“Roger Francis LeClarc.” The court usher’s voice boomed around the packed courtroom. An expectant hush fell over the crowd. Experienced spectators swivelled into position for a clearer view of Roger. First-timers, lured by the media—“Internet sex-slave chained in dungeon,”—craned like kids at a monkey house, hoping to glimpse something bestial. Out of the public’s view, a door, at the bottom of the stairs leading to the prisoner’s dock, clicked open. A large white figure was prodded into motion by a smartly uniformed officer. “Wait,” he commanded as he turned and locked the door behind him, then he nudged the listless figure up the stairs. Roger, wearing a one-piece, white paper coverall, rose like a voluminous spectre into the dock.
The hospital had been unable to supply anything more suitable than the disposable paper suit because of his bulk; the police didn’t care—the appearance of weirdness only strengthened their case. His parents, on the downhill slope of an emotional roller-coaster, would have brought him some decent clothes had they thought, but their elation at his rescue had swung from despair to disgust, and their concern had sunk in confusion.
“Stand up please, Mr. LeClarc,” the court clerk instructed.
Roger was already standing, doubled over with heart-rending sobs, and the crisp suit rustled alarmingly as he pulled himself upright, his head still deeply buried in his hands. Then the guard roughly pulled the hands away, leaving the tears to dribble down the bloated face.
The clerk raised his eyebrows and put the inflection of a question into his voice. “Roger Francis LeClarc?”
Roger dumbly looked across the courtroom to his mother, head down, face in her handbag, and sought guidance and comfort.— “Never mind our Roger. Here’s a bar of chocolate, you’ll soon be better.”
She didn’t look up—How could you do this to me you little bugger?
“Are you Roger Francis LeClarc?” the clerk tried again, knowing very well the man in the prisoner’s box could be no other.
A dozen journalist’s pens doodled as he considered his reply, but Roger’s full name, address, and date of birth had already been circulated to the twenty reporters crammed into the press box, the twenty or so others in the public gallery, and the tail-end-charlies barred to the street with their cameras and camera crews.
The “whirr” of the electric clock high on the wall above the magistrate pierced the air for five long seconds before Roger admitted he was indeed the man whose name had been called. Even then his sniffled “Yes” was heard only by those closest.
The spark of a courtroom buzz was quickly stamped out by the clerk, “What is your address?”
Roger tried, several times, but his head swam, and the information sank in a whirlpool of unfamiliar images. The clerk helped him out. “Do you live at 34 Junction Road, Watford?”
Forty reporter’s pens scribbled unnecessarily. His little terraced house in Junction Road had been besieged by cameramen, reporters, and rubber-neckers ever since the call for a doctor had rung through the airwaves late on Friday evening.
Roger wiped his eyes. “Yes.”
The legal rigmarole of reading out the charges took the clerk several minutes. Kidnap, unlawful detention, sexual assault, assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, and attempted murder were high on the list, and a few minor offences were thrown in for good measure.
“Do you understand the charges?”
“I didn’t mean to …”
The clerk stopped him mid-statement. “This is not a trial, Mr. LeClarc, all his Worship wants to know is: Do you understand the charges. Yes or no?”
Roger’s lawyer helped him out with a deep nod. “Yes,” mumbled Roger, though in truth his mind was still at sea.
The Crown prosecutor, a weedy man with comically large glasses, overly-flamboyant teeth seeking to escape, and strands of lank brown hair flopping over his face, leaned forward to examine his notes, then rose to his feet and waited while the audience settled. Satisfied, finally, he breathed deeply and let his eyes dart between the clerk and the Magistrate, ensuring they too were ready, pens poised. His squeaky voice matched his shrew-like appearance. “The defendant has been charged with a number of serious crimes and, at this time particular moment in time …” he paused, eyes everywhere as if looking for a way out, then finished with, “the Crown is applying for a remand in custody for seven days.”
Then he sat. That was it. An entire performance in one sentence.
Roger’s defence lawyer was even more succinct. Rising to his lofty six feet six inches, he stilled the whole room with his weighty presence and boomed, “No objection,” with such confidence that half the people present would have sworn he’d declared his client. “Not guilty.”
The lay magistrate, a butcher in real life, looked down the barrel of his nose and put a bead on Roger. “Do you wish to say anything at this time, Mr. LeClarc?”
Roger sniffed very noisily, causing a few grimaces, then muttered something unintelligible through sobs.
“I can’t hear you,” said the Magistrate turning an ear.
