Hour Game

by David Baldacci

  Out here alone with nothing around him except the bleakest landscape one could imagine, it all sounded delusional.

  He worked his way toward the mountains in the distance. He carried not one piece of personal information on him. Yet he did have papers that should allow him safe passage through the area.

  Should, not would.

  If he were stopped before he reached his destination he would have to talk his way out of it if the papers were deemed insufficient. If they asked to see what was in the truck, he had to refuse. If they insisted, he had a little metal box with a black matte finish. It had one red button on it. When he pushed that button he and everything else within a hundred square meters would disappear into vapor.

  That was just the way it had to be. He did not want to push the button and be transformed into vapor. What sane person would?

  He drove for twelve straight hours and saw not a single living person. He saw one camel and one donkey wandering around. He saw a dead snake. He saw a dead human body, its carcass being reduced to bones by vultures. He was surprised there was only one dead body. Normally, there would have been a lot more. This country had certainly seen its share of slaughter.

  During the dozen hours he saw the sun set and then rise again. He was heading east, so he was driving right into it. He lowered the visor on the truck and kept going although he was tired and his eyes were heavy. He played CD after CD of rock music, blasting the truck cab. He played Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” twenty times in a row, as loud as his ears could stand. He smiled every time the baseball announcer’s voice came on. It was a little bit of home out here. Who could have imagined?

  Still his eyelids drooped and he kept jolting back awake after his truck had strayed across the road. Luckily, there was no other traffic. There were not many people who would want to live around here. Foreboding would be one way to describe it. Dangerous would be another, more accurate, one.

  Dante’s Divine Comedy might be the best description of all. He was clearly not in Paradiso or even Purgatorio. He was smack in the Inferno part. Only he lacked the poet Virgil to show him the way.

  Thirteen hours into the trip he grew so tired that he had decided to pull off the road and take a quick nap. He had made good progress and had a little time to spare. But when he saw what was coming his weariness vanished. His nap would have to wait.

  The open-bed truck was approaching directly in front of him, the vehicle placed squarely in the center of the road, blocking passage in either direction.

  Two men sat in front and three stood in the bed, all holding subguns. They were coming on fast; he had no possible way to avoid them. He had known this might happen.

  He pulled partially off the road, rolled down the windows, let the heat waves push in, and waited. He turned off the CD player and Meat Loaf’s baritone vanished.

  The smaller truck stopped beside his. While two of the turbaned men with subguns pointed their weapons at him, the man in the truck’s passenger seat climbed out and walked to the cab door of the other vehicle. He also wore a turban; the bands of sweat seared into the material spoke of the intensity of the heat.

  The driver looked at the man as he approached.

  He reached for the sheaf of papers on the front seat. They sat next to his fully loaded Glock with one round already in the chamber.

  “Papers?” the man asked in Pashto.

  He handed them through. They were straightforward and appropriately signed and distinctively sealed by each of the tribal chieftains who controlled these stretches of land. He was counting on it that they would be honored. He was encouraged by the fact that in this part of the world not abiding by a chieftain’s orders often resulted in the death of the disobedient ones. And death here was nearly always brutal and never entirely painless.

  The turbaned man was profusely sweaty, his eyes red and his clothes as dirty as his face. He read through the papers, blinking rapidly when he saw the august signatories.

  He looked up at the driver and appraised him keenly. He spoke first in Dari and then in Pashto. The driver answered solely in Pashto.

  The papers were handed back.

  The man’s gaze went to the back of the truck, his look a curious one. The driver’s hand closed around the small black box.

  The man spoke again in Pashto. The driver shook his head and said that opening the truck was not possible. It was locked and he did not have a key.

  The man pointed to his gun and said that that was his key.

  The driver’s finger hovered over the red button.

  He said in Dari, “The tribal leaders were clear. The cargo could not be revealed until its final destination. Very clear,” he added for emphasis.

  The man considered this and slid his hand down to his holstered sidearm.

  The driver’s finger grew closer to the button as he watched the other man.

