The Wreckage: A Thriller (53 page)

Luca is resting his forearms on the dashboard, occasional y wiping the fogged window. He lost sight of Ruiz a few minutes ago. It seems longer.

At times working in Iraq he had been scared—at checkpoints or during firefights or when he was arrested in Baghdad—but over there he’d felt somehow better equipped. It was a war zone. He was doing a job. He had col eagues. Accreditation. Here he’s an outsider. He’s like an extra or an understudy who has wandered into the wrong play.

Ruiz is a different personality. He acts instinctively, unburdened by doubts or refusing to succumb to them. Luca shouldn’t have let him go. They should have waited for the police.

What’s taking him so long?

He sees something moving at the periphery of his vision, near the back door of the Merc. Ruiz returning. He turns his head and frowns momentarily at the man squatting in a shooting position, his eyes alive with the thought of kil ing. The side window shatters and a round strikes Luca’s shoulder like a fist wrapped in nails. Two more shots, fired with a silencer, punch into the metal of the doors, searching for his prone body. But the doors on the Mercedes 280 are built with a German Panzer in mind.

Luca lies very stil as the pain dril s through the bones of his shoulder. The longest minute passes. The kil shot doesn’t come.

Ruiz rips the tape away from Hol y’s mouth. Her lips are cracked and bleeding and her body streaked with dirt and sweat. She’s wearing some sort of vest over her thin dress. Putting the Glock on the floor, he runs his fingers around the edges of the heavy fabric, feeling the metal disc on the breastplate and the bal bearings packed tightly around the plastic explosives. His eyes fol ow the wires to the detonators.

“Please get it off me.”

“Shush! Let me concentrate.”

He looks for switches or pressure pads, feeling a rectangular outline beneath the material, two of them, detonators. Hol y is handcuffed to the chair. He can’t remove the suicide vest without first freeing her hands. Unless…? He needs a knife, shears, something sharp to cut the fabric.

“Get it off! Get it off!” whispers Hol y.

Ruiz holds a finger to his lips and looks around the room, lifting boxes, opening cupboards, fumes in his head. He tries the bathroom. The sink is broken. A cascade of water runs across the broken ceramics. The mirror—it would take him too long. He has bolt cutters in the car.

Re-entering the bedroom, he catches a glimpse of the Courier at the last moment and pivots to take the first blow on his shoulder. The second comes down on the side of his head.

The third crushes his scrotum, sending pain to the center of his brain. The Glock was on the floor next to Hol y. He can’t see it. Where has it gone?

He rol s on to his side and puts his hands on the floor, trying to rise but the floor won’t let him up. The butt of a pistol thuds into the side of his head. Barely conscious, he feels himself being dragged across the room. Something closes around his wrists. So this is how it ends, he thinks, a victim of his own stupidity, a sucker for a sob story. One door too many—that’s what they say when someone dies in the Armed Response Group. “One door too many.”

Ruiz opens his eyes. Blood is trickling from his forehead down his nose and over his lips and chin. He is handcuffed to a radiator. Hol y is standing in the corner, her thin dress clinging to her frame, the suicide vest stil buckled around her torso. Ruiz jerks at the metal cuffs.

“I wouldn’t trouble yourself. It’s a done deal,” says the Courier, who turns a chair backwards. Sits. Legs akimbo. He has a face now, real features. Dressed in black with razor-rimmed hair. Not handsome. Not ugly. Ordinary.

Ruiz has seen him before; he was in the crowd outside Colin Hackett’s office when Ruiz was talking to Gerard Noonan. Now he’s holding a mobile phone in his hand, spinning it like a six-gun.

“In case you’re wondering, that vest contains bal bearings packed around plastic explosive—enough to blow this room apart. When I send a text message it wil detonate. The wearer wil not have a choice. That’s one of the fail-safes I build into a project like this. I plan for cowardice.” Ruiz glances at Hol y. She nods her head. He’s tel ing the truth.

“They’re not going to reach London. The police are fol owing the van.”

“I don’t believe you, Mr. Ruiz. If the police were coming, they’d be here by now.”

“Suit yourself.”