Roger wiped his nose with his hand and mingled snot with tears. He tried again, blubbering uncontrollably.
“What did he say?” asked the Magistrate of the clerk.
“He said, ’I love her,’ Sir.”
“He’s got a bloody funny way of showing it,” muttered the Magistrate, much louder than intended, and shot an angered look at the press gallery that said, “If any of you scum print that I’ll have you for contempt of court.”
“Take him down,” ordered the clerk, and Roger’s ghostlike figure drifted back down the prisoner’s staircase.
Roger’s parents, clinging tightly together, were pounced on by half a dozen cameramen as they tried to slip out the back door a few minutes later. A seemingly sympathetic policeman had assured them they would go unnoticed if they took that route. But the same policeman, with a sly grin, had tipped off one of the reporters just a few seconds later. He had a daughter Trudy’s age.
Camera’s clicked and several cassette recorders were shoved in Mrs. LeClarc’s face.
“Your comments, Mrs. LeClarc?” was one of the many demands flung at her.
“Our Roger’s innocent,” she screeched, with a scowl nasty enough to guarantee a spot on the front page of several tabloids, captioned: “Internet fiend’s mother say’s innocent.” The power headline “Netted” would be reserved for Roger’s photo, as soon as a friendly cop could be induced to cough up a copy and, should Trudy die, some assistant editor would torture the language yet again.
Trudy’s mortality was problematic; her fractured body hesitating somewhere between life and death. Less than a mile from the courthouse, Peter and Lisa sat next to each other by the side of her bed, hanging onto every faint breath the scrawny pale body took. The array of machines, monitors, and tubes had become no less frightening as Sunday had dissolved seamlessly into Monday. They had slept little, woke guiltily after the briefest cat-nap, and spoke only of Trudy. Even the staples of small talk—movies seen, books read, holidays taken or planned, the state of the weather—were deemed inappropriate.
Margery had flitted in and out all day Sunday, toting food, messages of sympathy and support, and more flowers, before getting the train back to Leyton in the evening so she could feed Trudy’s cat. Peter had given her the train fair, and a handful of money to buy food and anything else she needed. “Be very careful,” he had said earnestly, as if she faced some terrifyingly perilous journey.
Just after they had politely refused an offer of breakfast from a trainee nurse —“How can we eat?”—a policeman they’d not met before interrupted their vigil to tell them about Roger’s up-coming court appearance.
“It’s only a remand hearing,” he’d said, trying not to sound enthusiastic. “It’ll just take a few minutes.”
There was no argument, neither of them would leave Trudy’s bedside. Although, they agreed, they would at some time want to confront the person who had done this to their daughter, now was not the time. The young officer’s shoulders slumped in relief. The prospect of having to deal with a distraught mother in the face of a determined press corps was not one he relished.
Doctors came and went, nurses fiddled and fussed. But, apart from an encouraging smile and an occasional sympathetic word, nobody gave any indication as to what they thought about Trudy’s chances of recovery. One doctor had lingered long enough to make a few sweeping generalizations. “These things sometimes take weeks or even months to sort themselves out,” he had said, then added, “A coma is the way a body deals with severe trauma. It is just like a long sleep.”
“Why won’t she wake up then?” asked Lisa, with a certain naïvety.
“She’s still tired,” replied the doctor as if addressing a child.
“I won’t be a minute Luv,” said Peter, giving his ex-wife’s hand a tender squeeze, before slipping out of the intensive care cubicle after the doctor left.
Two minutes later he was back.
“Have you called Joy?” Lisa enquired solemnly, managing to name Peter’s second wife without contempt.
“Is she coming to visit?”
Peter’s concerned face turned away, then he looked back and came out with the truth. “She said she won’t come if you’re here. She’s never forgiven you for the curry.” Then his face warmed in ironic memory as he recalled the incident in the Indian restaurant.
“I’m staying, Peter,” she said, without rancour.
“I don’t expect you to leave,” he replied, squeezing her hand again.
Lisa sank back into the chair and found no comfort in its padded seat. It lacked the viciousness of the old wooden kitchen chair. Although she still got cramps from continual sitting, she felt no great attachment to it. Peter made her get up and walk around the room whenever her saw pain on her face, and she had even willed herself out of the chair from time to time, when she had felt herself drifting off to sleep.
“I’ll wake you if anything happens,” Peter had promised on numerous occasions, but the mere thought of sleep was repugnant. Only by remaining awake could she be certain to keep Trudy’s spirit alive. Succumbing to sleep was tantamount to abandoning her to God-knows-where.