  He tried to keep his breathing normal and his limbs from twitching, but being seconds from getting blown into oblivion did certain physiological things to the body that he could not control.

  The man finally withdrew, climbed back into the truck, and said something to the driver. Moments later the truck sped off, kicking up dirt behind its rear wheels.

  He waited until they were nearly out of sight, heading in the direction opposite to his, and put the truck back into gear. He drove off slowly at first, and then punched the gas. His weariness was gone. Every sense he had was at its highest acuity.

  He didn’t need the music anymore. He lowered the AC because he suddenly felt rather cold. Perhaps from having Death in such close proximity?

  He followed his directions, keeping to the exact route. It did not pay to stray out here. He scanned the horizon for any other pickup trucks coming his way, but none did.

  He could imagine that word had been communicated up and down the line here that the cargo truck was to be given safe passage.

  Nearly eight hours later he arrived at his final destination. The dusk was starting to gather and the wind was picking up. The sky was streaked with clouds and the rain looked to be a few minutes from pouring down.

  When he arrived here he had expected one precise thing to happen.

  It didn’t.

  CHAPTER

  2

  THE FIRST THING to go wrong was that his truck ran out of gas as he pulled into the stone building’s rear door. He had extra fuel tanks, but someone had miscalculated.

  The second thing to go wrong was the gun being shoved in his face.

  This was no turban toting a subgun. It was a white man like him with a .357, its hammer already pulled back.

  He rolled down the window. “Is there a problem?” he said.

  “Not for us,” said the man, who was heavyset and jowly and looked closer to forty than thirty.

  “Us?”

  The man looked around and saw other white guys creeping out of the shadows. They were all armed and every gun they had was pointing at him.

  “This is not part of the plan,” the man said.

  The other man held out a cred pack. “There’s been a change in plan.”

  The driver studied the ID card and badge and said, “If we’re on the same side, why the gun in my face?”

  “In this part of the world I’ve learned not to trust anybody. Out, now!”

  The driver slung his fully loaded knapsack over his shoulder and stepped down onto the dirt floor holding two things.

  One was his Glock, which was useless with a dozen guns centered on him.

  The second item was the black box. That was entirely useful. In fact, it was the only real bargaining chip he had.

  He held it up to the cred man.

  “Fail-safe,” he said. “Red button goes down, we all get vaporized. Truck is wired all the way around with cakes of Semtex. Enough to make this just a hole in the ground.”

  “Bullshit!” yelled the cred man.

  “Look under the wheel wells.”

  The cred man nodded at one of the
other men, who drew a flashlight and ducked under the truck’s right rear wheel well.

  He backed out and turned. His expression said it all.

  The dozen armed men looked back at the man with the box. Their superior numbers had just been rendered irrelevant.

  He knew it, but he also knew this advantage was precarious. A game of chicken could have, at best, only one winner. But it could likely also have two losers. And he was running out of time. He could sense that in the fingers gliding to triggers, in the backward steps the men were trying to make surreptitiously. He could read their minds in every movement: Get out of the Semtex’s explosive radius and either let him detonate and kill himself or take him out with a kill shot and hopefully save the cargo. Either way they would live, which would be their primary objective. There would be other cargo to hijack, but they could not conjure additional lives.

  “Unless you can run a lot faster than Usain Bolt, that won’t be happening,” he said. He held the box up higher, so everyone could see how close his finger was to the trigger. “You shoot, my finger is going to involuntarily punch this thing and then we all get to have an eternity to think about our sins.”

  The cred man said, “We want what’s in the truck. You give us that, you go free.”

  “I’m not sure how that would work,” said the man.

  The cred man licked his lips and eyed the box. “There’s a pickup truck over there, fully fueled with extra in the back and a GPS. You take it.”

  “And where exactly do I take it?” he asked.

  “Wherever you want to go. I’m assuming out of this shithole.”

  “I had a job to do.”

  “That job has changed.”

  “Why don’t we just end this.” He moved his index finger closer to the button; barely any space existed between it and his flesh.