The Courier is annoyed by his nonchalance, his lack of respect. The girl knows how to fear him. She knows what he’s capable of.

“I am leaving now,” he says. “Perhaps I shal have to take a hostage as insurance. Who shal it be?”

“Take me,” says Ruiz. “Let her go.”

“Are you begging?”

“I’m asking.”

“Perhaps you should beg.”

“I beg you.”

He glances at Hol y and smiles. “This one is in love with you.”

“Maybe I just want a chance to rip out your throat,” says Ruiz.

The Courier laughs. “Oh, you sound so courageous, so heroic, but it’s not bravery if you’re lying on a floor, chained to a radiator. Al I hear are empty threats from a hol ow man. I know al about you, Mr. Ruiz, and there’s nothing heroic about your history. Your daughter. Your son. Three wives. A failed career. Did you real y think you could come in here, without a weapon, and hope to succeed?”

He doesn’t know about the Glock. Hol y must have hidden it. Ruiz fol ows her eyes. She glances at the bed.

The Courier raises his hand. Listens. Sirens. He looks at Ruiz with loathing. Then he grabs Hol y and pushes her out the door, pausing to strike the wheel of a cigarette lighter. He crouches and touches the flame to the carpet and a thin blue film shimmers across the floor. Liquid fire. Feeding. Growing.

The door closes. A padlock clicks into place.

Ruiz tries to pul his hand through the cuff. Ripping one arm back, he almost dislocates his wrist. He gets to his feet, leans backwards, arms outstretched and jerks against the chain, bel owing in pain. He lies on his back, kicking at the radiator, and then hooks his fingers over the top, rocking it back and forth.

The fire has spread from the floor to boxes of curtains in the next room and the bedding. Smoke is fil ing the ceiling space. Toxic fumes.

He yel s for help. Screams in frustration. Someone is rattling the padlock on the door. He yel s again, but fire whooshes across a mattress, drowning out the sound.

Then he hears a car engine, a familiar rumbling. Someone is revving the Merc, letting off the clutch, taking aim. The front wal of the room explodes inwards and part of the ceiling col apses on to the bonnet. Luca is sitting behind the fractured windscreen, slumped sideways with blood pooling in his lap.

The impact shakes the entire building. Plaster crumbles and pipes bend. Ruiz rocks the radiator again and this time pul s it clear off the wal . His wrists are stil cuffed, but he’s free.

Luca puts the Merc into reverse and spins the wheels, pul ing over broken bricks and plaster, using one arm to drive. Ruiz scrambles across the room and reaches beneath the bed, feeling blindly for the Glock. His fingers close around the grip.

Climbing over the debris he tries to open Luca’s door, but the impact has bent the frame, trapping him inside. Ruiz sees the blood.

“I’l be fine. Just go,” Luca yel s. “They went through the back fence.”

Ruiz crosses the forecourt and runs along the chain-link fence, looking for a gate or a hole. He peers into the freight yard to where spotlights create pools of light between rows of containers. He can hear them moving across the screed. The Courier is yel ing at Hol y to hurry up. Cursing her.

Ruiz aims the Glock with both hands, bracing the barrel in the diamond of the mesh fence. They are visible for a moment as they pass between rows of containers. Silhouettes. Two figures, Hol y the smal est, being dragged along behind him. Squeezing the trigger, Ruiz fires six rounds in a row, the brass casings flicking past his eyes. He releases the empty magazine and shoves in a fresh one.

The Courier has never been in the military. He’s never been taught to stay off the crest of hil s and embankments and never to run in a straight line when someone is aiming a gun at you.

Ruiz waits, scanning the broken edge of the horizon. There they are. Aim. Squeeze. Fire. The Courier spins sideways and fal s. Hol y goes down with him, disappearing from sight.

Police cars are screeching to a halt outside the motel, bathing the windows in blue and white. The first officers are wearing body armor and carrying weapons. One of them yel s at Ruiz to drop his gun.

Ruiz is scanning the fence line, looking for a way through.

“Drop your weapon, or I’l shoot,” the officer shouts.

Ruiz raises his arms and throws the Glock to the ground.

