Invasion USA Read Online Free Page A

heart, killing him almost instantly. His body hit the plate glass wall between the lobby and the office of Walt Lauderdale, the vice-president of the bank, and smashed on through it, showering glass down around him. Al never felt the shards cut him.
    The second robber had his gun out now, too. He bounded over to the counter where a couple of tellers were working. Mrs. Montgomery stood in front of the counter with the bonds she was going to cash in and deposit. The robber elbowed her roughly out of the way, knocking her off her feet. Her eighty-eight-year-old hip shattered as it hit the tile floor, and she cried out in pain.
    The robber leaned over the counter and stuck the muzzle of his automatic weapon in the face of Sheila Garcia, the older of the two tellers, and said, “Don’t try nothin’ funny, bitch, or I’ll splatter your brains all over the place. Move back so you can’t step on no alarm button.”
    The other robber, the one who had killed Al Trejo, leveled his weapon at Walt Lauderdale through the shattered glass and ordered, “Come outta there, man, unless you wanna die.”
    Walt did as he was told, walking shakily into the lobby with his hands held where the gunman could see them. The robber shouted, “Down on the floor!” He turned his attention to the handful of stunned customers who looked at him with expressions of mingled horror and sickness. “Everybody get down! On your bellies!”
    At the counter, the other robber took a folded canvas bag from under his shirt and threw it at Sheila, who caught it instinctively. “Fill it up,” he told her. “Nothing smaller than twenties.” He took out another bag and tossed it to the other teller, Maria Esquivel. “You, too, bitch.”
    Maria tried to catch the bag but fumbled it. She reached down to the floor to pick it up, and while she was bent over her finger touched the button that set off the silent alarm. She was standing far enough back in her cubicle that she didn’t think the robber would suspect she had triggered the alarm. As she straightened, her eyes touched the framed pictures that stood by her work station of her husband and her two babies. Lord forgive her if what she had just done cost those dear ones their wife and mother, she thought.
    But these animals couldn’t be allowed to get away. They had murdered Al Trejo, one of the nicest men Maria had ever met, and now they were looting the bank of its customers’ hard-earned money. Somebody had to stop them.
    Maria knew she had done all she could, though. She opened her drawer and began stuffing bills into the canvas bag while the M-15 brutes continued to wave their guns around and shout threats and obscenities.
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    Deputy Fred Kelso was in the sheriff’s cruiser at the edge of town, waiting for travelers on their way through not to notice that the speed limit dropped right at the city limits. Not that Little Tucson was a speed trap or anything like that. The speed limit went from sixty miles per hour to fifty, which was not a significant drop. Now, if it had gone from sixty to thirty, say, that would be a speed trap.
    But nobody seemed to be driving through this morning, and Fred was getting sleepy. He yawned and looked at the dashboard clock. 9:19. It was too early for anybody to be in much of a hurry to get anywhere.
    The voice that came over the radio was loud and excited. The dispatcher, Cecil Rhodes—everybody called him Dusty, of course—had to be practically yelling into the microphone.
    â€œBank robbery!” Cecil yelped, forgetting all about codes and proper radio procedure in his excitement. “We got a bank robbery! Silent alarm, silent alarm!”
    Little Tucson had two banks, the First State and the Savings Bank. Fred grabbed the mike, keyed it, and said, “Settle down, Cecil! Which bank?”
    â€œThe Little Tucson Savings Bank!”
    That was at the other end of Main Street.