I end the call and stuff the phone in my other back pocket, slam the tailgate closed and hustle to the driver’s seat. “I can drive, if you want. I know it’s not easy with your arm.”
He hops over to the passenger seat and I slide behind the wheel, hanging the HK by its strap on my lap. I squeal the tires as I pull away, leaving the mess behind us. The other car is very slowly rolling past the Mercedes, gawking, and then, with a bark of tires, they’re gone in the opposite direction.
A few minutes later, sirens erupt in the distance.
It’s tempting to burn rubber and get away at top speed, but that would only attract even more attention.
“We have to get a different car,” I say.
“I agree.” He glances at me. “You got more cash from the last group?”
I dig it out of my hip pockets, a crumpled wad of cash in the same three currencies—pounds, dollars, and dinars. “Here.”
“Quite a haul from those four.”
“At this rate, we’ll be well compensated by this little adventure.” I look in the back, where I dumped the stack of magazines. “We have enough ammo to make quite a stand, if it were to come to that.”
Apollo follows my gaze. “True. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“So how do we get a different car?”
He frowns thoughtfully. “Used car lot, perhaps? Like we did before? We have some cash now to make the deal a little sweeter.”
“We just have to find one, in that case.” I snort. “You’d think for the amount of time we’ve spent driving around this city that we’d know it a little better by now.”
“We have been somewhat distracted. You know, by little things like people shooting at us.”
We approach a gas station, and I pull in. Apollo nods. “Good thinking. I’ll ask the clerk when I pay for gas.”
It’s a short interaction that I can’t hear; he comes back with a map drawn on the back of a receipt. A few minutes later, we’ve put a few gallons—or liters—of fuel into the tank and are back on the road. The used car lot is a few kilometers away, and is closed when we get there—it’s still very early.
“Now what?” I ask.
A shrug. “We passed a restaurant a little ways back. We could get some food?”
“Real food would be amazing.”
We head back to the restaurant he’d seen—it is just opening as we park. We sit where we can see the whole restaurant and door, sidearms at our backs. I’m actively waiting for someone to burst through the door while we eat, so it’s hard to enjoy it. Apollo feels the same way, I can tell, so we don’t dawdle over the food.
By the time we’ve eaten and paid and get back to the used car lot, the first employee is arriving.
He eyes us suspiciously as we park. “Close.”
“We need a different car.”
He taps the hour’s sign on the door, and then the watch on his wrist. “Close.”
Apollo pulls out a few larger denomination dinars. “We’ll be quick. We just need to trade.”
The man shakes his head, shrugs; his English vocabulary is limited. Apollo points at the Toyota, then at a nearby sedan, a make and model I don’t recognize, then makes a swapping motion, holds up the cash.
The man eyes the cash, the Toyota, and then flicks his fingers in an upward gesture. It’s subtle, but easy enough to interpret—more cash.
“We’re going to get fleeced on this deal,” Apollo grumbles.
I laugh. “We’re spending money we stole from the bodies of people we killed, Apollo. I hardly think it matters.”
“I’m a businessman. The deal is the thing.”
