Reuben: “Shit.”
I eased half my face around the concrete wall and scanned the darkness to where the tunnel curved out of sight, discerning only precursors to light, like before-dawn shimmers on the horizon. I rejoined the blizzard of point-counterpoint.
Tricia: “How many of them?”
Me: “Sounds like four, coming from Drax Portal.”
Reuben: “Five at least. Does it matter? They’re armed.”
Tricia: “It matters. We can take them out.”
Reuben: “Are you nuts?”
Me: “Maybe they’ll stick with the main tunnel and pass us by.”
Reuben: “I wouldn’t risk it.”
Tricia: “Of course you wouldn’t.”
Me: “Focus! We’ve got to decide.”
Reuben: “Our footprints will lead them right in here.”
Tricia: “How far away are they?”
Reuben: “Sound carries. Couple hundred yards?”
Me: “More.”
Reuben: “Assume less.”
No time for this. I checked the main tunnel again. Man-made light had begun tickling the outer wall of the curve.
I flashed two palms, double stop signs. “We’ve got to haul ass until we get past Concord, then regroup. Flashlights only when necessary. Follow my lead.” Reuben knew the layout. Tricia didn’t. I grasped her hand. “Stick with me.”
We slipped into the transit tunnel. I glanced over my shoulder. One pursuer’s flashlight had rounded the curve, beam lowered.
We ran shy of a full sprint, the dust carpet dampening our footfalls. I kept the wall off my right and periodically pulsed my flashlight to reassure that our path ahead remained clear.
People in the world above the streets don’t know real darkness. Every nighttime alley or basement or bedroom contains a hair of illumination to orient us. Even with our eyes closed, blood vessels in our lids tint the faintest rays and reassure us we’re alive. But in tomb-like darkness, we hold on to sound and touch as if those senses too might be lost.
Tricia paced me on the left, her hand soft yet firm in mine. For the briefest moment, I felt we might outrun not only the Drax search party, but all the shards of our past and future that could slice like broken glass.
An easy arc of the wall to the northeast told me Concord Avenue Station lay beyond a Y junction. About a hundred yards past the branch, I tapped my flashlight once again to alert Reuben behind us.
“This service passage runs parallel to the main and reconnects further down, so we can’t get trapped.” I steered her by the hand and protected her head from the low entrance like a cop loading a prisoner into a squad car. Far narrower than a transit tunnel, service passages had the same high ceilings. We crouched close and waited for Reuben’s arrival. I felt her thigh warm against mine and listened to her catch her breath.
But Reuben didn’t show.
“Shit.” I stuck my head into the transit tunnel and listened. Nothing. Realization struck—we were in deep trouble. “I think he got confused and went left at the junction,” I said. Another realization: tons of earth separated me from Reuben’s ready intelligence and cool judgment. I touched the whistle draped against my breastbone—a form of communications, but only as a last resort.
“He’ll figure it out and backtrack, right?” Tricia asked.
“Better be fast, before Drax lights up the junction.”
We waited one minute. Two. Four. My stomach churned as time ate away our hard-earned lead. I considered racing back to find Reuben ahead of Drax, but wised up. The light or sound required to flush him out would attract Drax like flies to a carcass.
I retrieved my army surplus sighting scope and trained it on the intersection behind us.
First, a shimmer, a ghost of a light, enough to jumpstart the pulse. A concrete surface blinked blue-white and then blackened, followed by the overlapping brightness of multiple flashlights in motion.
As the figures came into view, I relayed the scene in whispers. “One… two, three… four… wait… yeah, four of them.”
“What are they doing?” she asked, holding her breath for my answer.
“Just walking and talking. Can you make out what they’re saying?”
Tricia cupped hands behind her ears. “No, too far away. Guns?”
