Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round
(part 1 of 2)
The plan is to drop into LA, see Lucy, maybe see Holly, and then make a break for it. John doesn't exactly have a good track record where the City of Angels is concerned, and not only because the whole Nakatomi thing sucks as far as first impressions go. So when Holly had called to ask whether he'd be interested in attending some big project presentation thing Lucy's doing for school, he had paused, only for her little sigh of disappointment to settle the issue.
So he'd said yes.
He's crossing his fingers and his toes this time.
"So how was it?"
Allen looks good. In the four years that John hasn't seen him, he's gotten a whole new bunch of laugh lines around his eyes. That, plus his grin of a life well-lived, should make John hate him a little, but he can't, not when Allen's kids are the most gorgeous in the world (after Lucy and Jack).
"Could've been worse," John says easily. "Could've been better, but hey, it's not like I can afford to be choosy. I'm just lucky she didn't kick me out."
Allen laughs, a roly-poly Santa Claus of a guffaw that has one or two of the closer patrons in the diner glancing up irritably. They can suck it, because John's enjoying this conversation right now, which is more than he can say for last night's dinner in Casa de Gennero. He hadn't expected Holly to invite him to dinner at her place, but he figured he'd better go in order to be polite, only to realize later that she had not expected him to say yes. But John stuck it out, making small talk with Holly and the new lawyer boyfriend, hoping that seeing Lucy (who was running late travelling down from campus) would be worth the agony.
"I don't even want to know," Allen says.
"Sure you do," John says, smiling over his cup of coffee. "You got a girl of your own, don't you?"
"Yeah, a miniature one," Allen says, though his eyes are fond. "But you're saying that Lucy outdid her mother?"
John nods. "Oh yeah. I don't think anything fazes her anymore." Apparently weathering the worst of being a stubborn cop's wife causes one to come out on the other side positively zen. Tim's probably a walk in the park (stable, reliable, boring) compared to John, but hey, whatever floats her boat.
Allen sighs. "I guess you're going to tell me."
"It was over dessert." John sits back, savoring the storytelling. "So we're having a good time, conversation's okay, I'm showing caring fatherly interest And suddenly Lucy stands up and starts shouting at me - in front of the others, gotta say that again - that I wouldn't be so damn nosey about her love life if I had one of my own. What the hell?"
Allen's laugh is not the sympathetic response John had been fishing for. "Girl's definitely yours."
"I think there was an insult in there," John says, eyeing him. "Is it being nosey if I'm asking about whichever shmuck she's dating this month? Isn't that being a concerned parent?"
"Your definition of being a concerned parent would include stalking out her dates and smacking them around a little if they get too friendly." He pauses, studying John's expression. "You didn't."
"So I care!" John exclaims. "Sue me!"
"McClane, you are truly a specimen," Allen chortles. "An example to us all."
"Thanks."
"But in all seriousness," Allen says, "Your kids do love you. But you forget that they're just like you."
John hides his wry smile behind his coffee cup, marveling at how this is just the story of his life. He flew out here just to see his baby girl, only to end up enjoying this exchange over breakfast far more. It's not like he's exactly helping the situation, he knows, because he could've taken up Holly's offer to join them for breakfast as well, but he'd skedaddled from the hotel the moment Allen had called, just so he'd have an excuse.
Fuck that. Better to change the topic. "Hey, I saw you on tv the other day."
"You did?" Allen says, surprised. "And why didn't I get a call from you after?"
"I figured you were too busy celebrating." John reaches over to slap Allen's shoulder a little. "Good one."
"I had a good team," Allen says, eyes lowered to the table. He's such an easy-going guy that it's always a bit of a surprise to see how solemn his face gets when he talks about work. John hasn't seen him in action since Nakatomi, but back then he'd been a desk-bound Sergeant, not the bomb squad Lieutenant he is now.
"That hostage case was pretty intense," Allen adds. "What kind of mind comes up with the idea of using an elevator? I haven't seen anything like that in a while, not that you ever get used it."
John taps his coffee cup against Allen's, drawing a smile. "I hear you."
The buzzing sound of Allen's radio signals that their breakfast is coming to a close. Allen takes a quick final swig before saying, "Speaking of work."
"Go do your thing," John says, content to nurse his coffee for a while.
He doesn't have that many options right now. There are a couple of hours to kill before he needs to go to the civic center to watch Lucy do her whatever speech, but he really doesn't want to go back to the hotel and stare at the walls. Going to Holly's place isn't an option either, and he's also really not in the mood to be a tourist right now.
John's thoughts don't make it far enough to reach a decision, because Allen's back.
"There's a situation," he says, voice low so not to startle those nearby. "I have to get back to the station."
"Yeah, sure," John says, nodding.
But Allen's still standing there, looking at him. John knows what he looks like when he's making a decision, so he waits, trying to not let his curiosity get the best of him. When he finally does speak, his voice is too calm. "All of you will be going to the center later today, right?"
"I wrote down what time I've got to be there," John says, remembering the post-it in his wallet. He glances at his watch. "But Lucy's likely heading there about now, said she's got to set up her whatcha-whatever. I offered to give her a ride, but." He shrugs.
"Driving herself?"
"Bus, I think," John says, and there's a cold chill up his spine at the way Allen freezes. "What is it?"
"You might want to call her," Allen whispers. "Send her there yourself."
John grabs his arm. "Why?"
"Just make the call." Allen moves quickly when he wants to, twisting his arm free and exiting the diner without looking back, but John manages to stop him just before he makes it to his car.
John presses himself against the door, blocking it. "Talk to me."
Allen sighs. John knows that he's not supposed to be sharing this information, but there's more than protocol when it comes to the two of them. So Al tells him what he knows, speaking clear and concise like a man on a deadline.
By the time Allen finally gets his keys in the ignition, John's running.
A huge part of Lucy wants to crawl under her covers and stay there until next Tuesday. And she would, if her covers weren't in her apartment 60 miles away. As it is, she's in her mom's house, getting dressed and listening tentatively to the sounds beyond the door.
Technically, this is still her room. There are enough of her old things in here to merit ownership, but she still feels like a visitor; just that much out of place despite the welcome of her surroundings. She thinks that it may have something to do with how this is a place of mom's laws, not her own.
This is also a place of mom's ideas, the latest of which was to call dad and guilt-trip him into flying almost three thousand miles to a city he hates just so that they can watch each other eat. This is so not what she needs right now.
The knock, when it arrives, makes her jump.
"Lucy?" mom says, her voice only a little muffled. "Are you coming down for breakfast or not?"
"Just some last minute touches I have to get done," Lucy says. "I'll be right down."
She does, after sending a quick email to Jack to let him know how lucky he is that he's missing the proceedings.
