Slim to None, page 14
Hannah shrugged. “It’s fast, but give me a Humvee anytime. I wouldn’t want to pit this thing against a landmine.”
“Yeah, well, you hit a mine with one of our Humvees, you’re not much better off. They still haven’t been up-armored. Brass keeps saying the steel plates are coming, but you know how that goes.”
Nuñez nodded. “I hear you, man.”
The corporal went back to examining their passports. “And you?” he asked Nuñez. “What’s your story? You with Brandywine, too?”
“Am these days, but I’ve been where you are, dude. I was with the Corps in Kabul after 9/11.”
“Yeah? What outfit?”
Nuñez rolled up his sleeve and showed off a tattoo on his right bicep. “Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment.”
“Don’t say.”
“Yup. Sniper. Semper fi.”
“And now, you’re pullin’ down the big bucks with Brandywine.” The corporal snorted. “Typical.”
“Hey man, I’m just doin’ a job, is all. Don’t knock it. You might find yourself doing the same when your stint’s up.”
“Money’s real good, I hear,” one of the younger marines said.
“You couldn’t pay me enough,” Hyter said. “I get out of this hellhole, I ain’t never comin’ back. Where you guys headed?”
“Ramadi,” Hannah said quickly. It was just another forty or so miles down the road. There was no point in admitting they were on their way to Jordan. It just begged too many questions.
“What for?”
“We’re from head office. They sent us out to look in on some of our teams over there.”
“What for?”
“Supply, logistics, that kind of thing,” Hannah replied. “Make sure they’ve got what they need.” It was the kind of vague bureaucratic response that normally invited more yawns than follow-up—except not this time.
Hyter smirked and his free hand dropped to his crotch. “Tell you what I need, honey. Think you could take care of me?”
Hannah was hot, sweaty, and getting very ripe-smelling in her grimy camos. She knew these guys were desperate, but even so, her inclination was to plant her steel-toed boot in those jewels Hyter was cradling. Fortunately, the ever-chivalrous Nuñez saved her from her own temper and the corporal from a well-placed kick.
“Hey, c’mon man, no need for that kind of trash talk. My partner here is just doin’ a job like the rest of us. And you know what? She may not be out of the Corps, but she was a cop. She’s paid her dues.”
“A cop? Really?”
“Sheriff’s deputy in L.A.,” Hannah said grudgingly.
“Hollywood cop, huh? Well, la-dee-frickin’-dah. I guess we better let you get on your way, then, Deputy Babe.” The corporal handed back their passports. “All the same, you wanna watch your backs. It’s pretty dumb, them sending you out here without a convoy. You want my advice, you’ll get your butts down the road to Ramadi as fast as you can. Don’t stop for nothin’ that’s not flying the Stars and Stripes. Lot of bad actors out here.”
“You got that right,” Hannah said, as all three marines gave her boobs one last, lusty perusal.
They were on their way once more, peeling down the highway, the hot desert wind whipping their hair. Hannah was back at the wheel. She would have switched places with Nuñez at the checkpoint, except she couldn’t resist the temptation of laying down rubber and leaving Corporal Hyter in a cloud of dust.
“What do we have for food?” she asked irritably. “I’m starving here.”
“I’m guessing you don’t want beef jerky,” Nuñez said.
“Had enough jerks for today, thanks. Jeez, Louise! Hup, hup, semper fi!” She snapped a mock salute. “Don’t you guys ever get past all that?”
He was settled back into the buttery leather seat. “Nope. No such thing as an ex-marine, only former marines.”
“Yeah, well, nice club, if you like Neanderthals.”
“Don’t mind those guys. They’re just hard up and bored. I know they act like idiots sometimes, but they don’t mean anything by it. You must have dealt with some of that when you were a cop, no?”
She waved a hand at the bag at his feet. It held a stash of food they’d taken from their hotel in Baghdad. “Munchies, please. I’m dyin’ here.”
He rummaged around the bag. “I’ve got dates, oranges, some of that flat bread, a tomato—”
“I’ll take some dates and a hunk of bread.” She took the flat bread he handed her, ripped off a corner with her teeth and laid the rest in her lap. Then she laid a handful of dates on top of that, not so much to keep her pants clean—that was already a lost cause—as to keep the grime off the sticky dates.
“Yeah,” she said finally, as she felt her blood sugar starting to climb back into normal range. “I ran into that kind of attitude on the job sometimes.”
“I figured. You seem like you can handle yourself.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it. You can’t win. You try to defuse it by being friendly, they decide you’re a slut. You push back, you’re a bitch. It’s exhausting.”
“I guess.”
“You better believe it.”
She kept pedal to the metal for the next few miles as they ate silently and watched the roadway for signs of trouble. There was very little traffic, but she was careful not to get sandwiched between vehicles, speeding ahead of everything they encountered. When she spotted a man with a loaded and tarped donkey cart, she steered the Aston Martin across the center strip, giving him a careful look and wide berth.
“We’re going to have to gas up in Ramadi,” she said after they’d passed him by.
“You think?” Nuñez leaned across the midline console to check the fuel gauge.