“Not that I can see, but I can’t see much. Hang on… They stopped—sweeping the ground, checking footprints. One is gesturing… pointing… now with the flashlight. Crap.” The beam stabbed my eye through the scope. I blinked, blinded, switched eyes, and peered again. Outlines, faint but unmistakable in a crosshatch of reflected rays. “They split up. Two of them are heading this way in no big hurry. But they didn’t see me.” I lowered my scope and turned to her. “Let’s get ahead of them. Maybe Reuben will be waiting where the tunnels reconnect.”
In the darkness, I stood and grasped her forearm to help her to her feet. She rose with a rustle of denim and I felt her hands on my shoulders, her cheek close to mine.
“I’ve got an idea,” she whispered, her breath hot against my ear. “Do you trust me?”
CHAPTER 26
The two men lumbered toward me, unaware of my presence. One was big, the other bigger, but when you’re on your knees, everyone looks oversized.
Once they reached the halfway point between the branch and me, I raised my voice. “Please don’t shoot! I give up.”
I knelt at the transit tunnel’s centerline, arms like goalposts. My backpack lay in a pool of gloom a dozen feet ahead.
A blast of light struck me dead in the face. I squinted.
“Well lookee here.” The cocksure voice was unmistakable. Hard Ass.
“I’m not running away.” I held motionless for self-preservation. Shrouds of darkness make people jumpy, and jumpy people do dangerous things.
Hard Ass walked like a gunslinger at high noon. “I oughta just shoot you but the boss has something else in mind. Where’s Klein?”
“Lost. I tried to find him but you got in the way,” I said wearily, as if resigned to defeat. “But Reuben’s not part of this.”
Hard Ass exaggerated a chuckle. “I fell for that bullshit at the train station and let him go. Not this time. Once we track him down, you’re both dead.”
My mouth went dry.
The two silhouettes came to a stop at my backpack. In the brief reflections, I recognized Gorilla playing his usual role of mute malevolence, the amplifier and enforcer of threat. And I noticed a greater danger: a gun in Hard Ass’s meaty mitt. Tricia’s plan had gone from questionable to improbable. Think.
While the pocked concrete took its toll on my knees, I teetered and watched Gorilla unzip my pack, upend it, and shake out the contents. The thwack of the Hasselblad against concrete shot straight up my spine. In a faraway hospital bed, Alfred must’ve shuddered.
“I’m not armed,” I said. “So put away the gun.”
Hard Ass gave his head a slow, authoritative shake. “How do I know you’re not armed?” He commanded Gorilla with a nod in my direction. “Check him.”
The giant reached me in three long steps, bent like a front loader, and thumped every square inch of fabric on my body with five-finger paddles. Satisfied, he straightened and stepped back.
The gun had to go. I tried to make eye contact with Hard Ass, but in the choked glow I picked up only pinpoint reflections in black sockets. “I told you, I’m not armed, and never have been. Recognize a pattern? I’m not looking for trouble.” I took a gamble. “What are you afraid of?”
Hard Ass stepped so close to me I whiffed the garlic leeching through his hide. He set do
wn his handheld so the beam illuminated my thighs. With one hand, he intertwined his fingers in my hair and squeezed as if juicing a lemon. It hurt like hell, but I wouldn’t give the satisfaction of a whine. With his other hand, he pressed the barrel of the gun against my forehead. My breath caught in my throat. He spoke meticulously. “I’m sure as hell not scared of you.”
“Then why the weapon? Since your boss won’t let you use it.”
Hard Ass spun the gun with a deft flip so the butt pressed against my hairline. “I am allowed to beat you ‘til you talk like a retard,” he snarled. “Now, what’re you doing down here?”
That surprised me. I chewed on his words for a moment. Was only Hard Ass clueless, or his bosses too? Maybe they’d never noticed the tiny green dot appearing in each photo they’d swiped from Alfred’s lab. Or maybe they’d noticed, but couldn’t explain it. Indeed, the complex chain of logic—from laser measurements, to advanced triangulations, to proof of fraud, to bilking the citizenry, to funding fascism’s rise—would require a mental pole vault.
I took another calculated risk. “I’ll fess up, but not to you. I want to talk to Tony.”
