Night Of Knives

Chapter 21

Jacob takes a deep breath. He doesn't want to intervene. He wants to run. But Prester has a problem, and Jacob has a solution. "I'm going out there," he says, and opens the door. "He won't make it. I can help."

He takes a second to close the car door quietly behind him, no sense advertising their presence, then he draws out his hiptop and rushes down towards the fence. The dogs howl for blood. Behind Prester's fleeing form, light spills out of the scrapyard building as a door opens. The ground is ridged and uneven and twice Jacob stumbles and nearly falls. Several men advance from the open door into the scrapyard. At least one is holding a rifle. Jacob slows halfway long enough to push the right buttons on his hiptop, it takes maybe three seconds but that seems like an eternity, the dogs are right on Prester's heels. Jacob sprints towards the fence, holding his hiptop above his head as if to announce its presence to the world. Prester's almost at the chainlink barrier, but he can't climb over barbed wire, and the slavering dogs have almost reached him -

- but then Jacob reaches the fence, and the dogs come within range of the repellent sounds his hiptop is projecting at maximum volume in frequencies only canines can hear, like an anti-dog whistle. Their howls wilt into whines, and they slacken their pace and slink away, back into the shadows. Prester and Jacob come to a halt across the fence from each other. Jacob sees the GPS trackers in Prester's hand, and his heart sinks. Prester didn't even have a chance to plant them, this was a total failure.

"They're coming," Jacob hisses, meaning the men behind Prester. They have guns and at least one flashlight, he can see a beam of light stabbing at the scrapyard wreckage as the men approach the fence. Their eyes won't have adjusted to the dark yet, but Prester is on the wrong side of a chainlink fence topped with barbed wire, Jacob has to stay close to him in order to keep the dogs away, and they have maybe twenty seconds before the gunmen discover them. He can't think of any way to get Prester out.

Headlights blink into life behind Jacob.

He turns and waches, amazed, as the Pajero accelerates downhill towards the scrapyard fence, its engine roaring, its undercarriage rattling and clanking against unseen obstacles on the uneven ground, until it slams into the fence with enough momentum that three fenceposts come straight out of the ground and the chainlink folds backwards. The Pajero's horn bleats briefly at the moment of impact, then drives right over the flattened chainlink and barbed wire into the scrapyard, and keeps going straight.

The broken shell of what was once a boat looms up in its headlights. As far as Jacob can tell Veronica never even touches the brakes. The Pajero plows into the ruin of the boat with a loud crunch and carries it somed distance across the yard before both vehicles come to rest. Light from one still-functional headlight blazes off the boat's torn and twisted fiberglass hull, illuminating the accordioned metal of the Pajero's hood intertwined with the wreckage of the boat.

Jacob and Prester both sprint to the new gap in the fence. When they meet, Prester grabs the hiptop from Jacob's hands, hisses "Be right back," and disappears into the scrapyard before Jacob can protest.

He thinks Prester has gone crazy, there are men with guns in there, albeit distracted by Veronica's dramatic entrance. Jacob looks over at the Pajero for a moment and hesitates. She needs help, but if he goes to her aid he'll expose himself to the gunmen. Before he can decide what to do, the Pajero door opens, and he sees Veronica's lithe form stagger away from the vehicle and into the darkness.

* * *

Veronica trips on a rut and falls falls hard to the hard-packed dirt, her hands and knees scrape painfully against the ground but then she is up again, still moving. A rattling fusillade of gunfire echoes in the distance, some kind of automatic weapon echoing across the scrapyard. She keeps sprinting across the moonlit yard, half-expecting to be shot dead within seconds. She can't believe everything has gone so wrong so fast. She can't believe she actually drove the Pajero through the fence into the scrapyard instead of following Prester's instructions and fleeing to the embassy for help. She feels dazed, her forehead smacked into the middle of the steering wheel when the Pajero slammed into the fence, rattling her consciousness, but she thinks she's more or less OK, no concussion. She's just lucky the fence didn't stop the car, she should have taken two seconds to put on her seat belt. On the other hand those two seconds might have been crucial.