Yolanda and Bliss were having no difficulty sleeping, in fact they slept most of Monday as they lay side by side in the ventilation duct somewhere under the Iraqi mountains. Shafts of light filtering up through vents from the rooms below illuminated the maze of tunnels with a metallic glow that was both soothing and comforting. The low-pitched hum of the fan and the constant flow of warm moist air lulled them through hours of restful slumber.
“What’s the time, Yolanda?” Bliss whispered in her ear as he awoke. She stretched noisily and Bliss cupped his hand over her mouth to stifle her wakening yawn.
“What time is it?” she asked through his fingers.
“I asked first,” he muttered, found her wrist and brought it to his face. “Seven forty-five.”
“Have they gone yet? I’m hungry,” she breathed into his ear.
“I’ll look,” he mouthed silently.
He was back in a minute, the tinny scratching noises sounding like a herd of mice as he scrabbled through the ducts. “They’re just getting ready to leave,” he whispered. “I want to see what happens at the elevator when they go,” he added, scuttling off in the other direction.
“One guard gets all the prisoners together in the elevator,” he said, on his return. “There are still a few people around, cleaners I think, but we should be able to get out soon.”
It was nine-thirty before the dimming lights and the dying fan told them the staff were leaving, and another half an hour before they took the plunge and dropped down through a vent inside a store cupboard. The Welshman had left enough food for an army in the battered metal filing cabinet, but they had to drink the water from a tap in the washroom. As they sat in a couple of cheap plastic chairs, munching a pile of goat meat sandwiches, there was only one question on their minds and Yolanda asked first, “How are we going to get out Dave?”
Bliss had the germ of an idea but was still developing it when a sudden noise caught their attention and jerked them upright in their seats.
He winced. “What was that?”
They listened.
“The elevator?” she suggested.
“Footsteps,” breathed Bliss, “Quick.”
The rustling of wrapping paper seemed deafening as he grabbed the sandwiches and threw them back into the filing cabinet. “Get under the desk,” he whispered, his eyes desperately scouring the nearly naked room for a hiding place.
Orders were being bellowed, doors flung open, men shouted.
He ducked behind the filing cabinet, she scrunched herself into a ball under one of the kneehole desks.
“I can see you,” she hissed, peeking out.
He sized the other desk—too small.
Flicking off his gun’s safety catch he heard Yolanda do the same.
Gruff foreign voices were getting closer. They’re searching for the missing guard, he realized, as he eyed the panelled ceiling—too high. He wasted seconds trying the other desk.
“I can still see you,” she hissed as his knees protruded.
Doors were banging open all around. Get behind the door, he thought, and rushed toward it. Two seconds later he changed his mind—they were bound to check. His brain was swirling with the white noise of indecision—there was nowhere to hide; there was no solution.
The door to a nearby office flew open with a crash and a flurry of words. “We’re next, he thought, standing in the middle of the room, turning one way then the other, stunned to inactivity by overwhelming fear. Then he pulled himself together. “Stay still,” he barked at Yolanda, and, gun at the ready, marched smartly into the corridor, slammed the door behind him and stepped across to the room opposite. His ill-fitting guard’s uniform attracted no attention as he strode swiftly through the room and out into another corridor opposite the toilets where he’d talked to the prisoner. His shaking gun couldn’t have hit a barn let alone a door as he slipped unseen into the toilet, dashed into a cubicle and vomited until his stomach was empty.
Ten minutes later he was still there, standing on the lavatory seat, his eyes and gun focussed over the top of the stall door. The voices had drifted away. The footsteps had wandered off. Fighting back the sickly bile taste in his mouth, he kept his statuesque pose on the pedestal for a further five minutes, forcing himself to count every second, fully cognisant of the old hide-and-seek trick of pretending to go while leaving a fifth-columnist in hiding who pops out and shouts, “Fooled yah,” just when you were convinced it was safe to emerge.
Cautiously, silently, Bliss crept back to the office, the blood deafeningly pulsing in his ears; then he saw the office door—wide open. His heart sagged—maybe I’ve got the wrong office—willing it to be the case. He raced inside: Right office, right filing cabinet, right desk. But everything was wrong—she was gone. His mind swam, his legs buckled and he steadied himself against the desk. That’s why they left so quickly— they’ve taken her for questioning. He retched at the thought. “Do something you idiot,” the voice in his mind insisted, but what?
