The Old Man(103)
The heat burned Spencer’s belly as the round tore through Spencer’s shirt and into the man’s chest. Spencer opened the car door, rolled out onto the gravel shoulder, crouched, and pulled the gun out from under his shirt.
The man was not moving. He had been kneeling on the driver’s seat above Spencer while he frisked him, but now he had collapsed facedown onto the passenger seat that Spencer had vacated.
Spencer held the gun on him, stepped closer, and poked him hard. He didn’t move.
Spencer pried the knife out of the driver’s grip, used his left hand to grasp the driver’s wrist, and pulled. The man offered no resistance, and there was no sign of consciousness, so Spencer dragged him across the passenger seat and out onto the shoulder of the road. He touched the man’s carotid artery and he felt no pulse.
Spencer closed the passenger door and looked around. He stuck the pistol back in his belt and dragged the body off the road into the field of weeds beyond. The land was bleak, another series of low hills and fields, but no sign of people or buildings. The driver had chosen a deserted place to rob and murder him.
He knelt beside the body and searched it. The wallet had only six dinars in it. There was also a driver’s license, but the picture didn’t look much like the body at Spencer’s feet. He took the six dinars, but put the wallet back in the man’s pocket.
He went back to the car, removed the keys from the ignition, and opened the trunk. There was no suitcase, no extra clothes. There were only a few rags, a spare tire, and an unopened one-gallon plastic bottle of water.
He took the mat that covered the spare tire in the well, put it over the passenger seat to cover the blood, and used some of the water and the rags to clean off the blood that had spattered his face when he’d shot the man. Then he got into the car and drove. As he drove he drank. He was not sure where he was, but the clock on the dashboard told him it was nearly ten o’clock in the morning.
The man’s wallet had not contained enough money to buy much gas. The first thing he had said was to ask Spencer what he would give him for a ride. And the photograph on the license did not belong to him.
Spencer was almost certainly driving a stolen car, and judging from the way the driver had already had the knife in his hand when he’d started searching him for money, the true owner of the car was probably dead. Spencer glanced at the gas gauge. There was a quarter of a tank of gas. What was that, fifty miles?
Spencer had eleven dinars. The wallet had held another six. If there was gas available for sale to civilians, he might still reach Tobruk. He kept driving. Every mile down the road was a mile he would not have to walk.
An hour later he could see he was approaching a city. And then, to his left, the sea appeared. Derna. It had to be Derna. Soon there were a few buildings. He began to see the word Derna in Arabic script. A Derna hotel, a Derna construction company, a Derna restaurant. The one thing he didn’t see was a Derna gasoline station.
He was wary about stopping. He was running very low on gas now, but the car could tie him to at least the killing he’d done, and probably the one he hadn’t. He passed an apartment building that had been bombed out, one wall gone and the rooms and staircases on that side opened like a child’s dollhouse. He knew that Derna had been taken by the Islamic State forces for a time and then won back.
The city seemed to have recovered from the fighting, and there were no sounds of gunfire, but this was not a place where he wanted to be stranded. It would be very difficult to get out if he were stopped.
He remembered that Derna was about seventy miles from Tobruk, so he decided to keep going. He drove along at a reasonable speed that he thought might stretch his gasoline supply and not attract attention from soldiers. He passed a checkpoint on the opposite side of the road with soldiers stopping and inspecting cars and trucks coming into town from the other direction.
A mile farther on he saw three armed soldiers walking along the highway. He pulled over to the side of the road near them and called out in Arabic: “Do you need a ride?”
The three men trotted to join him. Two got in the back and the other sat in the passenger seat. The man beside him said, “Thank you for your kind invitation.”
“It’s the least I could do. How far are you going?”
The soldier said, “Four kilometers straight ahead. It’s a long walk, and it feels good to ride.”
Spencer nodded sagely. He was familiar with the feeling. Then, only about a mile on, they reached another checkpoint on his side of the highway. Spencer pulled over at the checkpoint and a soldier started toward his car, but when he saw the three soldiers he opened the barrier and waved the car through.
In another few minutes the man beside Spencer said, “Leave us by the road up there. We don’t need to have the lieutenant know we didn’t walk all the way. He might think of more work for us to do.”
Spencer pulled over and said, “Allah protect you.”
The three soldiers went on their way. Spencer managed to drive forty miles farther before the engine coughed and then ran out of gas. He kept his foot off the brake and coasted a hundred feet before the momentum was used up. He got the rags out of the trunk, wiped the surfaces he had touched, and left the car unlocked with the keys in it.
He looked at his watch. He was reaching the end of his second day, and he still had about thirty miles to go. Before this time tomorrow the Canadians would receive their supply flight and be off without him. He began to walk.