“Things worked out,” I said.
“I was lucky in the end. But you never forget the first one. I keep thinking, what if I gave Tom the idea?”
Josie was back, hands on hips, looking down at Hobart with caring disapproval.
Is it possible what he’s saying is true, or did I just hear rambling fears from an old man who is out of touch? Is it conceivable that the boy who Hobart Haines knew grew into a man who has targeted one company?
Josie piped up. “You need to sleep, Hobart. And you should go, Doctor. Your driver was a thief and I sent him away. My friend will take you to the airport and charge you nothing. I will fill a thermos with coffee. And a sandwich for the plane.”
Check it out, I thought. Fast.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Tom Fargo forced himself to look meek and afraid, but he was waiting for an opportunity to kill his captor. He headed back toward New Albany, in the wrong direction, away from his final target. The gun in the hijacker’s hand hovered six inches from his stomach. The man leaned close in the passenger seat, the boy and woman in back, her head on her son’s lap. The sky was black, and rain pummeled the windshield so hard that the wipers barely helped his visibility. The headlights — on high — cast a pathetic glow extending out a few feet.
The smell of blood and wet was ripe, and the car hydroplaned through water, sent up twin shafts of spray.
I can’t drive them to a hospital. Or even into a town. By now Memphis police will have probably distributed the photos of me that kid took with his cell phone.
Tilting power lines seemed about to topple down on them. Masses of electric cables disappeared like writhing water moccasins into streams overflowing across the road.
“We’re going too fast,” Tom said.
“I ought to blow your head off,” snapped the man. Big guy, black, mid-thirties, with gray, short wooly hair and a thick beard and black-framed glasses. The man wore a skullcap. Of all the people to stop Tom, a Muslim. A brother, wearing his weekend going-to-dinner best; checkered button-down sopping cotton shirt and soaked khakis stained with his wife’s blood.
“If Tina doesn’t make it, you won’t either,” the man growled.
I could have released the insects anywhere. I could have let them out of their containers in a dozen places between Pittsburgh and here. But I passed up that opportunity. I wanted to release them in a specific place.
He had no illusion as to what would be coming toward him, from town. No way state and local police had not been alerted by Joe Rush’s press conference. Maybe they’d not recognize the Ford. But they would be stopping cars, checking drivers.
It can’t end like this. Give me courage. If my mission has your favor, show me a sign.
The woman moaned. Her hijab had slid off her head to wrap her shoulders like a scarf. Brown plain dress. Spittle on the lips. One shoe off. Tom had glimpsed the unconscious moon-shaped face when they laid her down. The boy cried silently. The woman had voided herself. The purplish stain gluing dress to chest told Tom she’d probably been thrown forward by the crash, hit a door or steering wheel or piece of glass.
Fear is an adrenaline problem. Conquer it and convince them you will help them. Get that gun moved away.
Tom made his voice tremble.
“My brother, may I tell you something?” he said.
“I’m not your damn brother!”
He gasped, “Please! I’ve been driving since yesterday! No sleep! My father! He’s in the hospital in Florida! He has cancer! I need to reach him, and when I saw you in the rain I didn’t think!.. I was wrong not to stop!”
“Watch the road, asshole.”
Tom jerked the car sideways and straightened at the last second. The swerve pushed the man against the door. But he remained in control. Tom glanced at the glove compartment. Inside lay his pistol. A fleshy ripping sound seemed to come behind, from inside the woman.
Tom recited, in a quavering voice, “You will not attain true piety until you voluntarily give of that which you love. Whatever you give, God knows of it.”
The boy’s gasp came over thunder. “You’re Muslim?”
Tom said, “Those who expend their wealth right, openly or secretly, their reward awaits them with the Lord.”
The boy said, glancing at his dad, “Poppa?”
Poppa growled, “Just drive and shut up.”
But Tom did not shut up. “To walk with my brother for his help is better than keeping to the mosque for a month. Put down that thing. It’s freaking me out.”
The gun, a big Smith and Wesson 629, a bear defense gun, stayed up. NEW ALBANY, 15 MILES. Tom did not need the guy to like him, just to hesitate. In town would be police, nurses, patients. Tom imagined himself carrying the woman into the hospital. He imagined people staring, turning to an overhead monitor broadcasting national news. He saw his face on the screen as Joe Rush said his name for all to hear. Tom made himself tremble.
“Stop shaking,” the man with the gun barked.
“I can’t! You’re scaring me!”
He tried to think. What lay ahead that might help him? Had he seen turnoffs or rest stops? He could not recall. He’d concentrated on driving earlier, not on the sights.
Tom pleaded with the man, piteously.
“Please! It might go off by accident.”
“I saw your face when you tried to get past us. You knew what you were doing.”
“Poppa?” the boy called in terror.
“What?”
“I think she stopped breathing,” the boy said.
The man didn’t turn around. But he shifted closer to Tom, and Tom smelled bile on his breath. Raspberry… gum or candy, maybe, and sweetish pipe tobacco.
“She’ll be okay,” the man tried to reassure his son.
NEW ALBANY, 6 MILES.
Lightning flashed on a sign: a yellow triangle with a black cross on it. An intersection was coming up.
“Poppa. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
Tom volunteered, “I know first aid.”
“She’s alive. And tough,” the man said. But he’d given Tom what he needed. Confusion. Fear. A chance.
“Look, you have the gun,” Tom said. “She needs help now, before we get to the hospital. Let me make it up to you. Stop that bleeding.”
“Poppa? The blood!”
“Please! Let me help,” Tom urged.
“Keep going,” the man ordered, but there was less rage in him now. Tom took a chance and started braking.
“What are you doing?” the man demanded.
“We need to help her now.” We! “We need to pull over for a minute.” We! “There’s no time!”
The intersection was coming up, and Tom glimpsed — far ahead — a series of red flashing lights, meaning ambulance or police. The man and boy had been looking at the woman, and they’d missed it. It would mark another accident or downed tree. Or worse, a roadblock. An upcoming curve in the road hid the flashing lights. Only Tom had seen them.
“Do it fast,” the man said, but now there was more despair in his voice than anger.
Tom coasted onto the gravel shoulder. He did not know if the vehicles ahead had been coming toward them — if they were they’d be here in moments — or had been stationary. The Ford stopped with a jerk. There were no lights visible and no traffic behind them. When the hijacker turned to see his wife, Tom’s hand came up off the steering wheel and he drove the side straight and true into the man’s Adam’s apple, crushing the larynx.