I should have warned her, he thought, recalling he had not told her what they had done to the American woman. He hadn’t seen the point in both of them being scared to death.
“Move,” said the voice. “Shoot your way out. Take some of the bastards with you; don’t just stand there.”
He moved. Striding offensively down the corridor, he checked the gun again and headed for the elevator. His hand reached out for the call button. Here goes, he thought, then a noise snapped his finger away. Diving for cover behind a totally inadequate chair, he curled into a ball and did his best stop the gun shaking. Nothing happened; the empty corridor hummed quietly with the electric purr of lights and computers, but whatever made him jump was silent. The only thing jumping was his pulse. He pulled himself together, uncoiled slowly, and warily moved back toward the elevator, then a call froze his tracks.
“Dave … Over here?” Yolanda sang out from her hiding place behind a cupboard. Then she burst into a torrent of tears.
“I thought you were a guard,” she sobbed into his chest as they hugged. “I was just going to get the elevator to…”
“I was sure they’d got you,” he mumbled, clinging tightly to her as he blinked back the tears.
“I thought they’d got you too.”
Their tears mingled with laughter as they clutched each other and made their way back to the office.
They finished most of the sandwiches in the relative safety of the air duct and Bliss told her the full story of the Americans.
“We have to get them out, Dave,” she said, very subdued.
“I know,” he replied. “But how?”
The night passed slowly, ideas came and went. Fear flowed through their veins at the realization that every conceivable plan had serious flaws and horrendous risks. There were so many unanswerable questions: “Where are we? Where are the guards? How many guards? Would they shoot on sight? How can we get out?”
“There was a gatehouse,” offered Bliss, “We stopped on our way in.”
“I remember.”
“But we’ve no idea where we are, we might come up in the middle of Baghdad.”
“No,” she shot back. “We would have heard traffic noise before we stopped.”
“I don’t remember hearing any city noises since we left the border.”
“We’re probably still in the northern mountains.”
“That’s why there was only one guard last night.”
“My God!” cried Yolanda, “I’d forgotten all about him. He’s still under the elevator.”
After hearing of the treatment meted out to the Americans, Bliss had closed his mind to the soldier. “Might be dead or escaped,” he replied with unconcerned casualness.
“We could find out,” she suggested.
Worming their way along the air ducts they eventually reached the elevator shaft and Bliss peered into the semi-darkness. “I think he’s still there,” he said, clambering down the maintenance ladder.
“Yolanda,” he called in a whispered shout. “Get some water and the rest of the sandwiches.”
She was back in a minute and Bliss held the guard’s own gun to his head as he removed the gag. The young man hungrily scoffed the food, fearful Bliss would snatch it away. Then, with his shirt tied back into a gag, they tested the ropes on his wrists and legs and clambered back up the shaft, looking high above them at the underside of the elevator cabin.
“I’ve got it,” Bliss whispered excitedly and his voice echoed eerily around the shaft.
“What?”
“I know how to get us out.”
With fearful expectancy, the Welsh computer expert checked the filing cabinet on his return to the office the following morning. “The food’s gone,” he whispered to Peter, his colleague, but found no satisfaction in acknowledging the fact that he hadn’t imagined the voice in the air duct.
“What are you going to tell him?”
“The truth,” he replied, “Everyone’s too bloody scared to escape.”
“He’ll be pissed off.”
“His problem.”
“My wife will be pissed off as well.”
“Bollocks, she thinks she buried you six months ago. Who’s going to tell her any different?”
Peter had a far away look in his eye and a wistful edge to his voice, “I wish I could get back. I really miss her, and the kids.”
“We all do. But the chance of getting us out of here is …” He turned to his keyboard, “Let me work it out.”
Reaching over he clicked on the screen, then almost fell out of his chair.
“Hi. This is your friendly neighbourhood cop. We’re taking you home tonight. Bring a picnic and be ready to run.”
His finger jabbed the delete key not a moment too soon as one of the Iraqi technicians entered the room.
“Everything is alright, I think, Gentlemen?” enquired the Iraqi, attempting to perfect his English.
They nodded silently and started work.