A silver lining, if it could be considered that, is that all this unnecessary homebrew drama's sufficiently distracting her from getting stressed out about her presentation. Public speaking in front of a thousand people should be a piece of cake compared to last night's dinner. (Dad's expression when she'd lost it on him has burned itself into the back of her eyelids.)
Dad doesn't know when to push, when to hold back, when to quit. It's really easy to justify herself, even if the excuses have run pale due to overuse. The thing with dad is the perfect example of the old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder. The key word here being: absence.
"Lucy?" There goes the second knock.
"Coming."
The thing that drives her nuts about dad is that he takes any sort of softness as permission to be as outrageous as possible, as though a snide comment from her gives him the right to be mean to Tim too, when it isn't. Dad could do with looking up subtle in the dictionary sometimes. Then, of course, there's the fact that the way to get anything through his thick skull is to shout it at him, so it's not like she has much choice.
Right then, the memory comes unbidden of Lucy's project groupmate, Kevin, yelling at her that she's a bossy mcbossypants' and shouldn't get so damn defensive at other people's criticism of her leadership techniques.
Thanks, subconscious. That's just what she needed before her morning coffee.
Anyway, it looks like she's set for the day, so she finally makes her way down for breakfast.
"Morning," she says.
Mom nods from where she's drinking her coffee, while Tim looks up from his paper to say, "Hey."
"I'm running late," Lucy says, grabbing some toast. "Dad not here?"
"He went out to meet Allen," mom says.
There's a sour rush of guilt at that, like maybe it's Lucy's fault he's not here, not that it would be much better if he was. But she can't think about that right now. She has to focus, get to the civic center, and make sure Kevin and the others don't mess things up with their booth, so she grabs some toast, fills up her thermos with coffee and heads out. "Okay, going now!"
It's a blessing that the bus is pulling up just as she hits the main street.
That's a good start, but there's an itch under her skin that's telling her it's going to be one those days. The dad situation is only one part of it - a part that she can put aside for now, which is why when her cell rings and it's his number on the screen, the flare of annoyance is brighter than usual. "Dad?"
"Where are you?"
He sounds tense, but dad gets tense when they go grocery shopping, so it could mean anything. "I'm on the way to the center, I'll see you"
"No, no, no, Lucy, get off the bus," he says quickly.
"Dad, I'm going to be late. Anyway, I'm already on." The doors slide shut behind her.
"Lucy, please, just get down."
"The bus is moving, dad," Lucy says, dropping into an empty seat. "I can't just walk out the window." She waits for his response, half-curious what this about it, but there's nothing. "Dad?" A glance at the screen confirms that the call got cut off, so she puts her phone down, figuring that if it's important, he'll call her back.
There is something unnerving about Los Angeles' oversized highways. Matt's sure that all the asphalt and concrete he's seeing crisscrossed in front of his eyes are real, but his brain keeps telling him that they can't be, because they're too broad, too clean, too plain. It's the only explanation Matt can think of, of why he's still staring out the window like a tourist at the near unchanging sights, instead of mentally preparing himself for the day's meeting.
Not that Matt's nervous about it - that's the starched shirt talking. He knows his stuff, he's done this a dozen times over, and he's even brought a tie with him this time (though it's in his bag for the moment). It's the travelling-in-a-foreign-city part that throws him out of whack, a different sort of jet lag that rattles his head and makes him second-guess himself.
Yeah, that's probably why he's staring at the tops of cars as they zoom past the window.
Matt glances at his watch, and then tugs at the uncomfortable collar of his shirt (it's collared, so it's uncomfortable by definition). They're nervous ticks, best gotten out of the way before he gets to his destination and accidentally vomits all over the guy he's trying to sell his new log program to.
Matt stops thinking about that when persistent honking draws him back into the world of the living.
He looks out the window, and is in a funny way cheered up that, apparently, rudeness is the same no matter what city you're in. A convertible has drawn up right next to their bus, and the driver is honking repeatedly. It cannot be at them, because their driver isn't doing anything other than driving sensibly in his freeway lane. Matt, because he is human, cranes his head to get a good look at the moron.
There's two guys in the car, and they don't look like the hotshot idiots he'd been expecting. The one in the driver's seat actually looks respectable in a dark blazer and boring slicked-back hair, but that only goes to show that douchebags comes in all sorts of packages. The other guy, though, looks like trouble in a leather jacket, his bald head catching the glint of the sun when the nutcase actually stands up on the seat and waves at their driver.
"This ain't no bus stop!" the bus driver yells ineffectually at the closed door.
Matt's already composing the blog post in his head when the convertible swerves perilously close and the bald maniac punches the freakin' door.
Someone behind Matt laughs nervously. "That guy must really want on this bus."
Matt can't disagree, because the guy's still yelling at their driver and waving an arm in what's an unmistakable request to get the damn doors open. A part of Matt's curious what the hell this is all about, but he goes still with nervous surprise when the bus driver does pull the lever that swing the doors open.
When the guy leaps from the convertible on to the bus, Matt mentally shifts his stereotypical opinion on adrenaline junkies. He didn't know they could come in that shape and age.
There's a flurry of movement when one the passengers rushes to the front of the bus, yelling, "What are you doing?"
At first Matt thinks that the girl has some major balls for yelling in the guy's face that way, but when he reaches out for her, the movement betrays familiarity between them. "You've got to" The words drop out of hearing range when the guy talks softly.
"No!" she snaps. "I'm not going anywhere if you don't give me an explanation!"
Another passenger, a tall guy in a blue shirt, gets to his feet. "Sir, I have to ask you to stop harassing this young lady."
"If you don't mind," leather jacket guy says, "I'm having a conversation with my daughter."
"I repeat, sir," blue shirt guy says, though he sounds a little nervous. "Please stop harassing this young lady."
"Thank you, but I've got this," the girl says.
"No, you don't." Leather jacket reaches into a pocket for a badge. Well, that explains it, except where it totally doesn't. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm with the NYPD, please stay seated and remain calm."
"Dad," his daughter says, exasperated.
"Lucy." He gives her a wary, though patient, look. "Police business."
The epic blog post gets even more epic when another guy suddenly leaps out from his seat towards the girl (Lucy), grabbing her in a chokehold and - oh shit, there's metal involved now.
Surreal just starts to explain how it feels to watch a stand-off live and in living color, as if Matt's eyes and brain have fallen out of alignment. It's like, if he stays really still, maybe he'll wake up, only he doesn't, because now Leather Jacket's shouting at Gun Guy to put down his weapon and back away, something about it him, but Gun Guy doesn't believe that, yelling at the driver that he had better stop the bus right now.
Then Lucy twists, doing something fancy with her arms and freeing herself enough to kick the guy in a knee, giving Leather Jacket the opening he needs to tackle Gun Guy to the floor. They struggle, grunting and loud where they roll and slam against the seats, eventually falling to the front of the bus in a mess of limbs as they both reach for control of the gun being waved the air.
