Delivering Caliban (18 page)

Thirty-Three

Interstate 95, between Washington D.C and New York

Tuesday 21 May, 2.05 am

The truck was an eighteen-wheel behemoth, its white refrigerated trailer like a carapace from beneath which the head-like red cab protruded. Pope saw all manner of decorations through the windscreen as they approached; multicoloured disco lights, a statuette of a nude woman on the dashboard that no doubt gyrated when the engine was running, a buffalo skull mounted on the inner roof. 

It was unlikely transport for two people on the run, so it would do.

Joel sang tunelessly under his breath as he helped up first Nina and then Pope. The inside was trimmed in red leather. Pope pulled the door closed and then shifted against it to give Nina room in the middle. She lowered her violin case into the footwell.

Since he’d mentioned the voices, she’d been noticeably different: readier to comply with his suggestions immediately, and even making eye contact on occasion. He had some way to go to get her back, but he felt he was making a start.

The engine started with a great coughing rumble, the entire vehicle shivering slightly as it shook itself awake. The cab smelled of onions and spearmint and diesel.

‘
Rock and roll, people,’ said Joel, and the beast began to pull out.

Through the window Pope saw, back don the interstate, the massing emergency vehicles. The traffic cops were already setting up, diverting the stream of nighttime cars around the scene.

‘Damn,’ said Joel, staring at the rear view mirror. ‘That’s some fender bender.’

For a moment Pope thought the man would turn the truck round to investigate; but he joined the northward flow.

Joel was going to Queens. Pope had told him his destination was Brooklyn, but he intended at the last minute to ask to be dropped off in Manhattan. Just in case the driver was in radio contact with anybody during the journey and mentioned where he was taking his passengers.

‘
So, Mike,’ said the driver. ‘What do you do for a living?’

‘
It’s Mark,’ said Pope. Had the man been testing the cover name deliberately? But why would he? ‘I’m in insurance.’

‘
Yeah? No kidding.’ Joel barked a laugh. ‘My first wife ran off with one of you guys.’

Pope said nothing.

‘You want to watch this guy, honey,’ Joel went on. ‘Always on the road. No telling what he gets up to.’ He gave Pope a leering wink.

Two more attempts at starting conversation followed before Joel gave up with an invisible shrug.

For ten minutes the only sounds were the rumble of the truck’s engine, the hissing of the tyres on the wet road and the tinny music from the radio, accompanied now and again by Joel’s off-key humming. Pope glanced at Nina. Yes, there was definite eye contact, if not yet a smile.

At two fifteen – Pope noted the time on the digital dashboard clock – the report came, cutting through the muzak. Joel reached across and turned up the volume.

‘– Issued a missing person’s report on a Ms Nina Ramirez, age twenty-six, height five two, weight one hundred and fifteen pounds, dark hair, eyes brown. Ms Ramirez is believed to be suffering from mental health problems and was last seen in Charlottesville, Virginia, at nine p.m. yesterday evening. Police believe she may have been heading in the direction of Washington D.C. and may pose a risk to herself.’

Pope listened hard. There was no mention of anybody of his description, nor of anyone else who might be with her.

The report ended with a telephone number and the music faded back in.

Nina stared up at Pope. Over her head he saw Joel’s profile, the jaw muscles bunched.

*

At two twenty-one – again by the dashboard clock – Joel said: ‘I got to call this in, man.’

Pope stared at him, saying nothing.

As though he’d been asked a question Joel said, ‘You both look like adults. But if she’s mentally sick… ah, man. I got to do the right thing.’

Nina blinked, glanced up at Pope again, looking confused.

Pope said, ‘It’s not her. My wife’s name is Carmela. She’s not missing. She’s right here.’

Joel shook his head. ‘I saw the way she reacted. It was her name they mentioned in the broadcast.’ He whistled thinly through his teeth. ‘Can’t ignore a missing person report when the person’s sat right up here beside me.’ As though addressing a child he said to Nina, ‘What’s your name, honey?’

She didn’t reply.

Pope said, ‘Look, Joel. Just keep on driving. Get us to New York. I’ll pay you, like I offered before.’

Another shake of the head.

‘
Two hundred dollars.’

A pause; then the driver said, ‘Sorry. Can’t.’

There’ll be a bigger reward for turning her in
, Pope thought.