Hard Ass rocked his shoulders with a derisive laugh. “You’re wasting your time. Mr. Drax is in charge here.”
“Rudolph,” I said, sounding spent, enough for Hard Ass to read nothing into my name-dropping, or so I hoped.
“That’s what I said, and Tony doesn’t scratch his balls unless Mr. Drax gives permission.” Suddenly, Hard Ass slammed on the brakes and glared down his nose. “I don’t like all your questions, Pixie.”
“I didn’t ask any questions.”
The face in front of me twisted with rage. Hard Ass extended a leg to brace his bulk and shoved me backwards. I lost balance and toppled, but with enough sideways motion to whip out one leg. I kicked the man’s flashlight and sent it spinning like a propeller.
I glimpsed what followed in the briefest of pulses from the rotating beam. Each image appeared and vanished fast, perhaps too fast for the guards to make sense of it all. A lithe young woman appeared in baggy jeans and a black, skin-tight top, the sweatshirt cast aside. Every muscle taut, she held the bolt cutters back and high like a batter at the plate.
More images. The tool mid-swing. Her jaw muscles bulging, eyes on fire. Impact and a muffled crack like the wet snap of a sapling. The gun mid-flight followed by clattering and skidding. Hard Ass, his face stretched with shock, mouth gaping with a piercing shriek. Then, a moment later, Hard Ass following his shoulder to the stone floor, buckled at the waist, forearm pressed to his belly.
By the time Gorilla produced a flashlight, she’d spun to face him. She drew the bolt cutters back for one more blow. But Gorilla was too far away. Two hundred fifty pounds of muscle had pivoted to fend off her attack.
I charged like a defensive lineman. My shoulder struck Gorilla’s midsection with the energy transfer of pushing a stalled car. I flailed my fists at the wall of gut—once, twice. My third struck diaphragm, punched out an audible exhale, but did no real damage. The big man released his flashlight, clamped my shoulders from overhead, and wrenched my upper body. I seemed to spin in space before descending to the concrete. My back slammed down hard. Gorilla was on me before I’d restored my balance, crushing the wind from me. He swung a furious fist. The first blow struck just outside my eye with a force that temporarily stole my sight. Arms crossed overhead, I grimaced in anticipation of the next punch. But it never came.
I blinked my vision clear. Above me, Tricia had mounted Gorilla’s back, her legs pretzeled around his midsection. The man wore the bolt cutter’s nippers like a bow tie, the long handles V’d around his throat. From behind, Tricia pulled the handles hard. Gorilla, his eyes bulging and panicked, tried to wedge his fingers willy-nilly to relieve the constriction, but the leverage was insurmountable.
“Five more seconds,” Tricia said, her voice pressurized with exertion.
Sure enough, Gorilla’s face transformed from pink to red to purple. His eyes rolled back in his head and his body went limp as if his bones had dissolved. I shoved up hard. Gorilla’s bulk settled sideways to the concrete in a heap.
Somewhere in the dark behind me, Hard Ass panted and groaned. I leaped to my feet with Gorilla’s flashlight. Hard Ass was on hands and knees but with one arm pressed to his belly from below. He fished about with his free hand, searching. The gun. I lit up the weapon in the dust a yard away and grabbed it.
“Enough, Mr. Daley,” I said. You never forget your enemy’s name. “I’ve got your pistol.”
Hard Ass let out a long breath and sat back, his right arm easy on his lap. “She broke my fucking arm.”
“Be glad it wasn’t your skull,” Tricia replied as she found rope among the pile emptied from my pack. “I checked the big guy. No gun, but he’ll wake up any minute now.”
“Valentine will hunt you down and kill you,” Hard Ass said between labored breaths.
We couldn’t let them follow us to Alpha Portal, but ropes would be a temporary solution at best. Steady friction against concrete would wear through the bindings in minutes.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. Then to Hard Ass, “Go sit next to your friend.”
Hard Ass radiated pain and outrage. “Fuck you, Pixie.”
