He put his left hand on the ground and fiddled with his belt buckle with the other. Sarah was impatient and very cold, and she snapped at him in Arabic. She must have been feeling grim, covered from head to toe with mud, leaves and pine needles, and her legs were wet, dirty and bleeding.
Lance was wearing Nike trainers, and Sarah decided to help him by pulling them off from behind. His Levi’s were next, and when he’d finished she stretched out on the ground, arched her back and raised her backside to get the big jeans on. She was doing up the belt and he was pulling off his T-shirt when I heard the helicopter again. The two of us looked up, which was pretty fruitless considering the tree’s canopy meant we couldn’t see anything. Lance’s T-shirt was over his head but not his shoulders. I put my left hand on the back of his neck and rammed his face into the mud, the barrel of my pistol pressing into his neck.
The throbbing of the rotors was virtually overhead. The heli was hovering. It stayed there for several seconds, the trees flexing under the downwash. Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement: those are the telltales that can betray your location. But we were in good cover; Sarah knew that, too, and continued slowly pulling on the warm clothes.
The heli moved away about fifty metres, hovered again, then moved on. The sound of its rotor blades disappeared completely. I took the muzzle away from the American’s neck and told him to carry on. He finished taking off his T-shirt. Sarah took off the jacket, put on the T-shirt, and replaced the jacket. All that was left were his socks and boxers. It was Lance’s turn to shiver, the thick hair on his back plastered flat by the rain.
I could see in his eyes that he was starting to flap. He must have thought he was going to be killed, and started mumbling some sort of prayer to himself. But it wasn’t a plea, the tone was more of acceptance.
I said, ‘It’s OK, Lance, you don’t need Allah yet, you’re not going to die. Just shut the fuck up.’
Sarah was sorted, kneeling with her hands in her jacket pockets, wearing size eleven trainers and jeans with the gusset hanging halfway down to her knees, with turn-ups so big they looked like some sort of fashion statement.
The boy was still mumbling away to himself on his knees, bent forward with his forearms resting on the ground, his hands clasped together in prayer. He was trying his best to be the grey man.
Sarah looked at me. ‘What about him?’
I said, ‘Let’s get moving while the heli’s gone. I’ll tie him to the tree with my belt. He’ll be fucked off, but he’ll live.’
She shook her head.
I said, ‘No, just leave him. Come on, let’s go. We need to make distance.’
She gave a sigh as I took the belt from the bag and kicked Lance over to the tree and began to secure him to it. An hour or two and he would free himself; if not, he deserved to die anyway. He was still muttering to himself, and as I tightened the knot he blurted out some insult to Sarah in Arabic. He was probably telling her what a bitch she was for fucking him over like this, after all they had been through together and all that shit. She ignored it. I felt like telling him I knew how he felt.
I had a quick look around to check we hadn’t left anything, and started to crawl out of the shelter. Sarah followed, or at least I thought she did. The Arabic mumblings got fainter.
I was still on my hands and knees, my head just emerging from the branches, when the loud report of a weapon came from behind me. Instinct flattened me to the ground. In almost the same instant I realized it wasn’t me who’d been shot and slithered out of the way.
My first thought was that he’d somehow got Sarah. I jumped to my feet and ran round the tree to approach him from the other side. I started to crawl in, weapon at the ready. Pushing through the branches on my stomach, I saw him. He was still being held up by his secured hands, but his body was sagging and his legs were splayed, like the crumpled victim of a firing squad. There was no way Lance would be feeling the cold any more. Sarah had head-jobbed him with a semi-automatic. She was on her knees, putting the weapon into her jacket pocket.
What the fuck was it with this woman? Every time she was left alone with a man she landed up killing him. ‘Give me the gun, Sarah… Give it.’
She looked up into the sky, as if I was being boring, pulled it from her pocket and threw it over to me. I crawled back out. It was pointless keeping a low voice now; half the State would know where we were. I snapped, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘He wouldn’t stop, believe me. He would try and join up with the other two or carry on himself. I know these people. I know Lance very well. Look, the other two – they know where, how and when to do the hit. What you did this morning won’t stop them.’ Her face had taken on a manic look. ‘For fuck’s sake, Nick, I’m beginning to wish I’d just killed you and opted to carry on with him.’
There was no time for debate. We’d been compromised. We had to be like animals now and run as fast as we could; it didn’t matter where, we just had to get out of that immediate danger area. Only when we were a safe distance away could I stop and assess.
Assuming the shot had been heard, there would be chaos at the police control centre as it was reported over the radio net. They would just have been starting to work through all their post-incident procedures when, literally,
bang!
, another problem. Initially they’d be confused, but they’d soon figure out where it had come from, and direct the helicopter and follow-up our way.
We legged it. We could move much faster now than before, even with Sarah wearing her size-eleven Nikes. I was severely pissed off with her for what she’d done, but tried to control it. Once you allow yourself to get angry, you stop concentrating on the aim, which in this case was to make distance. Whether or not she was lying wasn’t an issue at the moment, I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered right now was escape.
The helicopter swooped over the canopy. We stopped in our tracks and took cover beneath the trees. But the aircraft wasn’t hovering this time, it was moving fast and low. It crossed directly overhead, blasting torrents of rain water from the trees onto our heads, then roared away at speed.
I decided to keep going in the same direction, a straight line away from the house. I wanted to find a road or some habitation. A house should mean a vehicle.
It was fully light now. Our faster pace had got some body warmth going, and if anything I was starting to overheat. Just like me, Sarah was puffing and panting as we scrabbled up the rises and stumbled headlong downhill. There was no need to explain to her what I was doing. She was actually a help, because it was so much easier to have two sets of eyes and ears.