Pope drew the Heckler & Koch from his pocket and transferred it to his left hand. Stretching his arm across the back of the seat behind Nina, he levelled the muzzle at Joel’s head.

‘Drive.’

*

Nina recoiled when she saw the gun and it was all Pope could do to keep it trained on the driver. She twisted round and away from his arm, straining against her seatbelt.

Joel didn’t jerk away, didn’t spin the wheel in fright. He simply muttered, ‘Holy shit,’ drawing out the first syllable.

‘He’s going to turn you in to your father’s people,’ said Pope, keeping his voice low and matter-of-fact. ‘That message on the radio didn’t originate with the police. How would they know you were headed for Washington? It’s the CIA. They must have found the men I killed by the side of the road.’

At the mention of
CIA
Joel’s eyes widened a fraction. Pope thought the driver realised he was dealing with two crazies here, not just one.

‘
Get us to New York,’ Pope said in the same voice, to Joel this time. ‘No tricks. No attempts to alert anybody to the situation. Then I’ll let you go, unharmed.’ He’d dropped the American accent.

In the dim light of the cab’s interior, Pope saw sweat sheen the man’s forehead under the peak of his cap.

Nina hunched forward, avoiding contact with Pope’s outstretched arm behind her as though it was a python trying to drape itself across her neck. Pope kept his gaze fixed on the driver’s face. The man was scared, but he was keeping his cool. It might mean he was planning something stupid.

After ten minutes Joel said, ‘Shit.’

‘What?’

‘
Got to stop for gas.’

Pope leaned forward slightly and darted a look at the fuel gauge. The needle was touching the red and a light had come on.

‘Why didn’t you fill up back at the truck stop?’

‘
Too expensive. My employers won’t pay up if I bring them receipts from that place.’ Joel nodded at the windscreen. ‘There’s a gas station five miles ahead. I always fill up there when I’m doing a night run to the city. Grab a last cup of coffee.’

Pope thought about it. There didn’t seem to be anything he could do. The last thing they needed was to run out of fuel in the middle of the Interstate.

The red and white lights of the service station came into view while they were still a mile or so away. Joel hauled the truck into the forecourt. Pope watched for a telltale flick of the headlights, perhaps a prearranged distress signal to be used in case of carjacking, but there was none.

The truck hissed to a stop beside a diesel pump. Pope said, ‘We’re all getting out. I’m putting the gun in my pocket, but it’s there and I’ve got my hand on it. I will use it if I have to.’

‘Yeah.’ The driver opened his door, looked across to see if it was all right for him to climb down. Pope jumped down himself and helped Nina to the ground, making no comment when she brought the violin with her. Quickly Pope led her round to the other side of the truck, where Joel had the nozzle in his grip and was already feeding fuel into the tank.

Pope watched the road as the flow continued. Vehicles were sweeping by mostly singly now, many of them delivery trucks like this one. There were no other cars in the service station forecourt. Pope had seen a clerk seated behind a counter inside the shop.

Pope looked at the digital display on the pump. The amount of fuel delivered was advancing in drips.

‘
That’s enough,’ he said to Joel. The driver withdrew the nozzle, taking his time, and replaced the cap.

Pope nodded and Joel began walking towards the building. Pope kept a few feet behind, Nina at his side, the violin clasped in front of her.

The shop was like a small supermarket, its brightly lit aisles stocked with foods, pharmaceuticals and household products. Behind the counter perched another college boy like the one at the first station Pope and Nina had stopped at. This one looked fresher, as though he’d started his shift recently after a night’s worth of sleep. He watched them with mild curiosity. Pope supposed they made an odd trio, and they’d certainly be remembered later. That didn’t matter.

Above the counter a closed-circuit television monitor was split into four screens, showing various areas of the forecourt, the interior of the shop and the three of them plus the clerk. Pope watched Joel on the monitor handing across a credit card. The resolution wasn’t great but he could see nothing in the man’s eyes to suggest he was signalling the clerk in any way.

Pope kept his hand around the butt of the Heckler & Koch in his jacket pocket.

The clerk tore off a receipt and handed it to Joel. Joel turned and muttered to Pope, ‘I have to use the john.’

‘No.’ Pope inclined his head towards the exit.

‘
Jeez, man. I always do here. I’m busting.’

‘
Too bad.’