The elevator doors opened for them on time as usual at eight o’clock that evening. The regular guard, moustachioed, with a ferocious overhanging brow, stood with his arms folded as they lined up: Eight men in an assortment of ill-fitting clothes, unshaven, tired and pallid from months of working in artificial light without exercise. A day on tender-hooks fruitlessly awaiting Bliss’ hushed voice to filter down through the grating in the ceiling had taken a further toll on the Welshman and his face was drawn with the strain. The guard counted them one by one as they entered the elevator. Satisfied with his flock he stepped after them and pressed the “up” button. Three seconds later, the elevator jerked to a halt and hung suspended. Exasperation showed on his face as he picked up the red telephone and pushed the emergency button. Nothing happened. He stabbed the button again. Nothing. Then he started fighting with it, banging and jabbing it over and over again. Fully absorbed, he neither heard nor saw the emergency escape panel in the roof sliding open.
Bliss dropped on top of the guard with such ferocity that he ripped the emergency phone out of the wall and the cleanly snipped wires showed why he had received no reply.
“Quick,” Bliss shouted to the stunned audience. “Who wants to be a guard?”
Nobody moved.
“Come on, help me get his clothes off.”
The men were petrified, fearing it was an elaborate trap. Yolanda’s voice called from above, “Quick, help him or we’ll all be killed.”
Two men leapt to action, stripping the guard in seconds and manhandling his body up through the hatch to Yolanda. The Welshman slipped on the jacket and grabbed the gun, then Yolanda released the brake and jumped down to join them. Bliss prodded the “up” button and the elevator started ascending again. “How many guards at the top?” he asked, his eyes seeking contact with any of the prisoners.
“One usually,” replied one of the men, then he stared accusingly at the Welshman, “I thought we agreed not to escape.”
The Welshman shrugged, the matter was out of his hands.
Bliss quickly gave them instructions. “Walk out normally and one of you fall over in front of the guard.”
It worked like a charm. The guard spontaneously bent to steady the falling man and Bliss smashed him hard on the back of the head. Now they had another uniform and, with the guard’s nearly naked body in the elevator, Bliss stabbed the “down” button.
“Come on,” called Yolanda, throwing her shawl over her head, leading the charge toward the garage.
The Welshman grabbed Bliss’ arm. “Wait a minute boy’s, we decided we wouldn’t risk escaping.”
Bliss felt à little exaggeration would not go amiss “It’s too late for that—we’ve already killed three guards.”
“Oh my God! Have you any idea what they’ll do to us?”
“Only if we get caught,” shouted Yolanda still running.
“This place is a fortress,” continued the Welshman, then his face brightened in optimism. “You’ve got helicopters, right?”
Bliss shook his head.
“Well you’d better have half the British army at the gates or we may as well give up now.”
“Leave it to us, Sir,” Bliss replied, with a confidence implying, “I have all the answers, I am a policeman.”
“Will there be anyone in the garage?” he asked as they rushed down the corridor”
“Not usually,” replied a Liverpudlian, his singsong accent instantly recognisable by any Beatles fan.
The garage was deserted and a different truck had replaced the one in which they had arrived; another secret compartment speaking of another victim.
What could have been a dignified retreat turned into a disorganised rout as men were coerced into the truck by Bliss, Yolanda, and Owain, the Welshman. One petrified man had to be manhandled aboard—his arm twisted painfully behind him as he fought against freedom.
“Everybody in,” shouted Bliss, slapping the button to raise the giant steel shutter, then he slammed the door on the trailer’s secret compartment, leaped into the cab, fired up the engine, and fought with the gear lever to get it into reverse.
“Driven one of these before have you?” asked Owain sceptically.
“Of course I have,” he lied.
“Try pressing that red button there then,” he pointed. Bliss pressed and the gear slipped neatly into place.
“Now for the tricky bit,” said Bliss, once the truck was outside. Running back into the garage he attacked the electrical control box which powered the big door, looping wires around the steel rail on which the door ran. “Here goes,” he muttered, hitting the “door close” button, running as it started its descent. Banging the truck into gear, he jerked the rig crazily along the road as he tried to get the hang of the clutch.
“What are you going to do now?” asked the Welshman.
“That depends,” said Bliss.
“Depends on what?”
Behind them an immense blue fireball ignited the garage with a loud “crack” and every light in the complex went out.
“On that,” said Bliss triumphantly.
“I think they’ve blown a fuse,” he said, grinning for the first time in two days.
The main gatehouse was closer than Bliss had anticipated and the giant truck was still kangarooing wildly as they approached the tubular barriers. An emergency light illuminated the box itself and a guard jabbered frantically into a mute phone. Two more guards were struggling with a huge steel gate, desperately trying to manhandle it shut behind the barriers.
