The Thousand Dollar Escape

by J. T. Brannan

  The cops were gaining again – and I had no idea what other resources Chief Carson was calling in – but I could see the on-ramp now as the road straightened out ahead, and gunned the engine a little harder.

  The cops were a little faster though, powerful engines in much lighter vehicles, and before I knew it, the first one was pulling up alongside me.

  I didn’t even have to think, I just jerked the wheel and sideswiped the car off the road, watching in satisfaction as it veered wildly up the grass embankment separating the expressway from the on-ramp.

  There were two more behind me – the fourth must have been delayed in the chaos back at the stop-lights – and I jammed hard on the brakes, forcing them both to take evasive action.

  As they spun across the road to either side, I hit the gas again and accelerated toward the highway, sirens clearing a path for me as I joined the main route east to Tulsa.

  ‘It’s seven miles,’ Samantha said, obviously worried now, the humor gone. ‘Don’s gonna scramble every car, he’s got friends in Tulsa PD, the sheriff’s department, they’ll have helicopters, they –’

  ‘Hey,’ I said soothingly, interrupting her before she let the panic get the better of her again. ‘Hey. It’s okay. Honestly, it’s okay.’ I checked our speed, saw we were nearing eighty as the other vehicles continued to move aside for us, the scenery flashing past on either side. ‘At this speed, we’ll be hitting the city in just over five minutes. He’ll never have time to get things organized by then.’

  ‘You don’t know him like I do,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what he’s capable of.’

  I considered what she said even as I checked the mirrors and saw that a couple of squad cars were back on our tail, sirens blasting their own clear path through to us.

  What was Don Carson capable of? He certainly seemed capable of cold blooded murder – I was under no illusion that he was going to blow my head off back in that interview room. It wasn’t hard to believe that he was going to recruit as many law enforcement colleagues as he could, in order to bring us in.

  But he still only had five minutes; maybe less, I thought, as I pushed the pedal further into the floor, getting the truck up to ninety, then a hundred, glad that the siren was making the other vehicles move out of our way.

  What could he do in five minutes?

  A roadblock was a possibility, of course; a quick call to the Tulsa PD or sheriff’s department might just enable the city officials to set one up before we got there. Depending on what Carson told them – and, I realized, he didn’t even really have to make anything up, as shooting two police officers and escaping from jail was pretty bad in itself – a SWAT team could also possibly be on the cards, ready and waiting to take us out.

  And what would we do if and when we reached the city anyway?

  I was heading for Tulsa simply because it was the nearest big city, and it was much easier to hide in a city than in a small town. But to go into hiding would necessitate escaping somehow from the extremely noticeable red and chrome fire truck that we were traveling in.

  But that, I figured as the first cruiser pulled up alongside us at just over a hundred miles an hour, was something I could worry about later – if we got that far.

  I hit the brake, letting the squad car shoot past us, then hit the gas again, turning the wheel just enough for the hood of the truck to clip the rear wing of the cruiser.

  The effect was instantaneous, and destructive.

  The cruiser span wildly across the highway from the impact, before the momentum became too much for it and it sprang into the air, turning in one arc, then two, before coming to rest – far behind us now – on the grassy barrier between the two sides of the highway.

  I saw that the other cruiser had to turn sharply to avoid it, the driver losing control from the maneuver and ending up facing the wrong way. He wasn’t out of the fight just yet, but it would cost him time.

  I felt bad about running the first car off the road, but was pretty sure the crash wouldn’t have been fatal – modern vehicles were designed to withstand such accidents, and I was pretty sure that the cops would get out of the thing with just a bit of a headache and a few bruises.

  Samantha was starting to breathe quickly, the adrenaline of the crash threatening to send her into a full-scale panic attack, but as I looked toward her, she consciously tried to regulate that breathing, get herself under control.

  ‘Tulsa PD is based on the other side of the city,’ she said, as calmly as she could manage, ‘but the sheriff’s office is close to where we’ll be hitting the city, they’ll definitely be able to get there in time.’

  I drove on, considering what she’d said. The highway was the fastest way in, but it was also the easiest to defend, the most obvious route to block.

  Did we dare take the chance? It was speed versus visibility.

  On the other hand, this wasn’t my town and I didn’t really have any other ideas of how to get into the city – any less obvious or direct route might well dump me right on the door of the sheriff’s department.

  So – with a few miles already down – I decided to go for the direct route and take my chances on the expressway.

  I could hear sirens behind us but couldn’t yet see any blue flashing lights. But I knew they were there, probably in force.

  ‘Check up in the sky,’ I told Sam as I concentrated on the road ahead. ‘For helicopters.’

  It was unlikely that they would have had time to launch one, but if they already had a bird up there, they could have re-tasked it onto us.

  Sam checked out the windows, craning her neck to get a good look around us. It was a clear day and the sky was a bright blue with barely a cloud in sight; if there was a chopper up there, she’d see it.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said a few moments later.

  I’d been listening for one too, but had heard nothing; but that might have been due to the noise of the big diesel engine in front of me, and the sirens behind me, and I was relieved by Sam’s words. If there was no airborne surveillance, it would make it easier to disappear once we hit Tulsa.

