Read Page 214

I shut my eyes and clap my hands over my ears as the film crew rushes into the room.

3Advertisement

We're on a motorway. In a large van. We're heading toward the airport. The driver is the best boy from the French film crew. I'm catatonic, lying on the floor of the van surrounded by camera equipment, the legs of my pants sticky with Chloe's blood, and sometimes what's outside the windows of the van is just blackness, and other times it's a desert, maybe somewhere outside L.A., and other times it's a matte screen, sometimes electric blue, sometimes blinding white. Sometimes the van stops, then revs up and starts accelerating. Sometimes technicians are shouting orders into walkie-talkies.

The director sits in the front passenger seat, going over call sheets.

On the dashboard is an Uzi submachine gun.

There's one interlude that plays itself out very quickly on the ride to the airport.

It starts with a warning call from the driver, who is glancing anxiously into the rearview mirror.

A black truck is following us on the motorway.

The first AD and the gaffer crouch down by the rear windows, both of them holding Uzis.

They take aim.

The black truck revs up and starts pounding down on us.

-- Advertisement --

pqdm.comads300x250--

The air inside the van suddenly feels radioactive.

The van shudders violently as it's hit by bullets.

Tiny rapid flashes of light exit the barrels of the Uzis the first AD and the gaffer are aiming at the black truck, which keeps racing defiantly toward us.

I try to balance myself as the van lurches forward.

The black truck's windshield shatters, crumples.

The truck veers to the right and collides with several cars.

The black truck quietly careens off the motorway and overturns.

The van guns its engine, racing away.

Two seconds later a large fireball appears behind us.

I'm lying on the floor, panting, until the property master and a PA lift me up so that I'm facing the director.

Outside, it's a desert again and I'm moaning.

The van swerves into another lane.

The director pulls a pistol from inside his jacket.

I just stare at it.

The only thing that wakes me is the director saying, "We know where Bobby Hughes is."

And then I'm lunging for the gun, grabbing it, checking to see if it's loaded, but the PA pulls me back and I'm told to calm down and the director takes the gun from my hands.

"Bobby Hughes is trying to kill you," the director is saying.

The property master is securing a knife sheath around my calf. A large silver blade with a black handle is slipped into it. The Prada slacks I'm wearing are pulled down over the sheath.

The director is telling me they would like to see Bobby Hughes dead. I'm being asked if this is a "possibility."

I'm nodding mindlessly. I keep moaning with anticipation.

And then we can smell the jet-fuel fumes everywhere and the driver brakes the van to a hard stop, tires screeching, jerking us all forward.

"He needs to be stopped, Victor," the director says.

After the gun is slipped into my jacket I'm sliding out of the van and the crew is following me, cameras rolling, and we're racing into the airport. Over the sound track: the noise of planes taking off.

2

The crew direct me to a men's room on the first concourse and I'm running toward the door, slamming against it with my shoulder, and the door flies open and I stumble inside. The men's room has already been lit, but not for the scene Bobby was expecting.

Bobby's standing at a sink, inspecting his face in a mirror.

I'm screaming as I run toward him at full sprint, my fist raised, the gun in it.

Bobby turns, sees me, sees the crew following me, and his face seizes with shock and he screams, enraged, "You f**ks!" and raising his voice even higher, yells again. "You total f**ks!"

He pulls out a gun that I knock out of his hand and it slides across the tiled floor under a sink, and Bobby's ducking instinctively as I throw myself forward into him, grabbing at his face, screaming.

He reaches out and pulls my head back and slams into me so hard I'm lifted off the ground and thrown against a tiled wall and then I'm sliding to the floor, coughing.

Bobby staggers back, then reaches out and grabs the lower part of my face.

I suddenly raise an arm, slamming my hand into his mouth, and he reels backward, turning a corner, skidding.

I lurch forward and slam him into a wall. I push the gun into his face, screaming, "I'm going to kill you!"

He swipes at the gun.

I pull the trigger-a bullet opens up a giant hole in the tiled wall behind him. I fire again-four, five, six times, until the gun is empty and the wall is blown apart. pqdm.com