by Zoe Sharp
She shook her head.
“Don’t worry,” I said grimly, “you’ll soon learn.”
***
The city was a mix of wide open squares and narrow twisting streets. It was as if the head of planning had grand designs, but the rest of the committee conspired against him during his lunch hour, surreptitiously crowding houses and offices and shops into every available space.
Zak tore through the open areas as if trying to avoid a missile lock. Some of the squares were still awash, but at least it was only water.
Water cannon . . .
“Why didn’t they just shoot you?” I asked suddenly.
“Thank you, please, yes?” Zak queried over his shoulder. I’d noticed that if he didn’t understand the question, he tended to just throw words at you, hoping to land on the right answer by a process of elimination.
“There’s been artillery fire all over the city during the night. If it was government forces – and I can’t see the rebels bothering with water cannon – why didn’t they just shoot at you?”
“Too many news peoples,” Zak said, his grin becoming wider and slightly more grotesque. “Both sides wanting support of international community, yes?”
“Water cannon looks bad enough on camera,” Nils said from the front seat, where he was bracing himself during the wild ride with both hands and a knee wedged hard against the dashboard. “But killing civilians looks worse, for sure.” And the bitterness was back in his voice again.
Zak swerved round a corner and a shabby café came into view, one window boarded up with corrugated iron sheeting and bullet pockmarks in the walls. Outside was a motley collection of cars and scooters. They weren’t so much parked as huddled together like flotsam in the corner of a dirty harbour.
“Ah, luck is with us,” cried Zak, taking both hands off the wheel in his delight. “My friend – he is here.”
He ran the Toyota into the melee until the bumper docked with the car in front, and jumped out before I could stop him. I cursed under my breath. Going after him meant leaving the gun behind – carrying it openly would be inviting trouble. I went after him with a wad of money folded tight in my hand, leaving the SMG on the back seat for now and my door open. I had already tucked the survival knife through my belt, hidden beneath the folds of baggy clothing, and I made sure my scarf was pulled tight around my face.
The dented Merc pulled up on the other side of the street. This area was not a government stronghold, and the Tweedles looked as out of place here as they did uneasy.
They were so close I had to keep my voice low as I explained to Zak what was needed. If the Tweedles had wound down their windows, they could have joined in without needing to shout. These guys must have called in sick the day the Beginners’ Guide to Discreet Surveillance class was run.
Zak disappeared the cash with a magician’s skill and hurried into the café, sandals flapping. I gave the street a slow once-over, then climbed back into the Toyota, still leaving my door open.
“Where’s he gone?” Alison demanded.
“We need some help to get rid of our tail before we run for the border,” I said, eyes sliding towards the Tweedles. “As it is, if those two follow any closer we’ll be able to slap them with a paternity suit.”
Nils frowned, nodded to the gun by my leg. “So – why not shoot them?”
There were any number of tactical reasons why that would be a Very Bad Plan but before I could explain any of them, Alison rounded on him. “Is that how we get our story out now – kill whoever gets in our way?” she asked. “We’re supposed to report the problems, not become a part of them, remember?”
Nils gave another shrug that would have done Zak proud, and slumped back into his seat. The sudden silence between us grated. Alison muttered, “Come on, come on,” under her breath. “What’s taking him so long?”
I reckoned she’d been here long enough to realise that every business transaction started with drawn-out cups of tea or evil coffee. But even I didn’t like the time Zak had been inside. If nothing else, the distant AK fire that had formed a constant backdrop seemed to be growing in pitch and volume. And the deserted street was not quite so deserted any more. There were faces, movement, in once-deserted doorways and windows around us. I kept a wary eye on the slow convergence.
The Tweedle brothers were becoming increasingly agitated, too, to the point where I entertained a vain hope they might jump ship without waiting for further discouragement. They clearly weren’t happy with their current location, though – a fact which was not lost on Alison.
She ducked in her seat to get a better look at the buildings surrounding us, as if getting her bearings for the first time since the journey had begun. “This Zak – whose side is he on?” she asked abruptly.
“His own, I think,” I said. “If you think he might sell us out, I agree that’s crossed my mind, but this is a strictly cash-on-delivery kind of job. His promised fee is waiting for him at the border, so it’s in his best interests to get us there.”
Not to mention what I’ll do to him if he tries anything . . .
She nodded, and then I had to open my big mouth to add, “If it helps, I don’t think he’s a closet admirer of El Presidente.”
She didn’t flinch. Flinching would imply involuntary movement. Instead, she went utterly still, like a fat rabbit who’s suddenly realised that hawk-shaped shadow directly overhead is not a novelty cloud formation.