Every muscle in Matt's body is screaming to disappear, keep away, blend in the background, be safe. Hence, there's no explanation for why when - after the gun goes off and the driver's window is splattered red - he rushes forward to take the wheel.
John hits the guy one more time, just hard enough to promise a hell of a lot more where that came from should he even think anything funny, and clicks the handcuffs to the seat rail.
"There's so much blood!"
Okay, this one's a little tougher. The driver's shot in the shoulder, and the woman currently holding him isn't strong enough to keep enough pressure on the wound. "Can someone spare some hands, here?" Another guy in a yellow hardhat crouches close, murmuring an acknowledgement. John switches his hands for the lady's in pressing against the wound. "Keep it firm, and don't let him move if you can help it. Lucy?"
She starts at the mention of her name, eyes a little unsteady when they meet his. "Yeah, I'm" Pale, disheveled and holding her arms around her chest a little too tightly.
"Let me see," he says, reaching for her.
At the slight touch of his fingers, she flinches and pulls back, cradling the wrist in the protective cocoon of her other arm. It's probably a sprain, the result of when she'd twisted out of that guy's chokehold, but John can't know for sure. What he does know is that, when she was thirteen, she'd damn near pulled out her Achilles tendon in the middle of a tennis match and hadn't told anyone because she hadn't wanted to forfeit the competition.
"I'm okay," Lucy says, not that he believes her. "It's just, a little, I'm fine. He needs to get to a hospital."
"Yeah," John says, reluctantly turning back to wounded man. It hits him then that he just might have made things a hell of a lot worse by running to the so-called rescue, only for the driver to get shot and Lucy to get pissed at him again. Great going, dumbass.
From the driver's seat another voice speaks up: "Can someone tell me what to do?"
John looks up to where a civilian is behind the steering wheel. His eyes are steady on the road, with the only tell-tale sign of nerves being the flush high in his cheeks. John hadn't seen him take the seat - he'd been too preoccupied with the shmo John didn't know from Adam mistaking his presence as a personal vendetta - but he's relieved to have at least one less ball to juggle right now.
"Do you know the way to the nearest hospital?" John asks.
Kid shakes his head. "I'm not from around here."
One of the passengers raises her hand. "I know the way."
"Someone direct him, please." John wipes his forehead with his sleeve as a young woman shifts forward to the task, pointing out the way.
He can feel Lucy's heavy gaze on his back. She isn't saying anything, but he knows she's seething, waiting for some semblance of a logical explanation from him, only John doesn't have one to offer other than he chased this bus down because she could have been in danger.
Could have. Not is.
That's not going to cut it as far as Lucy's concerned, but that doesn't matter right now.
He reaches his jacket for his cell, hoping to contact Allen. He bites back another curse when he sees that the network bars are down to nil. "Can I borrow your phone?"
Lucy's face is still stoic as she silently hands hers to him.
"Huh." He gets to his feet. "Does anyone here have a working cellphone?"
It takes a moment for the rest of the passengers, most of them still shaken, to stir into movement. John isn't surprised when all the answers come in the negative. He'd hoped they wouldn't be, but isn't that just his luck?
"Are you watching this?" It's a rhetorical question, amusement lilting Mai's voice when she says it.
Gabriel glances at the bar at the bottom of the screen. "Bus 2525. That certainly makes things interesting."
"Shall I open the main frequency?" she asks.
"Not yet," Gabriel says. "But patch me through to them."
Matt had never thought before about what it would be like to drive a bus, but if he had, he'd have been surprised by how heavy the wheel is. It's inconveniently large, keeping his arms wider apart than he's used to, and he actually has to concentrate if he wants to keep the bus going in a straight line - which he would like to, and not only because there's a man possibly bleeding to death just a couple of feet behind him.
"Officer?" Matt tentatively calls out. The cop is talking with his daughter, asking her to help keep everyone calm. Her voice, when she replies, has a demanding edge that matches his. Matt strains to listen.
"Just do this for me, for them," the cop says. "Lucy, please."
Lucy doesn't answer. When Matt glances up in the mirror, he can see that she's walked away from her father to talk to the other passengers.
Matt feel unsettled. Everything's clogged up and messy in his head, leaving the rest of him jittery and nervous. What he needs is something to focus on, and a problem with the phones fits the bill. "Officer!"
"McClane." The cop comes up to Matt's side, gruff and annoyed, either at the use of the O word, or because Matt's speaking to him. "And it's Detective."
"Detective McClane," Matt says firmly, trying to find the sweet spot between insistent and pushy. "If you can pass me my bag right there, my communicator has a direct sat connection. I should be able to call out even if the network's down."
"You can do that? Sounds illegal," McClane says, but he reaches over for Matt's bag anyway.
"People do it all the time," Matt says, knowing that that isn't a proper response to either of McClane's statements. "Just give it to me and"
"No, you keep your eyes on the road," McClane says. "Talk me through it."
Matt wants to protest that there's only light traffic along the stretch of freeway before them, but then he remembers that it's probably a bad idea to talk back to a guy he'd just seen leap on to a moving bus to talk to his daughter. "Okay, take out the, the grey one with lots of buttons."
There's the sound of rustling, McClane's grubby fingers digging deep into Matt's bag and making faint, yet distressing, sounds. "You got a lot of junk in here."
Matt sighs. "Maybe we should switch places."
"What the hell is this?"
Matt flushes, realizing that he's found the graphic novel he'd brought along to read. "Just some stuff, oh god, please don't" A faint ripping sound makes him groan. "Please don't tell me you tore New Flesh, because that'd just be"
"Relax, a little tape and it'll be fine," McClane says. "You're a little old to be reading comics, anyway."
"Haha, comics, yeah, silly me," Matt's voice goes higher, inappropriately hysterical. "Do you even know what a communicator looks like?"
"Keep your pants on. Is this it?"
Hallelujah. "Yeah, that's it. Open it up and"
"Bus 2525."
Matt damn near almost jumps out of his seat because the electronically-distorted voice is coming from somewhere near his lap. McClane, who apparently doesn't waste time being fazed, reaches out for the radio receiver and says into it, "Copy that, this is Bus 2525."
"Are we having a good time?"
Matt can almost hear the frown in McClane's voice. "Who is this?"
"Here are the rules." The voice sounds predominantly male, with a side order of smarter-than-thou. "There is a bomb on your bus. Your speed is currently 68 miles per hour. If it drops below 50, the bomb will be triggered."
Matt's hands go cold; his foot stiffens where it's pressed against the pedal.
