Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

Knox is out before Dulwich skids the van to a stop. The canal bubbles eerily. No sight of the car. A man swims frantically for a nearby houseboat. Dulwich makes surprisingly good time in that direction, despite his bum leg.

Knox climbs between struts and drops into the murky water. The windbreaker, laden with its pockets of tools, weighs him down and he sinks quickly.

The car’s daytime headlights draw him. It’s landed on its side, the driver’s window facing the surface.

Knox tries his Maglite. To his amazement, it comes on.

A leaking air bubble stretches from the back window to the windshield. The trunk has opened on impact. The depleted airbag waves against Grace’s head. She’s out of the seat belt, sucking the remaining air while fighting the water pressure that holds the door shut.

Her eyes go wide with fright as Knox puts his face to the glass. He’s running out of air. He motions her back and tries breaking the glass with the butt end of the Maglite, but it just taps against the glass.

Grace returns to the pocket of air, her hair floating eerily. Knox holds up a single finger. Then he swims for the surface where his bursting lungs find relief. He sees Dulwich boarding the canal boat to capture the escapee.

He’s alongside the car again. More than half the air has leaked out. He pulls on the door. Nothing.

Bubbles of air burst loose and he’s blinded. He tries again to break the glass, but he lacks the proper force.

He leaves her. Grace pounds against the glass desperately. But Knox is headed for the car’s trunk. He pulls it farther open. Still no access to the backseat, to Grace. A floor mat floats into his face, startling him. He exhales most of his reserve air, digs for the tool kit, unscrews a large wing nut and takes hold of the tire iron.

As he comes around to the driver’s window, Grace is gone, lost behind a curtain of silver bubbles. He swims to the hood. Her face is pressed, eyes shut, into a tiny pocket of remaining air.

He takes out the driver’s window with three consecutive blows. The safety glass finally shatters, though in slow motion: small, brilliant cubes cascading down like ice crystals.

He takes her by the shirt and pulls. She breaks his grip, caught unaware by the contact. A second later, her hand gropes for his and they join. Knox draws her from the car.

Together, they kick for the surface.

Three or four minutes, max,” Dulwich says, referring to the distinctive police sirens closing in. Grace and Knox lean against a brick wall, both panting. “With my leg, I won’t even make it to the van in time. And she’s not going anywhere.”

Knox absorbs what he’s being told. He suspected all along that the three of them would not make the jet. But he didn’t see it working out this way.

“Bullshit,” Knox says.

“Pangarkar gave you up, Knox. Get while the getting’s good. I can try to keep Brower from going to the press on the knot shop, at least overnight. After that, bets are off. It doesn’t mean they won’t be after you,” Dulwich adds. “But shut this sucker down, and maybe you buy us some favors.”

“Two minutes, tops. Go. I’ve got this.” Knox bends and pulls Grace gently toward him. She’s conscious, but the consistency of a rag doll. “Try to hold the jet. Work Primer for leverage here. Maybe it works out.”

Knox is on his feet. He takes in the hostage by the van, the van itself, Grace’s condition. Dulwich is of military stock. Because of this, his thinking doesn’t always fit the situation; it’s Knox’s job—his duty to Grace—to make certain this is the right call. With so little time, it comes down to instinct. He bends and kisses Grace on the cheek.

“You okay?”

She touches his hand and pulls it to her lips. “Go,” she says. “Keep my laptop. They mustn’t find it.” She provides him her password.

He rubs her hair, meets eyes with a surprised Dulwich. He jogs to the van, where he retrieves the laptop and the stolen GPS and power cord. Sirens bearing down on him, he recrosses the footbridge and hurries past Dulwich and Grace without acknowledgment.

—

LOSING FAHIZ HITS HIM MUCH LATER.He walks in the direction of the airport having little idea of where else to go. His iPhone is wet and dead. If he can find a store, he can buy a pay-as-you-go. Grace’s laptop must offer something, but he’s too dull to know exactly what.

As each obstacle is addressed by a possible solution, the trauma subsides, freeing up more of his mind to work out additional complications. The web is woven from the center, out.

He’s following along a tram route that will lead back to Centraal Station. Despite the likely presence of police there, a train is the fastest, most anonymous route out to the airport. He spots an electronics repair shop—the perfect place to inquire—and enters, setting off a dull buzzer as the door opens.

The woman behind the counter is Armenian or Eastern European. She’s in her mid-twenties. The store is filled with everything from used toasters and blenders to tube televisions and plasma screens. Several of the televisions are running, each tuned to a different channel.

“I am looking for a pay-as-you-go mobile,” he says in Dutch, resting the laptop on the counter.

His clothes are damp, his hair matted. His shoes squish and have left a trail across the floor. “Oops,” he says. He proffers his iPhone. If she has an iPhone, all he will need to do is switch out his SIM card. If not, he has plenty of other SIMs to fit whatever she may offer.

She nods and moves to a counter display of dozens of older model mobiles.

And there’s Sonia.

It’s a small color television, some kind of portable model with an extending antenna. It’s a local news piece. A weary-looking Sonia Pangarkar—the pride of Dutch journalism—stands with her arm around a shy, bashful girl, as her colleagues stand to ask questions. The sound is turned down. The girl is Berna. Behind the two is an image of a newspaper’s front page—a preview of tomorrow’s morning edition, if Knox has his Dutch right. She has an exclusive interview with the leader of a child labor ring. Fahiz.

The merchant must speak to him repeatedly to win Knox’s attention. She can’t understand his fascination with the television.

“You like?” she asks in halting English. “Good price, just for you.”

One John Knox equals Berna’s freedom and an interview. It means something more to him: Sonia negotiated with Fahiz. She made contact. She knows things he wants to know.

The merchant offers an iPhone 3GS, but it takes a different SIM than the 4. He settles on a RAZR that will accept two of the other cards he carries. Pays twenty euros for it.

The shot of Sonia was a short piece for a news program. It’s replaced by a traffic pileup, which segues into weather coverage.

“Do you have Internet?” he asks.

She directs him to a coffee shop two blocks away.

He notices two shelves of car electronics, including a dozen GPS devices. Digs into his jacket’s many pockets, producing the cigarette lighter wired to the stolen GPS.

“Can you power this?” They’ve settled on English.

“Of course.”

He has to battle the device because it can’t lock onto a satellite, but the woman comes to his assistance. He borrows a pen and paper and takes down the last nine recent destinations that Fahiz’s men had driven to. Six are street addresses. The remaining are numbered one through four and represent latitude/longitude coordinates. He repacks his jacket and tips her five euros.