  Another minute passed, and the world passed with it at high speed – malls, fast food outlets, apartment blocks, housing estates, factories, retail parks, minor roads jammed with traffic, an open window onto the American Midwest way of life.

  Trees rose up on the right hand side as we flew toward an underpass, signpost indicating an exit onto Quanah Avenue. Ahead I could just start to see the tops of the silver high rises of the city beyond.

  ‘Come off at Quanah?’ I asked Samantha, thinking that we were close enough to the city now to risk it.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘that’ll take us off toward Tulsa early.’

  I drifted across to the right, ready to make the turn off.

  And then I saw it – the traffic on the highway slowing, blue flashing lights not behind us but ahead.

  It was a roadblock, just as we’d feared. They must have figured that we’d try the Quanah exit, established their position as far ahead as they could get away with, given the time they’d had.

  I took a deep breath and prepared myself.

  There was only one thing for it, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Chapter Seven

  There were four cruisers up ahead, blocking both the highway and the exit onto Quanah. They were spaced to let the traffic through ahead of us, but in position to quickly plug the gaps when our big red fire truck came hurtling toward them.

  As we neared the blockade, I could see that the cruisers were – as Samantha had predicted – from the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office. It was a quickly put-together operation and so there were no trucks or bollards or tire-shredding stingers, but several officers were placed by their vehicles, handguns aimed across the roofs and hoods. Two men held shotguns.

  ‘No,’ Samantha whispered, horrified. ‘No, no, no . . .’

  I didn’t have time to comfort her – all my senses were concentrated on dealing with the problem at h
and.

  ‘Stop the truck!’ a deputy’s voice sounded over a loudhailer, as the gaps in the roadblock were covered. ‘Stop the truck or we will open fire!’

  Should I try and ram them? The thought crossed my mind, loudly and quite convincingly. But could I really take the risk of killing them? If I smashed my way through, it could well prove fatal for one or more of them – given the width of the road and the position of the deputies, they wouldn’t all get out of the truck’s way in time.

  They also had guns and – if the deputy with the loudhailer was to be believed, and I had no reason to suspect that he wasn’t – they were prepared to use them.

  If I pulled a U-turn in the middle of the highway and pushed back against the traffic the way I’d come, I would be heading right back toward the pursuing vehicles of the Sand Springs PD.

  Which left me only one real option.

  I whipped the wheel over to the left, using the truck’s weight and bulk to smash through the flimsy metal barrier that separated one side of the highway from the other.

  Samantha let out a cry as we crashed through into the oncoming traffic, and even Kane gave a little yelp; but the impact was far less damaging than if I’d attacked the roadblock itself.

  Samantha’s cries turned to screams as the first onrushing car missed us by a hair’s breadth, and I had to weave fast left and right to avoid two more.

  As I heard the high crack of pistol fire, and the low boom of the shotguns – and felt the truck shuddering from the impacts, glass breaking over us – I continued to force our way across to the left, toward the on-ramp that lay exactly opposite to the Quanah exit.

  Again, the siren helped to alert the other drivers to our presence, but we had a problem – the on-ramp led down a narrow single lane channel, a concrete wall to our left and a steeply angled bank to our right, and the oncoming vehicles had nowhere to go.

  But at least, I considered as I pulled the wheel to the left, we were shielded now from the deputies’ gunfire.

  The truck hit the wall and scraped along it violently in an explosion of sparking metal and concrete shards, but I’d created a narrow opportunity for the other vehicles headed toward us.

  The first driver took his chance, mounting the bank with two wheels – the only way to fit past us – and bursting through at a near-forty-five-degree angle.

  Other vehicles followed, all barely scraping by as I continued to rub the truck’s side along the on-ramp’s wall.

  But the space opened up as the concrete gave way to grassy banks on either side, and I watched as the other cars and vans pulled hard onto the verges to get out of our way.

  And then we were at the intersection with North Quanah Avenue, and I pulled the fire truck north across the traffic, finally regaining a position on the road going in the correct direction.

  If the deputies got their acts together and worked quickly, they might be able to get their cruisers down the exit and onto Quanah from their side, but they would be quite a distance behind us.

  As we fired up the road in our bullet-riddled truck, Samantha struggling to keep her breathing under control, I hoped it would give us enough time.

  Because now we were in Tulsa, it was time to disappear.

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  I sat on the edge of the armchair and hit the remote for the TV that sat in the corner of the room. It powered on and I searched for the news channels, eager to see what was being reported about us.

  Samantha was curled up on the sofa, arms tight around her knees, head down; since escaping from the authorities, she’d gone into herself, become distant and introspective. Now that there was no immediate danger, she had time to think, and I guess that being in a room alone with a strange man sent all sorts of fears into her – fears no doubt beaten into her by her husband. Now she would be worrying what would happen to her if Don found her, and her imagination was probably working overtime.

  I didn’t really know what to do, to be honest; consoling scared or traumatized women wasn’t really in my bag of tricks. And perhaps anything I might have said would only have worsened the situation anyway.

