Half-Past Dawn

by Richard Doetsch

  “Got it?”

  “No,” Frank said, pain in his voice.

  “What?”

  “It’s a nightmare down there. Seems the whole world is looking for your box. The feds took the place over.”

  “Dammit.” Jack slowly exhaled, trying to balance his nerves and focus as his only link to Mia slipped away. “We need that case-”

  Jack stopped talking as the rumble of the street momentarily distracted him, but this time it wasn’t the subway. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see a sanitation truck make its way down the road, two workers clinging to the white garbage truck’s side, leaping off, grabbing and dumping waste cans that had been left for pickup. There was a line of cars behind the slow-moving vehicle, windows down, drivers cursing, laying on horns, which, as anyone who lived in a city knew, only made the truck move slower.

  Jack turned his attention back to the man across the street.

  “Jack?” Frank’s tone was filled with concern.

  “Jack,” Joy echoed Frank. She could see the look on her boss’s face and knew it all too well.

  But Jack was lost in thought, staring at the blond man who now leaned on the Crown Victoria until he finally tilted the phone toward his mouth. “I’ve got to go-”

  “Go?” Frank’s voice grew loud with anger. “Go where?”

  “There’s someone I need to talk to-”

  “Don’t you dare get out of that car-”

  Jack slammed the phone shut, stuck it back into his pocket, and watched the sanitation truck crawl up the street toward him. It finally came to a stop in the middle of the road, clogging traffic while obscuring his view of the Crown Victoria and the man who stood beside it.

  “Jack,” Joy said, “don’t even think about it-”

  Suddenly, on instinct and against reason, Jack leaped out of the car. Using the large white sanitation truck as cover, he stayed low and circled back around the Crown Victoria.

  Just as Jack rounded the back of the truck, coming out behind the blue car, the blond man noticed his approach. The man’s eyes grew wide with shock. He reached for his cell phone, quickly dialing, but before he could lift the phone to his ear, Jack was upon him, knocking the phone away, thrusting him against the car.

  “Where’s my wife?” Jack said through gritted teeth, his body like a coiled spring ready to release.

  “I watched you die…” the man said in disbelief. He reached for his gun, but Jack snatched it from him, tucking it into the small of his back.

  “Where is she?” Jack wrapped his hands around the man’s throat. “I’ll snap your neck.”

  While the element of surprise gave Jack the advantage, it was only temporary. The man quickly recovered his wits and, with lightning motion, swept his arms up, freeing himself from the stranglehold. His hand clenched into a fist and in a continuous arc struck Jack in the side of the jaw, stunning and knocking him backward.

  The man took off, racing up the street. Without breaking stride, he grabbed his phone from where it lay in the gutter and kept running, dialing on the fly. Jack quickly recovered, regained his footing, and took off in pursuit. He couldn’t afford the world knowing he was alive, not yet. He ran for everything he was worth, knowing that if the call went through, Mia’s already meager life expectancy could drop down to minutes. He pressed on, pushing his legs to the limit.

  The man cut across Center Street, up Chambers, and hung a right onto Broadway. He was fast, but Jack was faster, quickly gaining on him. They bobbed and weaved through oncoming traffic, as cars locked up their brakes and tires screeched, trying to avoid the two crazed men who ran through the streets of New York. The blond man leaped a fraction of a second before the front end of a yellow cab plowed into him, his butt sliding across the hood of the car, then practically landing in stride on the street as he fled. Jack didn’t miss a beat as he leaped onto the hood of the cab, jumping to the roof of the next vehicle and back to the sidewalk, landing inches from his prey.

  Jack reached out, a hair’s breadth from grabbing him, when the man cut left and raced down a flight of subway entrance stairs, taking five at a time, stumbling but quickly gaining his footing. The man jumped the turnstile and charged along a darkened platform.

  Jack never lost distance, hurdling the turnstile, never breaking stride. A moment of panic filled him as he watched the man charge the closing doors of a departing subway car but was quickly relieved as the doors sealed up and the car left the station.