The British-built car was a right-hand drive, which freaked Hannah out just a little when she was behind the wheel, between shifting gears with her left hand and having a limited view of the roadway ahead and behind. As long as they were on a straight run, she was fine, but every time they rounded a curve, she had to resist the urge to cross over to the left side of the road, so strong was her need to be on the outside of the car while she was driving.
“We’ve still got over half a tank left,” Nuñez said.
“Yeah, but it’s a couple of hundred miles to the next major town after Ramadi. There might be some small villages, but I don’t want to take a chance on them having gas. Better to fill up now. After that, with a full tank and the jerry can Valenti put in the trunk, we should be good all the way to the border.”
“Okay, so we look for a gas station.”
“There’s a little more to it. You’ve seen the gas station lineups back in Baghdad. If anything, it’s going to be worse out here. We find one, I don’t want to waste an hour waiting to get to the pumps. More to the point, we get wedged in like that and we’re sitting ducks for every Tom, Dick and Ahmed with a gun and grudge. I hate playing the big ol’ Yankee bully, but unfortunately, nice people get dead. I heard of three guys getting killed just last week when they got caught in a gas line that suddenly turned ugly.”
“So what’s the plan?”
Hannah told him.
About twenty minutes later, they spotted a green road sign, written in Arabic and Roman script, announcing the turnoff for Ramadi six kilometers ahead.
“If we’re lucky, we won’t have to go in to town,” she said. “I seem to recall that there was a service station at the forks. If it looks like they’ve got gas, we’ll move in and out fast, so get yourself ready. Get some cash ready, too. The locals are going to be ticked off enough as it is. We don’t want anyone thinking we’re trying to rob the place. You never know who might be packing fire under his dishdasha.”
“How much cash, do you think?”
“God only knows. Gas was running sixty cents a gallon before the war. Saddam couldn’t export it because of the sanctions, so the stuff was cheaper than water. Now, the refineries are off-line again and supplies are getting scarce, so it’s whatever the market will bear. I think if we throw sixty bucks U.S. at the attendant, it should cover it.”
“Sixty bucks? For less than half a tank?”
“Hey, it’s a bargain at twice the price. No gas, no go.” She punched him playfully in the shoulder. “Anyway, you’re rich, dude! You’re getting fifteen grand for this little run and another cool half mil when we get back to the States and see Patrick Fitzgerald.”
“You don’t think he’ll renege, do you? What if that CIA dude we ran into in Baghdad gets to him ahead of us, gives Fitzgerald some spin about how we don’t deserve it?”
“I’m not worried. Amy will be back home by now. She’ll tell her father the truth about what happened out there. You heard her. She said her dad was a good guy. He’ll do the right thing, Oz, don’t sweat it.”
He leaned back and grinned. “So, what are you going to do with yours? Buy your kid a pony?”
“Nope, nothing fancy. Gonna bank it, stick close to home for a change and work on getting my son back. I’ve already lost two years of being his full-time mom. I’m not losing any more.” She glanced over at the young ex-(no, former) marine. “What about you?”
“I’m gonna build us a new house, a ranch bungalow with ramps and no stairs. When Raquel gets a little bigger, I’ll get her a motorized chair so she can go anywhere she wants, all by herself, until some kind of new treatment comes up that’ll fix her. I’m going to build it near a school they just put up in Austin. My wife’s been looking into it. This place has got programs for special needs kids. When the baby’s ready to start school, she’ll have the same advantages as every other kid.” Nuñez drummed his fingers on his knees. “And I’m going to start a college fund. She’s gonna be whatever she wants to be, if I have anything to say about it.”
Hannah smiled. He was only twenty-one, but the kid was all grown up just the same. “You’re a good father, Oz.”
He looked proud.
The first thing they spotted was the green-and-yellow petroleum company sign rising high over the road ahead like a hot-air balloon. As they got closer to the squat and dusty service station, they could see a line of cars, a dozen or more, snaking across the parking lot and out onto the highway, waiting to buy gas. The station had two lanes of old, paint-chipped pumps, two pumps on each island, but the lane between them was blocked off by a rope. A sign was also taped to one of the pumps in the outside row. It appeared that three of the four were out of order. That wouldn’t be surprising, Hannah thought, given the sanctions since the last Gulf War and the resulting shortage of spare parts for everything from heavy machinery to toasters.
As they got close to the station, she could see that the unused pumps were half dismantled. One had no hose or nozzle. One had had the meter guts ripped out of it. One was little more than an empty metal box. The only working pump looked like Frankenstein’s monster, held together with crudely attached after-market rivets and swatches of duct tape. Obviously the other three pumps had been cannibalized for parts to keep this one running.
“Okay, timing is everything here,” she told Nuñez. “See the pickup truck at the working pump? We’re going to move him out. I want you to do whatever it takes, short of murder, to get him the hell away. We need a clear getaway the second we finish gassing up, so make sure he doesn’t hang around to argue. I don’t want him or anyone else blocking our exit.”
“Roger,” Nuñez said. He checked the ammunition clip on one pistol and tucked it into his waistband alongside the other in his holster.