Behind Joel the clerk was frowning a little. It was time to go.

As Pope stepped aside to let the truck driver go ahead of him he noticed something about the clerk’s frown. It was no longer directed at him. He looked at the boy’s face, followed his line of sight through the glass.

At the rim of the forecourt, at each of the two points designated
Entry
and
Exit
, a car had pulled up and parked, blocking the access to and from the road. As Pope watched, men emerged from each car, crouching.

Like street lights being turned on in sequence, a silent flashing red and white light appeared on the roof of each car.

Thirty-Four

Interstate 95, between Washington D.C and New York

Tuesday 21 May, 2.35 am

Nina couldn’t be sure of the sequence of events in the next few seconds. Each separate experience was like an individual card in a deck that had been rapidly shuffled.

Strobing lights washed through the windows and across the faces of Pope and the truck driver and the clerk.

The clerk shouted something incomprehensible.

The driver, Joel, shouted, terrifyingly close to her, He’s
got a gun get down he’s kidnapped us
.

Pope pulled, hard, on her arm, the way she had to pull hard on the old-fashioned toilet chain in her first home, and she felt herself dropping.

From her position on the lino floor, tiny and helpless, sprawled over her violin case she saw the looming shape of the clerk above the counter, something in his hands – a gun…

She heard the
ch-chak
of the gun’s slide action less than a second before it was drowned out by a crashing boom directly above her, one that made her clasp her hands over her ears to shut out the noise, both of the explosion and of her screams.

From where she was on the floor Nina could see the gap in the counter giving entry to the space behind it, and she watched the clerk slam back against the racks of cigarettes and liquor bottles on the wall behind him and drop onto his butt on the floor, where he sat propped, his legs splayed, one eye staring at her, the other missing along with half his head.

Her screams seemed to engulf her, becoming the whole of her, and although she blocked her ears and closed her eyes against them they penetrated through.

Something nagged at her, through the screaming and the horror, and she realised she had to pay attention to it.

Somebody was asking her something, over and over.

*

‘Please, don’t.’

Nina rolled over and brought her legs up so that she was hunched on her heels on the floor, over the violin case.

Three feet in front of her she could see the backs of Pope’s legs. Beyond him, at eye level with her, she saw the chubby truck driver, Joel. He was kneeling, facing Pope, but looking past him and at Nina. His cap had been dislodged sideways to reveal a sunburned, peeling bald pate above the ring of scrubby hair.

His hands were clasped and shaking in front of him.

‘Please,’ he whispered again. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t kill me.’

He was staring at her. Asking her not to kill him.

She shook her head. What did she mean? She hoped he understood.

Nina watched Pope extend his hand, and for an instant she thought he was reaching to help the man up.

The gun roared and bucked slightly in his hand again and Nina fell back, hands coming up around her ears once more.

*

A half hour passed, sluggishly, like the time spent waking up from an anaesthetic. Except it couldn’t have been a half hour; it was more, Nina realised later, like a few seconds.

She was still on the floor, the violin pressed to her, but she’d crawled back into the adjacent aisle to get away from the horrors on the floor where she’d been earlier. Pope stood six feet away, slightly crouched, staring out the windows.

‘Nina.’

He didn’t turn when he said it, and for a moment she though the voices had come back.

‘Nina.’ This time his head turned a fraction, and his voice was louder. ‘Stay down but come over here.’

She heard, but couldn’t process the words.

Pope stooped and backed over to her, reaching her in an instant. With his free hand he grabbed hers and dragged her back towards the window, forcing her to duckwalk to keep up.

When they reached the wall with the windows, rows of potato chips and candy bars arrayed in front of her face, he pulled her so that she stood. She felt him step behind her. One of his hands gripped her shoulder.

The gun barrel touched her ear.

*

She’d seen it countless times in movies, and had thought it must be one of the most terrifying experiences possible. But now, with the ring of the barrel an inch from the side of her head, radiating warmth and the smell of metal, she felt nothing. No fear. No numbness, even.

His voice murmured in her hair beside her ear.

‘I know this is horrible, but I swear to you, it’s a bluff. I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not going to let those men out there hurt you. There are four of them. They’re not police. They’re your father’s men. This is the only way to keep them at bay for the time being.’

His words were clear as ice, their meaning as well as their sound. She gave a tiny nod.

