‘Help. Get us out of here. Help,’ Dylan screamed. His voice bounced off the car’s interior.
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Don’t waste your energy. There’s no one here who can help us.’
Dylan just looked at me, his face devoid of all emotion.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Rykov leaned over the edge and peered directly into the car at me. He grinned at me, revelling in my misery. ‘Hancock, come. You see.’
Hancock was conspicuous by his absence. When he didn’t respond to Rykov’s immediate beckoning, one of Rykov’s goons dragged him over.
Rykov slung an arm around Hancock’s neck and drew him close. ‘You see, Vic? This is how you deal with problem. I show you to teach. Next time, you do same and make problem disappear like a bad dream. Yes?’
‘Oh God,’ Hancock murmured. All the colour had drained from his face.
‘No gods here,’ Rykov said. ‘Only devils.’
He repeated the joke in Russian for his compatriots, judging by the laughter that followed.
He waved at his man closest to the crusher’s controls. He went to the control panel and kick-started the crusher into life. The roar of the engine and whoop of the hydraulic compressor winding up turned my insides to water.
‘Oh my God,’ Dylan murmured. ‘This is it. They’re really going to do it.’
‘Keep it together,’ Steve said. ‘Don’t give them the satisfaction.’
It was a nice sentiment, but I felt my grip slipping on the notion. Just the idea of the hydraulic rams squashing the car and us along with it swept away any possibility of bravery. We were going to be crushed to death. We wouldn’t last long, which was a blessing, but those final moments before the end came would last a lifetime.
‘Your grandfather is right,’ Rykov said. ‘I am going to kill you.’ He moved over to the controls. ‘I cannot say it will not be fun.’
Derek snatched the Russian’s arm. ‘Don’t do this. Let us deal with it.’
‘Why take risk? Kill birds with one rock while we can.’
Derek didn’t correct Rykov on his poor telling of the phrase. But who would?
‘You’ll literally leave a trail to Hancock’s door. Do you want that?’
Rykov thought for a second then shook his head. ‘I do not think so. I have done before. Very clean kill with little blood. It easily washes away and body is burned up when car is smelted. There will be no trail.’
‘I can take care of them just as cleanly,’ Derek said.
A distrusting smile spread across Rykov’s face. ‘You sound like friends.’
‘It’s not that. I screwed up and you’re fixing it for me. I don’t want that. I fix my mistakes myself. I want to make up for it,’ he nodded at us in the crusher, ‘so I don’t suffer the same fate.’
I didn’t know why Derek was going to the trouble of staying our execution. Rykov was right. This was a very effective and clean execution. Wasn’t this what Derek had wanted all along? Maybe it wasn’t. From his expression, he wasn’t deriving any glee from this. Maybe Rykov had crossed a line Derek wasn’t willing to cross.
‘You don’t worry,’ Rykov nodded at the crusher. ‘You, good soldier. You I trust,’ Rykov said, removing Derek’s hand from his arm. ‘But if make you feel better, you start machine.’
Derek hesitated then nodded.
Rykov stepped aside for Derek. He barked at his men and they trained their guns on us in case we tried escaping again.
‘I think I’d prefer to take a bullet than to go out in here,’ Steve said.
‘I don’t want either option,’ Dylan said.
‘None of us do,’ I said. ‘Everyone stay put.’
Something about Derek’s personality shift gave me hope. He wasn’t the same man who’d played up killing Alex in the clubhouse. This was a human. He wouldn’t let us die this way. He wouldn’t press the button. He’d do something to help us. I didn’t understand it, but I felt it. My panic melted. I hoped I could believe in my gut feeling.
‘We won’t talk,’ I yelled. ‘No one knows what we know. Anyone I’ve tried to tell hasn’t believed me.’
Rykov smiled. ‘I believe you. That big problem. If I believe, others believe. Is not good for me. Can’t take risk. Derek, please continue.’
Derek looked at me. I looked into his eyes for hope, but it wasn’t there. He pulled a lever on the control panel and the crusher burst into action.
The crusher’s engine roared and the first ram moved in from the side. It eased along its path with slow, deliberate speed, sweeping the Renault along. The tyres squeaked as the car slid on the metal bed. There was nowhere for the car to go except inward. The ram pinched the car against the opposite wall. The door panels popped and banged as they buckled under the pressure.
My breath shot in and out in fast, untidy pants. A scream was building in my throat.
Even though it was futile, the three of us yelled for help. Rykov patted Derek on the back as he operated the controls and his Russian buddies pointed and laughed at us. Some mocked us by putting their hands to their faces and pretending to scream back. I wished we could keep our screams in, but we just couldn’t help ourselves.
The ram’s progress slowed then stopped when it squeezed against the Renault’s tough chassis. I wanted the crusher to chip its tooth on the French made car, but no. Derek cranked up the power and the ram resumed its path. The chassis resisted the overwhelming pressure for just a moment before giving way. The exterior of the car collapsed with a shriek of buckling steel. The confines of the car’s cabin shrank and we instinctively shifted to the centre of the cabin where there was still space. It was a futile gesture. We were only buying ourselves seconds. But there was no control over our need to survive. We tried to hold onto life for as long as we could.
The front and rear windscreens split then burst under the pressure, spraying us with glass.
Steve pointed to the gaping holes. ‘Out through the front and back.’
I scrabbled out over the bonnet. Two bullets thudded into it inches from my left hand.
‘What we say about escaping?’ Rykov shouted over the din. ‘Get back in.’
The Russians opened fire on us, driving us back into the Renault. They laughed as we disappeared back inside.
‘We’re so dead,’ Dylan said.
‘Not yet, we aren’t,’ I said.
I jumped on the car horn and learned on it. It blared. The annoying sound spread far and wide. I hoped it would draw someone. No one would put up with that noise for long. The car shifted by another inch and something inside the car broke, killing the horn.
‘Nice try,’ Steve said, ‘but a little late.’
Steve was resigned to his death. I wasn’t.
‘Keep moving,’ I barked. ‘Don’t get trapped.’
The floor pan buckled and collapsed beneath us. The roof popped and peaked. We might have been losing width, but we were gaining headroom.
‘Get in the middle,’ I said, clambering between the two front seats.
I had the front of the car to myself. Steve and Dylan had to share the back seat and were losing space. Dylan tore out the parcel tray from the boot with his bound hands and tossed it through the windowless hatchback. He clambered into the boot space.
‘Now what?’ Dylan demanded.
‘We keep fighting.’
The back seats snapped off their mounting. One seat smashed into Steve, knocking him over. He yelled out, stuck in the well between the front and rear seats. He had seconds before he’d be pinned down. Dylan lunged for him and when he yanked him back up, blood streaked half my grandfather’s face. The front seats crushed the centre console and armrest as they came together. Other pieces of the interior sheared off and struck us as the car continued to shrink. Dylan yelled out when he got his hands trapped between a seat back and the car’s frame. He worked them free, but the damage had been done — two broken fingers on his right hand. The injury didn’t stop him. We all contorted our bodies in an attempt to find an inch of space, tossing anything and everything that was no longer affixed out the busted windows for that vital extra cubic inch of space.