At the rim of the forecourt, at each of the two points designated Entry and Exit, a car had pulled up and parked, blocking the access to and from the road. As Pope watched, men emerged from each car, crouching.
Like street lights being turned on in sequence, a silent flashing red and white light appeared on the roof of each car.
Thirty-Four
Interstate 95, between Washington D.C and New York
Tuesday 21 May, 2.35 am
Nina couldn’t be sure of the sequence of events in the next few seconds. Each separate experience was like an individual card in a deck that had been rapidly shuffled.
Strobing lights washed through the windows and across the faces of Pope and the truck driver and the clerk.
The clerk shouted something incomprehensible.
The driver, Joel, shouted, terrifyingly close to her, He’s got a gun get down he’s kidnapped us.
Pope pulled, hard, on her arm, the way she had to pull hard on the old-fashioned toilet chain in her first home, and she felt herself dropping.
From her position on the lino floor, tiny and helpless, sprawled over her violin case she saw the looming shape of the clerk above the counter, something in his hands — a gun…
She heard the ch-chak of the gun’s slide action less than a second before it was drowned out by a crashing boom directly above her, one that made her clasp her hands over her ears to shut out the noise, both of the explosion and of her screams.
From where she was on the floor Nina could see the gap in the counter giving entry to the space behind it, and she watched the clerk slam back against the racks of cigarettes and liquor bottles on the wall behind him and drop onto his butt on the floor, where he sat propped, his legs splayed, one eye staring at her, the other missing along with half his head.
Her screams seemed to engulf her, becoming the whole of her, and although she blocked her ears and closed her eyes against them they penetrated through.
Something nagged at her, through the screaming and the horror, and she realised she had to pay attention to it.
Somebody was asking her something, over and over.
*
‘Please, don’t.’
Nina rolled over and brought her legs up so that she was hunched on her heels on the floor, over the violin case.
Three feet in front of her she could see the backs of Pope’s legs. Beyond him, at eye level with her, she saw the chubby truck driver, Joel. He was kneeling, facing Pope, but looking past him and at Nina. His cap had been dislodged sideways to reveal a sunburned, peeling bald pate above the ring of scrubby hair.
His hands were clasped and shaking in front of him.
‘Please,’ he whispered again. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t kill me.’
He was staring at her. Asking her not to kill him.
She shook her head. What did she mean? She hoped he understood.
Nina watched Pope extend his hand, and for an instant she thought he was reaching to help the man up.
The gun roared and bucked slightly in his hand again and Nina fell back, hands coming up around her ears once more.
*
A half hour passed, sluggishly, like the time spent waking up from an anaesthetic. Except it couldn’t have been a half hour; it was more, Nina realised later, like a few seconds.
She was still on the floor, the violin pressed to her, but she’d crawled back into the adjacent aisle to get away from the horrors on the floor where she’d been earlier. Pope stood six feet away, slightly crouched, staring out the windows.
‘Nina.’
He didn’t turn when he said it, and for a moment she though the voices had come back.
‘Nina.’ This time his head turned a fraction, and his voice was louder. ‘Stay down but come over here.’
She heard, but couldn’t process the words.
Pope stooped and backed over to her, reaching her in an instant. With his free hand he grabbed hers and dragged her back towards the window, forcing her to duckwalk to keep up.
When they reached the wall with the windows, rows of potato chips and candy bars arrayed in front of her face, he pulled her so that she stood. She felt him step behind her. One of his hands gripped her shoulder.
The gun barrel touched her ear.
*
She’d seen it countless times in movies, and had thought it must be one of the most terrifying experiences possible. But now, with the ring of the barrel an inch from the side of her head, radiating warmth and the smell of metal, she felt nothing. No fear. No numbness, even.
His voice murmured in her hair beside her ear.
‘I know this is horrible, but I swear to you, it’s a bluff. I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not going to let those men out there hurt you. There are four of them. They’re not police. They’re your father’s men. This is the only way to keep them at bay for the time being.’
His words were clear as ice, their meaning as well as their sound. She gave a tiny nod.
Through the glass, she could make out silhouettes around the two cars. Police cars, they looked like, with their cherry-top lights; except that they didn’t appear to have police markings. The silhouetted shapes — there might have been four, as Pope said; she couldn’t be sure — were hunched against the cars, again just as she’d seen in the movies. The siege posture, she thought of it as.
As she watched, the silhouettes shifted position, two of them detaching themselves from the car and advancing a little at a stoop. Both men carried guns, held low and in both hands.
Pope straightened further, pulled Nina closer. The men stopped, remained where they were.
Something didn’t make sense to her.
‘I had to kill those two,’ Pope said.
She nodded.
‘The clerk was going to shoot me. The truck driver would have made a run for it at some point and those men outside would have got in.’
He was telling her this, Nina knew, because he needed her to trust him. This she understood.
But still, something about the situation was wrong. Something about the tactic he was using.
She felt him step crabwise to the left and allowed him to shuffle her along with him. They reached the counter. Nina kept her gaze on the forecourt, not wanting to look at the body of the clerk. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pope reach across and lift the handset of the landline phone perched in its base beside the till.
In the faint reflection in the glass, she saw him hold the phone high. He’d released her shoulder, but his right hand still touched the gun barrel to her head.
Across the forecourt one of the men straightened a little, then seemed to say something to his friend. The man called something across to the other tow shapes near the second car.
One of them was fumbling with something which she realised from the tiny blue light was a cell phone.
Two minutes passed. Nina became aware for the first time of faint, tinny music coming from a radio somewhere behind the counter.
She understood what was happening. The men outside were locating the phone number for the gas station.
The phone rang in Pope’s hand, shrill and startling. He hit the receive button and spoke immediately.
‘Back off and give us safe passage in one of your cars. If you advance any further or don’t comply with my instructions, I’ll kill the girl.’
Nina couldn’t make out the reply at the other end but she heard Pope interrupt: ‘No negotiation. You have two minutes. Leave the keys to both cars in the car in front of the exit and then all of you go over and sit in the other car.’
Another tiny burst of noise came through the receiver. Pope said, ‘Two minutes, starting now. Any longer and I shoot her.’