The Thousand Dollar Escape

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘You could teach me,’ Sam persisted.

  ‘A lot of it is experience too,’ I deflected. ‘Years of experience.’

  ‘Could you teach me something, at least?’ she asked. ‘Just so . . . you know . . . I don’t feel so helpless.’

  I understood what she was saying, why she wanted to know. She might never be able to take on a group of men single-handed, but perhaps I could teach her something, at least.

  ‘You want me to teach you moves, techniques,’ I said, ‘but you really don’t need them. For what you need in your life, you already know everything you’ll ever need.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not techniques you need,’ I told her, ‘it’s the will to use the weapons that God has already given you. Teeth. Nails. Fingertips. Combine it with rage, anger, aggression and you can’t go far wrong.’

  She kept looking at me expectantly, so I continued. ‘Let’s say someone attacks you,’ I said. ‘A guy. A big guy, like two hundred pounds or more. Now, what do you weigh? One hundred, one ten?’

  She shrugged. ‘One fifteen.’

  ‘Okay. So who’s going to win a punching battle between the two of you?’ I shook my head. ‘You wouldn’t have a chance. And those wrist locks you see in those self-defense classes?’ I shook my head again. ‘Total bullshit. With a hundred-pound weight difference, they’d never work. And even if they did, what then? You’ve got the guy tied up, are you just gonna get him to promise to leave you alone? You’d have to let him go eventually, and what then? Added to which, if a guy’s making a move on you, he’s probably been drinking, right? Changes the likelihood of pain compliance completely, he won’t respond the same as when he’s sober. Hell, you might break his wrist and it’ll only piss him off more.

  ‘So why make things more complicated than they have to be? Why compete strength with strength, or rely on techniques that have to be practiced thousands of times to make them even slightly effective?

  ‘No, all you need to do is grab that sonofabitch around his face, sink your thumbs into his eyes and your teeth into something soft like his ear, his nose, his cheek, even his neck.’

  She looked at me in surprise, and I could see that – despite what she’d had to deal with over the years – the thought of biting someone’s face, or sticking her thumbs in their eyes, still horrified her.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ I said, ‘but even if you go to all the karate clubs you can find for a few years, you’re still not going to stop a monster like Don. Only vicious, primeval rage is gonna do that. Rage, teeth and fingernails. But you have to make that mental jump, have to convince yourself that it’s your right to do it, your moral right to protect yourself. If a guy’s gonna try and rape you, beat you – well, in my opinion, they give up any rights they have for their own protection, and they deserve everything they get.’

  Sam nodded her head slowly as she thought about it.

  ‘Put your thumbs into the corner of the eye socket,’ I told her, ‘near the nose. Then tear them out to the side, rip your thumbs sideways to the outside of the head, aim to pull those eyes right out of their damn sockets. It probably won’t happen, but if that’s what you aim for, you’re still gonna damage the bastard, or at least distract him for long enough for you to get away.

  ‘And when you bite down, do it hard, and then whip your head around like a dog with a bone – if it’s an ear you’ve got, then try and rip that ear right off his head, clamp those teeth down and don’t let go, you know?’

  ‘I . . . guess so,’ she said noncommittally, obviously not entirely convinced.

  ‘The other option is to study martial arts for about twenty years, three hours a day, get some real-life experience – maybe in the police, the military, or even as a bouncer – and then put on a hundred pounds or so of muscle.’

  ‘It sounds like a no-brainer,’ she said after giving it some consideration.

  ‘It is,’ I told her. ‘Like I said, you already know everything you need to know about protecting yourself. What you really need is up there,’ I said, tapping her on the forehead. ‘You’ve got to believe - really believe – that you’re worth protecting. And trust me, Sam. You are.’

  I pulled my boots on and – slowly and painfully – levered myself from the bed and up onto my feet.

  Sam stood close, eyes searching mine. ‘I am, aren’t I?’

  ‘You bet,’ I confirmed.

  And that was when we heard Kane growling from outside the room.

  Chapter Ten

  I froze, knowing we’d been caught out.

  They’d found us here, and they were coming to get us.

  But who were ‘they’?

  Was it the Tulsa PD, or the county sheriff’s office? If so, they would only be looking to arrest us – in which case we could make our argument about Don Carson being an abusive psychotic, and see what happened.

  But if it was Carson himself, along with some of his buddies, then they wouldn’t be looking to arrest us, they’d be looking to kill us.

  ‘Let him in,’ I told Sam as I slipped over toward the window. She opened the door a crack, and Kane slipped into the motel room, breathing hard, excited. Something was definitely happening out there, and I moved the window blind to one side and carefully checked the parking lot outside.

  A car was parked right outside – I supposed it must have been the second one we’d stolen on our way out of the city – and several more were parked outside the other rooms which branched off ours. The motel formed almost an enclosed circle, save for the entrance and exit at the far end, which opened up onto West Skelly Drive, and Interstate 44 beyond.

  And at that entrance were two police cruisers, Sand Springs PD, creeping slowly into the courtyard, lights off. By their side, six cops entered the complex on foot, four with shotguns and the last two with handguns drawn.