  “Wait,” said the cred man. “Wait.” He held up his hand.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Just take the truck and get out of here. What’s in that truck is not worth dying for, is it?”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “You’ve got a family back in the States.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do. And I have to believe you want to get back to them.”

  “And how do I explain losing the cargo?’

  “You won’t have to, trust me.”

  “That’s the problem: I don’t trust you.”

  “Then we’re all going to die right here in this shithole.”

  He eyed the pickup truck. He didn’t believe anything he had been told. But he desperately wanted to get out of this alive, if only to make things right later.

  The cred man said, “Look, we’re obviously not the Taliban. Hell, I’m from Nebraska. We’re on the same side here, okay?”

  He finally said, “So how about I withdraw quietly from the field?”

  “That was my offer.”

  “How do you propose doing this?”

  “First thing, don’t push the button.”

  “Then don’t pull your triggers.”

  He edged toward the pickup truck, keeping his finger close to the button. The men parted to allow him passage.

  He reached the truck and eyed the ignition. The keys were there.

  The cred man said, “What’s the range on the detonator?”

  “I think I’d like to keep that to myself.”

  He threw his knapsack on the front seat, climbed into the truck, and started the engine. He kept his free hand ready with the detonator.

  He shifted the truck into gear. All guns were pointed at him.

  The cred man said, “How can we trust you not to detonate when you’re well away?”

  “It’s a question of range,” he replied.

  “And you haven’t told us what that range is.”

  “Would you? So you just have to trust me, Nebraska. Just like I have to trust you that this truck isn’t wired to blow up as soon as I’m out of here.”

  He pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the truck roared out of the stone building.

  He expected shots to be fired at him.

  None came.

  He imagined they believed that would lead to their deaths when he hit the button in retaliation.

  When he was far enough away he looked at the black box. The red button was right there. All he had to do was push it. And all the men and what was in that crate in the box truck would exist no more. It would solve a great many problems all at the same time.

  His finger moved to do just that. He was still within range. He could still do it. But then he thought of the creds the first man had shown him. If they were legitimate there was a lot more going on here than he cared to think about right now. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to see it through.

  In fact, he did.

  He pulled his finger back from the button and accelerated.

  And the only way to do that was to let this play out.

  Now he just had to get the hell out of here.

  He hoped that was possible. Because most people came to this part of the world simply to kill or be killed.

  CHAPTER

  3

  SEAN KING DROVE WHILE Michelle Maxwell rode shotgun.

  This was the reverse of what the pair normally did. She usually drove the car, like a rhino on steroids, while he hung on for dear life and mumbled his prayers, but without much confidence they would actually be answered.

  There was a good reason for his piloting tonight, and for the last twenty-one nights. Michelle was simply not herself, at least not yet. She was getting there, only more slowly than she wanted.

  He looked at her. “How you doing?”

  She stared straight ahead. “I am armed. So you ask me that one more time and I will shoot you, Sean.”

  “I’m just concerned, okay?”

  She turned to him with a ferocious stare. “Oh, that I get. But I’ve been out of rehab for three weeks. I think I’m good to go. And that’s what your concern can do: Go.”

  “Your injuries were life-threatening, Michelle. You almost didn’t make it. Trust me, I was there for every second of it. So three weeks out of rehab after something like that is actually not very long.”

  Michelle touched her lower back and then her upper thigh. There were scars there. There would always be scars there. The memory of how she had come by these injuries was as vivid as the initial knife thrust into her back. It had been done by someone she thought was an ally, but who instead had just wanted to kill her.

  Yet she was alive. And Sean had been with her every step of the way. Only now his hovering was obviously starting to get to her.

  “I know. But it was two full months of rehab. And I’m a fast healer. You of all people should understand that by now.”

  “It was just close, Michelle. Way too close.”

  “How many times have I almost lost you?” she said, shooting him a glance. “It’s part of what we do. It comes with the territory. If we want safe we have to get another line of work.”

  “Yeah,” he said absently.