The Second Life of Nick Mason

by Steve Hamilton

  He saw the raw materials in me even then, sitting across the table from me in a prison cafeteria. Everything he’d ever need.

  And now here I am.

  Mason shook out his hands and took one more breath. Then he went back to his car.

  As he drove down, crossing the city line, he had gone over everything he knew. He knew these cops wanted the black box that was sitting on his backseat. They needed to protect themselves. Once they had that, then they would kill him. They had to eliminate this threat, this soldier Cole had sent to fight in this war.

  And then they would kill Diana. No other way to see it. Not only would she be a witness, even more important, she would be the one way they could strike back at Cole. She was his only weakness.

  They couldn’t touch Cole directly, not if he was sitting in a federal prison two hundred miles away. They could kill Mason, they could kill Quintero, they could kill any man Cole sent to Chicago. Cole would just send someone else.

  Diana was the one person in the world he cared about. The one person who couldn’t be replaced. Kill her and you’ve taken the war right to him.

  Mason couldn’t imagine where the war would go after that. But he knew he’d be a part of it.

  And you don’t go to war without someone covering your back.

  “Where are you?” he said as he touched the Bluetooth headset in his left ear.

  “I’m stopped at the gate,” Eddie said. “I see you.”

  “I’m going down. Hang back until I tell you.”

  Mason had remembered what Eddie had told him when the two of them were catching up over beers in his garage. How he still got to the range once in a while even though he’d been out of the Army for years.

  He just hoped Eddie could still hit anything inside a thousand yards.

  “You’re too far away,” Eddie said in his ear. “Too dark to cover you.”

  “Do your best,” Mason said. “Don’t get too close.”

  He was inching his way down the shelf. You couldn’t call it a road. It was too steep a drop, with no rail on the side. One slip and the car would go over the edge and fall for five seconds before finally hitting the bottom.

  He was glad Eddie was trailing behind him in a four-wheel-drive Jeep.

  “Hey,” Mason said, gritting his teeth as he kept the wheels dead straight. “While I got a chance . . .”

  “What?”

  “Shoot anybody you want. Just not me or Diana, okay?”

  He heard a nervous laugh on the other end.

  Mason came to a place where he had to make a tight turn and head in a new direction. He could see nothing past his headlights. When he finally crawled all the way to the bottom, he stopped for a moment and got out of the car to take a look around.

  The quarry floor was mostly flat and empty, with dark mounds of broken limestone scattered in the distance. As he looked up, he could barely see the thin line of cars on the highway that passed along the north rim.

  He had just driven into his own grave.

  “I’m down,” he said. “Nobody here.”

  He got back in the car and drove across the quarry, his car bouncing on the rough ground. As he got closer to the north wall, he saw nothing but a sheer cliff rising forty stories above him. He turned and traced along the edge of it until he found a pass-through leading under the highway.

  He found himself in another canyon, just as vast as the first, just as deep, but now there were ponds of standing water all across the floor, and in the far corner, he could make out a dim circle of light.

  “Pass-through under the highway,” he said, picturing Eddie in his Jeep somewhere behind him. “I’m on the other side.”

  “You’re too far ahead of me. Wait up.”

  Mason didn’t bother answering. As he moved the car forward, his headlights played against the construction vehicles, all standing idle for the night. He weaved his way past a giant backhoe, the tires ten feet high, then a dump truck just as large. He was a tiny figure in a tiny car, a speck moving across this vast chasm. But he kept going. There was no turning back.

  • • •

  Mason still couldn’t see why they were doing this here. A quiet place, with nobody else around—that much he got. But they could have done that almost anywhere. Even in the middle of Chicago you find an abandoned house, with known drug traffic. Just like the house in Fuller Park. Bring Mason there. Kill him. Throw him down the stairs with the rest of the dealers. Even Diana. Just two more people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caught up in something they should have had no part in. Let the uniforms sort it out.

  But no, it was all going to happen here. In a fucking limestone quarry.

  Mason made a tight turn between two more construction vehicles and saw a circle of light in the distance. It could have been a mile away or it could have been suspended in outer space.

  He kept driving toward it, splashing through the standing water, then passing by one construction trailer, then another. The circle kept growing, kept getting brighter. Until Mason came close enough. Stopping his car, Mason stepped out onto the ground.

  He stood at the mouth of a tunnel.

  The circle was forty feet high. A perfect round hole cut into the side of the cliff. A strand of braided rebar, as thick as a tree, reinforced its perimeter. A half-dozen halogen lamps were mounted around its rim, giving the entrance an eerie glow.

  Mason just stood there, looking up in wonder at the size of this tunnel.

  “Where are you?” Eddie said.

  “Find the tunnel,” Mason said. “Can’t miss it.”

  This was the Deep Tunnel he’d been hearing about since he was a kid in Canaryville. Because Chicago was built on a swamp, the sewers and the storm drains would overflow every time it rained hard enough. They’d been working on this tunnel for forty years, so they could bring all the rainwater and piss and shit and fuck knows what else in a giant pipe away from the city and apparently right into this quarry. The whole thing would be flooded soon. Any dead bodies left in this quarry would be swallowed up under four hundred feet of water and never seen again.