  This was no routine stop – someone in law enforcement had found out where we were. Maybe it was from the stolen car, maybe it was because the desk clerk hadn’t believed Sam’s ID, maybe someone had seen Kane. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Bottom line was, someone knew we were here, and they’d told Don Carson.

  And now Carson had sent in his men to finish the job.

  Two of the men were pointing over to the stolen car in front of our room, and the cruisers started to slowly cross the courtyard toward us.

  I turned back to the room, frantically checking for another way out.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ Sam whispered anxiously.

  ‘Sand Springs PD,’ I told her, and Sam understood immediately what that meant; they would be shooting first and asking questions later.

  She started looking around the room for a way out with me, and even Kane began to sniff his way from one wall to another.

  The room was a basic affair, a Queen-size bed against one wall, a desk and a mirror on the other side next to a fridge and microwave. On the rear wall was an air conditioning unit, and through a door was a tiny bathroom.

  But there was no back door.

  There wasn’t even a window.

  Think . . . Think . . .

  ‘Colt,’ Sam whispered, ‘what are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Fight, I guess.’

  Hell, maybe we wouldn’t die within seconds.

  Maybe.

  There was a sound of metal being scraped, and I turned to see Kane scratching frantically at the air conditioning duct.

  Of course!

  Maybe there was still a way out of this death trap after all.

  The unit was fixed in place, but I didn’t have the time or the tools to dismantle the thing properly; instead, I backed up and then skipped back in, smashing my booted foot right into it with a side thrust kick, just as hard as I could manage without opening up the stitches in my shoulder.

  Kane knew that the unit led through the wall to the outside, probably to a service road which would run around the exterior of the motel.

  The unit was eighteen inches high by about
two and a half feet wide, positioned about four feet from floor level.

  If I could smash through it, pull it out of the wall, create some sort of hole there . . .

  I kicked again, and again, and again, the metal tearing and breaking, the unit shifting within its hole in the wall, loosening up, plaster starting to fall down the wall around it.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ Sam whispered, watching from the front window.

  ‘Probably wondering what the hell the noise is,’ I said, knowing that my handiwork was anything but quiet.

  I leant in, pulled at the unit with my hands, felt it move. My shoulder ached, but I pulled harder and it moved again, sliding forwards out of the wall before sticking in place.

  I moved to the side and kicked it hard from an angle, and it loosened even more.

  And this time when I reached forward, I managed to pull the entire unit from the wall, until it clattered down to the motel room floor.

  But daylight didn’t spill into the room like I’d hoped, and I peered into the hole I’d made, saw that the air conditioning unit hadn’t come out fully but had instead sheered into two pieces, and the remaining half was still blocking our exit.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Sam whispered, ‘and – shit! Don’s with them!’ She sounded scared, fearful, and I couldn’t blame her; this was, after all, the guy who had terrorized her for years. ‘He just got out of the cruiser, they’re nearly at our car.’

  I grabbed the chair from next to the desk, stood on it to get some extra height, and shot a side kick level down the open hole, my foot connecting hard midway through the wall with the second half of the air conditioning unit.

  It moved, but not enough.

  ‘Hurry,’ Sam pleaded, and I kicked again, was hit by a feeling of satisfaction as the last half popped straight out of the other side of the wall, falling to the path outside, daylight flooding into the room from the hole at last.

  ‘Kane,’ I ordered, and he leapt straight through the hole and out the other side.

  I waited for him to warn us of any danger on the other side, but when he remained silent I helped Sam up and into the hole, watched as she crawled through and dropped clear to the ground outside.

  And then I was up and climbing through the wall myself, just as the first loud knocks came on the door to our room.

  ‘Police!’ I heard a cop call as I pulled myself through the wall and landed in the service road on the other side. ‘Open the door! Now!’

  But there was no chance of that.

  We were already running.

  It was evening and the sun was low in the sky, but it was still bright and I was all too aware of the target we presented as we ran west along the service road that lay behind the motel.

  There weren’t any cops guarding the rear, but why would there be? There were no doors or windows, and no obvious way out. But I knew it wouldn’t take them long. They would either reroute around the complex, or follow us through the hole, or – most probably – a combination of both.

  We kept on running as we cleared the motel complex, mounting a section of grassland to cut a corner, racing past a big white house on our left until we hit another road.

  We didn’t stop, even as I saw lights flashing from further along the road on the left, we just carried straight on, dodging an SUV and a kid on a moped.

  I heard shots ring out, turned to see three cops following us down the service road, shooting as they went.

  There was a building up ahead, a wide industrial unit with ‘Railway Signals International’ adorning a billboard above the property, and we raced past parked cars – which helped to block the incoming fire – toward a small down-ramp on the right hand side.

  At the last moment, I saw that it didn’t lead anywhere and jinked left, tracing the fence until we hit a wall; Kane and I made the jump, then I pulled Sam up behind us and we carried on running through the rear lot.

  More shots rang out, and I knew we still weren’t out of danger yet.

