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Authors: Andy McNab

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BOOK: Remote Control
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There was a slight pause as she worked through it all. I got her knickers, placed her feet in them and pulled them up.
‘Why didn’t they want to take me, Nick?’ She sounded sad at the thought.
I moved over to the chair and picked up her jeans and shirt. I didn’t want her to see my eyes. ‘It isn’t that they didn’t want to take you, but there was a mistake made, and that’s why they asked me to look after you.’
‘Just like
Home Alone
!’
I turned round and saw that she was smiling. I had to think about that one. ‘Yeah, that’s right, just like
Home Alone
. They left you by mistake!’ I remembered watching it on a flight. Shit film but good booby traps. I busied myself with her jeans again.
‘So when will we see them?’
I couldn’t spend all day picking up two bits of clothing. I did a half turn and walked back towards the bed.
‘That won’t be for a while yet, but, when I spoke to them just now, they wanted me to tell you that they love you, and they’re missing you, and to do everything I say and be a good girl.’
There was a beaming smile on her face. She was taking this all in and I wished I had the courage to tell her the truth.
I said, ‘Kelly, you must do what I say, do you understand that?’
‘Sure, I understand.’
She nodded and I saw a little child needing affection.
I gave her my best attempt at a smile. ‘Remember, they wanted me to look after you for a while.’ I looked into her eyes. ‘Come on, cheer up. Let’s watch TV.’
We both went back to watch
Power Rangers
with a can of Mountain Dew. I couldn’t take my mind off the news broadcast. Kelly’s photograph had been on the TV. The receptionist, the clothes-store keeper, anyone, might remember her. Surely the embassy had called London by now, surely every fucker knew what was going on because it was splashed all over the news? No need to wait three hours before making the call.
I’d have to go to the outside phone again because I didn’t want Kelly to hear. I put Kev’s jacket on, slipped the TV remote control into a pocket, told her where I was going and left.
As I came to the stairs by the Coke machine I looked down. Two cars had pulled up outside the reception lobby. Both were empty, but their doors were still open, as if the occupants had piled out in a hurry.
I looked again. Besides a normal radio aerial, both vehicles had two-foot antennae on the back. One of the cars was a white Ford Taurus, the other a blue Caprice.
There was no time to think, just enough to turn round and run like a man possessed towards the rear fire escape.
8
Now wasn’t the time to worry about how they’d found us. As I ran, the options started to race through my mind. The obvious one was to leave Kelly where she was and let them pick her up. She was a millstone around my neck. On my own, I could get away.
So why did I stop running? I wasn’t too sure; instinct told me that she had to come with me.
I doubled back and burst into the room. ‘Kelly, we’ve got to go! Come on, get up!’
She’d been drifting off to sleep. There was a look of horror on her face because of my change of tone.
‘We’ve got to go!’
Grabbing her coat, I picked her up in my arms and started towards the door. I snatched up her shoes and stuffed them into my pockets. She made a sound, half frightened, half protesting.
‘Just hold on!’ I said. Her legs were wrapped around my waist.
I came out onto the landing. I closed the door behind us and it locked automatically. They’d have to break it down. I had a quick check along the corridor, not bothering to look below to see what was happening. I’d soon know if they were behind us.
I turned left and ran to the end of the corridor, turned left again and there was the fire exit. I pushed the bar and it opened. We were on an open concrete staircase at the rear of the hotel, facing the shopping mall area about a quarter of a mile away.
She started to cry. There was no time to be nice. I got hold of her head so that her face came right up to mine. ‘People have come to take you away, do you understand that?’ I knew it would frighten her and that it would probably fuck up her mind even more, but I didn’t care about that. ‘I’m trying to save you. Shut up and do what I say!’
I squeezed her cheek hard and shook her face. ‘Do you understand me, Kelly? Shut up and hold me very tight.’
I buried her face in my shoulder and lunged down the concrete stairs looking for my escape route.
Ahead of us lay about 40 metres of rough grassland and, beyond that, a 6-foot chain link fence that looked old and rusty. On the other side of that was the rear of the long row of office buildings that faced the main road. Some were brick, some were plaster, all different styles built over the last thirty years. Their rear admin area was strewn with clutter and large cylindrical skips.
There was a pathway running across the waste ground, and it went through at a point where a whole section of the chain link fence had crumpled or been pulled down. Maybe the hotel and office workers used it as a short cut.
Carrying Kelly was like having a bergen on the wrong way round. That was going to be no good if I had to run fast, so I threw her round onto my back, linking my hands under her arse so I was carrying her piggyback. I got to the bottom of the stairs and stopped and listened. No sound of them shouting or breaking down the door yet. The urge was just to run for it across the waste ground towards the gap in the fence, but it was important to do this correctly.
Still with Kelly on my back, not bothering to tell her what was happening, I got onto my hands and knees. I lowered myself to within about a foot of the floor and slowly stuck my head round the corner. There was a chance that, once I’d seen what was happening, I’d choose a different route.
The two cars had now been driven to the bottom of the staircase by the Coke machine. The fuckers were obviously upstairs. I didn’t know how many of them there were.
I realized that they couldn’t see most of the waste ground from where they were. I started running. The rain had been light but constant and the ground was muddy. It was reasonably well looked after, littered only here and there with bits of paper, old soft-drink cans and burger boxes. I kept heading for the gap in the chain link fence.
Kelly was weighing me down; I was taking short, quick strides and not bending my knees too much, just enough to take her weight, bending forward from the hips as if I was lugging a bergen. She made involuntary grunts, in time with the running movements, as the wind was knocked out of her.