“Look out,” yelled Bliss, as the flash of a pistol spurted from the hand of one of the men. “We’ll have to crash the barrier. Get down; cover your head.”
The giant truck lurched toward the barrier in a series of violent hops as Bliss fought with the controls. He was in the wrong gear but couldn’t find the right one. The guard who’d fired was frantically yanking the gate and already had it halfway across the road. Bliss jammed his foot on the accelerator and aimed straight at the steel barrier. The truck leaped ahead and wrenched the barrier out of its socket as easily as if it were a doll’s arm, then it flung the heavy steel pole at the guard with such ferocity it nearly cut him in half.
“He’s dead,” shouted Bliss, without a second glance. The moment the huge steel barrier smacked into the body and crushed it against the gate, all life drained out of the bundle of flesh and bones and it flopped into a ragged heap. Bliss had never killed anyone before and drove pensively for a few seconds wondering why he felt no remorse.
“Where are we going then?” enquired the Welshman above the roar of the engine as Bliss found another gear and they sped away from the compound. There was only one road out of the place and Bliss was fighting to keep the truck on it. He had no idea where they were going but longed to be able to say, “Home.”
“What are they doing at that place?” he yelled, ignoring the man’s question.
“They’re going to take over the world,” Owain shouted, as if he were talking about some corporate merger plan. “Or at least that’s what they’re planning.”
Bliss felt like saying, “Nonsense,” but asked anyway, “How?”
The Welshman looked at him for a few seconds, balancing the pros and cons of telling or keeping his revelations for some more senior authority. He started with a question. “What’s happens when there is a coup d’etat?”
Bliss turned to him blankly and the Welshman carried on, “What’s the first thing the ringleaders do when some tin-pot dictator tries to overthrow some other tin-pot dictator?”
“Shoot them,” shouted Bliss.
“No,” then he paused, “Well they might do … but first they seize the radio and TV stations.”
The road started to climb, Bliss searched for a lower gear and the Welshman waited until the engine had stopped screaming. “They always take over the communication systems first,” he continued, “You see, whoever controls information controls the country. Propaganda is everything. Look at the Gulf War when the Yanks made all that fuss about their bloody Patriot missiles knocking out the Scuds. It was a pack of lies; they didn’t shoot down a single missile, but as long as the world, and the Iraqis, believed it, that was all that mattered.”
Bliss hadn’t heard about the missiles. “I thought the Patriots …”
“Yeah, so did everyone else, Dave, apart from all the people who were blown to bits by the Scuds.”
“I still don’t understand what they’re doing now,” said Bliss, cresting a hill and ramming the gear stick into a different hole.
“They’re planning revenge against the western world,” he replied darkly.
“How?”
“They’ve got this grand scheme and if they pull it off, it’ll be a real doozey.”
“There’s lights behind us,” shouted Bliss anxiously.
“Well you didn’t think they’d just let us go did you?”
“I thought we might get a good start. We’ll never get away in this.”
“What else have you got,” snapped the Welshman angrily. “A bloody Ferrari?”
“There’s another one,” shrieked Bliss, noticing a second pair of headlights, and the truck started bouncing on the verge as his concentration drifted.
Owain shouted, “Look where you’re going. I’ll watch behind.”
One set of headlights was quickly closing the gap as they climbed higher and slower. Bliss fought with yet another gear change to quell the engine’s complaint, but as soon as he’d found the right gear, they crested the top of a rise and were barrelling downhill again.
“They’re gaining on us,” yelled the Welshman.
Bliss risked a look in the mirror. “At least they’re not shooting.”
“They might blast us with a bloody missile. They’re crazy enough.”
“They won’t want to kill you. It cost them a lot of money to have you brought here and now they haven’t got the Americans … what’s their plan of anyway?”
Owain pondered for a moment, trying to decide where to begin, then he started at the end. “They’ve got their hands on a super virus.”
The Welshman gave a look of astonishment, then realized it was just a lucky guess. “Yes,” he replied, “It’s exactly like AIDS to a computer.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Bliss, impressed as much by his insight as the significance of the malaise.
Owain sneaked a quick look in the mirror. “They’re right behind us,” he said with panic in his voice.
Bliss was confident. “They won’t shoot.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that, they’ve already got most of what they need.” Then he stuck his head out of the window and quickly pulled it back. Fear strained his voice. “Dave, we’re on the side of a bloody cliff. Keep away from the edge for God’s sake.”