  Alone on the vacant platform of the subway, the man jumped onto the tracks and never stopped, the sound of his racing feet echoing through the shadowy, cavernous tunnel as he disappeared into the darkness.

  Without hesitation, Jack also jumped to the tracks, the stench of urine and filth filling his lungs as he sprinted and gasped for breath, struggling to keep up with the man ahead of him. The footing grew precarious, the gravel fill intermittent and scattered and the gauged rail ties uneven with his stride.

  They were both swallowed by the dark, the only light coming from the green and red subway lights affixed to the walls, their unnatural glow casting staccato shadows.

  Jack’s heart pounded in his ears. He had been sprinting for three minutes full-out, farther and faster than he had ever pushed himself.

  But the rhythmic thrum was soon obscured. The heavy roar of an approaching train grew by the second, shaking the ground on which they ran and making it even more treacherous.

  And then it was there, up ahead, rounding the corner to bear down on them, the wail of the train’s horn shredding their ears as its harsh light blinded them. The subway brakes locked up, sparks flew, and the seized metal wheels let out a screaming cry. There would be no stopping the train in time.

  But the blond man never stopped. His silhouette, ten feet ahead, seemed to accelerate as if playing chicken with the thirty-ton train. And then, suddenly, he cut left through an opening in the wall as if he knew it was there all along. The train bore down on Jack, only feet away, milliseconds from crushing him.

  He dove through a hole in the wall just as the train roared past, a mix of shrill brakes and rumbling motors. He could feel the heat of the lead car as it barely missed clipping his back.

  Jack found himself in an adjacent tunnel, this one without the benefit of the red and green directional lights. The blackness felt like a veil over his senses. He lost his bearings as he turned around, listening for any sign of the man who had shot him. He caught a glimpse of light ahead, coming from above, and approached what he realized was a sidewalk grate.

  By the time he felt the man’s presence behind him, it was already too late.

  The garrote had already wrapped around his neck.

  Frank stood on the platform as the express train roared through the station without stopping. He had caught sight of Jack racing up Center Street and took chase, his body forgetting his age until he was forced to stop and wait for the train to pass. He doubled over, hands on his knees, swallowing air in large gulps. He was in good shape, but he was no match for Jack, who was fifteen years his junior. As the train continued by, Frank took the brief interlude to clear his mind of his anger. He couldn’t have been more specific when telling Jack not to leave the car under any circumstance. After enduring the sight of the evidence room filled with feds and not getting his hands on the evidence case, he was floored to emerge from the building and find Jack out of the car, tossing some stranger against a Crown Victoria.

  Before he could shout, the blond man had taken off with Jack in full pursuit. As Frank took up the chase, running with everything his half-century body had, he hoped to God no one recognized his friend; otherwise, what little advantage they had was gone.

  As he stared into the dark tunnel where Jack had vanished, he feared the worst. The Lower Manhattan underground was a maze of subway tunnels, viaducts, and abandoned passages dating back almost 150 years, a world where one could get lost forever.

  “Where is it?” the man screamed in Jack’s ear.

  As th
e garrote dug into Jack’s neck, he could feel the warm moisture of blood trailing down his back. He struggled, his arms flailing, his head throbbing while his brain screamed out for oxygen. The man had taken him by surprise, positioning himself in the shadows beneath the sidewalk grate, lying in wait.

  And then, with the thin wire wrapped tightly around his neck, the man kicked Jack to the ground of the abandoned tunnel, crushing his face into the dirt, where puddles of stench-filled water dotted the ground.

  Jack’s rage and anger were no longer directed at the man but were turned on himself for being so easily captured, where he was now about to die, where all hope for saving Mia would die along with him.

  “Where is the case?” the man growled in his ear.