"Did he just say there's a bomb?" The lady right behind Matt gets to her feet. "Oh my god, is there a bomb?" Her too-loud words send a ripple down the rest of the bus, and someone at the back shrieks.
McClane tries to calm the lady down but she's near hysterical. Lucy ends up having to come forward to mediate, which is a good thing, because the voice on the radio is speaking again.
"Bus 2525, are you still there?"
McClane brings the receiver back to his mouth. "Yeah, still here," he says calmly, though Matt gets the impression that he's barely keeping his anger in check. "Are you the shithead responsible for the explosion this morning?"
"Ah, so you have heard of my work," the voice says. "Yes, that was a taste of things to come. I presume that I have your attention now?"
"I know you have an IOU of my foot up your ass," McClane responds.
"There is a bomb on your bus. You'd think it would be more productive to focus on that."
"I'm gonna take that bomb and shove down your throat, how's about that?"
There's a pause that makes Matt's skin crawl.
He thinks that maybe this is it. He's going to die here in the middle of a city he barely knows.
But that doesn't happen. What does happen is that there's a soft electronic click, and the voice is suddenly amplified through the bus' speaker system. "Ladies and gentlemen, users of the Los Angeles public transportation system."
"Hey," McClane says, irritated. "I thought we were having a conversation."
"There is a bomb on your bus," the voice continues, ignoring or not hearing McClane's comment. There is something slightly different about the voice now, something colder and more impersonal, like a recording. "But if you are calm and do not panic, you shall be safe. Here are the rules. Rule one: no one gets on or off the bus, no exceptions. Rule two: the speed of the bus cannot drop below 50 miles per hour. Breaking either rule will ensure that the bomb will be triggered and your lives significantly shortened. Have a nice day."
"Hey, asshole!" McClane yells into the radio. "We have wounded on the bus. They need to get to a hospital."
The voice, now back on the small radio speaker, says, "Then you should've been more polite."
"You won't miss two. There's still plenty of us left to kill," McClane says.
"Say please."
"Please." McClane doesn't even pause. "Let the wounded get off the bus."
The voice is quiet for a moment. "All right. As an act of good faith, the two wounded may be removed from the bus." The voice sounds reluctant and maybe even a little intrigued.
McClane grunts, and the radio falls silent.
"Well, that's a relief," Matt says, kinda amazed that he can still breathe.
McClane shoots him a look, sharp and surprised, like he'd forgotten that Matt was there. "The shithead's watching us."
"He knew the speed we were going, too," Matt points out. "Probably hacked the Metro."
"Hacked the what?"
"I'm not an expert," Matt says, "But I think most buses are equipped with GPS monitoring systems these days, you know, for security and traffic management? It shouldn't be hard to hack the system, get the information he needs. And, of course, there's Big Brother right there." He tilts his head to the CCTV camera above his head.
"Great," McClane says, sparing a moment to eyeball the camera.
When he turns away to check on the passengers, it occurs to Matt that he can't hear anyone else in the bus freaking out. In fact, there's a very intense lack of noise, and as soon as he notices that, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
There's now a whole bus full of people who are relying on him to not blow them up.
He takes a deep breath, glances at the speedometer, and jumps in his seat (again) when McClane reappears close to his shoulder.
"Look, kid," McClane says, voice soft enough that Matt knows these words are meant only for him. "It's okay to be afraid. But I need to know if I can count on you to drive and keep it together."
"I'll just pretend this is a Hummer." Matt honks as he overtakes a slower car. "It's always been a secret fantasy of mine to drive something this stupidly huge, just to see if I could, you know, take corners and stuff. The speed thing's a bonus, but the bomb bit, not so much."
"You got a name?"
"Yeah, Daisy Duke, got a lot of shit for it as a kid, don't make it worse." Matt knows he's making an ass of himself, but he can't help himself. He's jittery, his head's full of white noise, he's finding it hard to focus on anything.
"Well, Daisy Duke, the moment you want off, just tell me."
Then there's McClane, who's more pissed than worried, and it's funny what one finds comforting in a situation like this. Matt latches on.
"I can drive," he says. There's a lot more Matt can tag on to that statement, like how he doesn't want to drive knowing what's at stake, but in a selfish way it's better than being a passenger because he thinks that it would be worse if he had to sit back and take whatever's coming. But he doesn't say any of that, doesn't even dare think it too deeply in case it makes him lose his grip on the stupidly heavy wheel in his hands.
"I'm not going anywhere," McClane says, and Matt believes it. "But you have to tell me when it gets too much."
"Gotcha," Matt says quietly.
"I don't think we can go to the hospital now," McClane says, briefly glancing back to where the driver is still on the floor. "We just have to keep moving, keep above 50."
"Are we going to be okay?" Matt regrets the question the moment it's past his lips, because there's no right answer. McClane could try to soothe, promising that everything will be fine and no one's going to get hurt; a part of Matt needs that reassurance, but the rest of him bristles at the possibility of a platitude.
"I'm gonna do my best," McClane says, finally. Matt steals a glance sideways, but McClane's not looking at him. He's looking out at the freeway, eyes slightly distant and forehead creasing - for a moment, he looks much older, and tired.
"Matt. My name's Matt," he says, and McClane's eyes sharpen, turning to focus on him.
"Keep driving, Matt," McClane says. "And talk me through this phone thing of yours."
It's always a little crazy at the start of it.
That's how it has to be when everyone's scrambling to get on the same page, but there is method to what looks like madness.
"Where's the fucking bomb squad?" Captain Morton bellows.
"Officer Reeves called in, they're heading out, sir," Fisher says.
Next to her, Adam's got his headphones on, re-listening to the recording to find any helpful clues. Bill's just behind them, talking on the phone with the Metro rep, trying to get them to calm down while extricating the information they need.
Allen's here, in the eye of the hurricane, trying to see where the pieces fit.
This has to be the same guy who was behind the elevator hostage situation. It's only a hunch at this point, but Allen's instincts have rarely served him wrong over the years, and there's a certain complicated elegance to this hostage situation that perfectly mirrors what went down at the McTiernan Towers just a couple of weeks ago. They're still studying the recording they'd received this morning just after the first bus exploded on the beach, but the only thing they've learned so far from it is that there's a bomb wired to explode on a moving bus somewhere in the city.
Suddenly his phone goes off.
"Allen."
Well, damn. "Hey."
"Guess where I am."
Allen shakes his head in disbelief. Sometimes he can almost believe that the universe really does have it in for McClane. On the other hand, this is something they can actually use. Allen pulls away from the phone to shout: "We got contact with the bus!"
The attention in the room shifts.
"Okay, John, sit tight," Allen says. "Bomb squad's on the move."
"Need the bus number!" Bill shouts.
John, having heard that, says, "2525. You better tell your boys to get here quick, there's a man down, gunshot to the shoulder - don't ask. Got permission to get him and Lucy off."
