Crisis Four (41 page)
Authors: Andy McNab
She closed the door and I hit the gas pedal. I’d noticed some bags and stuff in the back. ‘Why don’t you check that out?’
She didn’t need telling again. She was straight in there.
22
‘Is there a map?’ My arm was killing me as I gripped the steering wheel. The wagon’s heating system wasn’t up to it, so I used my sleeve to wipe the condensation from the windscreen. Even the wipers only worked on half speed. At least now I could sort of see where I was going, even if I wasn’t too sure where that was.
The bend eventually straightened out and trees loomed up on either side. Above them, all I could see was thick grey cloud. Great; the worse the weather, the less the chance of the heli still operating.
‘Nothing, just crap.’ Sarah was back in her seat. She wound down the window and started to adjust the wing mirror to keep a check behind us. I kept my foot down, but the vehicle was only making about 60 mph with the wind behind it, the threadbare tyres not exactly gripping the road big time. All the shit in the back was rattling, and bits of paper were flying around in the draught rushing through the open windows. I just hoped the brake pads were in better shape than the bits of the wagon I could see.
She tried to pull open the glove compartment on her side, which probably hadn’t been done for years. It gave way, and out spilled bits of fishing wire, lighters, greasy old garage receipts, all sorts. But no map. She shouted, ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ I kept quiet, letting her frustration play itself out.
I drove on for about three miles, during which we didn’t say a word to each other. We got to a T-junction with the same sort of road. There were no signposts. I turned right.
I was feeling exposed. I didn’t know if the police back at the gas station had comms, which would depend on whether they had relay boards in the area to bounce radio signals off. I couldn’t help a smile: Metal Mickey’s head would have come in handy.
I shouted at her so I could be heard above the noise of the wind. ‘Did you drop any of the police?’
She was wiping the wing mirror. She seemed to have calmed down a bit. ‘I don’t know, I don’t think so. Maybe.’
I started to feel even more depressed. Whatever had happened, if we didn’t get out of the area very soon and hide up, we’d be in a world of shit.
Less than two minutes later the chance came when I saw dipped headlights in front of us. ‘I’m going to take it, Sarah. Make sure you don’t say a word, OK?’
She nodded. ‘What do I do?’
‘Just point the gun at whoever’s in there.
Do not
shoot anyone. Just keep your finger off the trigger… please.’
Do not
shoot anyone. Just keep your finger off the trigger… please.’
I slowed down to about 20 mph and swung the van left, blocking the road. The car kept coming towards us. I couldn’t see how many were in it, but it was a blue four-door saloon.
Sarah was waiting for instructions. ‘Come out this side and follow me. We have broken down, OK?’
I jumped out, trying to watch the car as well as listen for a heli. The car slowed. It was a Mazda, one up, and going by the big hair blocking half the windscreen she was the twin sister of the woman at the gas station. She wasn’t too happy about what was going on. I had to be quick, in case she reached for a weapon; for all I knew, she might be one of Jim’s best customers.
The car stopped. I ran over to the driver’s side with a very thankful face on. She hit her window button and let it down only a couple of inches, but at least she wasn’t going for her handbag or the glove compartment.
I got to the window and drew down on her, screaming, ‘Look down! Look down!’ My accent was getting worse.
She was maybe in her thirties. Her hair must have taken all day to tease into that beehive. Her make-up was about two millimetres thick and looked like wet cement now she’d started to cry.
I yelled, ‘Out, out!’
The door was locked. I kicked it and made out like a madman, which wasn’t far from the truth. She finally relented; Sarah heard the clunk of the central locking and started moving towards the car as the woman got out. I motioned with my hand for her to take the driver’s seat; she passed the woman, who was standing on the road sobbing her heart out. ‘I have babies. Please don’t kill me, please. Take the car, take the car. Take my money. Please don’t kill me.’
I wanted to tell her, Shut up. You’re not going to die. I’m playing the madman because I want to scare you; that way you don’t go for a weapon, and we all stay alive.
Sarah was in, door closed; I ran round to the other side and joined her. Before I’d even shut the door she was slamming the car into a three-point turn. I looked under my legs to see what I was sitting on. It was Big Hair’s bag. No point in fucking her up completely; I got the barrel of the pistol hooked in the bag and threw it out to her, just as Sarah finished a really bad turn with lots of braking and tyres screaming in the wet.
‘Get your foot down.’
She didn’t need any prompting for that.
The car interior smelled of fresh perfume and coffee. A large polystyrene cup with a lid was resting in the console holder; I lifted it out and gave it a shake. It was half full and the contents were still warm. I took a couple of sips and handed it over. The air-conditioning was on; I turned a couple of dials and it soon changed to hot, hot, hot.
‘Where to, Nick? Where am I going?’
I wasn’t sure. ‘Just keep going until we see a sign.’
Ten minutes later we hit a main drag and were welcomed to Route 98 – Raleigh was to the left, Durham to the right.
‘Go left, left!’ It was still a single carriageway, but wider than before and with houses dotted along the way.
Before long we were joining other vehicles on their daily migration towards the city, and in no time we were in mainstream traffic and had some cover.
I said, ‘Have you got any rounds left?’
She gave me her weapon. I checked and refilled her mag from the spares in my pockets, and passed it back. She placed it under her right thigh with a ‘Thanks’.
I started to recognize our surroundings. Traffic was starting to slow up; every time we hit a major intersection there was another bunch of lights letting people out from all the suburbs around the city. We couldn’t see any of the houses, though, because of the trees and low-level industrial units that hemmed us in on either side.