  The question shocked Jack, and the tables turned as the man slammed his face into a puddle while tightening the garrote. But then the man lifted him out of the water and, to his surprise, loosened the garrote. As Jack gulped for air, drawing in a big breath, his face was shoved into the puddle, where he gasped nothing but water into his lungs. Reflexively choking, the man retightened the garrote, drowning Jack with a mouthful of water.

  Jack’s lungs burned as his mind began to turn black, darkness flowing in from the periphery of his vision. He could taste death as if he already knew its flavor.

  But then a singular thought filled his mind: it was Mia in all of her beauty, in all of her grace and perfection. If Jack was to die, then she would have no hope, no chance of living, for her captors wouldn’t be letting her go.

  Despite all of his valiant thoughts, he lacked the strength to escape his captor. He would die in the darkest recesses of Manhattan, never to be found or heard of again, as if he had already died in the Byram River.

  Again, his face was jammed into the puddle, the severe lack of oxygen kicking his body’s automatic response to breathe when the garrote was released. The water flowed deeper into his lungs this time, burning like nothing he had ever felt before. But this time, under the pressure of imminent death, he didn’t see the proverbial light or his family before his eyes; his life didn’t replay like all of the myths.

  What Jack saw in a burst of memory was the night before, as if the curtain was momentarily pulled back, allowing him a brief glimpse of something forbidden. Not vivid, more like a recaptured dream. The river raged beneath him as he lay on the shore. The world was filled with shadows beneath the driving rain. All around him were shattered trees and rocks. And the pain came charging back at him as if it had just happened, as if his body had a memory of its own that it couldn’t suppress. The pain below his shoulder was like hot steel, his head throbbed, and the teeming rain poured down on his face as he struggled to breathe. He caught glimpses of debris on the soaked shore around him,

  And he saw a man emerge from the woods, his face cloaked in the night. He looked around at the raging river, up at the bridge, skyward as the rain began to stop, while shafts of moonlight pierced the parting of the clouds. Jack could hear his own voice crying out.

  “You have to help me…”

  The man looked at Jack but said nothing.

  “I think I’m dying, but my wife… I have to save my wife…”

  Jack’s recollections were suddenly shattered as the garrote grew tighter around his neck, and a knee jammed into the small of his back, pulling him out of his memories to dangle him at the edge of death.

  His captor held his cell phone in his other hand, thumb dialing. The signal that struggled through the grate was weak, intermittent, the call static-filled. “Hey, it’s Gallagher… Gallagher!” he repeated. “Listen to me. You’re not going to believe this…”

  Frank trudged his way through the tunnel. He hated the dark; he was terrified of it. With the unworldly sounds that permeated the lower depths of the city, his mind filled with images of rats and dead bodies, of the unknown lurking in the shadows. He kept his ears attuned for any sound of Jack, for any indication of an oncoming train, not knowing where Jack could have possibly turned within the confined space of the tunnel.

  With the help of the red and green glow of the subway lights, he could see the disturbed gravel, and the intermittent footprints along the rail ties confirmed that he was heading in the right direction.

  “Listen to me. You’re not going to believe this.”

  Frank heard the voice up ahead, his ear pinpointing the distance. He drew his gun and caught sight of a small service opening in the wall.

  “He’s alive.”

  Frank felt like a moth drawn to the flame as he crept through the opening on silent feet. He stepped through the dark, catching sight of Jack and an assailant in the checkerboard light wash that poured in from above.

  “Jack Keeler…”

  Frank raised his gun as he saw Jack facedown in a puddle, a wire dog-tied around his neck, his assailant atop him with a flexed right arm wrapping the wire, his cell phone held in the other hand, pressed to his ear.

  “Tell him Jack Keeler is alive.”

  Frank pulled the trigger, the report of his Sig Sauer sounding like a cannon in the confined space as the orange glow of the barrel flame momentarily lit the space.

  The man fell to the ground, the sounds of death leaking from his mouth, from the exposed side of his head.