“We need to get out of here,” she said, a fine serration of panic sawing through her voice. “It’s not safe―”
“Get a grip,” I snapped, surprised and not a little annoyed by the cracks in her cool. “Of course it’s not safe. We’re in a country that’s had months of unrest and is heading downhill rapidly into full-blown civil war. Not exactly Leamington Spa on a wet Bank Holiday Monday.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. She broke her immobility, twisting as if trying to cover all angles at once. “We can’t trust him! We need to go.”
I confess I’d been reluctantly edging towards a similar conclusion, but maybe with slightly less hysteria. I ducked my head to check the Toyota’s ignition. It was empty.
Shit.
“OK,” I said, “Let’s―”
Before I got any further, a trio of skinny figures slithered out of a narrow alley next to the café and approached the car from the driver’s side, peering in. They were mid-teens, but I didn’t make the mistake of thinking of them as children. Nevertheless, although I put my hand on the SMG I kept it hidden – for now.
“English? American?” they demanded. “Manchester United? Red Sox?”
“No, Swedish,” Nils called back. And then, perhaps realising that replying in English might not have been too smart, added quickly, “Jag är Svensk. Svensk!”
“Français,” Alison declared, not to be outdone.
The pair ducked to look directly at me. “Irish,” I said, putting all the threat of East Belfast into the single word.
They paused, not quite sure what to make of our replies. I flicked my gaze briefly to the café, the open doorway now thronged with faces watching the show. Nothing like the possibility of a lynching to brighten a dull morning.
I felt my heart rate step up, adrenaline pumping. I knew that when things went bad here, they tended to reach flashpoint very quickly. Zak might be setting us up, or he might be lying inside the building with his throat cut. Alternatively, he could be sipping his mud coffee and navigating the formal dance of small talk on his way to a deal.
Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
I glanced around me, forcing my focus outwards to assess the whole scene. The Merc was only metres away with the engine running. It was a heavy vehicle – heavy enough to use as a battering ram if I needed to force our way through. If it came to it, I would have to take out the Tweedles and to hell with Alison’s sensibilities. Still, the prospect of getting my principals transferred from one vehicle to the other, in the face of hostile and no doubt
readily armed opposition, was not a choice to be made lightly.
“Maybe we should ask those watching us to watch over us?” Nils suggested out of the corner of his mouth. He’d twisted in his seat and followed my gaze – if not my intent – to the pair in the Merc.
“Not exactly what I had in mind,” I murmured. “Just be ready to move.”
Then, just as I tightened my fingers around the pistol grip of the Sterling, Zak pushed his way through, talking loudly, waving his arms as if to shoo away crows. The youths scattered and Zak climbed back into the car.
“All OK,” he said, smiling. “We go, yes?”
He rammed the gear lever in reverse and the Toyota leapt back from the pile of vehicles, coming within a gnat’s whisker of whacking another dent into the side of the Mercedes as it did so.
Tweedle-Dumb, behind the wheel, rapidly shifted the big car backwards away from a collision. Maybe any damage was deducted out of his pay. Looking at the state of the Merc he hadn’t received his full packet in quite a while.
Meanwhile, a nondescript car turned into the street behind us and approached so fast I thought the driver was going for full ramming speed. I was just about to call a warning when Zak shoved the Toyota’s transmission into first and stamped on the accelerator. We shot off with the second car so close up behind us I couldn’t see enough of the front grille to identify the make. The Merc wheelspun in pursuit.
The Tweedles could not have been happy about having this buffer between us. The two rear cars weaved from side to side in the narrow street in an attempt to pass or avoid being passed. All it needed was sets of running boards and men in pinstripe suits and I’d be in the middle of a classic Chicago gangster movie.
Looking out of the back window, all I could see of the chase car’s occupants was their eyes. There were four people inside – that they were all men was a fairly safe bet – with their faces covered. If their gesticulating arms were anything to go by, they were all talking at once. Even the driver.
“Hold very tight please, thank you, yes,” Zak yelled over his shoulder, then spun the wheel to launch us into an alleyway with barely half a metre spare on either side. The chase car followed, slicing off its door mirrors as it ricocheted through the entrance.
The alley was lined with houses, narrow doorways that spilled straight out into the roadway. I prayed nobody stepped out of their front door as we thundered past.
I turned to look back, just in time to see the nose of the chase car dip as the driver slammed on the brakes. The front wheels locked, smoke and dust billowing up, until the car finally came to a halt. All four doors opened. All four occupants leapt out. They scarpered into the nearest buildings, which swallowed them up as if they’d never been, leaving a stalled roadblock firmly in the path of the Mercedes.
We burst out of the far end of the alley and fishtailed away, leaving the Merc boxed in behind us.
Zak turned and grinned at me hugely over his shoulder. “My friends, they follow plan, yes?” he said.
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
Nils had twisted to watch the foiled pursuit. For the first time I thought I caught a glimpse of bone-dry humour. “You planned this?”