  Now I get it, Mason thought. This is why they chose this place. He took the gun from his belt.

  Then he walked into the tunnel.

  The ground had been cut flat here. Flat enough to walk on. Flat enough for a vehicle to drive on. The walls rising on either side and coming together in an arc high above his head, the coiled rebar like the ribs of a great whale. Thick cables ran along the ground on the right. Electricity, water, maybe even air. There were more lights spaced every few feet, but only a few of those were lit. Every hundred feet, there were two bulbs mounted high on the arc, one left, one right, together creating a single ring of light. These rings ran one after another, the lights getting dimmer and dimmer as they stretched off into infinity. Just enough light to see your way through in a nighttime emergency. During the day there’d be workers coming through here, vehicles going back and forth, fans blowing, every light turned on. A busy underground street. Now the place had been given back almost completely to darkness.

  He had no idea how far he’d have to walk to find someone. He had no idea how long he’d live.

  He walked through great puddles of standing water. It was cold and as his shoes got more and more soaked, his feet started to get numb. He could hear more water dripping all around him. He could smell it in the dense, humid air.

  Go back, he said to himself. Get the car, drive it right down this tunnel’s throat. Get as much speed as you can. But then he saw a shadow appearing ahead, and as he got closer, he saw it was a great orange-painted crane that had been parked there for the night. There was no way he’d ever get around it.

  Mason put the gun back in his belt and climbed up the ladder to the cab. What the hell, he thought. Maybe they left the keys in this thing. But there were no keys. And he had no i
dea how to operate it, anyway. He jumped back down to the ground.

  As he looked back, he couldn’t see any trace of the entrance anymore. He’d been swallowed by the earth.

  “Nick!”

  It was all he heard from the Bluetooth. He was starting to lose the signal.

  “Here.”

  “Can’t see . . . Bad light . . .”

  Shit, Mason thought, looking down the tunnel. A faint ring of light, then full dark. Another ring, then full dark. No matter what kind of scope Eddie’s got, how do you see to the other end?

  But I’m not letting him get any closer. This is my war, not his.

  Mason walked through another puddle of cold water, saw another shadow, this time high along the right side of the circle. As he got closer, he saw that the wall had been cut away and a flight of metal stairs had been set into the rock. He climbed the stairs and went along a catwalk until it came to a door. It was thick metal, with a large wheel in the center, like the door of a submarine. He tried turning it but it wouldn’t budge.

  He went back down the stairs to the ground. He took a few breaths to reset himself, the air even thicker here, so wet and filled with the smell of limestone it was like drinking mineral water.

  “Where the fuck are you?” he said out loud. His voice disappeared into the void, bouncing off the rock walls and echoing in both directions.

  He took off the headset and yelled, “Where the fuck are you?”

  Not a smart thing to do, but he didn’t care anymore. He’d come too far. It was too dark in here and Eddie would have to get too close for any kind of shot. Mason’s feet were now completely numb and he was choking on the thick air. He knew he’d never have any advantage on these men no matter what he did. They knew he was coming. They’d see him long before he got close. There was no surprise. They were probably wearing their tactical vests, too. They’d be fools if they weren’t.

  No match for Eddie’s rifle, but any body mass shot from Mason’s M9 would be blocked by the Kevlar.

  So all they have to do is wait for him. Then gun him down.

  If that’s the way they wanted to do it.

  Mason thought about it. Maybe they don’t do it that way, he said to himself. Maybe I’ve got one slim chance.

  “I’m right here!” he yelled, hearing the words echo again. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

  He waited. He listened. Finally, he heard a voice.

  “Down here, Mason! Walk slowly! Hands on your head!”

  The words reverberated and could have come from either direction, but he knew they had to be coming from up ahead.

  You already made your first mistake, Mason thought. You just proved to me you’re gonna do this like a cop.

  He put the Bluetooth back in his ear and the gun in his belt, left hip, handle forward. He started walking again. He heard more water seeping down the walls, felt a fine spray of drops hitting his face. A chill ran down his back.

  You’re cops, he thought as he moved forward from one dim ring of light to the next.

  Dirty cops, clean cops—you are all still cops.

  And I know cops.

  He saw the slight flicker of a shadow in the distance ahead of him. It was impossible to know how far ahead—three lights, a dozen lights—but there was something up there. He kept moving.

  The shadow grew as he continued on. It became bigger and then split into two separate shadows. Mason again shook out his hands to release the tension from his body. He took in deep breaths of the cold, wet air.

  In. Out. Breathe. Heart rate down.

  As he walked through one more passage of complete darkness, he reached over with his right hand and adjusted the gun on his hip.

  Right here. Exactly right here.

  He was surprised they hadn’t stopped him yet. Surely they could see him as he stepped under the next light. But nobody said a word. Nobody moved except Mason.

  Forward. Forward. Shoes splashing through another icy puddle. He couldn’t feel anything. It was all motion. Reaction.

  “I said hands on your head!”