Allen frowns. "The mastermind talked to you?"
"Over the radio, yeah," John confirms. "Shithead called us, told us about the rules. No one else gets on or off; bus can't drop below 50. We're okay so far, but this traffic's not going to last forever."
"We know about the rules," Allen says. He glances at his watch. "Guy's supposed to call us in twenty minutes on details for the ransom drop-off."
At the desk, Bill announces, "We got a position on 2525!"
"Get those boys out there!" Morton's rushing out the door, exchanging a look with Allen just before he disappears.
"Oh, and he's also done something so none of the phones here have reception. No one can call in or out."
"So how'd you manage to get through?"
"Got a hackboy here," John says. "This is the only working phone on board, so you guys gotta use it."
Allen points to Fisher. "Call the patrol cars, anyone who can help control traffic and keep Bus 2525 in the clear."
"Oh, shit!"
Allen starts. "What's happening, Roy?"
"Traffic. Will call you back."
Up front, their replacement driver is shouting. "What do I do, what do I do?"
"Emergency lane!" dad yells. "Just take it, don't worry about the"
They swipe the barrier barrels, water flying everywhere.
"Wow, that was easy," the driver mutters, glancing at the side mirror. "This is allowed, right? You're not gonna arrest me for reckless driving, right?"
"Just keep going," dad mutters.
Lucy sighs, turning her attention back to the passengers clustered around her. "My father knows what he's doing."
It's mostly true: he doesn't panic under pressure, is excellent at improvising, and has his priorities right (in a situation like this). This doesn't necessarily mean that he has a plan, but it does mean that they have a guy in charge who will make damned sure that every single one of them will get out of this, if it's the last thing he does.
But right now, he's in front, focused on the traffic and trying to get Uncle Allen on the line again. This leaves Lucy here, sitting on the floor next to Hawthorne, the bus' actual driver, as Beth cradles him in her arms.
She knows some of their names now: Simone, Carlos, Ruck, David, Natsuko, Daniel. They're gravitating towards her because she's one of them - regular, normal, everyday - and she isn't panicking. She doesn't tell them that that part of her psyche's probably broken, thanks to her having been kidnapped twice in her life (so far). That kind of thing happens when she has parents like hers.
It's a matter of focus. While other thoughts are circling inappropriately at the back of her head (mom's gonna be upset, Kevin's gonna mess up the presentation), Lucy knows that what's important right now is to get Hawthorne's head higher.
"You got family?" Lucy asks him, as she and Beth adjust his position.
"The missus." Hawthorne winces at the movement, but it's a good thing that he can still feel pain. "I wonder if she's watching tv now."
"What's her name?" Beth asks.
"Minnie," Hawthorne says with a soft cough. Beth takes up the thread, asking about her, how they met, what she was doing this morning.
That leaves Lucy free to look up to the front of the bus, where dad's telling their replacement driver to get off the freeway. She can see why: the traffic's clogged up front and there's no way they can keep the 50 minimum without attempting to monster truck their way through.
Even so, she has to comment. "Is that a good idea? How will city traffic be in any way better than freeway traffic?"
"We have a police escort coming," dad says. "If we're lucky, they'll find us before it comes to that."
"McClane, what do I do now?" the driver says frantically.
"Get on the shoulder," dad says, then louder, "I said the shoulder!"
"What, the shoulder?" Everyone tilts a little to the side when he swerves. "Oh god, this isn't even - oh shit, sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to do that! You're a witness! You know I didn't mean to do that!"
"When they ask, tell them you were only doing what I told you to do." He lifts the communicator to his ear. "Allen, talk to me."
Close to Lucy's shoulder, Beth says in a small voice, "I don't want to die." Her expression is awful, desperate.
"The best thing we can do is stay calm," Lucy says. "If we panic, that'll make it worse."
Ruck laughs nervously. "How can it possibly get worse?"
"Things can always get worse." She feels bad at the way he flinches, so she softens her voice, "If we stay calm, we can think. We can be ready when the LAPD get here and tell us what to do."
"Oh shit oh shit " Matt runs a red light, the bus climbing on the pavement to get out of the way of an oncoming car.
"You heard that nutcase," Ruck says to Lucy. "No on gets on or off the bus. What difference does it make if the LAPD get here?"
"What we need" dad says, loud enough so everyone can hear him, "is to get to some place where we can drive around in circles without getting in anyone's way. Stadium, park, anything. Help us out here."
The discussion is a good, if brief, distraction from what sitting right under their asses. Dad's good at this part, making eye-contact and learning names where he can.
"How about the airport?" Carlos suggests.
"Too far," Simone says. "We'd have to get back on the freeway, the traffic's going to be the same."
"If the police escort's with us, it shouldn't be too bad," Carlos argues.
Matt honks the horn. "Get out of the way! Do they think I've turned on the hazard lights because they're pretty?"
"There's the new highway," Beth suggests. "It's just back that way, and I don't think it'll be as congested."
"You getting all that?" dad says into the communicator. A sudden noise makes him look up sharply, the communicator falling away from his ear a little when his hand drops. "What the"
Someone is honking. The sound is the same loud, trilling bleat of a bus horn, but it's definitely not them. When Lucy lifts herself up on to her knees, she sees another bus heading right towards them.
It's not slowing down.
"Get out of the way, what is wrong with them?" Matt honks right back. "I actually have right of way this time!"
Dad's voice is a low rumble. "Matt, get on the pavement. Let them go past."
"What? But we're"
"Let them go past."
Their bus bumps a little when Matt gets half the wheels up on the pavement. It's still not quite enough, not when the other bus doesn't seem to take the hint and is still roaring towards them, honking all the way.
"Heads down, everyone," Lucy says, and those around her obey.
It won't help if they get rammed by the bus, but they shouldn't have to watch. Lucy herself stays where she is, dreadful realization sinking in as the other bus keeps coming, and then at the last moment swerves just enough to go past, with maybe a foot to spare between them.
It's certainly close enough to see that the other bus has the same set of faces: pale, scared, everyday people, and a bus driver who's barely hanging on.
"There's more than one bus!" dad says into the communicator. "Do you hear me? He's rigged more than one bus! Crazy son of a bitch!"
"Oh my god!" someone shrieks.
"What number is it?" dad shouts. "Someone catch the number!"
Lucy scrambles up on to a seat, but it's too late, the bus is too far.
Her mind is racing. If there really is another bus out there in the same situation, it'll change things. The LAPD will be stretched thinner, the guy behind it will be hiked up a couple of notches on the danger-meter, and the people in the city will really have something to talk about.
"Matt, get on that, turn." Dad points. "Turn, damn it, turn!"
"Turning!" Matt makes a hard left, wheels squealing as they get on to another road.