  We’d left the fire truck in a residential area west of Quanah, turning sharply left not long after coming onto the avenue. I’d cut the siren and made a couple more turns just to confuse anyone who might have seen us, then mounted an empty driveway that ran next to a small ranch house so that it wouldn’t easily be seen from the street.

  We’d all left the truck – Samantha in a daze – and we’d jogged through the streets of the neighborhood until we were in an area sufficiently distant from the cops for them to have a hard time finding us. I could hear the sirens – and they would almost certainly find the abandoned fire truck before long – but they wouldn’t know which way we’d headed on foot without helicopter support.

  Before long, I’d found another one-story home with a covered car port and – unseen from the road – I broke inside, eager to get some clothes on over my boxer shorts at long last. I pulled some jeans and a simple work shirt from the main bedroom’s wardrobe, along with some socks and a pair of sneakers. Too small, but better than nothing. And after being near-naked for the best part of the day, anything was a luxury.

  I made sure that the shirt had long sleeves, to help conceal the broken cuffs that were still attached to my wrists, and pulled the pants legs down to hide the ankle bracelets that had been left there from the chains.

  I got some new clothes for Samantha too. They were too big, but that wasn’t a bad thing – they smothered her and disguised her figure pretty effectively.

  I also found a set of keys in the kitchen for the small Toyota hatch parked outside, and within five minutes of entering the house, we were driving slowly out of the neighborhood, Samantha hunkered down with Kane out of sight in the back.

  I tousled my hair and slipped on a pair of sunglasses I found in the glove compartment. As disguises went, it was hardly a work of art, but – along with the new set of clothes – it would do.

  By the time we got back onto Quanah, we actually passed two cars from the sheriff’s office, and four more from Sand Springs PD; but they were traveling too fast, and were looking for a bright red fire truck, and failed to see us as we drove straight past them.

  From Quanah I took the stolen car left onto West Archer Street and – passing underneath Interstate 244 as it looped its way around the city - we carried on until we hit downtown Tulsa.

  We passed a veritable army of police and sheriff’s office vehicles on the way, and Samantha told me that we were driving literally within spitting distance of the sheriff’s headquarters, which was housed at the Faulkner Building on the road running parallel to us.

  But we were never stopped, and I eventually pulled the car into the Main Park Plaza on South Boulder Avenue West, right in the city center, parking it in a long-term spot on one of the upper levels, using some cash I’d taken from the house to pay for it. No point arousing suspicion by not having a ticket. The car would be found, but better later than sooner, I figured.

  On our drive into the city – as Samantha retreated into near-silence – I had come up with a plan of getting somewhere to stay. Hotels and motels were an option, but we would probably be noticed by someone; and we didn’t really have much in the way of money either. My backpack was still in a room I was renting in Sand Springs, and both Samantha and I had been stripped of our possessions when we’d been arrested. We had some cash from the house, but not much – and certainly not enough for an extended stay at any kind of hotel.

  After parking up, I’d gone into a couple of stores and picked up some essentials, along with a local newspaper. I’d searched the classifieds for apartments to rent, and found a few which were already furnished.

  We’d then gone to visit each one in turn – from a distance, of course – and I checked important issues such as location, access, security, and so on, until I’d found the perfect place.

  It was an apartment block in the downt
own area, a zone jam-packed with tourists and business people, all strangers to the city like us. It was also near to quite a few of the bars I’d visited with Ricci the night before – it was so hard to believe that it had only been last night – and was therefore one of the only areas of Tulsa that I was vaguely familiar with.

  It was a large building too, with dozens of low-rent apartments, the kind of place in which people didn’t really pay attention to who was coming and going, and it had good access in and out of the building from multiple points.

  While Samantha had waited out on the street with Kane, I had entered the building, located the apartment and – making very sure that I wasn’t seen – had quickly picked the lock with some of the ‘essential’ items I’d picked up from the store earlier.

  I’d checked the place out – a decent enough two-bedroom apartment that was, as the advert suggested, fully furnished – and then called for Samantha and Kane to come up and join me.

  We’d be secure here for the time being, unless a realtor came round to show it to an actual client – in which case we’d be screwed.

  But that was a risk we’d have to take; and if it did happen, then we’d just deal with it and move on.

  I knew, however, that this was a short-term strategy, and we were going to have to come up with a longer term solution eventually.

  The first thing I did when we all got into the apartment was to make a check of the handgun we’d brought with us from the fire truck. I unloaded it, verified the rounds – just three left, not many but better than none – and then reloaded the weapon, made it ready by cocking it and racking one round into the chamber, and then applied the safety.

  The second thing we did was to go through the bag of goodies I’d bought from the store.

  I used a hacksaw to cut off the broken cuffs from my wrists and ankles, and then we both used hair dye to change one of our most obvious identifying features. I used peroxide to bleach my dark hair blond, while Samantha – who was already using dye to lighten her hair – used a different batch to turn her back into a brunette. I’d considered red for her, but had decided against it – the color was just too uncommon, and would draw needless attention to her. I used scissors to change the style too, cutting it to shoulder length. As I cut, I could tell from her fearful reaction that she was instinctively worried about what her husband would think; he probably liked it long, and even now – after everything that had happened – she struggled to make the change.