Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

His words were clear as ice, their meaning as well as their sound. She gave a tiny nod.

Through the glass, she could make out silhouettes around the two cars. Police cars, they looked like, with their cherry-top lights; except that they didn’t appear to have police markings. The silhouetted shapes — there might have been four, as Pope said; she couldn’t be sure — were hunched against the cars, again just as she’d seen in the movies. The siege posture, she thought of it as.

As she watched, the silhouettes shifted position, two of them detaching themselves from the car and advancing a little at a stoop. Both men carried guns, held low and in both hands.

Pope straightened further, pulled Nina closer. The men stopped, remained where they were.

Something didn’t make sense to her.

‘I had to kill those two,’ Pope said.

She nodded.

‘The clerk was going to shoot me. The truck driver would have made a run for it at some point and those men outside would have got in.’

He was telling her this, Nina knew, because he needed her to trust him. This she understood.

But still, something about the situation was wrong. Something about the tactic he was using.

She felt him step crabwise to the left and allowed him to shuffle her along with him. They reached the counter. Nina kept her gaze on the forecourt, not wanting to look at the body of the clerk. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pope reach across and lift the handset of the landline phone perched in its base beside the till.

In the faint reflection in the glass, she saw him hold the phone high. He’d released her shoulder, but his right hand still touched the gun barrel to her head.

Across the forecourt one of the men straightened a little, then seemed to say something to his friend. The man called something across to the other tow shapes near the second car.

One of them was fumbling with something which she realised from the tiny blue light was a cell phone.

Two minutes passed. Nina became aware for the first time of faint, tinny music coming from a radio somewhere behind the counter.

She understood what was happening. The men outside were locating the phone number for the gas station.

The phone rang in Pope’s hand, shrill and startling. He hit the receive button and spoke immediately.

‘Back off and give us safe passage in one of your cars. If you advance any further or don’t comply with my instructions, I’ll kill the girl.’

Nina couldn’t make out the reply at the other end but she heard Pope interrupt: ‘No negotiation. You have two minutes. Leave the keys to both cars in the car in front of the exit and then all of you go over and sit in the other car.’

Another tiny burst of noise came through the receiver. Pope said, ‘Two minutes, starting now. Any longer and I shoot her.’

As he lowered the phone, Nina saw two sets of headlights sweep down the slip road leading towards the forecourt.

*

‘Time’s running out.’

The phone had rung again. Nina had watched the two new cars pull up outside the entrance and a woman emerge from one of them. One of the men had advanced toward her and from his gestures was clearly telling her to back off.

Nina strained her hearing, starting to become accustomed to the sound coming from the receiver. She made out a few words from the other end. Not with us… get rid of them… more time.

Two men had joined the woman from the cars. An urgent argument was developing.

Pope had lowered the phone again. In the glass his face was in shadows and Nina couldn’t read it.

She said, her voice stronger than she’d believed possible: ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Pope. ‘These new people seem to be different.’

‘Police?’

‘Perhaps.’ He sounded unconvinced.

The two remaining original men — my father’s men , Nina reminded herself — stayed out of the argument, keeping close to their car on the other side, watching Pope and Nina in the window. Nina wondered if Pope was considering making a move now that two of the men were otherwise occupied. But he kept still, his hand with the phone resting on her shoulder, and the gun barrel always gently touching her ear.

Pope’s two-minute ultimatum had long passed. The scene at the entrance was becoming more fraught. Both sides were squaring up, pushing against the space between them. Nina could hear voices raise din anger but couldn’t make out the words.

The woman held something up. Light glinted off it. A detective’s shield. So they were cops.

The two men took a step back, and then things happened fast.

The two men with the woman crouched and lifted their arms, guns levelled. The two original men aimed their weapons back.

The two remaining men began advancing across the forecourt toward the building.

Pope dropped the phone and put his forearm across Nina’s throat, lightly, behind the neck of the violin case. He drew her across him. The movement made her stagger slightly and her violin case sweep the rows of candy bars and chips in front of her below the windows, scattering them noisily to the floor.

The men, her father’s men, were halfway across the forecourt. Over at the cars the standoff continued.

Nina twisted her neck in discomfort. As she did so she glanced up at the CCTV monitor above the counter over to the left.

One of the split-screen images showed the back of the shop. A man was sidling down one of the aisles, gun arm extended.

Nina yelled, ‘ Behind us .’

Interstate 95, between Washington D.C and New York

Tuesday 21 May, 2.05 am

Berg’s phone trilled on the dashboard. She put it on speaker.

They’d been driving for over an hour, the interstate appearing as vast and as empty as any road Purkiss had seen, despite the steady flow of cars. The signs said they were nearing Philadelphia.

Nakamura’s voice came across. ‘Just picked up a police report from Philly. Car smash here on 95 heading north, with one guy dead. The other driver left the scene. Get this. The cops say the dead guy didn’t die in the crash. Witnesses saw him get out the car and start arguing with the other driver. Next thing he’s on the ground. And the cops found a gun in the abandoned car, a Glock.’

Berg said, ‘Huh. But it still doesn’t mean — ’

‘Same witnesses say the driver left the scene with someone else. A skinny teenage boy, or possibly a young woman.’

‘That’s them.’ Purkiss sat up, feeling the adrenaline spike. ‘Ramirez, and probably Pope.’

Berg said, ‘Danny, do you have a licence plate on the abandoned car?’

‘Waiting on it from the local cops.’

‘It’ll be up ahead,’ said Berg to Purkiss. ‘Keep your eyes open.’

In a minute Nakamura’s voice returned. ‘Cops ran the plate through DMV. It’s from a car rental place in Charlottesville.’

‘Our girl all right, plus whoever’s with her,’ said Berg. ‘Danny, get a — ’

‘Description of the person who rented it. Yeah, I’m already on it, Berg. Eat my dust.’

Berg grinned. She glanced across at Purkiss.

‘Good feeling, huh? When you’re closing in. You’re kind of like a cop. You know how it is.’

She put her foot down a little. Nakamura’s Taurus was a couple of cars behind, keeping up easily in the relative lightness of the traffic.

Nakamura came back on the line. ‘Rental place is an all-nighter, but the guy there wasn’t on shift when the car was rented. However, he checked the records and it was booked out to a Douglas Torrance. British licence holder. The photo from his licence is being scanned and sent to me. I’ll forward it so Purkiss can see.’