"We've got to catch that other bus," dad says. "There! Go!"
"What, why?"
"Because the LAPD is tracking us and we can lead them right to it," dad says.
"I think I saw it!" Daniel says. He and another passenger start shouting directions, multiple eyes directing Matt to switch through another semi-busy intersection to where they've tracked down their twin.
It's not swerving erratically, but it's obvious that their driver isn't concentrating.
"Allen, did you hear me?" dad says into the phone. "Yeah, it looks like there's another bus that - okay, no, I'm not positive, but it's making like a Tasmanian Devil with rabies and you better get a fucking helicopter out here, that's what we need. Does anyone have pen and paper?"
Lucy passes him a sharpie from her bag just as Beth hands over a yellow flyer. Bracing the flyer against the window, dad writes in big block letters: BOMB ON BUS?
"Okay, what do I do now?" Matt asks, now that they're drawn up right behind the other bus.
"Go beside them," dad says.
Matt has to wait until the other bus has entered a main street, and then hits the gas in moving up alongside the other. Dad presses the flyer against the window, pointing at it.
In their twin, the passengers go nuts, some standing, some nodding frantically: YES.
Dad pushes down the window, and what follows is a shouted conversation of how he's a cop, help's on the way, please stay calm, stay behind them.
"Stay behind us?" Matt says. "Their driver is actually trained for this!"
"Kid," dad says, "No one has training for this. Now get in front."
They take the lead, Matt following dad's instructions to get on to another main road, honking loudly all the way as a warning. There's only one close call when a bunch of pedestrians have to scatter from where they were starting to cross the street, but Matt handles that without panicking, only laughing nervously once they're out of harm's way.
Dad's talking on the communicator, Matt's babbling to himself, and Lucy's the one who notices the third bus.
"Dad?"
He gets into the seat in front of her, following her finger to where she's pointing. The other bus, which does look like it's going faster and swerving a little more aggressively than it really needs to, is on a flyover quite a distance away, so there's no way to get to it and make sure.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Dad winces. "Sorry, language."
Lucy rolls her eyes, biting down the urge to swear right back at him, when it unexpectedly hits her that they've been on this bus for maybe an hour now, and that makes it the longest time they've spent in each other's company without either one of them storming off (because there's nowhere to storm off to), making this a wholly different kind of messed up for them.
It's been a while since Lucy's seen dad in action, so as she watches what's unfolding in front of her, it occurs to her now that maybe this is the only thing he's good at, like he can only function at a hundred miles per adrenaline rush. Anything less and he stumbles, falters. He doesn't know how to slow down, except for the part where (and here's another jolt of realization) he is trying in his own way to learn the lessons she'd hoped for years that he would, but he's getting them wrong because there's no one to teach him.
Except, a quiet voice in Lucy's head says, maybe that's what she's supposed to do. After all, she loves him the way he does her: fierce and sharp, like everything about them that's soft got left behind somewhere.
Lucy's not her mother. She can't give up.
"Hey, dad," Lucy says, though she freezes up a little when he looks at her. "Is that Uncle Allen on the line?"
"Yeah," he says, smiling a little. "Hey, Allen, Lucy says hi."
Lucy flushes. "I'm guessing he's how you found out about this whole bus thing in the first place." This so isn't the best place to talk to her father. Later, she promises herself.
"Oh, hey," Daniel says loudly from down the aisle. "Looks like the cavalry's here."
Ah, sirens. Lucy still gets a jolt whenever she sees police cars, LAPD or not, a soft electric shock of dread and recognition. There's one car and one truck tucked up next to them now; Lucy recognizes the truck as a bomb squad vehicle. Matt hits the lever and the double doors flip open.
Hot potato they go: dad passing the communicator to Lucy while he talks with the officers outside.
"Hey, Uncle Allen," Lucy says. Up front, dad's shouting to the officers that there's a third goddamn bus going up the flyover.
"Hello, Lucy," he says. "The guys caught up with you?"
One of the LAPD officers is shouting back that they're going to send a car to catch up with the third bus, but they're here for the transfer of the wounded.
"Yeah, they're getting ready to move the driver," Lucy says. "God, this is insane."
"Hang tight," he says. "Oh. Damn, FBI's here, I've got to"
Faintly, Lucy can make out someone saying, Is that the line to the bus? followed by Uncle Allen answering something, someone else shouting in the background, and then the clatter of the phone exchanging hands. (Meanwhile, dad's now instructing Carlos and Daniel to help carry Hawthorne for the transfer.)
"Is this Bus 2525?" a new voice asks her.
"This is Lucy McClane," she says. "Bus 2525 is a physical object and incapable of speech. But if you meant to ask if you're speaking to someone who's on Bus 2525, yes, you're on the right line."
"Ma'am, I'm Agent Johnson of the FBI, I have been told that the LAPD have made contact with your bus."
"You have been told the correct information, Agent Johnson," Lucy replies. "They're escorting us now."
"Have they instructed anyone aboard your bus to check for the whereabouts of the bomb?"
"I don't know, Agent Johnson. Right now we're getting an injured passenger off the bus."
"Ma'am, please stop them, no one's allowed on or off the buses."
"We have been given permission to do this transfer," Lucy says. Dad's gesturing at her to stand up, and she obeys without thinking. "You'll be glad to know that the injured person was successfully removed from the bus, Agent Johnson."
"FBI?" dad says, once she's on her feet. She nods, so he grabs the communicator and passes it to Simone, quickly whispering, "Just keep talking, they like that." Then, unexpectedly, he turns to her. "Okay, Luce, your turn."
She frowns. "I'm not injured."
"What's that?" Dad grabs at her wrist. There's a surge of rage and embarrassment when her eyes water, and she pushes back harder than she means with her good hand. He says, "You've got to get off the bus, Lucy."
"No," she insists. It isn't fair. There are ten other passengers on the bus, all of them just as important. This is dad being stupid by making things personal. "I can help."
"Yes, you can," dad says, coming close.
Lucy only peripherally sees Beth walk past them to the door, but doesn't notice. Dad doesn't see it at all.
Dad pulls Lucy to his shoulder like a father comforting his daughter, but he's whispering, "The asshole's tracking us, watching us, maybe listening to us. Get them to find that signal and mess it up."
Up front, Matt says loud enough for them to hear, "Hey, what are you doing?"
"If she's not going, I am," Beth says, one foot out.
Dad turns. "No!"
Lucy's less than half dad's age, but she doesn't have the reflexes he has. One moment he's standing there with her just as she's understanding the message she has to take off the bus, and the next he's throwing himself at Beth.
Just as there's no getting used to gunshots, there's no getting used to explosions, even small ones.