We reached the broken section of chain link, which was buried in the mud. I heard the screech of car tyres, then the sound of protesting suspension and bodywork. I didn’t bother looking round, just dug deep and lengthened my stride.
Once through the gap we were faced with the rear of the office buildings. I couldn’t see the alleyway we’d come through earlier. I turned left, looking for any other route through to the main drag. There must be one somewhere.
Now on tarmac I could make good speed, but Kelly started slipping. I shouted, ‘Hold on!’ and felt her tense up more. ‘Harder, Kelly, harder!’
It wasn’t working. With my left hand, I got hold of both her wrists and pulled them down in front of me towards my waist. She was nice and tight on me now and I could use my right hand to pump myself forward. My priority was to make good speed and distance. They would be out and running soon. I needed that alleyway.
It’s a strange thing when untrained people are being chased. Subconsciously, they try to get as much distance as they can between themselves and their pursuers, and, whether it’s in an urban environment or a rural one, they think that means going in a straight line. In fact what you need to do is put in as many angles as possible, especially in a city or a town. If you come to a junction with four options, it makes the chasers’ job more difficult: they have a larger area to cover and have to split forces. A hare being chased in a field doesn’t run in a straight line; it has a big bound, changes direction and off it goes again – the pursuers are getting momentum in a straight line and all of a sudden they have to change direction, too, which means slowing down, re-evaluating. I was going to be that hare. As soon as I got to the end of the alleyway I was going to chuck a left or a right, I didn’t even know which yet, and run as fast as I could until I hit other options.
I found the alleyway. No time to think if it was the right decision, just make one. I could hear shouting behind me, maybe 100 to 150 metres away. But it wasn’t directed at me. They were too professional for that. They knew it wouldn’t have any effect. I heard the cars turning round. They’d be trying to cut me off. I ran.
By now I was out of breath with this seven-year-old on my back. My mouth was dry and I was breaking into a sweat. Her head was banging on the back of mine, and I was holding her so tight that her chin was digging into my neck; it was starting to hurt her and she was crying.
‘Stop, stop, Nick!’
I wasn’t listening. I reached the end of the alleyway and ran into a totally different world.
In front of me was a minor road that ran the length of the office buildings and, on the other side of it, a grass bank that went downhill to the main drag. Beyond that lay car parks and the malls. Traffic noise drowned out Kelly’s cries. The flow of vehicles was fast in both directions, despite the wet road. Most had their headlights dipped and their wipers on intermittent. I stopped.
We must have looked a sight, a man with a shoeless child on his back, puffing and panting down the grass slope, the child moaning as her head banged on the back of his. I climbed the railings at the side of the main drag and now we were playing chicken with the Washington traffic. Cars sounded their horns or braked sharply to avoid us. It seemed my new name was fuck, nut or jerk. I didn’t acknowledge anybody, even the ones who saved our lives by braking, I just kept on running.
Kelly was screaming. The traffic scared her as much as the running. All her young life she’d probably been warned about playing near the road, and here she was on a grown-up’s back, cars and trucks swerving all around her.
Crossing the railings at the far side, I, too, was starting to flap. Kelly was slowing me down, without a doubt, and I still had quite a distance to run to get to safety. I ducked and weaved through the car park, using the height of pick-ups and people-carriers to block us from their view.
At the far right of the mall was CompUSA, a computer superstore, and that was where I headed. There’s always a good chance that a large store on a corner site will have more than one entrance. I’d expect there to be one on the other side, maybe at the rear, so even if they saw me going in they’d have problems.
I knew the store would be hard for them to deal with because I’d had to do this sort of thing myself in Northern Ireland. If a player went into the shopping centre, we would send only one bloke in with him, then rush to seal up all the exits. It was hard enough when we knew a target, let alone having to find and identify him. If he was doing anti-surveillance drills, he could go up in a lift, leave by one exit, go back in through another and up two floors, down in a lift one floor, then wander out into a car park and he’s gone. If these boys were switched on, they’d start sealing the exits as soon as they saw where I’d gone. I had to be quick.
We went in through wide automatic doors. It was like a mega DIY store, with aisles and aisles of office equipment, computers and software packages. I went past the checkout counters without taking a trolley, still with Kelly on my back. The place was packed. I was standing there drenched with sweat, chest heaving up and down as I fought for breath, and Kelly was crying. People started looking at us.
Kelly moaned, ‘I want to get down now!’
‘No, let’s just get out of here.’
I took a look behind and I could see two boys coming across the car park. In their suits, they looked very much like plain-clothes police and they were running purposefully towards the store; they’d be heading to block off the exits. I had to put in some angles, had to get that confusion going.
I ran down a couple of aisles crammed with CD-ROM games, turned right and ran along the exterior wall, looking for an exit. Fuck it, there wasn’t one. The warehouse seemed to be one big sealed unit. I couldn’t go back out the way I’d come in, but if I didn’t find another exit I was going to spend the rest of the day running around the shop in circles.
One of the young assistants looked at me, turned away and went trotting down the aisle, obviously looking for the manager or security guard. Seconds later, two men in shirtsleeves with name badges started to approach us. ‘Yes, excuse me? Can we help you?’ All very polite, but in fact meaning, ‘What the fuck are you doing in our store?’
There was no time to answer. I ran towards the rear, looking for loading bays, emergency doors, open windows, anything. At last I saw the sign I was hoping to see: ‘Fire Exit’. I ran at it, pushed it open, and the alarm went off.
We were outside. We were on a platform, obviously used for deliveries, where trucks could back in and unload.
BOOK: Remote Control
13.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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