Lee Child - Persuader

I drove four miles, and then I saw a government Taurus. It was parked on the shoulder. Facing toward me. No lights. The old guy was sitting behind the wheel. I killed my lights and slowed and stopped window to window with him. Wound down my glass. He did the same. Aimed a flashlight and a gun at my face until he saw who I was. Then he put them both away.

“The bodyguards are out,” he said.

I nodded. “I figured. When?”

“Close to four hours ago.”

I glanced ahead, involuntarily. No time.

“We got two men down,” he said.

“Killed?”

He nodded. Said nothing.

“Did Duffy report it?”

“She can’t,” he said. “Not yet. We’re off the books. This whole situation isn’t even happening.”

“She’ll have to report it,” I said. “It’s two guys.”

“She will,” he said. “Later. After you deliver. Because the objectives are right back in place again. She needs Beck for justification, now more than ever.”

“How did it go down?”

He shrugged. “They bided their time. Two of them, four of us. Should have been easy. But our boys got sloppy, I guess. It’s tough, locking people down in a motel.”

“Which two got it?”

“The kids who were in the Toyota.”

I said nothing. It had lasted roughly eighty-four hours. Three and a half days. Actually a little better than I had expected, at the start.

“Where is Duffy now?” I asked.

“We’re all fanned out,” he said. “She’s up in Portland with Eliot.”

“She did good with the phones.”

He nodded. “Real good. She cares about you.”

“How long are they off?”

“Four hours. That’s all she could get. So they’ll be back on soon.”

“I think they’ll come straight here.”

“Me too,” he said. “That’s why I came straight here.”

“Close to four hours, they’ll be off the highway by now. So I guess the phones don’t matter anymore.”

“That’s how I figure it.”

“Got a plan?” I said.

“I was waiting for you. We figured you’d make the connection.”

“Did they get guns?”

“Two Glocks,” he said. “Full mags.”

Then he paused a beat. Looked away.

“Less four shots fired at the scene,” he said. “That’s how it was described to us. Four shots, two guys. They were all head shots.”

“Won’t be easy.”

“It never is,” he said.

“We need to find a place.”

I told him to leave his car where it was and get in with me. He came around and slid into the passenger seat. He was wearing the same raincoat Duffy had been wearing in the coffee shop. He had reclaimed it. We drove another mile, and then I started looking for a place. I found one where the road narrowed sharply and went into a long gentle curve. The blacktop was built up a little, like a shallow causeway. The shoulders were less than a foot wide and fell away fast into rocky ground. I stopped the car and then turned it sharply and backed it up and pulled forward again until it was square across the road. We got out and checked. It was a good roadblock. There was no room to get around it. But it was a very obvious roadblock, like I knew it would be. The two guys would come tearing around the curve and jam on the brakes and then start backing up and shooting.

“We need to roll it over,” I said. “Like a bad accident.”

I took my bundle out of the back seat. Put it down on the shoulder, just in case. Then I made the old guy put his coat down on the road. I emptied my pockets and put mine beyond his. I wanted to roll the Saab onto the coats. I needed to bring it back relatively undamaged. Then we stood shoulder to shoulder with our backs to the car and started rocking it. It’s easy enough to turn a car over. I’ve seen it done all over the world. You let the tires and the suspension help you. You rock it, and then you bounce it, and then you keep it going until it’s coming right up in the air, and then you time it just right and flip it all the way over. The old guy was strong. He did his part. We got it bouncing through about forty-five degrees and then we spun around together and hooked our hands under the sill and heaved it all the way onto its side. Then we kept the momentum going and tipped it right onto its roof.

The coats meant it slid around easily enough without scratching, so we positioned it just right. Then I opened the upside-down driver’s door and told the old guy to get in and play dead for the second time in three days. He threaded his way inside and lay down on his front, half-in and half-out, with his arms thrown up above his head. In the dark, he looked pretty convincing. In the harsh shadows of bright headlights he would look no worse. The coats weren’t visible, unless you really looked for them. I moved away and retrieved my bundle and climbed down the rocks beyond the shoulder and crouched low.

Then we waited.

It seemed like a long wait. Five minutes, six, seven. I collected rocks, three of them, each a little larger than my palm. I watched the horizon to the west. The sky was still full of low clouds and I figured headlight beams would reflect off them as they bounced and dipped. But the horizon stayed black. And quiet. I could hear nothing at all except the distant surf and the old guy breathing.

“They got to be coming,” he called.

“They’ll come,” I said.

We waited. The night stayed dark and quiet.

“What’s your name?” I called.

“Why?” he called back.

“I just want to know,” I said. “Doesn’t seem right that I’ve killed you twice and I don’t even know your name.”

“Terry Villanueva,” he called.

“Is that Spanish?”

“Sure is.”

“You don’t look Spanish.”

“I know,” he said. “My mom was Irish, my dad was Spanish. But my brother and I took after our mom. My brother changed his name to Newton. Like the old scientist, or the suburb. Because that’s what Villanueva means, new town. But I stuck with the Spanish. Out of respect for the old guy.”

“Where was this?”

“South Boston,” he said. “Wasn’t easy, years ago, a mixed marriage and all.”

We went quiet again. I watched and listened. Nothing. Villanueva shifted his position. He didn’t look comfortable.

“You’re a trooper, Terry,” I called.

“Old school,” he called back.

Then I heard a car.

And Villanueva’s cell phone rang.

The car was maybe a mile away. I could hear the faint feathery sound of a faraway V-6 motor revving fast. I could see the distant glow of headlights trapped between the road and the clouds. Villanueva’s phone was set to ring with an insane speeded-up version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D. He stopped playing dead and scrambled halfway up to knees and dragged it out of his pocket. Thumbed a button and killed the music and answered it. It was a tiny thing, lost in his hand. He held it to his ear. He listened for a second. I heard him say, “OK.” Then, “We’re doing it right now.” Then, “OK.” Then he said “OK” again and clicked the phone off and lay back down. His cheek was on the blacktop. The phone was half-in and half-out of his hand.

“Service was just restored,” he called to me.

And a new clock started ticking. I glanced to my right into the east. Beck would keep trying the lines. I guessed as soon as he got a dial tone he would come out to find me and tell me the panic was over. I glanced to my left into the west. I could hear the car, loud and clear. The headlight beams bounced and swung, bright in the darkness.

“Thirty seconds,” I called.

The sound got louder. I could hear the tires and the automatic gearbox and the engine all as separate noises. I ducked lower. Ten seconds, eight, five. The car raced around the corner and its lights whipped across my hunched back. Then I heard the thump of hydraulics and the squeal of brake rotors and the howl of locked rubber grinding on the blacktop and the car came to a complete stop, slightly off line, twenty feet from the Saab.