The yellow truck twisted, slewing around so that it covered the last few meters of the pier lengthways on, sliding down its length. It toppled, falling onto its passenger side.
Only meters behind it, Bill didn’t have any time to react. He screamed as his own overland truck ploughed head-on into the broadside of King’s, crunching the two vehicles around each other and propelling them both over the edge and into the freezing water.
35:
Nail Him!
Seconds before the two runaway overland trucks hurtled down the track leading to the pier and plunged into the tranquil waters of Lagos Viedma, Sid had been watching her guard intently. She knew that her life depended on nothing more than a radio call from the man who had identified himself as Bill.
Every fifteen minutes for an hour now Bill had broken the tense moments with a brief message, checking in with his pilot. Each time, in the moments leading up to the call, the guard had studied his watch intently, glancing occasionally in her direction. Each time, Sid had held her breath, waiting for him to swing the pistol, which had been clenched in his fist the entire time, up to her head. Yet, each time, seconds before she was convinced her guard was going to become her executioner, Bill had called.
But not this time.
“Time’s up,” he announced in a scarily quiet voice. Some analytical part of Sid’s brain decided that the guard would take no pleasure out of killing her. Instead, she thought, it seemed as though he believed he was carrying out his duty. Nothing more. Nothing less.
For some reason, that observation scared her more.
“Wait,” she stammered. Her heart hammered inside her ribcage. “Not yet. Surely it’s not—”
“I have my orders,” he answered, raising his gun to aim at her head. “Fifteen minutes, on the dot. But it’s been your lucky day. I’ve given you an extra forty five seconds just to be sure.”
Sid wanted to say something smart and factious, like ‘how generous’ but she found that her mouth was bone dry and—
She saw the reflection in the window behind her executioner just as his finger squeezed the trigger.
There was an ear-splitting screech of metal and the stench of burning rubber as the yellow lorry’s tyres shredded and it spun on its axis to slide length ways down the pier. Then, seconds later, a second truck, this one blue and white, slammed into it and they both were hurtled off the jetty and into the water.
Sid braced herself just as the enormous wave created by the impact of two giant lorries slammed into the Catalina’s hull, throwing the flying boat up into the air. Her guard, however, had not been ready and he staggered then fell to his knees in front of Sid.
Sid reacted on impulse and lashed out with her bound feet, smashing his lower jaw against his upper with such force that she heard what she supposed were teeth crack. The man let out a howl of pain as he bit the tip of his tongue clean off and a spurt of blood spewed out.
He fell back onto his haunches and Sid lunged out of her seat, slamming into him and knocking him back further. He sprawled across the deck, his gun falling from his fingertips.
But ultimately, her guard was a professional and Sid was not. Pushing his pain to some other part of his mind, the man slammed an elbow into Sid’s ribs and drove the wind out of her. With her limbs still bound, she was unable to prevent a second blow. She rolled off the man and he took the advantage to scramble across the deck, pluck the gun into his fist, turn and—
A blur of motion swept the guard from behind, lifting him up off his feet and somersaulting over the shoulder of the man who had just tackled him.
With the crack of breaking bones, though Sid wasn’t sure which ones, the guard went down and Benjamin King rushed to her side.
“Ben,” she gasped in both relief and shock. “How. ?”
King, adrenaline still pumping through his body, didn’t have time to describe his terrifying escape from Bill, the chase through the mountains or how he had leaped through the vacant hole that had once housed a door in the driver’s side of the cab just before its own weight had dragged it underwater.
He ignored her question as he hurriedly ripped the duct tape from around her ankles and then her wrists, helping her to her feet.
“Ben!” she warned, pushing him aside. A bullet whistled past and smashed into one of the compartment’s windows. Behind them, their guard hauled himself upright, gun in hand. In response, King pushed Sid towards the back of the plane just as another bullet slammed into the bulkhead.
He had entered the plane through the hatch at the front of the plane and had planned on leaving that way too. Instead, he fumbled with the controls for the rear hatch. With a hiss of hydraulics, it began to slowly yawn open. King didn’t wait. He pushed Sid up the incline of the opening and then scrambled after her just as the pilot got to his feet and took aim. His bullet hit the bulkhead just as King climbed through and leapt with Sid onto the latticework of wooden beams which held the pier above the water.
“Climb up,” he ordered his girlfriend and they both started climbing as though the beams were the rungs of a ladder, reaching for the safety above.
With a thwunk, a four inch long nail jabbed into one of the beams three feet away. King spun to see Bill scrambling from the freezing water at the far end of the pier, the unwieldy nail gun still in hand.
“King!” he bellowed down the length, his voice echoing against the underside of the rickety jetty. “Give me the map!”
“Quickly,” King told Sid, ignoring Bill. They were still three feet below the level of the jetty and he suddenly realised that Bill had the advantage. At the end of the pier, rising out of the water, was an actual ladder and realising his warning had fallen on death ears, Bill quickly ascended it.
Even as he reached above him to heave himself up onto the top of the pier, King realised it was too late. Bill was already running down it. He fired again. Closer, the accuracy of the nail gun was far improved and another four-inch long projectile splintered the wood in front of him.
King yelped, grabbing Sid and pulling her back under the safety of the pier.
“Is he shooting nails at us?” she asked as he led her into the maze of struts and beams which zigzagged this way and that at haphazard angles, some embedded with long rusty nails and sharp splinters which they had to be careful to avoid impaling themselves on.
“Better than bullets,” he replied.
A bullet slapped into the post right behind his head.
“Faster,” he urged and together they hopped, jumped and skidded through the latticework of the pier’s frame towards the opposite side. The Black Cat’s pilot stood in the plane’s open entrance firing and King could hear Bill’s footsteps above.
They were trapped.
Then he saw it.
Tethered to the jetty, a small motor boat, a tender for the vacant ferry, he guessed, bobbed on the swell the sunken trucks had created.
He grabbed Sid’s shoulder and pointed. She nodded. “When I give the word,” he told her, “get in it and start its engine.” Sid nodded but paused, waiting for him. Another bullet ricocheted through the supports. “Go,” he hissed.
Sid started towards the tender, leaving King in the middle of the pier. His body trembled with adrenaline and fear. His heart was pounding and his breath came rapidly. He wondered if this was how Nathan Raine felt in situations like this, whether or not his cool demeanour was merely a front.
He saw one of the rusty pins sticking out of the wooden beam in front of him. He clutched it and tugged. It came away from the wood easily and King studied it. This was no four-inch nail. Instead, it was nearly a foot long and despite the rust, its tip was still sharp.