“You promised to get me out of here if I did,” said Thura, eyeing him in the mirror. “And you had better keep your promise. . .If we make it out. If we don’t, no worries, right? Because the dead have no worries.” He grinned.
Two hours later they parked off the road and behind some large bushes after killing the lights. Adjacent to the bushes ran a field of grass nearly six feet high. Using a pair of night binoculars he had brought with him from Hong Kong, Nash got out of the Jeep and watched from behind some of the bushes. The SUV they’d been following had pulled off the road but on the other side. Twenty minutes later Nash sank down as another vehicle passed by and stopped parallel with the SUV. Four men got out of the second vehicle, and the two men from the SUV joined them. There was a brief discussion, and Nash watched as one of the four men opened the back of their vehicle and drew out some substantial firepower. He passed out these weapons to the other men.
Nash looked at his watch. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought.
A minute later the men climbed back into their vehicles. They pulled well off the road and hid them behind thick underbrush and high grasses across the road from Nash. He continued to watch as two men from the second vehicle reappeared and placed something dark and flat in the roadway. He then hurried back to the Jeep and told the others about what he’d seen, including all the weaponry they’d be up against.
“Okay, Thura, an ambulance coming from the prison is going to appear along this road on its way to the hospital. There are six men up there who are going to stop it. There will be a woman in the ambulance. The guards will be subdued and the woman will be freed. The men believe they will be taking her to another location in a planned chain of stops prior to getting out of this country.”
“But you will not allow this?” said Thura.
Nash said, “Wewillallow it, up to a certain point. What the men there don’t know is thatwe’regoing to take the woman and get her out of here. Andthey’regoing to be left behind.”
“But how will we get her out of here?” asked Thura nervously.
“You can leave that to us. But you’ll be coming along for the ride,” added Nash.
“You said those men have heavy firepower,” Thura pointed out. “And there are six of them.”
“Seven, counting one prison guard who’s on their side and will no doubt be in the ambulance.”
“Okay, seven. I only have a knife and you have two pistols. Not a fair fight.”
“We’ll have to level the playing field then,” said Nash as he pulled out his guns and checked their loads, making sure each was racked with a round.
“How?” asked Thura.
“By putting our finger on the scales when it’s best for us,” replied Nash.
“But how will you do this?” Thura wanted to know.
“You’ll have a ringside seat. But when we leave, you need to drive like a bat out of hell.”
Thura smiled. “I do not know what that means, but it sounds like something I would like to do.”
CHAPTER
24
AFEW MINUTES LATER NASH CHECKED THE TIMEand told Temple and Thura, “Okay, they’ll be here soon.”
Thura looked at him and said, “Leave me one of your guns.”
Nash eyed him, glanced at Temple, who shrugged, then handed his Beretta to Thura. “Aim straight and true,” advised Nash.
“What other way is there to kill someone?” replied Thura.
Nash ducked out of the Jeep. Carrying the can of gas and a knapsack with the four casings of slurry, he threaded his way completely hidden through the high grass on his side of the road. He stopped when he was roughly parallel with the device that the men had laid over the road. He set the can down and inserted his homemade shoelace fuse through a hole he had punched into the can above the level of the gas. Making sure the gas cap was screwed on tight, he then splayed out the rest of the fuse along the ground. Leaving that spot, he placed the four casings about three feet apart, mentally gauging the location of the two hidden vehicles across the road as he did.
He checked his weapon a final time, did his four-and-four breathing, and tried to push from his mind how many ways his rather primitive plan could go wrong.
But it’s not like I had much to work with.
As he crouched in the high grass Nash texted Thura and told him that when the ambulance approached he was to wait for the signal from Nash before starting the Jeep.
Now Nash awaited the arrival of the ambulance.
Ten minutes later Nash turned to the right when he heard the vehicle approaching. He slipped back to the first of the casings he had planted on the edge of the high grass, took out a lighter, and waited.