if they were to get Jenna to the set of The Morning Show early on election day. She held the rifle firmly and her finger never strayed far from the trigger.
Every pair of headlights that overtook the old Subaru felt like a mortal threat, and when a large vehicle raced onto the highway behind them just after they passed a rest area, Jenna could feel everyone stiffen with dread. Dafoe used the mirrors to track the car’s rapid approach. Forensia turned around, gasping, “It’s a big black SUV,” repeating the very words she’d used to describe the black Expedition that she’d first spotted idling by Dafoe’s driveway.
But this three-ton behemoth sprinted by so fast that it almost blew their doors off. It had to be doing a hundred and twenty, hardly the low-key profile of a vehicle packed with foreign assassins scouring the thruway for three Americans and the daughter of a North Korean defector.
“Would it bother you if I put on some news?” Jenna asked Dafoe.
“That’s fine. Go for it.”
“I’m hoping to hear a bulletin that a car full of Asians has just been apprehended.”
No such news, but it didn’t take long before they heard a headline about the tanker takeover, followed by a reporter’s breathless warning about how a world catastrophe could be unleashed “at any second” in the Maldives.
From breathy to boozy—Rick Birk’s voice filled the car: “Live from the heart of the hoth-stidge taking over on the than-ker Dick Cheney.”
Birk sounded drunk to Jenna, though she could hardly imagine that he’d scrounged cocktails from gun-wielding jihadists. Maybe he was exhausted, or frightened half to death. Still, he was definitely slurring his words: “Ther-ists demanding fast, fast action. You hear me? Ther-ists want it fast.” Then she heard a loud bang, like he’d pounded a table for emphasis.
Christ, he sounds belligerent. Maybe he is wasted.
“How well do you know that guy?” Dafoe asked, keeping his eyes on the road, the rearview, and everywhere else at once, it seemed.
“Not very. He chewed me out the only time I ever talked to him. It was so offensive that I hung up on him. Then he tried to apologize, but I never took his calls. After that, he got taken ‘hoth-stidge.’” She giggled, couldn’t help herself. “I shouldn’t be joking about an old guy who’s had three fingers chopped off,” although it did feel good, amid all the worry, to experience a few seconds of relief, “but he’s a real creep. I haven’t met anyone who likes him.”
Dafoe listened closely to the radio. “Maybe he’s drinking himself to death. He sounds really plastered. If he’s found some booze, he’ll be lucky if they don’t chop off his head next.”
* * *
Birk could sniff out a purebred teetotaler in less time than it took him to knock back a Manhattan and suck down the damn cherry, and Suicide Sam hadn’t ever had a drink. I want his liver, Birk thought, when the time comes.
Raggedy Ass had nodded off, so Birk had tried several times to get Suicide Sam to wrap some tape around the captain’s mouth to shut … him … the … fuck … up, but this jihadist either didn’t understand English or didn’t care.
For chrissakes, that weasel’s still whining. It’s only three fucking fingers, pussy. I should be the one whining, putting up with your bullshit. Your goddamn fingers stink like gefilte fish, and I’m the one stuck with them on my shirt? I’ll never get these goddamn stains out. We get out of this jam and you’re getting the cleaning bill, buddy.
Birk felt that he had serious grounds to feel so aggrieved. Weasel mouth had tried to bite him—that’s right, bite him—when Birk stepped over his head on the way to the facilities. That did it. Birk whipped out the old avenger and tried to pee on him—give the sourpuss a serious dose of humiliation—before Raggedy Ass pushed him toward the head.
“Fucker needs a muzzle,” Birk said to the cracker jihadist after he’d drained the lizard.
“Tha’s lack the pot callin’ the ol’ kettle black,” Raggedy Ass drawled, treating Birk to more of his twisted Southern tongue.
Ye gods, get me away from these people. Birk hadn’t been able to stomach crackers in the States—Why should I, of all people, have to suffer fools gladly?—and he’d seen no evidence that transplanting them to Muhammad’s sacred soil had done anything to improve the bizarre species festering on the murky side of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Birk eyed the captain, knowing that he should