The War Cloud

23

Jennifer turned the wheel hard, and the minivan skidded onto an unplowed country road. As she pulled at the steering wheel to adjust, her iPhone started ringing. She tightened one hand on the wheel and with the other dug into the front pocket of her jeans for her phone. But Robbie tried to stop her.

“You still have your phone?” he shrieked. “Don’t answer it! They can track us!”

But Jennifer’ s hand was already around her iPhone and pulled it out. The display showed “The Deb” and her mother’s number. She answered. “Mom, where are you?”

“Thank God you’re OK.” It was her mom’s voice, but the connection wasn’t good at all. Her phone showed five bars for reception, but her mom sounded like she was a mile underground. “Listen…Jennifer….Those men…chasing you ….”

“Don’t tell me they’re just trying to help, Mom.”

“No, Jennifer. They want…to hurt you.”

Jennifer felt a shiver up her spine and involuntarily swerved the minivan around the next corner. “What?”

“They want…”

“You’re cutting out, Mom.

Jennifer, trying to drive and talk, turned onto another road and saw a Westchester County Sheriff’s highway patrol car coming their way. She held her breath as they passed each other, then looked up in the mirror to see the patrol car make a long, sloppy U-turn in the snow.

“They found us!” she shouted into her phone.

“Jennifer!” Her mom’s voice rang out.

Robbie was screaming hysterically, “Get rid of the fucking phone!”

Jennifer lowered her window, tossed the phone into the snow and drove away as fast as she could from the flashing lights behind her.

“We’re screwed,” Robbie said. “There’s no way we’re going to outrun the cops.”

She had enough and slowed down.

“What are you doing?” Robbie shouted.

“Kicking you out of the van.”

“Shut up and drive!”

“You shut up, Robbie, and then I’ll drive.”

He finally chilled out and she looked up in her mirror in time to see the police car get rammed by a black Suburban. The Suburban pummeled the police car into an icy wall of plowed snow, then began to back up and ram it again and kill the driver. She could see two Green Berets inside the Suburban.

“Holy shit!” she screamed and hit the accelerator.

The minivan skidded forward until it got its grip on the ice, and she slowly applied more pressure to speed away. She made several sloppy turns through the maze of winding winter roads, losing sight of the Suburban behind her and praying against reason that the goons behind the wheel wouldn’t pick up her trail.