  I looked around the lot, which was devoid of people – presumably the workers had knocked off for the day – but full of massive metal signal boxes, broken machinery and light trucks.

  ‘Get down,’ I hissed at Sam, and she immediately ducked out of sight. I gestured for her to come over to where I was, hidden behind the cab of a dark red truck, and she shuffled over and knelt down beside me and Kane.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

  ‘Evening the odds,’ I told her, bending lower so that I could see underneath the truck, watching the men’s legs as they got steadily closer.

  I nudged Kane in the ribs, and – knowing exactly what I wanted – he burst out from cover, leaping at one of the cops and knocking him to the ground, racing off before the other two cops could get a shot off at him.

  They tried, raising their pistols and loosing off some rounds, but the effort was futile against such a rapidly moving target; and their distraction was exactly what I needed.

  In a heartbeat I’d left the security of the truck and made it to the two cops that were stood blasting away after Kane, chopping my callused hand down on the first cop’s forearm. The hand reflexively opened and he dropped his pistol, and – careful not to use my bad arm – I backhanded him under the nose with the same hand, at the same time side-stepping round him and stamping down into the second cop’s leg.

  The first cop was hitting the floor just as I grabbed the second cop’s gun hand and snapped a powerful elbow up underneath his jaw, the whiplash to his neck knocking him unconscious instantly.

  I took the gun, span round toward the cop that Kane had tackled to the ground and slammed him in the head with it, rendering him senseless.

  I heard more people entering the lot and quickly pocketed the pistol, before stooping down to grab the other guy’s. There was another one down there somewhere from the cop Kane had attacked, but I didn’t have time to find it now; and besides which, I already had two more guns than I had a minute ago, and that was good enough for me.

  I turned and, keeping low, we crawled through the lot to the rear fence which we climbed over with what was now practiced ease.

  Still keeping low, we ran across an open area of high grass until we reached another road. We ran across it at an angle just as a couple of patrol cars turned onto the same street from the south, and then another two from the north; and I could see more cops on foot making their way over the fence from the Railway Signals International back yard.

  I pulled Sam across the front parking lot for the roofing contractor’s warehouse in front of us, seeking cover behind an old Ford pickup.

  I took a deep breath to control myself.

  It looked like it was going to be shooting time.

  Chapter Eleven

  I turned to Sam as the cars got closer. ‘Get up into the back of the pickup,’ I told her. ‘Stay there until I tell you, then do exactly what I say.’

  The cars were braking to a halt from either side, tires screeching across the asphalt while the cops on foot were closing in from the other side of the road, and I was glad when Sam did as I asked and climbed up into the back of the Ford.

  It was decision time. Could I justify lethal force? With Don Carson, I was pretty sure I could. But what about his friends and colleagues? They were complicit in what had happened to Sam, and probably more besides. Tulsa PD and the sheriff’s office were a harder call, but they were probably clean; or I didn’t have anything on them yet, at least.

  So I developed a list of options.

  Don Carson was a viable target, all the way up to a lethal shot. The rest of the Sand Springs police might deserve the same treatment, but I couldn’t be sure – and shooting police officers dead wasn’t going to get me on anybody’s Christmas card list. Nobody I wanted to know, anyway. So I’d just tag them, keeping it to non-lethal shots. Same treatment for Tulsa law enforcement, if any showed up

  For the time being though, all I could see were Sand Springs PD.

  Had everyone else been
called off? Was it just police chief Carson and his own private execution squad?

  I sighed, resigning myself to the situation.

  It was time for the fun to start.

  While they were still in their cars, I aimed from cover and opened fire, bang-bang-bang to the windshield of the first car south, aiming high but not really caring; then turning north and bang-bang-bang again to the first car there; then back south and three more shots, north and three more after that.

  Twelve shots in five seconds, then I fired the last four from the first gun at the cops racing toward us across the open road; I hit one in the leg, another in the gut, and the rest threw themselves down, scattering in all directions.

  The cops in the cars, meanwhile, hunkered down behind their dashboards, fear pinning them in their seats for those first few vital seconds, and I used that opportunity to draw the second gun.

  There was movement in the grass opposite, and I fired off a shot that hit the guy in the shoulder; and then car doors were opening all around us, men emerging with shotguns aimed over those doors, aimed right at us.

  In the next moment I was targeting those doors, aiming through the windows, pinning the cops down once more.

  ‘The roof!’ I shouted to Sam. ‘Go! Now!’

  There was a moment’s pause, enough for a shotgun blast to shred one of the pickup’s tires, and then I fired back and shouted again. ‘Go!’

  And then she moved, arms reaching upwards, hands grasping hold of the corrugated iron roof and pulling hard. Her practice over the walls and fences earlier in the day obviously helped, and she made it up there in one smooth, rapid movement.

  I watched her roll away out of sight of the cops, then fired a couple more shots at the two cars on the south side; and then a moment later I was breaking cover and running straight toward the open car door nearest to the building, my eyes growing wider as I saw the cop there raise his shotgun through the broken door window at me.