‘How’s your leg?’ Lock asked, hoping to distract her.
‘Wonderful.’
She checked the screens. More vehicles massing outside the perimeter. Most of them clustered either side of the gate.
‘No sign of your friend,’ she said.
‘He’ll be here.’
Mareta lowered the gun. ‘OK, have your five minutes. But after that, it’s half an hour until I kill the next one.’
‘You said every hour.’
Mareta sighed. ‘We negotiate. I give you something, you give me something back in return. That’s how it works, no?’
Seventy-six
Twenty miles short of the naval yard, the empty tank light on the Hummer’s console pinged on. Ty groaned. The fuel consumption on a Hummer wasn’t great at the best of times, but throw on close to a ton of B-7 armour and it practically required its own oil field.
‘Problem?’ asked Stafford from the back seat.
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Ty responded with a grimace.
Three miles down the road, he found a gas station. His plan was simple. Threaten the living shit out of his cargo. Get fifty bucks of gas. Throw a Lincoln through the slot and get back on the road.
Ty pulled in and swivelled round. ‘I’ll be gone less than two minutes. You’ll be in my sight the whole time. If I see you move in any way, shape or form that makes me uncomfortable, I’ll kill you faster than David Duke at a Nation of Islam cookout.’
He turned off the ignition, took the keys with him, got out and locked up. He then grabbed the nozzle and jammed it into the gas tank. His eyes flitted between the dollars and cents ticking over on the display and the doors of the Hummer. He stared at the point where Stafford and Van Straten would be. He couldn’t see a damn through the tint, but he didn’t want them to think that.
These days when he bought gas, the numbers flicked past like a slot machine, but this pump seemed near glacial. Fifty dollars up, he placed the nozzle back in the pump, closed the flap and went to pay, looking back at the Hummer every few yards.
He pushed the money through the tray in the bandit screen and jogged back.
As he went to open the driver’s door, he remembered. Damn. The Glock. He’d left it in the front compartment.
He glanced back. The gas attendant, a young Hispanic kid in his early twenties, was perched on a stool watching whatever crap they threw on TV at this hour.
Ty drew his own weapon, yanked open the door and stepped back behind it, bracing himself for the first flash of movement.
Nothing.
From the angle he was at he could see only Nicholas Van Straten’s shoulder. But Pops wasn’t the one he was worried about.
‘Step out of the car. One at a time. You first, Stafford.’
‘Stay in the car. Get out of the car. Which one is it?’
‘Be quiet, Stafford,’ Ty heard Van Straten mumble.
‘Could you at least open the door, then?’ Stafford asked, tetchily.
Ty slammed shut the driver’s door, moved up the side of the vehicle, reached over and opened the passenger door, making sure to keep the armoured plate between him and Stafford. Stafford stepped out, hands held high in the air.
Ty glanced over his shoulder to see the gas attendant staring at them, no doubt trying to work out what kind of special-needs criminal brings his victims to a gas station to rob them.
Nothing else for Ty to do now but get on with it. He patted Stafford down. Clean.
‘OK, now you.’
Nicholas Van Straten stepped out and Ty repeated the procedure. Nothing on him either.
‘Stay there,’ he told them.
Clambering into the front seat, he opened the compartment. The gun was gone. He stepped back to see Stafford waving frantically to the attendant, miming someone making a phone call.
‘OK, where is it?’ he asked Stafford.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Stafford was doing exactly what Ty would have done in this situation. Stall. The gas attendant was already on the phone, one eye on what was unfolding outside, spitting his words out as fast as he could into the handset.
Stafford must have known that Ty had some purpose for them. Otherwise he would have killed them both at the house. Or pulled off the road back in Shinnecock Bay and done it.
‘I don’t need both of you,’ Ty said. ‘So who’s it to be?’
‘I think if you took a vote, it would end in stalemate,’ Nicholas Van Straten said drily.
‘Hmm,’ Ty said, mulling it over. ‘Guess that leaves me the casting vote then.’
He levelled the gun at Nicholas Van Straten’s head.
‘Go ahead,’ said Stafford.
‘It’s tucked into the back seat,’ Nicholas said.
‘So much for family unity,’ Ty said, reaching back into the vehicle and securing the weapon.
He hustled them back inside the Hummer, just as the police cruiser pulled in.
A single-officer patrol. More units presumably on the way. Judging from the rapid gesticulations of the attendant, who’d been busy on the phone trying to explain a robbery when he wasn’t being robbed, Ty guessed that the call had been put down as a roll by and report. Still, if he let the situation develop it could go only one way.
He waited for the cop to step out of the cruiser, then he shifted the Hummer into reverse and hit the gas. The rear of the hulking SUV concertinaed the engine block of the Chrysler.
Smiling for the first time since he’d turned into the gas station, Ty took off, leaving behind a very pissed-off cop scrambling for his radio.
Seventy-seven
The Hummer inched between a Nomad Command Post trailer and an up-armoured NYPD Bomb Squad forklift. Van Straten and Stafford could only stare out in bewilderment as more than a hundred men and women, many of them heavily armed, moved carefully between the perimeter and the vehicles.
‘Here we are, boys,’ Ty offered. ‘All ashore that’s going ashore.’
He slowed the Hummer. Over to his left, two regular NYPD cops were taking a good look at him. One of them was on the radio, the other talking out of the side of his mouth to his partner. As they started towards the Hummer, Ty eased down the window to hear what they were saying.
‘Hey. Stop that vehicle.’
Yup, that’s what he thought they were saying.
He closed the window, shifted the transmission into low and aimed straight at the gate. The trick was to hit it at ramming speed, approximately twenty miles an hour, then push on through the very centre. The mistake most people made when ramming, say, a roadblock was to get up as much speed as possible and go straight for it. In close protection circles that was known as ‘crashing’. Very different to what he was about to do.
Ty didn’t look back as he got to the gate. He didn’t have to because he was pretty certain no one would be following him in. The perimeter was more psychological now than physical.
The fence shook on the initial impact. That was followed by the grinding of metal on metal.
By now Stafford, at least, realized what was going on. They were ransom payment, in human form. Next to him, his father sat ramrod straight, tapping into some long-lost patrician fortitude.
As the Hummer breached the fence, the couple of cops who’d been running alongside, banging on the doors like demented groupies chasing a limo, fell away.
The Hummer forged ahead, straight for the building holding the control room. A couple of rounds zinged off the roof, the first metal raindrops of a fast gathering storm.
Ty pulled the Hummer up to the entrance of the main building, got out and opened the rear passenger door on the driver’s side as cover. ‘OK, ladies, end of the line. Better get inside before some over-eager ATF boy scout uses your bony white asses for target practice.’