Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

“What about the van?”

“My problem. Don’t you move.”

The windscreen has fogged again. Ruiz wipes a circle on his side and sees a dark figure emerge from Room 12, a fourth man. He’s carrying something in his right hand-a plastic jerrycan. He crosses the forecourt and disappears from view. Several minutes later he returns.

Ruiz opens the car door.

“Where are you going?”

“Want a closer look.”

“He told us to wait.”

“You wait.”

Retracing his steps along the fence, Ruiz reaches the rear of the motel, keeping an eye on Room 12. The walkway is ahead of him, the rooms in darkness… all but one of them. Room 17 has a padlock hanging on a latch, uncoupled. He slides the bolt and nudges the door.

Disarray inside. Broken furniture. Cardboard boxes. Larger bins of old curtains… sodden. Petrol fumes catch in his throat and he fights the urge to cough.

The door to an adjoining room is partially open. He moves along the wall, holding the Glock at an upward angle. Peering through the opening he can see a table, a sofa spilling foam, chairs, a bed…

He hears a sound like a trapped animal and sees a shadow across the table. Someone sitting in a chair.

The situation is all wrong. He has to move through the door without cover, with his right arm extended at an awkward angle around the doorjamb. If there is someone on the other side, he won’t have time to sight the target before firing. He should wait for backup. All he can do from here is hold someone, he can’t take them out. He hears feet scraping on the floor.

“I’m armed. Come out now and you won’t get hurt.”

He listens. There is another muffled cry. Someone captive. He kicks open the door and crouches, pivoting and swinging the gun towards the chest of a seated figure. Muddy-eyed, he yells at the figure to put up his hands before realizing that she can’t. Her arms are bound. Her legs. Her mouth covered by masking tape.

Holly.

Luca is resting his forearms on the dashboard, occasionally 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 colleagues. 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 killing. 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 still as the pain drills through the bones of his shoulder. The longest minute passes. The kill shot doesn’t come.

Ruiz rips the tape away from Holly’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 ball bearings packed tightly around the plastic explosives. His eyes follow 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. Holly 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 Holly.

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 Holly. He can’t see it. Where has it gone?

He rolls 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. Holly is standing in the corner, her thin dress clinging to her frame, the suicide vest still 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 ball bearings packed around plastic explosive-enough to blow this room apart. When I send a text message it will detonate. The wearer will 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 Holly. She nods her head. He’s telling the truth.

“They’re not going to reach London. The police are following 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 shall have to take a hostage as insurance. Who shall 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 Holly 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. All I hear are empty threats from a hollow man. I know all about you, Mr. Ruiz, and there’s nothing heroic about your history. Your daughter. Your son. Three wives. A failed career. Did you really think you could come in here, without a weapon, and hope to succeed?”

He doesn’t know about the Glock. Holly must have hidden it. Ruiz follows her eyes. She glances at the bed.

The Courier raises his hand. Listens. Sirens. He looks at Ruiz with loathing. Then he grabs Holly 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.