  The unmistakable voice of a cop. This is how he’d been trained. He’s done it this way a thousand times. Even if he’s a fucking mile below the ground, getting ready to gun down a man in cold blood, he’s still gonna do it the same way.

  It’s a routine to him. It’s practically hardcoded into the man’s DNA. He’ll tell Mason to turn around next. To keep his hands on his head. To walk backward toward him until he’s close enough. Then to get down on his knees.

  “Hear them,” said the voice in his ear, the signal almost gone. “I’m coming . . .”

  But Mason knew Eddie couldn’t help him now. He reached up, clasped his hands across the top of his head, and kept walking. He started to see the quality of the light change as the walls on either side of the tunnel seemed to bow outward. There was a wide spot here, with another flight of stairs cut into the rock of one wall, accessing another high door. He saw all of this as the two shadows ahead of him resolved into a man wearing a long coat.

  And Diana. She was on her feet, but otherwise half bent over and closed in on herself. Mason was maybe a hundred feet away. His eyes darted from one wall to the next, and things were starting to add up for him. A bulldozer sat idle on the left side. The widening of the tunnel had created a large room, where the dozer had been chewing away at one wall. Mason saw that the ground dropped off just beyond the dozer’s blade. He couldn’t tell how deep it went, but he imagined a pile of rocks and debris at the bottom, pushed over the edge by the machine.

  The perfect place to put two bodies.

  Bury them there, cover them with more debris. Nobody would ever think to dig it up. And within months this whole tunnel would be filling up with water.

  This is why you made me walk all the way down here, Mason thought. You’re gonna stand me right at the edge of that pit before you kill me. Not only are you dirty cops, you’re dirty cops who don’t want blood on your hands.

  “That’s close enough!” the man said.

  Mason kept walking. Eighty feet away now. There had to be another man here. A cop would never do this alone. Mason needed to know where that second man was.

  There. He saw that the other man had moved up onto the stairs for a better angle. He had his Mossberg 500 police-issue shotgun aimed right at Mason’s body mass.

  The next sound, Mason thought. You can’t talk and shoot at the same time. The next time you open your fucking mouth.

  Wait for it.

  “I said—”

  Mason pulled the gun and fired. The sound exploded in that closed space, pressing in against his eardrums. He fired at the man with the shotgun first, with not much hope of hitting him from this distance. But he had to take that gun out first. Mason had already thrown himself against the wall as the shotgun blast obliterated everything else in the world. Water erupted where he had just been standing. Mason fired again at the shotgun, just to keep him pinned down, then at one of the lights above. He needed darkness. One shot, then two, and the light was out. Mason was already moving again—forward, not backward—as the shotgun went off again and he heard the wall crumbling just behind him. He rolled on his back and shot at the other light. It was out and now he was hidden. But he needed to keep moving. He threw himself forward again, staying prone, rising up just long enough to fire off two more shots at the shotgun. The man next to Diana found his range and put a bullet in the wall inches from his head.

  Mason got up just long enough to throw himself across to the other side of the tunnel, hoping that the dark would be enough to hide him. He heard two pistol shots as he went down as flat as he could against the cables that ran along the right wall.

  He caught his breath for a moment, wondering why the shotgun hadn’t gone off again. Six shots in one of those motherfuckers and he’d heard only two. He looked up and
saw the first man in the classic pose, two hands on his gun, aiming carefully. Diana had collapsed to the ground behind him.

  The first man fired. Then again. But the man was backlit. He fired yet again and now Mason took dead aim, fired, and shot the man in the head.

  He tucked himself back in against the wall as he heard the body fall.

  He waited. He tried to listen, but he couldn’t imagine ever being able to hear again. He let a minute pass, then it was time to get up and move. He held the gun out in front of him as he took one step after another, keeping the gun steady. The second man was sitting on the stairs. He seemed to be lying back against the wall as if catching his breath. But as Mason came closer he saw that the shotgun had fallen down to the first step and that the man was holding on to his neck, blood running through his fingers and down onto his vest. He gave Mason a pleading look.

  Mason shot him in the forehead, blowing off the top of his head. The blood flew high in the air, far enough to spray Diana’s face. She screamed.

  Mason went over to her and tried to pick her up. She hit him with her fists and kicked him and kept screaming until he slapped her across the face.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Diana, it’s me.”

  Her eyes met his, but they were still unfocused. She was fighting to breathe.

  He picked her up, but she collapsed against him. He pulled her up straight and held her for a moment, his arms wrapped tight around her.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” he said into her ear, not even sure if she could hear him. He could barely hear his own voice. “You’re safe.”

  She nodded her head against his chest.

  “Hold on.” Mason let go of her hand and went over to the cop on the stairs. He picked up the shotgun and took one more look at the man’s dead eyes. Then he went up the stairs and along the catwalk to the door that had been cut into the wall. It was another submarine door, like the first one he’d tried. But this door opened when he turned the wheel.

  He pushed it open slowly, keeping the barrel of the shotgun trained on whatever might be on the other side. As he stepped into the enclosure, he saw a caged staircase winding its way high above his head. All the way up to the ground level, he thought. That’s how they had gotten down here with Diana.