“They’re getting away! He’s got a hostage!”

Final y he sees where the wire has been cut and peeled back from the metal posts. Dropping to his hands and knees, he crawls through, ignoring the orders of the policeman. Up again, running, he crosses the trol ey tracks, heading towards the freight yard.

The motel is eighty yards behind him when he reaches the ridge where he last saw Hol y. He notices blood on the rocks and weeds, a dark stain like fungus or rust.

Ruiz doesn’t stay on top of the ridge. He drops down and scans the rows of metal boxes, stacked four and five units high. The Courier is hiding somewhere among them. Wounded.

Bleeding. He’s stil with Hol y.

The next fifty yards is open ground. Ruiz decides to run for it, huffing air in his nostrils, feeling like an elephant rather than a gazel e.

Someone like the Courier is trained for this. His reflexes. His instincts. No conscience. No guilt. What wil he do if he’s cornered… if he can’t run? He’l fight. He’l die. He’l take Hol y with him.

That’s when he sees her. Running. Legs pumping. Chin tilting back. She’s stil wearing the vest. Stil handcuffed.

Ruiz reaches her in moments, lifting her like a rag dol . She fights at his arms. Squirming. Screaming.

“Get it off! Get it off!”

Ruiz drags at the vest, pul ing it over Hol y’s head, turning her in a somersault, wrenching the fabric to the end of her arms, where it can go no further.

“Please. Help me!”

The Courier is slumped against the wheel arch of a rusting freight trailer; his head is tilted back and lips parted as though drinking in the sky. He’s drowning in his own saliva from a sucking chest wound. Dying.

Opening his eyes, he watches Ruiz and the girl. Then he glances at the mobile phone in his hand. The screen lights up. This thumb presses “send.” A two-word message:
Allahu
Akbar.
God is great.

Kicking open the heavy metal door of an empty container, Ruiz carries Hol y inside and lays her on the floor with her arms stretched in front of her. Then he drags the door closed, trapping the vest on the outside of the door, stil attached to Hol y’s handcuffs. He pul s at her hands, holding them a few inches inside the closing door. The vest is looped over the chain of the handcuffs and the double door won’t shut completely. He braces his feet against the frame, holding the handles, pul ing with al his strength, shielding her body with his.

That’s when the prayer comes to him—the one from his childhood—the one he couldn’t remember in the church.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

Bless the bed that I lie on.

There are four corners to my bed,

Four angels round my head,

One to watch, and one to pray,

And two to bear my soul away.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Taj is driving the van, keeping to the middle lane, using the cruise control to keep a constant speed. Being stopped by the cops would be sil y. Stolen van. Bombs on board. Syd is in a playful mood. Poking his head between the front seats. Ketchup stains around his mouth.

“Did you see that girl? Do you think he was going to fuck her? I would have fucked her. She was fit. I mean, wow, she made Jenny Cruikshank look like a slag. Do you think he’s going to do it?”

Rafiq tel s him to shut up. “Put your seat belt on. We don’t want to get picked up.”

Syd giggles. “You think they’re going to worry about my sodding seat belt, when they see the hardware we got in here.” He picks up one of the guns.

“Put that away!” says Taj. “What if someone sees you waving that thing about? They’l cal the cops. We’l never get to London.” Syd puts down the gun and leans back in his seat, sipping on a can of Red Bul . It’s raining. The wipers are slapping against the bottom of the windscreen, air blasting on the inside of the glass. Taj has to crane forward, trying to see the electric red smears of brake lights. London is stil an hour away but already the traffic is building.

Syd leans forward again. “A thousand fucking people—how cool is that? The place is going to be packed. I feel like a fucking soldier. What are you going to do with the money?

They reckon fifty grand wil buy you a palace in Pakistan. That’s what I’m gonna do. Then I’l bring my mum and dad over. Show them my palace. Tel my old man he can shove his fish-and-chip shop up his arse.” He crushes the can. “Are you going to bring Aisha over, Taj? Did you tel her? What did you say?” Taj doesn’t want to talk about Aisha. Their last words had been harsh. He had never seen her in such a temper, so adamant that he was wrong. She had thrown the money at him.