I stepped closer and dropped to a squatting position, eye to eye. “If you don’t, I will rope the wrist of your broken wing and drag you over there like a bag of laundry. And while you’re at it, give her your radio.” I waited.
Hard Ass pressed his lips into a line, lumbered to his feet, and handed Tricia the walkie-talkie. With another painful effort, he lowered his bulk alongside the prostrate Gorilla who was beginning to stir.
“Don’t wait too long,” Tricia cautioned.
I slipped her the gun. “The safety is off.”
“I can see that,” she replied, training the pistol on Hard Ass’s torso. “When we shoot them, let me do it, okay?” she said, deliciously dancing between serious and sarcastic.
I dragged Gorilla’s right leg parallel with Hard Ass’s until their boots touched. I bound their ankles, running multiple loops before turning ninety degrees to compress the binding.
“Ow,” Hard Ass said. “You’ll cut off the blood flow.”
I stood, satisfied with my handiwork. “It’ll get better once we start walking.”
“Walking?”
I grinned down at him. “You were never in a three-legged race when you were a kid?”
. . . . .
We headed out, with our three-legged prisoner unit stomping ahead in sullen synchronization. Tricia had offered her sweatshirt so Hard Ass could jerry-rig a sling for his fractured forearm. This produced a small but welcome reprieve from his venomous threats.
Tricia and I took turns holding the pistol until I noticed that our prisoners cooperated better with her finger on the trigger. Apparently, bone-splitting, coma-inducing underworld Harpies commanded more respect than grad students in architecture.
The Adolphus Avenue straightaway delivered us to the Ptarmigan Street Station after twenty minutes of shambling progress. Bordered by a swirling banister, a marble staircase rose to the underside of a city street.
Tricia leveled the gun at our prisoners from a healthy distance.
“I need two minutes max,” I said.
“Take your time,” she replied with the confidence of a card shark. “If you hear a gunshot, no need to hurry back.”
I wound my way through the service passage, picked open the now-familiar steel gate, and returned.
“All set.” I directed Hard Ass and Gorilla toward the low doorway from which I’d emerged.
Both men registered uneasy ex
pressions.
I placed my hands on my hips and vented an audible sigh. “Don’t worry. Cold-blooded execution suits your bosses, not us.” But never leave leverage on the table. “Unless you refuse to get in there.”
Our tripod tagalongs complied, twisting sideways and adjusting their lopsided gait to the narrow passageway’s twists and turns. Tricia and I took up the rear. I signaled her to remain back as the twosome moved beyond the heavy gate I’d left open.
“Make yourselves comfortable.” I swung the steel barrier closed with a resounding clunk, then checked to make sure the lock was secure.
“What’s that mean?” Gorilla asked, to my astonishment. I’d never heard him speak.
I dropped my voice. “At the end of the passage behind you is a mystery spur, a dead end that doesn’t appear on any subway map.” Gorilla appeared stunned, as if I’d asked him to spell bougainvillea.
Hard Ass looked worried. “You’re leaving us here? For how long?”
His words brought to mind a question I’d been stewing about. “Have you ever been here before?”
“Of course not.”
Tricia appeared beside me, curious. “In all your eavesdropping around Drax headquarters,” I continued, “ever heard anybody mention a subway spur?”
“Hell no.”
“Ever heard the name Richard Baumgartner?”
Hard Ass narrowed his eyes with mistrust. “Why should I tell you anything, Tremaine? You’ll still lock us up.”
“Get off it, Daley.” I was fed up with the tough-guy song and dance, the memory still fresh of a cold gun barrel against my forehead. “Level with me and I’ll share a little tip that might keep you morons alive until more morons show up.”
Hard Ass dialed down the heat. “No, I never heard of… what’s his name?”
“Richard Baumgartner.”
“Never heard of him.”
I believed him, not that his ignorance proved anything. But Alfred’s theory that his lover’s body rested in the crates seemed a little less plausible.
Follow Me Down Page 24