Bliss could see it. They were on a narrow ledge cut into the mountain. On one side, the headlights lit a vertical wall of rock, on the other, a black void that could have been ten, a hundred or a thousand feet deep. He shot another look in the mirror and was horrified to see a set of lights right behind them. “Hold tight,” he screamed and stood on the brake. The air brakes locked, the tires protested with a deafening screech, and the truck snaked and crashed sideways into the cliff face. Ragged boulders clawed at the side of the trailer, ripping out chunks of metal in a huge shower of sparks, lighting up the terrified face of the following driver.
The pursuing car couldn’t stop. Despite the driver’s frantic efforts he fishtailed wildly and was forced to start passing the trailer, only inches from the brink.
“Wait, wait,” muttered Bliss to himself as he watched the car in the mirror. “Softly, softly catchee monkee,” he continued as every nerve in his body strained.
“Now!” he yelled, as he thrust his foot back on the accelerator and wrenched at the wheel. The huge truck lunged forward, bounding back off the solid wall, heading toward the cliff edge, leaving the car nowhere to go. The Welshman screamed in terror as he saw the abyss approaching. Bliss reacted by spinning the wheel back again. The trailer’s whiplash took a sideways kick at the car and sent it spinning off the edge in a spectacular dive, and a blaze of headlights lit a crazy path across the sky as the car somersaulted, flipping like a falling autumn leaf. Finally, it flattened itself, and its passengers, against the rocks two hundred feet below.
Bliss rammed his foot back on the brake and the truck slid to a stop as it rounded a bend. The screams of the four guards in the car had died with them—all Bliss heard were screams from the truck’s trailer, its occupants now exposed by a gaping hole where it scraped the rock wall.
The second car was still flying toward them and Bliss grabbed his gun, ran to the rear of the trailer, dropped to his knees, took a deep breath and aimed. As the car rounded the bend he fired, pumping round after round. In three seconds he fired six shots and extinguished one headlight. The car kept coming, weaving, speeding, dangerously out of control. Stunned by the unexpected attack the driver reacted too late, then the brakes bit and the skidding car kissed off the rock face and buried itself under the back of the trailer.
Night returned instantly without the car’s lights, and voices at the front of the trailer were calling, shouting, demanding. He ran back. Two bodies had been pulled from the wreckage of the truck and laid on the ground. The unnatural shape of one was enough to confirm to Bliss that the man was dead. The other figure, slender with a mop of golden hair glinting in the starlight, caused Bliss a heart tremor.
“Dave, I’ve been shot,” Yolanda said calmly as soon as he bent over her.
“How?” he managed to force his taught throat to say.
“Just as we were leaving.”
Bliss remembered—the single flash from the man he’d killed with the barrier.
Men stood around, stunned. “Don’t just stand there,” Bliss shouted angrily, “Two of you get to the back and keep watch. “You,” he said, pointing to a shadow, “see if there’s any guns in the car, we’re going to need them. Owain, help me with Yolanda.”
She let out a cry and bit her lip as they lifted, and Bliss felt the sticky warmth of blood on his fingers as he carried her. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital,” he said as if it were a matter of calling 911. “What happened to the other guy,” he asked. “Was he shot?”
“No. Hit by a rock when we crashed.”
Bliss felt himself going pale. How many more would die? How many more would he kill?
Shadowy figures crowded Bliss as he knelt over Yolanda. His racing mind offered no solutions. Feeling his hands starting to shake, he clasped hers more tightly, trying to squeeze warmth and comfort into them, hoping to draw inspiration from them.
Owain broke the silence. “Are you O.K., boy’o?”
“Yes … No … We’ve got to get away quickly.”
“We’ll never get home,” wailed one of the others. “Why didn’t you leave us alone?”
“I wish I had.”
The Welshman’s nasty tone stung. “You should’ve had a proper plan.”
“Stop bloody whining you ungrateful bastards. We didn’t have to rescue you …”
Another voice cut in. “You haven’t rescued us. You’re goin’ to get us all killed.”
Hearing mutters of agreement, Bliss rounded on them. “You would’ve been killed anyway you stupid bastards. Do you think they would ever have let you go?”
“What about your people. Why can’t they help?” persisted the complainer.
“No one knows we’re here,” he was forced to confess.
“Dave?” Yolanda’s thin voice drifted up from the ground. Bliss bent to her. “We can’t go over the mountains. It’ll take forever.”
He knew.
They desperately needed a lifeline and Owain threw it. “There were planes back at the place,” he said nonchalantly.
