Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Dwayne Carlisle: The Obvious Answer

Marco's cousin's farm wasn't anything like we expected. Most of the buildings were boarded up, and I was sure that if we hid the Box there any recent opening would be immediately visible. Not to mention, there was a small cluster of cars closing in on our current position. Where the farmhouse was, Carl said he could see one road where any traffic must be coming right there. And a large number of vehicles he wasn't expecting, it could only be the CIA guys again, either the fakes or the real ones. We had no idea what they thought was inside the Box; this much effort seemed too much to be about blackmail material. If either of the others had any guesses, they didn't say anything to me.

I was starting to suspect that Carl would be in a lot of trouble if they suspected the Box was anywhere on his farm. We only talked for five minutes, just about long enough for me to get over my anxiety from the gun battle and start making plans in my mind again. But even if we didn't know this guy, I didn't want to think about him being tortured over our secret. So we piled back into the battered plumber's van and kept on driving, hoping that whoever was following us wouldn't think to interrogate the farmer.

We were pretty much driving in circles, occasionally catching a glimpse of pursuit. They probably would have caught up long before, but the van we'd ended up in was small and nimble, compared to the pick-up trucks and tricked-out vehicles that this Spenser guy seemed to favour. A few quick turns allowed us to buy a little distance, though we were never more than a minute away. I was racking my brain, trying to think of a way to lose them.

"Where else can we go?" I asked the rhetorical question again, "Marco and Kris both had great ideas, but they fell flat. Sticking it in the elevator didn't even work for one night."

"We could take her to Daddy's house," Monty shrugged, "I don't think he'd mind, he's said I can keep stuff in the safe."

"Your folks live nearby?"

"They've got a couple of places, depending where they're working. They're pretty rich, that's why I was allowed to go to college here. They thought I'd still be at one of their houses, so Mother could keep track of me and make sure I don't do anything that might embarrass her perfect family idyll. But I got a flat on campus because I wanted to look after myself for a change, and it was too late for them to change anything. I still go back there if I don't want to be on my own."

"And there's a safe big enough to hold a Box like this?" I wasn't convinced. Nobody had a safe that large unless they had something that size to store, and that would mean it was full. Still, even if it was a stopgap measure until the bad guys found us, it would be better than nothing.

We slowed down. I stole a quick glance at the wing mirror, and saw no sign of pursuit. Monty was already stretching out of the window, waving enthusiastically. There was a car ahead, almost blocking the narrow road, and it took me a second to recognise that this particular pile of scrap held together with rust was Kris's pride and joy. He was backing up now, to the nearest passing place. Marco thought we might be able to just drive into the hedge a bit, cut up the undergrowth to get past quicker, but Kris was yelling something about a ditch.

I slid open the van's side door to see what he meant. There was a wide mat of plantain leaves at the side of the road, but swatting a couple aside with a wrench revealed a ditch, just like he'd said, drifting past at a fast walking pace. It might have been water draining off the road at some point, but a few years of water running across soft, gritty soil in the same place had left quite a deep trench. Maybe three feet deep, with a thin trickle of brownish water along the bottom, and easily wide enough to swallow the wheels of any vehicle dumb enough to drive too close.

That's when the idea hit me. I rattled it off to the others. Marco said it would be too disrespectful to Kris, but I quickly pointed out that he had known Spenser, or his family had at any rate. He was the only one of us who could possibly slow Spenser down without getting a kicking. The others reluctantly agreed, and started trying to shout the plan across to Marco as he backed out. I pulled the key out of the Box to ensure its mechanisms wouldn't start unlocking it again, and remembering Cassie's advice slipped the long piece of metal into the back pocket of my jeans.

We didn't even need Marco. I'm not as strong, but I know the power of leverage. The Box was resting on top of some tools, the van hadn't been big enough to put it down on a clear space. So I slid a wrench under a screwdriver and put my weight on the other end. The Box lifted just a couple of inches, but enough to topple it out of the sliding door and straight through a screen of plantains. I grabbed handfuls of leaves from the hedge and scattered them over the top, but it wasn't good enough. Spenser's men would see it if they looked closely.

"It's pretty obvious," I called out as we slowed down, "We need to properly cover it."

"I was afraid of that," Marco grunted. As Kris's car pulled out of the field behind us, his front wheel actually went over the Box. Then the van lurched back, and we all felt the squeal of metal from the collision. I slid the door closed, but not before I'd taken one last glance back at the ditch to assess our handiwork. I thought it was good, there was no way they could see the Box there, it just looked like we'd hit our friend and pushed him into the ditch as we passed, getting the timing wrong or maybe not realising how narrow the road was at that point.