After thirty minutes of hard running we finally hit a road. It was a single carriageway, potholed and no more than three or four metres wide. I paralleled it to the right, running through the trees about ten metres to its side. We hadn’t gone far when I heard a vehicle. We stopped, got down, and I rested on my elbows and knees to keep myself out of the mud and preserve body warmth. It was approaching fast from behind us, engine roaring and tyres splashing on wet tarmac.
A blue and white appeared and sped past, its roof-mounted red and blue light bar flashing brighter than was normal in daylight because of the cloud cover. The police would have things squared away by now; they were probably placing a cordon round the whole area. They’d then either wait for us to emerge, or come in and flush us out.
The moment the cruiser disappeared from view we got up and started moving. The wind had strengthened and I could see waves of heavier rain coming in ahead. After twenty minutes of running through deeply rutted, puddled ground we came to a large open area, a perfect square of about five acres cut out of the forest, with a white cattle fence around the perimeter. Sitting in the middle, and approached by a driveway from the road, was a two-storey ranch house built of wooden slats, with a pitched roof, tiled with grey slates. A square extension had been added onto the far end, and I could see an open garage at ground level. Inside were a pickup truck, two other cars and a small powerboat on a trailer. The building and two of the three vehicles looked as if they’d seen better days.
There was no approach to the garage that avoided open ground. I guessed there would be windows on every side of the house, to take advantage of the views. Six or seven horses were loose in the field, but there was no evidence of dogs and the house itself seemed quiet enough. Maybe everybody was still tucked up in bed.
‘You stay here,’ I whispered to Sarah. ‘I’m going to go and get a wagon. When you see me drive out, move up to the road.’
‘Why aren’t I coming over with you?’ She sounded suspicious, as if she thought I’d get in a vehicle and just leave her stranded. If only she knew.
She was in no position to question my decisions, but I answered. ‘Number one, it’s quieter if I go on my own – I know what I’m doing, you don’t. Number two, I don’t want you killing anybody else. And number three, you have no choice. I have your documents in here.’ I half turned to show her the bag on my back. ‘You want me to help you, you wait here.’
The plot of land was as flat and green as a pool table, not a single fold in the ground. Checking the road for vehicles and the sky for helis, I set off across grass which was about three inches high and full of moisture, running but trying to keep as low as possible. I didn’t know why, because it didn’t make me any less visible, but it just seemed the natural thing to do. I was leaving a clear track in my wake through the wet grass, but I couldn’t do anything about that.
I kept looking at the windows for movement. As I got closer I could see that the upstairs curtains were drawn. I wondered if Mr and Mrs Redneck were sitting in bed watching the news about last night’s events down the road. For sure, there’d be more news crews at the lake by now than there were police.
Reaching the house, I bent down below a side window with open curtains. In this weather there would have been a light on if people were up and about, and there wasn’t, but even so I didn’t chance looking inside. I held it there for a few seconds and listened. Nothing. Now that I was close up to them I could see that the slats weren’t wood at all, but aluminium painted to look that way, and the roof was just felt, masquerading as tiles.
I moved around to the opposite side of the house, towards the garage extension, making sure that I kept low to avoid the windows.
I shook my head to get the rain out of my face. There were no wet tyre marks on the garage floor or rain on the wagons. There had been no movement since at least last night.
The first thing to do was check whether any of the vehicles were alarmed. I couldn’t see any warning signs, flashing LEDs, or other telltales. An alarm would probably have cost more than the two cars anyway. I tried all the doors on the vehicles, starting with the pickup truck, then the two others – a small, rusting red Dodge, a bit like a bottom-of-the-range Rover, and an elderly, olive-green estate car, with fake wood panelling along the sides that made it look like a stagecoach. Everything was locked. The rain was drumming on the garage roof as I went back to the muddy white Nissan pickup. It had a double cab, with a flat bed on the back, protected by a shaped, heavy plastic liner. I had a quick mooch in the boxes next to it against the wall, then moved aside the plastic bottles of two-stroke mix for the boat engine, looking for something to jemmy it open with.
I found a toolbox and was bending over it, moving the tools really slowly and carefully so I didn’t make any noise, when there was a shout that made me jump.
‘Don’t move! Freeze, yo’ son of a bitch!’
Whoever it was, he must have spent his life stalking animals in the woods, because I hadn’t heard a sound. I didn’t move a muscle. ‘Keep still or I’ll shoot yer so’ry ass,’ he said in a really cool, calm, deep Southern drawl. He was directly behind me.
Fucking right I stood still. I also made sure he had a good view of my hands. I had a pistol tucked down the front of my jeans, and another in my jacket, but they were staying where they were. I didn’t know what he was pointing at me, or even whether he had anything at all, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. I stayed bent over the toolbox and kept my mouth shut; I didn’t want to say anything that might antagonize him, especially in my bad American accent.
I could hear his feet scraping on the concrete floor of the garage. I listened intently; I wanted to estimate how far away he was.
‘Surn of a bitch, stay whar y’are.’ He sounded an oldish man, maybe in his early sixties.
He was shuffling towards me. I moved my eyes so that I could catch his reflection in the door window of the pickup. As he moved closer I could clearly see an outstretched hand holding a snub-nosed revolver.
‘D’ya know whose truck this here’s is, feller?’
I shook my head very slowly.
‘Muh surn’s. Muh surn’s a State Trooper. He’s out thar lookin’ fer yer ass right now. But yer in muh house. You belong t’me. Surns o’ bitches, shit, dammit…’
Either I was right – they had been watching breakfast TV – or Mr and Mrs Redneck’s little boy had been on the telephone to fill him in on events.
He carried on. ‘The troopers is comin’ now t’drag yer ass in, feller. Shit, thet’s muh surn’s truck, he worked dadburned hard fer thet… mutherfucker, shit…’