“Why didn’t you say so before?” shouted Bliss.
“I thought you knew what you were doing,” he sneered. “Thought you had a plan.”
Bliss ignored the obvious contempt, “How do you know about the planes?”
“We used to hear them taking off. Why, can you fly?”
Bliss looked down at Yolanda. He didn’t need to ask.
“I could try,” she said.
Ten minutes later they had dumped the body of the dead man back into the trailer and unhitched it from the cab. Shouting, “Keep clear,” Bliss used the powerful motor to push the mangled trailer toward the cliff edge. The car, containing the bodies of two guards, still jammed under the rear of the trailer was dragged along with it.
The trailer’s final journey was something of an anti-climax. No fireball; no ear splitting explosion; no screams. Just a dull thud echoing up the side of the escarpment as the huge container crumpled onto a ledge five hundred feet below. The secret compartment had become a flying sarcophagus for the man killed when the trailer crashed into the rock wall; an ironic internment for someone whose life had apparently ended a year earlier in a fiery head-on collision with a train.
The drive back toward the compound was nervewracking as they anticipated an attack at every turn. Several of the men clung to the outside of the unlit cab with guns at the ready and spoken words were few. Each man prayed silently to his own god. Those without gods prayed there was one. A few flickering lights showed up in the distance. Candles or oil lamps thought Bliss. “They haven’t fixed the fuses,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.
“It took two days to get the power on after Mary killed herself …” Owain’s voice faded at the bitter memory.
“Everybody out,” said Bliss as he eased the truck to a stop a few hundred feet off the road. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Using the flickering lights as a beacon they stumbled toward the compound in the dark, well away from the road. The man with the smashed arm screeched in pain at every jolt from the rocky ground and the others took it in turns to shush him. Yolanda had tried walking, but her knees collapsed the moment her feet touched the ground. Bliss had scooped her up, carefully laid her over his shoulder, and struggled manfully for several hundred yards before accepting Owain’s offer of help.
The rising moon gradually warmed the sky with a soft yellow glow, and their surroundings slowly took shape. The mountains became visible as spiky grey splodges against a starry, deep blue canvas, and the camp buildings showed up as black boxes in the foreground.
“The airfield must be on the other side,” said Bliss scanning the huddle of buildings through the perimeter fence. “I can’t see any planes here.”
“There might not be any,” cautioned the Welshman. “They might just fly in supplies and guards, then fly out again.”
“Why didn’t they fly you in then?” asked Bliss. “Why use a truck?”
“They brought us in from Turkey,” he replied, expecting Bliss to realize the significance. He did not.
“So?” he said
“The United Nations no-fly zone,” explained Owain in an exasperated tone. “They’re not allowed to fly in Northern Iraq.
An hour later they had skirted the compound to approach from the south and found their path blocked by a river. The sluggish water glistened with moonlight and ran like a ribbon of thick dark molasses along the valley floor. Bliss knelt on the bank and peered intently, trying to gauge depth and current, then he reached forward. Imagining the water to be warm, even sticky, he flinched as the coldness bit into his questing fingers.
“It’s bloody freezing!” he exclaimed with a note of surprise. “It must come from the mountains.”
“That’s a fairly safe bet,” sneered Owain, “considering we’re surrounded by them.”
Spurred by the Welshman’s sarcasm, Bliss ripped off his socks and shoes and slipped knee deep into the water. “Stay there,” he commanded, but could have saved his breath. No one was following.
Primal fear caused him to hesitate, just for a second, then he gingerly stepped forward. Apart from the numbing cold, the river posed no threat. It was barely waist deep and he was soon guiding the little group across.
The moonlight painted everything with a grey wash that distorted perspective, erasing clues as to size and distance. The four aircraft shaped objects at the end of the runway could have been jumbo jets or two-seat Cessnas. Bliss pointed to the assortment of planes and asked Yolanda. “Could you fly one of those?”
“Dave, I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I don’t even recognize them.”
“Isn’t flying one plane the same as any other?”
“The basic controls are the same, but you have to learn each type.”
“I hope you’re a fast learner—I just learned to drive a truck.”
She gave him a look of astonishment, then buried her head in her hands, and burst into laughter. The laughter quickly turned to a bout of violent coughing and ended when she brought up a handful of blood. As she wiped her hands on her skirt Bliss saw the dark stain smeared across her palm in the moonlight.
“Take it easy. We’ll soon get you to a hospital.”
“Okey dokey, Dave.”