Lucy's ears are ringing, her eyes definitely watering now. Dad's crouched on the floor among splinters of burnt metal and what remains of the bus' steps and door, while Beth's on the floor, pushed away to safety. Lucy opens her mouth, rushing forward to check on him, but he puts a palm out to stop her.
"Get off the damn bus, Lucy," he says through gritted teeth.
Blinking quickly, Lucy says, "I'm gonna buy you a new shirt." And then she jumps over the space between bus and truck, into the hands of the LAPD.
There are ways to deal with pain, putting it aside where it can be dealt with later. John's pretty good at prioritizing, but in the thirty years he's been doing this, he hasn't figured out if there's a way to ignore the first hit of fuck-motherfucking-son-of-a bitch that's the metaphorical knee to the balls of John's entire physical being.
So yeah, it hurts like a fuck-motherfucking-son-of-a-bitch.
When his hearing comes back, he can hear Matt talking frantically: "Check him, check him, somebody!"
Hands are touching him. They mean well, but John jerks back, skin tender where torn. The construction worker, Carlos, is bending over him. "You okay?"
"Yeah, peachy." Nothing's broken, but his left arm feels hot where it's been singed - likely the skin's burnt. He pulls himself upright, gingerly tugging soon-to-be-sticky cloth. "Damn, I liked this shirt."
Carlos' laugh has strikes that familiar edge of slightly hysterical and reluctantly relieved. John used to laugh like that, before this shit got old. "You're crazy, man."
"You know," John says as he gets to his feet, "I don't get that as much these days as I used to. Is everyone okay?"
The chorus is present, if not enthusiastic. Beth is crying, but another passenger, Lin, has taken her hand and is talking softly to her. John goes to her side, asking if she's hurt. Beth shakes her head, barely able to look at him, so he pats her on the shoulder so she knows that it's all right. That just makes her twist away, so Lin slowly leads her to the back of the bus.
Some of the other passengers are looking at him differently now, some dubious, some more hopeful, but John turns away from them to look out the gaping hole of where the front doors used to be.
"Glad you're still in one piece, sir," says Officer Reeves of the LAPD bomb squad from, a young guy with a crew cut whom John vaguely remembers Allen describing as one of his boys.
"So am I," John says.
Behind Reeves, two officers are carefully setting Hawthorne down and checking on his wounds. Lucy's sitting nearby talking to another officer, during which she catches him watching and her expression goes a little strange before she breaks away. She's probably still mad at him, but hey, what else is new?
"What happens now?" John asks Reeves.
"We've got clearance from the airport," Reeves replies. "We're going escort you there, via the new highway so it'll be clear. All you've got to do is pretty much sit back and let us do our job."
"I'm all for that," John says, relieved to hand things over to those whose turf this actually belongs to.
A soft touch to his shoulder makes him turn around. "Mister McClane?" Simone holds up the communicator. "The FBI still want to talk to you."
Bracing himself, he takes the call. "Yeah."
"The man responsible, he contacted your bus in person?"
"What, no hi, how're you doing?'" John takes a bunch of wet wipes offered by one of the other ladies, nodding a grateful thank you because dry blood can be a bitch.
"Come on, Detective McClane."
Oh, so they know who he is. Peachy. "Yeah, he contacted us over the two-way."
"Interesting," Agent Johnson says. "That likely means that he's personally watching you."
"Should I be touched?"
"If he makes contact again, please let us know. In the mean time, take care, and we'll contact you if we have any new information."
"What, that's it? Hello? Thank you very much!" He makes a face at the communicator like it's at fault for the poor conversation, and then passes it to Simone with a huff. "Call your family, pass it down." Her face crumbles a little, but she nods gratefully, taking the communicator back to the other passengers to decide who gets to use it first.
John turns away from that, calling out to the front: "Hey, Matt! Bill me, kay?"
He can only see the back of Matt's head when he softly says, "You threw yourself on a bomb."
"Couldn't shoot it," is John's simple reply.
Matt makes a sound that's almost a laugh. When John approaches, he realizes that Matt's shaking. He's still keeping it together, hands firm around the wheel, but the knuckles are pale, and his chest is heaving a little tighter than what's right.
"You okay?" John asks.
"I thought that was it," Matt says. "When that thing went off, I thought that was it, and I was dead. But then I realized I wasn't, and I was so glad, but then I saw you on the floor, and it was I don't know. I don't know if I'm okay."
"Do you want off the wheel?"
"No." There's no hesitation in his voice. "I can do this, I can drive. It's the other parts I'm not too good at."
John glances back at the other passengers anyway, seeing if there's anyone else who could take the wheel if it came to that. Carlos, probably.
"This is so not how I was planning to spend today," Matt says.
"You, me and the rest of the damn crew." When he moves, he can feel tell-tale tightness along his arm, so he tugs off his jacket, wincing when it brushes against tender skin. There's definitely some burns there, but it's nothing to worry about. Carlos, who sees what he's doing, steps forward and hands him an unused kerchief, which John starts wrapping as a makeshift bandage around his arm.
As John does that, he's looking out the gaping maw where the doors used to be. The bomb squad truck is back, tightening up against their side while Reeves hangs on to the edge, bending low to look under the bus. Most of em are barely older than Lucy, but all geared and padded to the nines; shiny examples of LAPD professionalism. In his line of work, John normally wouldn't trust anyone that young, but his back's acting up, he's tired, and he really hates that the gods of LA apparently do have a vendetta against him.
Matt speaks up, forcing John's attention again. "What I don't get is what this is all about."
"It's about money," he says. "This is a hostage situation. Easy money."
"I wouldn't say easy," Matt says, snorting a little. "In fact, I'd say it's pretty damn complicated. If I had all this equipment and wanted to make money out of it, I wouldn't be going around bugging random buses and hoping that the city pays up."
"I'm not gonna pretend to understand what goes through their minds, okay," John says.
"And another thing." Matt's quite the chatterbox.
"Yeah?"
"Why did you even chase down this bus in the first place? How did you know?"
"A bus exploded this morning on the beach," he says. "The guy who did it called in, said that there was another bus rigged up and the city had to be pay a sweet 50 mill to keep all the passengers from blowing sky high. I knew Lucy was going to be on a bus today, and I had to be sure."
"But you couldn't have been sure," Matt says. "The odds are still pretty slim."
Yet it still keeps happening to him, but John doesn't say that part out loud. "There one bus following us right now, and at least one more bus out there in the same situation. It's more than likely if there are other busses out there in the same situation as us, they don't have a cop on board and have no way to call out and ask for help. They have no way to know that there is help. If it means that I had to be a jackass chasing my daughter down to get those odds, then I'm fine with that."
"That's not what I meant." Matt glances at him quickly, looking hurt.
"It doesn't matter." John shrugs. "I'm here. Don't pretend to be grateful on my account."
