30. Chapter Thirty
Chapter thirty
The crusher came to life with a massive mechanical rumble. Noble felt a shudder run through the car chassis. The ponderous steel plate began to lower, sinking inch by agonizing inch toward the roof of the car.
Noble let out a nervous breath. He had just minutes to make an escape, which would be impossible while he was handcuffed to the steering wheel.
He craned forward for a look up through the windshield at the steel weight.
Intellectually he knew they moved pretty slow.
The process of crushing a car probably took a good five minutes.
Emotionally that big slab of metal seemed to be hurrying down to meet him.
Noble tried to do some mental math. He had maybe two minutes before the plate buckled the roof down to the level of the doors.
By that time, it would be too late to get free.
He’d be pulverized inside the vehicle and likely no one would ever know what had happened to him.
He briefly wondered if Bill and Milena went the same way.
He hoped not for their sakes. It was a rotten way to go out. Slow and painful.
Zeqiri and his goon squad had intentionally picked a method of death that would give Noble time to think about what was about to happen before it happened. It gave him some time to fear the end before feeling the car smashed flat around him, crushing the life from his body.
Bastards.
He’d pay them back if he could, but first he had to get free.
“One problem at a time,” Noble told himself.
First, he needed to escape the handcuffs.
That would be easy, if he still had his wallet with the lock picks.
Unfortunately, Zeqiri had the wallet, along with the picks.
Noble looked around the interior of the automobile, hoping to find something, anything, that might let him escape the cuffs.
No such luck. Either the owner had kept a clean car, or the salvage yard had cleaned out anything of value first. The only thing he found in the floorboards was lint, sand, and what looked like a decade old bit of noodle.
Meanwhile, the steel plate overhead continued to whine down along its tracks.
The smell of warm metal and greasy oil invaded Noble’s lungs, like the scent of some massive metal beast hungry for his blood.
Panic was starting to set in. His heart beat harder inside his chest and air burst from his lips in rapid gusts.
He yanked futilely at the cuffs, then the steering wheel, hoping to find a little give in either.
No dice.
The loud noise of the motors filled his ears.
He considered laying on the horn. Maybe someone would be close enough to hear.
But that was a foolish hope. Nobody was around for miles.
Zeqiri had chosen a secluded spot where no one would hear Noble scream.
The Albanian Captain had done this before.
No help was coming. Noble was getting out of this on his own, or he wasn’t getting out.
Focus, Noble told himself. Have to get out of these cuffs.
The car had been stripped for parts. Just about anything of value had been removed.
That included the overhead lamp, the back passenger seat and most of the dash components.
The vehicle gauges were still there but the clear plastic covering had been removed.
Noble’s eye fell on the orange speedometer needle.
It was just about the right size and shape.
Yanking it off without twisting it into a useless pretzel would be difficult.
He gripped the small plastic finger and bent it straight back toward him.
It took several tries, bending back and forth, back and forth.
The whole time the steel plate overhead continued its slow decent.
Finally, the speedometer needle broke free.
“Yes,” he hissed.
He meant to jamb the orange plastic needle into the cuffs, forcing the ratchet teeth to separate. In his excitement, he fumbled the makeshift lock pick against the steering wheel. It slipped from his fingers, landing in the floorboard at his feet.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Noble said to the empty car.
The steel plate had almost reached the roof. Any moment now the top of the car would start to buckle. Once that happened, it might be too late.
“Don’t panic,” Noble told himself, because right now he felt like panicking; that wouldn’t help. If he lost control, he’d lose his life. “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
He passed his left arm through the steering wheel until his shoulder was pressed against the wheel, creating as much room to maneuver as possible, and bent down. He had to stretch, the cuffs biting into his wrists, but at last his fingers touched the speedometer needle.
Noble sat back up and went to work on the restraints. He carefully inserted the needle and wiggled it gently, feeling the teeth separate. Plastic wasn’t the best for this. A metal shim would work better, but plastic was Noble’s only option. If it didn’t work, he’d be dead.
The crusher had reached the roof of the car. There was a low metal screech then an ominous grinding sound. The roof started to crumple.
Noble had to remind himself to breathe while he worked. He could feel but could not see what was happening inside the cuff, as the orange needle forced its way down inside the gears. Finally, he felt movement in the bracelet.
A moment later he was free. Free of the cuffs anyway.
The steel slab had bent the car roof down until the tops of the doors were starting to bend out of shape.
He wasn’t getting out that way. It would take the jaws of life to open those doors now.
The front windshield cracked and rained out of the frame in a shower of broken chips. The side and back windows followed.
Sheer panic told Noble to scramble out through the broken windows and he almost did exactly that, but training told him that was a mistake.
The window frames were now quickly closing maws of razor-sharp teeth that would catch Noble as he tried to worm through, slowing him down and ripping open his belly in the process.
If he tried to escape through a window, he’d likely get caught and pinched in half.
Instead, he scrambled into the back. The rear seat had been removed, and Noble was able to crowd into the trunk.
Modern cars come equipped with emergency tabs in case a hapless owner gets stuck inside their own vehicle.
Mostly it was for children who liked to play in cars and sometimes found themselves in a closed trunk.
The tabs glow in the dark so Noble had no trouble finding it.
Black lettering advised him to pull in case of an emergency.
The crusher had already turned the roof of the car and the doors into mangled, misshappened hunks of metal, but the trunk still had a little room. Seconds ticked away as Noble yanked at the glowing tab. The trunk popped.
The lid, however, didn’t open all the way. The crusher stopped it. There was only a small gap through which Noble might squeeze.
He hauled himself through the narrow opening as the steel plate continued to come down.
He almost got caught but jerked and kicked until he managed to slither out, landing on the cold metal floor of the crusher.
The sound of twisting, buckling metal was deafening as Noble scrambled free of the industrial death trap.
He didn’t breathe easy until he felt dirt beneath his hands and knees.
Then he collapsed on the ground, gasping for air.