Through the glass, she could make out silhouettes around the two cars. Police cars, they looked like, with their cherry-top lights; except that they didn’t appear to have police markings. The silhouetted shapes – there might have been four, as Pope said; she couldn’t be sure – were hunched against the cars, again just as she’d seen in the movies. The siege posture, she thought of it as.

As she watched, the silhouettes shifted position, two of them detaching themselves from the car and advancing a little at a stoop. Both men carried guns, held low and in both hands.

Pope straightened further, pulled Nina closer. The men stopped, remained where they were.

Something didn’t make sense to her.

‘I had to kill those two,’ Pope said.

She nodded.

‘The clerk was going to shoot me. The truck driver would have made a run for it at some point and those men outside would have got in.’

He was telling her this, Nina knew, because he needed her to trust him. This she understood.

But still, something about the situation was wrong. Something about the tactic he was using.

She felt him step crabwise to the left and allowed him to shuffle her along with him. They reached the counter. Nina kept her gaze on the forecourt, not wanting to look at the body of the clerk. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pope reach across and lift the handset of the landline phone perched in its base beside the till.

In the faint reflection in the glass, she saw him hold the phone high. He’d released her shoulder, but his right hand still touched the gun barrel to her head.

Across the forecourt one of the men straightened a little, then seemed to say something to his friend. The man called something across to the other tow shapes near the second car.

One of them was fumbling with something which she realised from the tiny blue light was a cell phone.

Two minutes passed. Nina became aware for the first time of faint, tinny music coming from a radio somewhere behind the counter.

She understood what was happening. The men outside were locating the phone number for the gas station.

The phone rang in Pope’s hand, shrill and startling. He hit the
receive
button and spoke immediately.

‘
Back off and give us safe passage in one of your cars. If you advance any further or don’t comply with my instructions, I’ll kill the girl.’

Nina couldn’t make out the reply at the other end but she heard Pope interrupt: ‘No negotiation. You have two minutes. Leave the keys to both cars in the car in front of the exit and then all of you go over and sit in the other car.’

Another tiny burst of noise came through the receiver. Pope said, ‘Two minutes, starting now. Any longer and I shoot her.’

As he lowered the phone, Nina saw two sets of headlights sweep down the slip road leading towards the forecourt.

*

‘
Time’s running out.’

The phone had rung again. Nina had watched the two new cars pull up outside the entrance and a woman emerge from one of them. One of the men had advanced toward her and from his gestures was clearly telling her to back off.

Nina strained her hearing, starting to become accustomed to the sound coming from the receiver. She made out a few words from the other end.
Not with us… get rid of them… more time.

Two men had joined the woman from the cars. An urgent argument was developing.

Pope had lowered the phone again. In the glass his face was in shadows and Nina couldn’t read it.

She said, her voice stronger than she’d believed possible: ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Pope. ‘These new people seem to be different.’

‘
Police?’

‘
Perhaps.’ He sounded unconvinced.

The two remaining original men –
my father’s men
, Nina reminded herself – stayed out of the argument, keeping close to their car on the other side, watching Pope and Nina in the window. Nina wondered if Pope was considering making a move now that two of the men were otherwise occupied. But he kept still, his hand with the phone resting on her shoulder, and the gun barrel always gently touching her ear.

Pope’s two-minute ultimatum had long passed. The scene at the entrance was becoming more fraught. Both sides were squaring up, pushing against the space between them. Nina could hear voices raise din anger but couldn’t make out the words.

The woman held something up. Light glinted off it. A detective’s shield. So they were cops.

The two men took a step back, and then things happened fast.

The two men with the woman crouched and lifted their arms, guns levelled. The two original men aimed their weapons back.

The two remaining men began advancing across the forecourt toward the building.

Pope dropped the phone and put his forearm across Nina’s throat, lightly, behind the neck of the violin case. He drew her across him. The movement made her stagger slightly and her violin case sweep the rows of candy bars and chips in front of her below the windows, scattering them noisily to the floor.

The men, her father’s men, were halfway across the forecourt. Over at the cars the standoff continued.

Nina twisted her neck in discomfort. As she did so she glanced up at the CCTV monitor above the counter over to the left.

One of the split-screen images showed the back of the shop. A man was sidling down one of the aisles, gun arm extended.

Nina yelled, ‘
Behind us
.’