Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

A man walked along the aisle. He had a square face and a humourless expression, as though this busload of boisterous Brits was somehow beneath him. He was doing nothing, however, but counting heads. Danny tensed up as he approached the General. Would a member of the US military recognise O’Brien at a glance, despite his hoodie.

He didn’t. Nor did he look twice at Danny and Bethany. A minute later he had alighted, and the bus was driving through an open security cordon and out of the base.

Danny stood up. There was a lull in the buzz of conversation on the bus as he moved up the aisle and towards the driver. It was a wide road, but mostly deserted. Any vehicles Danny saw were military not civilian. The sky was changing. The mackerel clouds had become stormier. Bad weather was on its way. ‘You’ve been told to stop for us?’ he asked the driver.

Just a surly nod by way of response.

Danny stayed standing at the top of the aisle. He didn’t have to wait long. After a couple of minutes he saw a black SUV parked up on the side of the road. It was an anomaly: a civilian vehicle abandoned here in the middle of nowhere. ‘This is it,’ Danny told the driver.

At first he thought the driver wasn’t going to stop. Then he understood his passive-aggressiveness for what it was. The driver only hit the brakes once they’d passed the SUV. The bus came to a halt fifty metres beyond the vehicle. The driver opened the doors without taking his eyes from the road. Bethany and the General joined Danny up front. They alighted together and the doors hissed shut almost before they were out of the bus, which immediately eased back out into the road.

The General sniffed the air. ‘A storm’s coming,’ he said.

Danny nodded. ‘You need to tell me where the memory stick is,’ he said.

‘I already did. DC.’

‘Where in DC?’

‘I’ll show you when we get there.’ A couple of heavy raindrops hit the tarmac, leaving wet splodges the size of military medals. ‘We going to stand here and get wet, or we going to drive?’

Danny looked at the sky again. Dark clouds were rolling in from the south. ‘We’re going to drive,’ he said.

Danny found the keyless entry fob hidden behind the nearside front wheel. He took the driver’s seat. The General sat next to him. Bethany in the back. The car was new, modern and comfortable. There was a full tank of gas. As Danny turned on the ignition, the General made to key directions into the built-in navigation system. Danny stayed his hand. ‘We put our destination into that, anybody can read it if they get hold of the car.’

‘Nobody knows we’re here,’ the General said.

‘Plenty of people know we’re here. Hereford. MI6. You think none of these people have contacts with Washington? We’ll find our own way.’

The General considered that for a moment, then nodded. ‘Route 64,’ he said. ‘We’ll take the bridge-tunnel up into the Hamptons. North from there. I’ll direct you.’

That was all Danny needed to know. He turned on the wipers, pulled out into the road and drove.

The weather deteriorated. The spots of rain became more frequent and fell so heavily that they started an irregular drumming on the roof of the SUV. Their route took them over a long bridge spanning the waterway between Norfolk and the Hamptons. By the time they crossed, visibility was barely a few metres on either side. Thunder rolled overhead. Lightning cracked. The sky became twilight dark. Danny kept his foot on the gas.

The storm followed. It was as if the elements were tracking them. They sat in silence, not only because they were tense in each other’s company, but because the hammering of the rain and the crashing of the thunder made conversation impossible. It slowed them down, too. Whenever Danny saw the speedometer dip below forty miles per hour, he felt a twist of anxiety in his gut. The day was passing. It was already 16.00 hrs. That made it 13.00 on the west coast. The terror attack might happen there, which gave them a few extra hours. He turned on the radio and found a news station. A news anchor spoke in a brash, booming voice of a power struggle between the President and congress, as if he was discussing the latest celebrity tittle-tattle. But there was no talk of a hit.

Not yet.

Time crept by. They turned north on to Interstate 95. The storm turned north with them. That was how it felt, at least. The General had said three hours to Washington. Danny estimated that they needed to add another hour to that. Maybe more.

The afternoon waned. The weather deteriorated further. The closer they grew to the capital, the heavier the rain became. The wipers were on high, necessary but barely effective. A grey mist of road spray surrounded every vehicle on the highway. Evening came. The overhead signs for Washington DC became more frequent: 150 miles, 100 miles, 75 miles. The traffic became heavier. Danny kept his speed at a safe level. It was a challenge. His urge to reach DC was strong, but they’d get nowhere if they came off the road: a distinct possibility for anyone travelling at speed in these conditions.

By 19.00 hrs they were twenty miles out of DC and the neon of emergency lights glowed through the downpour up ahead. The traffic slowed to a halt. They crawled past a four-vehicle RTA. Danny knew at a glance that there were fatalities, but his attention was not on the crash or the ambulances. It was on the six police vehicles parked up around the crash sight, and the police officers in foul-weather gear, some of them dealing with the crash, others waving the traffic jam on. Rain pelted heavily against the windscreen and the side windows. It would be difficult to see into the SUV from outside. It didn’t stop Danny’s skin from tingling as they drove past the police lights. Next to him, the General pulled up his hood and stared straight ahead. Nobody spoke until they were well past the accident and the traffic moved a little faster. Even then, tension bit at the air. ‘We’ll head for the centre of the city,’ the General said. ‘Then I’ll tell you where we’re going.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Couple of hours and we’ll get this done.’

Danny drove.

TWENTY-THREE

The children were grouchy. Staying up late the previous night watching the fireworks was all catching up with them. They had begged their mum and dad to be allowed to watch the fireworks again this evening, but Rabia had only agreed on the condition that they went back to the hotel for a late afternoon rest. Her decision was unpopular, but as soon as the children had lain on their beds, they had fallen asleep.

Now it was half past seven. The fireworks wouldn’t start until a quarter past nine. Hamoud lay on the bed, watching television to ease his racing thoughts. Fox News played quietly. It was broadcasting footage of a presidential rally somewhere in the south. Hamoud watched, half transfixed, half appalled. The President had a kind of rictus grin and was rambling so incoherently that Hamoud simply could not follow his line of thought, if indeed he had one. The audience didn’t appear to share Hamoud’s lack of comprehension. They cheered. They waved American flags. They held banners aloft with the President’s name and his jingoistic slogans. They punched clenched fists in the air. The audience, more than the President, interested Hamoud. There were only white faces. The camera didn’t settle on a single person with brown skin. Each time the crowd roared its approval, he felt unnerved. He imagined himself among those people. Would he feel safe? He would not.

Rabia came out of the bathroom wearing a robe, her hair wrapped in a towel. She checked on the children through the interconnecting door, then sat on the edge of the bed next to Hamoud and stroked his hair. ‘I don’t know why you watch that man on television,’ she said.