Hannah took out her own Beretta and laid it in her lap. The tires on the Bondmobile screeched as she careened wide around the last car in the queue, then peeled off the highway and into the gravel-topped lot, kicking up a cloud of dust and stones in her wake. The driver of the battered Isuzu pickup at the front pump was standing beside his open door, leaning on the roof of the cab, shooting the breeze with the green jumpsuit-clad attendant, who kept his hand on the nozzle in the tank while the pump’s gauges clicked over behind him. They barely had time to look up in surprise when Hannah leaned on the horn.
Nuñez, meantime, had thrown open the passenger side door. He leapt out of the car, brandishing his M-16, and waved it at the startled pickup driver. “Go! Go! Now!” he screamed.
When the driver hesitated for a split second too long, Nuñez pointed the rifle at his face, making his meaning dangerously clear. The man jumped into the truck and fumbled with the keys. The motor finally turned over, black smoke spewing from the tailpipe.
“Go! Go!” Hannah shouted in Arabic.
The truck lurched and sputtered as the nervous driver gave it gas. The attendant barely had time to get the nozzle out of the tank. Scraping the truck bed, the nozzle was still dripping gas as the pickup lurched away.
Nuñez pivoted on his heel, his rifle swinging in an arc, issuing a silent but lethal challenge to potential troublemakers. Hannah deftly squealed the Aston Martin into position at the pump, cutting off an old Ford Escort that had been next in line after waiting for God only knew how long to fuel up.
Slamming on the brakes, she pointed her Beretta out the window at the startled attendant. “Fill it!” she commanded.
“You…you should turn off the engine,” he blubbered. Despite the stubble on his chin, he was just a kid, younger even than Nuñez. The nozzle in his hand shook, splattering droplets of gas. He looked as if he was going to wet his pants.
“Just fill it!” she ordered. There was no way she was going to kill the motor, not in a situation when every second counted.
As the terrified kid unscrewed the gas cap on the Aston Martin, she took in every nuance of their surroundings, watching ahead of her and behind in the rearview mirrors. Nuñez was pacing back and forth alongside the car, doing his best imitation of a loco gangsta from the ’hood. If they only knew what a cupcake he really was.
As complaints and grumbles rose from other drivers in the long queue, Nuñez suddenly let out a godawful shriek, waving his M-16 around like a maniac. Apparently he’d studied at the Mel Gibson school of overacting, Hannah thought, smiling to herself. It wasn’t a bad strategy, under the circumstances. Had she had the luxury of infinite time and resources, she would have preferred three or four guys on backup here, but one apparent lunatic with an automatic rifle was enough to give pause to all but the most foolhardy. There was no sign these people were militants, as far as she could tell. They were just poor, tired working stiffs trying to keep it together in trying times. She could sympathize. She just couldn’t let down her guard. She was damned if she was going to die in Iraq.
She turned back to the attendant. He was still trying to get the nozzle in the tank but, in his nervousness, kept missing the opening. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Hannah yelled, hoping he wasn’t scratching the car’s paint job. Who knew how finicky that collector in Jordan was? They needed to deliver the product in good condition.
The nozzle finally found its way home and the pump began to hum, the steady click-click of the turning meter counting out the gallons. Exhausted as she was, the sound had a lulling effect in the drowsy heat, but Hannah forced herself to keep her eyes moving, scanning for signs of danger. Standing still in the middle of a hostile crowd was never a good place to be. Things could go south faster than a duck in autumn.
Nuñez paced back and forth by the rear bumper, keeping his watchful gaze pinned on the line of cars behind them and on the service station building about ten meters off to her right. They had no idea whether there was anyone inside there. If there was and he was armed, they could be in a world of trouble.
Just then, she heard a squeal of tires from behind. Nuñez’s gaze, she saw in her mirror, was fixed at that moment on the station building across the lot. She pivoted and looked over her left shoulder just in time to see a dark blue sedan come shrieking around the line of cars. The muzzle of a gun was showing out the right passenger window, and the car was coming straight for them.
“Oz! Behind you!”
He swung around, dropping onto one knee but keeping his gun high. Hannah was already out of the car, leaning on its roof, cupping her Beretta in front of her, taking aim. A shot rang out from the blue sedan, but the bullet went wide of the mark, pinging off the metal pole of the tall gas station sign. Hannah’s brain registered a ball cap on the shooter but not much more than that.
Before the gunman could get off another shot, she fired. Nuñez also opened up, spraying the sedan with automatic fire. The windshield crackled but held as the car veered left. Its front driver-side wheel caught the edge of a downward incline. The car wobbled, then slid as the driver slammed on the brakes, just narrowly avoiding rolling over into a ditch. The wheels bit gravel once more and the car leveled itself.
Nuñez’s M-16 peppered a line of holes in its side and trunk as the car spun around. The shooter was on the far side of the vehicle by now, but he kept shooting out of the window anyway—aiming for rogue migratory birds, Hannah could only imagine. The driver, meantime, looked like he might be thinking about returning for another run at them.
