group of masked women headed toward him, walled him off from the rest of the milling crowd, pushed him toward the ramp. Frustrated, he climbed up the loading dock and hurried to the open door. Just as he was about to go through the door, he jumped back, and a young man in a blue oxford cloth shirt and jeans ran out of the building and headed toward the lights.

A

Creek backpedaled. When A

'They were go

The patio was chaos, with the cameras and the Pig-man, the women with cages, all swirling around. Blue shirt arrived and A

'Give me that pig,' he screamed, and he ran at the pig-man. 'Gimme that.' The animal women blocked him out, not hitting him, just body blocking. Both Creek and Jason tracked the twirling scrum while A

The Bee caught A

The women with the blue garbage can were waiting their turn with the lights, and A

As Jason came up, the women with the garbage can, who'd been waiting, popped the lid and tipped it, and two hundred or three hundred mice, some black, some white, some tan, scurried down the sides and ran out onto the patio, looked around and headed for the nearest piece of cover.

Jason hung close and then the kid in the blue shirt went that way, screaming, 'Gimme those,' and, sobbing, tried to corral the mice. They were everywhere, ru

Jeez: this is almost too good, A

As Creek tracked him, the Bee came back with her nagging voice: 'Do you want an on-camera statement?'

And A

A

The man with the pig turned toward her: 'I'm the Rat,' he said. His teeth were bared, his face spotted with what looked like mud, but could be pig shit.

'We're go

'No problem,' he said. He handed the struggling pig to a woman. 'What exactly do you want?' The Rat had a deep, smooth voice, a singer's baritone. His eyes were pale blue behind the black mask.

'Just tell us why you did it,' A

He leaned forward and stage-whispered, 'For the publicity.'

A

Jason yelled, 'Hey, Rat: You wa

As the Rat and the Bee talked to Jason's camera, A

Creek hung back a couple of steps, so the camera wouldn't be right in the kid's face. A

The kid looked up, dazed, a pale teenage child with brown eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses. 'What?'

'Are you okay?' A

'They're go

'How'd you get the bloody nose?' A

'I tried to hold the door, but they kicked through. Then about four of them held me and I couldn't get to the phone, and they tipped everything over in the lab, all the animal cages, everything.' He touched his face. 'I think the door hit me.'

'Look, there's go

Creek stepped away, spotted a mouse looking at him from the top of the loading dock and closed in on it. Behind him, the Bee and the Rat were still talking to Jason's camera; the pig was still struggling with the woman who'd taken it, but the squealing had stopped, and the scene was almost quiet.

A

She patted his thigh. 'Now, go like this. From your nose.'

She made an upward rubbing gesture with her hand, on her own face.

The kid gulped. 'Why?'

'Want to keep your job?' A