"'Course not," Matt says. "If we should be grateful to anyone, it would be to Lucy."
John looks at him sharply. It's an automatic reaction to whenever anyone male so much as breathes her name within earshot, but even as he does it, it's like he can feel Lucy rolling her eyes at him from wherever she is at the moment.
"Yeah, Lucy," John mutters.
"It's easy to see where she gets those balls of steel from," Matt says.
"Hey, watch it," John says. "That's my little girl you're talking about."
"Little girl?" Matt gives him a look. "Ah. Okay."
"Just shut up and drive," John says, sounding grumpier than he really is.
"Hey, I didn't mean anything," Matt says. He's definitely smiling now, the shape of it completely changing his face. It's a little startling, especially with the way Matt's eyes briefly flicker over to him, like there's something funny going on that John can't see. "You know, don't get me wrong, but something tells me you've been in shit like this before."
"Not for a while," John says, his lower back aching with a reminder of just how long.
Matt still hasn't stopped smiling. "Yeah, I'm glad you're here."
Nothing's actually changed - the bomb is still in here and the bad guy is still out there - but when Matt says so out loud, it feels like the odds have shifted somewhere. So what if John's used up something like six of his nine lives; so what if he's older, stiffer, his fingers aren't as nimble as they once were, his reflexes are maybe a full second slower than they need to be. They can still make it.
No one's beaten him up, either. That's definitely a plus.
"Tell me, Matt, what kind of hardware does it take to pull off something like this?" John doesn't look at the CCTV camera directly, but it's hard to forget that it's there. It's harder still not to wonder what the asshole's thinking as he's watching this (if he's watching this, but the possibility is near definite), and whether the only reason he hasn't blown them up yet is because he's having a huge laugh at their expense.
"Hacking the Metro wouldn't be that hard," Matt says. He shifts, glancing up at John guiltily. "In theory, not that I've ever done anything like that or even thought about it. I've never thought about hacking any public service system - did I say hacking? I'm not a hacker, I only use computers sometimes, like to pay my bills and stuff like that." His grin is too bright.
John rolls his eyes. "The point, if you can find it."
"Hacking the Metro itself wouldn't be hard," Matt starts again. "That can be done from a safe distance. I would say it's the individual wiring of the buses that would be the most difficult to pull off. They'd have to physically go there - probably to the depot - and open up the buses one by one. It'd take time, at the very least, and I don't know what kind of security they'd have to get through."
They're talking about this, and still the bus hasn't blown up. Maybe he really isn't listening in to them, not that they can be sure about it.
"But like I said, it's an ineffectual way to make money," Matt says. Then his voice changes, its lightness evaporating. "Why are the LAPD escorting us to a dead end?"
A visual confirmation does imply that that's a dead end up ahead. Suppressing the heavy sigh he feels in his chest, he walks over to the blown-out door to talk to Reeves. "Hey! Where are you takin' us?"
Officer Reeves looks. He tries to mask his surprise, but John can tell that he's only just now noticing where they're heading. "Take a right! It's just a sharp turn."
"That what you call it in this town?"
"Quickest way to the airport. Sorry, McClane, it didn't look that on the map." At least Reeves has the decency to look sheepish. "However, I can tell you for sure that the highway's actually complete, and you will not have to make any jumps."
"Hell yeah we better not be making any fucking jumps!" John snaps, getting a cheap thrill at the way Reeves' face twitches in what could pass for a blush. "Now get your ass back there and warn the other bus!"
"Yes, sir!" Reeves almost salutes, even.
Ducking back inside, John claps his hands to get everyone's attention. "We're going to make a sharp turn. Everyone on this side of the bus, and hold on."
"Wait, what?" Matt says. "That's your advice?"
"Unless you can make a U at 60, I don't see what choice we have." John makes a quick round to check the passengers, trying to sound reassuring and checking that everyone's sitting right and holding on to something firmly. "When we turn, press your weight as hard as you can against the wall."
He gets to the gun-holder from earlier, who now looks terrified and guilty. "I didn't know, man, I didn't know"
"You and me both," John says, unlocking the handcuffs. "Press against the wall."
After another round of checks, John heads back up front to where Matt's shaking his head anxiously. "We're going to tip over, we're going to tip over..."
"Think positive, Matt." He's probably weirding the kid out by smiling, but he can't help it, that's what he does. "Keep your foot on the gas."
"Fuck my life." Matt takes a steadying breath.
It's quiet while they race towards the end of the road; everyone and the bus watch and wait. Then they hit it, and they're turning. John's bending over Matt, grabbing the wheel and pulling with him, fighting the inertia as they tilt, tires screeching.
There's the sweet spot when half the wheels are still in the air, just before the momentum moves back and they're coming back down. The tires make an ugly noise when they reconnect with the asphalt, but then they get their balance back and someone is whooping - others quick to follow with their own noises of relief and joy.
John permits himself a smile. Another day, another close call, whatcha gonna do?
A touch on his arm makes him look down. Matt's fingers are curled above the junction of his elbow, the tips cold even through John's shirt.
Leaving the fingers where they are, John turns back to watch the other bus make the same sharp turn.
They skid a little, tires screeching even louder, but after swerving briefly, the driver gets it back under the control and they're together again, a happy pair heading to the airport in the same two pieces they started with. Fucking yeah. John grins down at Matt. "Good driving, kid."
Matt nods stiffly. "You know, this is a nice city and all, but I don't know if I'd want to come back here."
John laughs. Matt jumps a little at the sound, but then looks up and relaxes a little, answering with a smile of his own even if he doesn't completely understand the joke. Lucy would probably make a face and tell John he's being inappropriate, but it's nice to be able to laugh at anything right now.
Matt's fingers uncurl, and John pats him on the shoulder before going back and checking on the other passengers.
"See, now it's just getting ridiculous," Gabriel says. "That was completely unnecessary."
"That's LA's finest for you," Mai replies.
"Not that one, though."
One of the screens is not like the others, and that's the one where a broad black-and-white figure is crowding up the camera's view, standing at least two feet in front of the do-not-cross yellow line to talk to a floppy-haired driver.
"Detective John McClane," Gabriel says, letting the name roll of his tongue. "What are the odds, indeed?"
Mai adjusts her headset. "Ten minutes to our next check-in with the LAPD."
Gabriel pushes his chair a little, letting it roll closer to another set of camera screens that overlook a square in downtown LA. Right now there's nothing of interest to watch; just pedestrians and the occasional cyclist going past. But after Gabriel makes his call (in nine and a half minutes) to let them know that that's the supposed ransom drop-off point, it'll become a matter of waiting until it becomes a game of Where's Waldo: LAPD edition.
It does seem a pity to let Detective McClane go to waste, though.
Gabriel thinks.