  Jack rolled over in the puddle, gasping, rubbing his own neck as if it would impart air quicker. He heaved, his lungs expelling water with gut-wrenching coughs that echoed in the abandoned tunnel. He lay on his back, his eyes closed, his mind without focus, as his body struggled to recover from near death. Blood seeped from the razorlike wound that wrapped his neck, the surrounding skin swelling up.

  Frank tucked his pistol back into his holster and leaned over the body of the dead man, rifling through his pockets, pulling out keys, a clip of bullets, his wallet. He picked up the cell phone, briefly looking at it, and tucked it into his pocket. He rolled the man over and removed his gun from his holster. He examined it, shaking his head before laying it on the ground.

  Frank turned and knelt beside Jack, helping him to sit up. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted the blood on Jack’s neck, holding it to help stanch the flow of blood. “Jesus, are you OK?”

  Jack nodded in reflex without thought of his condition. He finally looked up at Frank, looked into his friend’s eyes, his voice hoarse, his throat raw. “I remember.”

  Frank stared at him. “What?”

  “There was someone else there with me last night.”

  “Can you remember what they look like, a name, maybe?”

  “No.” Jack shook his head. “But whoever it is… he scares me.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve got an even bigger problem. You sure this is the guy who drove you off the bridge, who kidnapped Mia?”

  Jack nodded.

  Frank held up the man’s billfold, letting it drop open to reveal a badge and an ID that made Jack’s blood run cold.

  Steven Gallagher was FBI.

  CHAPTER 20

  FRIDAY, 1:00 P.M.

  Cristos entered the room and laid a new silver tray of food and tea on the table before Mia, picked up the tray of tea and the now-empty plate, and handed it to a man at the door, who quickly departed. They were once again sealed in.

  “How dare you!” Mia raged as she shook the picture of her children. “My children have nothing to do with this.”

  “I see we found our voice.” Cristos’s tone was calm and proper, like a nanny speaking to a child. “Your children are fine. I have not touched them, nor will I. Provided you help me.”

  “You killed my husband,” Mia finally said, her eyes filled with anger. She was not going to give this man the satisfaction of crying, letting him see her pain, seeing her weak. “They’re going to find me. The whole world of law enforcement is going to come down on your head.”

  “Actually,” Cristos said in feigned sympathy, “the only place they are looking for you is at the bottom of a river.” He picked up a newspaper from the silver tray and placed it before Mia, t
he headline screaming out the deaths of her and her husband.

  Mia sat there in shock. What was stopping them from killing her now?

  “I have a very simple question,” Cristos said. “Where is the evidence case?”

  Mia stared at Cristos.

  “I know that you removed it from the FBI and hid it in the evidence room of the Tombs.”

  “How would someone like you know that?” Mia said, channeling her pain into anger.

  Cristos stood and walked around the small room. He rubbed his fingers together as he stared off in thought before finally looking back at Mia. “I want you to look at me,” he began as he took a seat next to Mia. “Where in the evidence room of the Tombs is the case?”

  Mia stared at him, defiant and silent.

  “Where is the case?” Cristos’s voice was barely above a whisper as his dark eyes began to bore into her.

  Mia continued staring, her silence taunting him.

  He leaned forward into her face; she could smell the odor of cigarettes and wine on his breath. Their eyes were inches apart as he mouthed the words, “Where is the case?”

  Mia stared back, but instead of answering, she did the one thing that she did when confronting an adversary, be it her father, her husband, or a suspect.

  She simply gave a false, vindictive smile.

  Cristos exploded, all refinement melting away, the veins and tendons in his neck distended and throbbing. “ Where is the case?”

  Mia had gotten to him. Without a single word, she had unearthed the madman beneath the silk and wool facade.

  Suddenly, his hand shot out, grabbing her around the throat, while his other hand grabbed her by her hair. His trembling rage radiated down his arms, through his hands, and into her.

  He slowly began to squeeze just enough to send a message that he could snap her neck with his bare hand. Her face began to redden, and although she tried not to react, fear rose into her eyes.