We had stopped at a set of lights alongside some other people drinking their breakfast. Some of them had big paper cups from drive-ins, some had mugs that looked like Apollo space capsules, really wide at the bottom so they didn’t fall over in the car, then narrow at the top with a nozzle to drink through. All of a sudden I saw people in different cars around us smiling or laughing out loud to themselves. Sarah saw what was happening and she wanted to listen in. She hit the radio buttons on preset and cruised through the stations. Three goes and she got it. A man and a woman were talking about people’s choices of bumper stickers. The woman said, ‘One is OK, but hey, more than that reads a ten on my geek meter.’
The guy replied, ‘Have you seen the one that says, “A mind is like a parachute. It only works when it’s opened…” Come on, man, that’s like, off the scale!’ There was some canned laughter, then he quickly returned to the airwaves.
‘Hey, morning! It’s Q98 comin’ attchaaa…’ The ads started to roll.
Everyone was laughing with us in the traffic. Then it got worse as they saw the same thing we did. The van four or five vehicles ahead had that very sticker in its rear window. I couldn’t stop laughing as we started to move on green. I looked over at Sarah, who was joining in the fun; it wasn’t that the joke was that funny. I think we were just so relieved to be back in civilization.
We hit the beltline, saw signs for the airport and swung right at the intersection onto the highway. About halfway round we were on an elevated section, and down below us were low-level square buildings, mostly motels and burger joints, islands in a sea of neon. The rain had slackened to a drizzle.
I directed Sarah off the ramp and we cruised around, looking for a motel that would work for us. She drove past a Days Inn, standing in its own lot. It was a T-shaped building, with the reception at the top and three storeys of brown doors making up the stem. It had seen better days, but was just what was needed. I let Sarah carry on past it so I could check out the area. That way I knew which way to run if we got bumped once we were inside.
‘Turn left here.’
She drove into the parking lot of an adjacent single-storey sportswear outlet. There were about 200 cars in the 400-capacity carpark; she found a space in the middle and parked. We wiped the car interior of our prints, got out and did the same to the outside – not that it mattered that much, as they would have our prints from the van; it would just slow them up a bit.
Walking back towards the motel, we made an effort to clean ourselves up, brushing the mud and pine needles off our clothes. It didn’t seem to make much difference. We got a few strange looks in the carpark, but nothing too serious; Americans know better than to stare at dishevelled strangers. The motorway roared above us with the morning’s traffic, and a truck’s brakes hissed loudly as it stopped to make a delivery.
As I peeled the gloves and clingfilm from the docs, I gave Sarah our story. ‘OK, we’re Brits – boyfriend-girlfriend, travelling up from the Cape Fear coast, had a puncture. We’ve been out in the rain trying to fix it, and all we want to do now is sort our shit out.’
She thought for a few seconds. ‘Got it.’
I cleaned up the jacket sleeve the dog had ripped as best I could, wiping the dried blood on my hand against my jeans. A last quick spit and rub on the more stubborn stains did the trick.
We’d put our hands through our hair in a last minute effort to sort ourselves out as we went through the door. We still looked rough, but so did the motel. The carpet in reception needed replacing and a new coat of paint wouldn’t have gone amiss. To my left, a TV blared by the coffee and vending machines as the glass doors closed behind us.
The receptionist went through the automatic company welcome: ‘Hi, how are you today?’ still looking down at something more important. She was about seventeen or eighteen, and wore a maroon polyester waistcoat and skirt, with a white blouse. Her name tag said she was Donna. She was a black girl with relaxed hair put into a side parting, a big, round pair of glasses and, now that she was actually pointing it at us, a great big brilliant smile. It might not be sincere, but at least she was the first person we’d been close to for a while who wasn’t shooting at us.
Her smile evaporated as she took in our appearance. ‘What’s happened to you folks?’
I did my best stupid English tourist impression. ‘We had a puncture this morning and the car went off the road in all this rain. Look at us. It’s been a nightmare; we just want to clean up and sleep.’ I stopped my waffle and looked sorry for myself while showing her the state of my jeans.
She agreed, we were in shit state. ‘Wow!’ She looked down at the computer and hit the keys. ‘Let me see…’ She didn’t sound too hopeful. ‘It’s early and I don’t know if any rooms will be ready yet.’ She smiled as she read the screen, and I knew we were in luck. ‘Hey, you know what? I have a double room – but it’s smoking.’ The way she said it, I knew that when the time came for her to have a child, she’d sue someone lighting up even two states away. She looked up, waiting for us to share her distaste.
I said, ‘That will be fine, thank you.’ She looked at us as if we were somewhere below subhuman. ‘We don’t smoke, but at the moment anything will do.’ I smiled. We became normal again and were given a big smile back.
She continued to hit the keys. ‘Sure. I have a special at the moment: thirty-nine dollars ninety-nine, plus tax.’ Her expression now said that I should be jumping up and down with joy. I took the hint.
‘That’s great!’ I pulled out my wallet and gave her my credit card. She could have been asking for $139.99 plus tax, I wouldn’t have given a shit.
‘Thank you’ – she studied the card – ‘Mr Snell.’
She swiped the plastic and the machine clicked and hummed as I filled in the registration form. I put down any shit I could think of for the vehicle registration. They never look at it anyway, and if she did, I’d just say, sorry, Hugh Grant type character Brit abroad.
‘OK, you’re room two sixteen. Where are you parked?’
I pointed out and to the left. She started to direct with her hands. ‘OK, go round back to the left, up the first flight of stairs, and it’s there on the right-hand side.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘You’re welcome. Y’all have a good one.’
We walked out of reception and I placed my arm around Sarah, talking shit about what a night it had been. We turned left to go to our non-car and worked our way round the motel to our room. There was a chance that anyone putting two and two together after watching the news might call the police, especially if the gas station was already news. But this girl looked as if she didn’t even know what day it was. There had to be a point where I had to accept I’d done all I could for now. It was time to clean up, get our act together and then move on.
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