I shrugged. “Only works if you’ve got a chase car following close behind,” I said. “But if Princess Di’s security had done the same instead of trying to outrun the paparazzi that night in Paris, who knows how things might have turned out?”
Zak kept his foot wedged down on the throttle and made a series of random turns. With every passing minute, the Tweedles’ chances of reacquiring us diminished until they were somewhere between slim and none.
I wondered if they’d have that taken out of their pay, too.
***
We drove for nearly three hours through the hottest part of the day. The Toyota’s air conditioning system consisted of opening the windows. At speed, the inrush of dust and grit blowing across the raised desert highway acted like the roughest facial you ever had. After the first ten minutes my eyes were full of gravel, but it was preferable to dying of heat exhaustion.
Alison had calmed down after her panic outside the café. In a manner that always struck me as terribly English, she attempted to over-compensate for doubting Zak’s allegiances earlier by being extra nice to him now, giving his every pronouncement more attention than it warranted, smiling and nodding.
Zak, as if to demonstrate his debonair side, had the radio tuned to a local station and was singing along. By that, I mean he was singing at the same time as the music, rather than in time with it. His accompanying hand slaps on the steering wheel were equally erratic.
Nils coped with the racket by feigning sleep. I could tell by the way his chest rose and fell he was faking it.
The road was heavy with traffic, foot as well as vehicle. There were the ubiquitous boys on donkeys, overladen pickup trucks with vociferous goats in the back, mixed in with new BMWs and SUVs. Hardly anyone was heading towards the city. The flood of refugees had started – all making for the border just like us.
“We need to get off highway, yes?” Zak suggested over the roar of wind noise as we slowed for yet another broken-down donkey.
I hadn’t missed the fact that when we weren’t moving, we were attracting the wrong kind of attention from our fellow travellers. Their country’s conflict might be mainly internal, but that didn’t mean they’d pass up the chance to stone a group of foreigners, just for someone else to blame.
“You wouldn’t by any chance know an alternative route, would you?”
Zak turned to look at me, his distorted features pulled almost into a leer. “Maybe yes, maybe,” he said.
***
Zak’s alternative route involved the kind of terrain I’d only previously encountered on army tank courses. It was brutal, but the old Toyota scrambled gamely on, encouraged by Zak’s random wheel-slapping and tuneless yodels. Nils feigned coma by this time. I was tempted to join him.
Eventually, just when I thought my eyes would never line up with their sockets ever again, we bumped off the rutted track and rejoined something that nearly resembled a metalled road.
“All OK now, yes?” Zak said, beaming at us as he put his foot down.
It was clear that he was not the only one who knew about this detour, but at least the traffic was light and the slow-moving stuff kept to the shoulder to let us by. We were moving through sparse desert scrub, flanked by huge outcrops of rock blasted smooth by the elements. Settlements huddled close to the roadside as if fearful of what lay beyond it, out in the wilderness. The few people we saw stared at the passing vehicles like floats in a parade. They were mainly women, kids, and the elderly – over here that seemed to encompass anyone over the age of thirty-five.
Where are the men?
“How far to the border?” Alison asked.
“Not far,” Zak said with a vague gesture to the road ahead that could have indicated anything from an hour to a week. “All OK now.”
The road had begun to twist around the rock formations, creating natural chokepoints and elevated strongholds that made my defensive antennae twitch like crazy. And maybe it was because this was one of the rare occasions when Zak actually had his eye on his driving so I couldn’t see his face, but something in his voice worried me. A tightness, a faint harmonic that had been absent during the rest of our journey.
He’s nervous, I realised. Why now?
I sat forwards in my seat. “Any likely problems up ahead I should know about?”
“No, no, all OK, thank you, yes.”
There it was again – more of it this time.
Fear.
“Zak, stop the car.”
“No, we must go,” he insisted, sweat in his voice now. “All OK.”
“What is it?” Alison demanded. “What’s wrong?”
That’s what I’m trying to find out.
Desperate measures were called for.
“Stop the car or I’ll pee here,” I improvised loudly. “Your choice, but it’
s going to stink.”
Zak flung me a single horrified glance over his shoulder and stood on the brakes.
We were in the middle of a corner at the time and the Toyota didn’t take kindly to the manoeuvre, skating on the loose gravel that coated the road until we eventually came to an untidy halt.
Still, in other ways the timing couldn’t have been better. Up front, about three hundred metres in the distance, was a narrow bridge across a dried-up riverbed. The entrance to the bridge was currently blocked by a line of rusted oil drums. A dusty Land Cruiser with vaguely military markings sat nearby. Guarding the drums was a group of four guys in sloppy fatigues. The only thing impressive about these troops was their obvious familiarity with the weapons they carried.