“Not if it means letting those animals who are responsible for Laurin go free,” Jason said through clinched teeth, not taking his eyes off the road. “Not if it takes the rest of my life. Can’t you understand that?”
Maria turned in her seat to face him, putting a hand over his on the steering wheel. “I understand you loved her very much, still do, and I accept that. But when you’re full of hatred, how much can you love me?”
Neither metaphysics nor rhetoric was a subject in which Delta Force trained its members. Neither had he taken either course in college. Jason regretted the omission.
He placed a hand on her leg well above the knee as he turned onto the narrow causeway that led to the main part of the island. “I tried to show you how much I love you last night….”
She removed his hand impatiently. “I was just too tired. Besides, sex and love aren’t the same. My ex demonstrated that enough. I—”
She followed his eyes. A large cement truck had turned onto the far end of the causeway. A construction company had brought several over on a special ferry from the mainland to do some work in the town. But there were no roads on this side of the causeway that would accommodate a vehicle of that size.
And there was no building going on.
“What …?” Maria began.
Instantly alert, Jason shushed her with a hand gesture, looking over his shoulder. He stopped and quickly shifted into reverse and began speedily backing up, to the consternation of two motor scooters, a cyclist, and a pocket-sized Fiat 500. Two pedestrians, older women, crossed themselves as they scurried to the other side of the road.
Maria turned from staring out of the open rear flap of the Samurai’s canvas top and looked at the truck approaching with increasing speed. “Is he drunk, crazy, or both?”
Jason glanced to the front too, and then backward. The end of the causeway he had just left seemed impossibly far away. “I don’t intend to stick around to find out.”
The truck, smoke snorting from its vertical exhaust like the breath of a dragon, was rapidly filling the Samurai’s windshield. The road was barely wide enough for two small cars to pass. There was no room around the oncoming behemoth. The causeway here had been originally built centuries ago across a narrow stretch of swampland that connected the two islands. Although eventually paved, there had been no reason to widen it or to add shoulders. Leaving the road meant running into a tidal bog of unknown depth, one that, under weight, could easily crumble into the sea that had been nibbling at the edges of the road since rock, pebbles, and sand had been used to steel it from the tides.
“Jason, that truck is going to hit us,” Maria said in a surprisingly calm tone.
She was right. Unless Jason could win the race to the end of the causeway behind him, there was no place to go. And it didn’t look like the contest was going in his favor.
7
It was becoming obvious that Jason was losing the race. He wasn’t going to get to the end of the causeway in time.
The causeway.
Shoving the lever that activated the Suzuki’s four-wheel drive, Jason drove over the lip of the pavement. Tires spun, hissing a rooster tail of mud, sand, and seawater into the air.
Then the tires caught, the sudden traction sending the diminutive car jolting forward.
“Jason,” Maria gasped, “you can’t …”
He ignored her as he began a sweeping crescent with the cement mixer at its center. The problem, he thought, was that there was no way to tell where the foundations of the causeway abruptly dropped off into the sea. At any second, the Suzuki could run off the shelf, overturn, and sink with all aboard.
The truck’s driver suddenly became aware his prey was about to escape and abruptly turned off the pavement also. Just as Jason had anticipated, the much heavier truck did not fare as well as the much lighter Suzuki. The second its double rear wheels left the road, a geyser of muddy mix shot into the air, and it came to an abrupt stop and listed to the right like a sinking ship.
Jason made another abrupt turn, heading straight for the larger vehicle. When he was within a few yards, he brought the car to a stop, hopping out.
“Jason! What—?”
Without pausing in the knee-deep water, he shouted over his shoulder. “Drive back onto the pavement!”
As he reached the side of the cement mixer, the driver was halfway out of the window. By now the door was partially submerged and Jason guessed it had either jammed or was being held shut by water pressure. Jason made a grab for the driver’s shirt but was met with a swish of a knife’s blade splitting the air.
Jason sloshed his way a few steps toward the back of the big rig, where the driver couldn’t quite reach him and had to strain to see to the rear. With a leap, Jason had an arm around the one that held the knife. He took a step forward, slamming the arm down onto the windowsill. The sound of the cracking ulna and a scream of pain seemed simultaneous.
The knife splashed harmlessly into the murky water.
With both hands grabbing the man’s shirt, Jason wrestled him through the open window. Jason wrenched the injured arm behind the driver’s back, forcing him to kneel in the water. If the man was not an Arab, he certainly could have passed muster for one. Dark-skinned and bearded.
Jason placed a knee between the man’s shoulders, forcing him forward so that his face was only inches from seawater. “Who sent you?”
Turning his head, he spat in Jason’s general direction.
Leaning forward, Jason forced the struggling man’s head underwater. He watched until the frenzy of bubbles calmed before he used his free hand to grab a handful of hair. Gasping, spluttering, the truck driver gulped air as though the supply might run out.
“Now, we’ll try one more time: Who sent you?”
Although Jason spoke no Arabic, he was fairly certain he was hearing curses, not names.
The man’s head went back underwater. This time Jason waited until the bubbles ceased before pulling him up. At first, Jason thought he might have waited too long, but the man coughed into life like a balky car motor on a cold morning.
“Glad you’re back with us. Now, absolute last chance: Who sent you?”
Silence.
This time Jason had every intention of drowning his former assailant, but there was a tug on his arm.
“Jason, no!”
Maria had come up behind him. “Jason, you’re killing him!”
“Maria, the man tried to run us over, squash us like bugs. What do you suggest, that I sue him?”
“You can’t just drown him in cold blood!”
“There’s nothing cold about my blood. I’m mad as hell.”
Maria was pleading but those blue eyes were angry. “Jason, let him go.”
“Why? So he or one of his buddies can try again and maybe succeed?”
“You can’t just kill him.”
“Watch me.”
“Jason,” she pled. “Violence begets violence. You kill him, then they come for revenge. It has to stop somewhere.”
Maria covered her mouth with her hand. “My God!” She was pointing. “You already killed him!”
Jason looked down. There were no more bubbles. He let go and the man pitched forward, facedown. “Problem solved.”
Maria’s face went white. She stooped to kneel in the water and pull the man’s head above water, glaring at Jason “You, you … you murderer!”
“Maria, be rationaclass="underline" He goes free, you think he’s going to thank us? Maybe with a long-range rifle shot or a bomb. The only way you deal with those people, the only thing they respect, is force. They want paradise; I intend to help them get there.”