The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  McCall half jumped, half staggered down the rest of the marble stairs and out onto the station platform.

  Berezovsky was standing in the center of the platform, the red smoke dissipating around him. The platform was littered with bodies. Berezovsky had hold of Scott’s shoulder and the barrel of the Makarov pistol was pressed against the side of his head. Scott stood absolutely motionless. The light filtering down through the blue skylights, one of them shattered now, barely reached the platform. The two of them were backlit, like ghostly images on a battlefield.

  “I know my wife and daughter are not upstairs.” Berezovsky’s voice echoed on the platform. “Katia’s your lover. You set her up in a beautiful apartment at the Dakota. She betrayed me. My daughter is a stranger. No doubt you have them hidden in a room somewhere on the platform. I will find them and kill them. But what to do about your son?”

  “Let him go,” McCall said, dragging himself closer, the Sig Sauer pointed down at the platform floor.

  “Men like us cannot have families. It is too dangerous. Both of us should have known better.”

  “Let my son go and you can walk out of here,” McCall said.

  “You would never allow me to do that. I was told you’d resigned from The Company. That you’d come to finally understand your real enemies were your own people. I was proud of you. A shame that wasn’t true. Throw down your gun.”

  McCall remained unmoving.

  Berezovsky prodded Scott in the head with the barrel of the Makarov.

  His voice was suddenly raging.

  “Do it now!”

  McCall opened his shaking fingers and tossed the Sig Sauer onto the platform floor.

  He tossed it in a particular place, calculating the distance it would take him to reach it when he threw himself to the ground.

  “I did resign,” McCall said, stalling for time.

  “And yet you murdered an employee of mine outside of Prague. To save the life of an American government official.”

  “That was a bonus.”

  “I see. No doubt you felt some closure about Elena Petrov in ending Durković’s life. He did indeed kill her. But he was acting on my orders. So you see, there will be no escape from your pain, Mr. McCall. Not that it matters now. After I kill your son, who doesn’t even know you, you will die. I will open another nightclub. I will find a new assassin. Life goes on.”

  “Not for you,” McCall said.

  His eyes had flicked beyond Berezovsky’s figure.

  Out of the ghostly darkness behind him Katia had appeared. She was holding the Beretta Storm 9 mm that McCall had given to Natalya in both hands, pointed at her husband’s back. She halted and her hands stopped shaking.

  Berezovsky could not have heard anything, but he started to turn, never taking the gun barrel from Scott’s head.

  Katia shot him twice in the back.

  Berezovsky staggered.

  Scott twisted out of his grasp and fell to his knees.

  Berezovsky brought the Makarov pistol back around to the boy’s head.

  McCall dived to the ground, grabbed the Sig Sauer, and fired three times. All three bullets hit Berezovsky’s forehead. The force of them spun him to the edge of the platform. He toppled over it onto the tracks.

  Eleven hostiles dead.

  McCall tried to get up, but couldn’t put any weight on his right leg. Scott scrambled to his feet and ran to his father’s side. He gripped him under his left arm and hauled him up to his feet. McCall transferred all of the weight onto his left leg and hung on to his son.

  It was as close to a hug as they’d probably ever get.

  McCall looked past him. Natalya had walked up behind Katia. She took her mother’s trembling hand as she looked at Berezovsky spread-eagled on the subway tracks. Neither of them spoke.

  “There’s an Adidas sports bag in that hut at the other end of the platform,” McCall said to Scott. “Can you get it?”

  Scott nodded and ran down the platform, jumping over the bodies there. He ducked inside the hut and came out carrying the sports bag. He ran back to where McCall stood.

  “How about that M16 rifle? Can you reach it?”

  Scott looked at the tracks.

  “Sure.”

  He ran to the edge, knelt down, reached far out, and picked up the fallen M16 by the barrel.

  “Got it.”

  He jogged back to McCall, knelt, and slid the M16 into the sports bag. McCall took the tear gas revolver out of his belt. Scott took it from his father’s shaking hands, dropped it into the sports bag, and picked the bag up. Katia and Natalya walked to where McCall and Scott stood. Katia took off the belt of her dress, knelt down and tied it tightly at the top of McCall’s leg wound as a tourniquet. The bullet had gone through his right shoulder, but there was a lot of blood. McCall pulled up his turtleneck and jammed a handkerchief over the wound. Rachid’s bullet that had hit his left arm had also gone through the skin at the top and the bleeding there was minimal. Katia finished tying the tourniquet. McCall nodded and pulled her to her feet. He motioned to the stairs behind him. There were no bodies on those stairs. Scott supported McCall on one side, still carrying the Adidas bag, Natalya on the other. Katia led the way.

  No one spoke.

  In the echoing tomb of the City Hall subway station they walked up the marble stairs to the dark main ticket room, up the stairs to the street, emerging from the enclosure that had ENTRANCE still stamped on it and out into the New York night.

  CHAPTER 49

  McCall waited until they were four blocks away from the old station before he stopped. The blood had congealed over his right eye. The tourniquet on his leg had stopped the bleeding there. But his right shoulder and left arm were leaking blood. He wouldn’t be able to walk another ten feet. He took out his iPhone and dialed.

  Twenty minutes later Jimmy pulled up in a 2009 silver Lexus. He got out, tugging a Yankees jacket tighter around him. There was no one else on the street. Traffic was light. Katia and Natalya stood together, shivering a little in the cold, but mostly with shock. Scott stood with a hand on McCall’s arm, steadying him.

  “Sorry to get you out of bed, Jimmy,” McCall said. “I’m sure Sarah didn’t appreciate a call from me after midnight.”

  “To be honest, McCall, she doesn’t appreciate a call from you at any hour.”

  “This is Katia Rossovkaya and her daughter, Natalya. They’re living at the Dakota. They need a ride home. I need to know no one’s waiting for them at their apartment. Are you armed?”

  “If I’d taken a gun to meet with you I’d be divorced.”

  McCall took the Sig Sauer P238 out of his pocket and handed it to him.

  He kept losing guns.

  “Does she need to go to the hospital?” Jimmy asked, looking at Katia’s face.

  Katia spoke directly to McCall. “Natalya will look after me. She always has. Alexei was my husband.”

  “I know,” McCall said.

  “He used to beat me regularly.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “No,” she said softly. “Not anymore.”

  “Who’s this?” Jimmy asked, indicating Scott, but McCall was pretty sure he knew.

  “My son, Scott. He needs to go home, too.”

  “No problem.”

  Jimmy looked at the Adidas sports bag that Scott was still carrying. He knew what was in it. He popped the trunk, took the sports bag from Scott, dropped it into the trunk, and slammed it.

  “Get in.”

  Katia and Natalya climbed into the back of the Lexus, then Scott. McCall slid painfully into the front passenger seat. Jimmy got behind the wheel. He didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t comment on McCall’s face, his injured right leg, or the fact there was blood soaking through his clothes. He just pulled away from the curb.

  Jimmy dropped Katia and Natalya at the Dakota. There were no good-byes. They walked quickly into the lobby, Natalya supporting her mother. Jimmy walked with them, disappeared for five minutes, then c
ame out, got back into the Lexus, and drove away.

  “All clear.”

  McCall made his second call when Jimmy turned onto Park Avenue. The Blakes lived at 1000 Park Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street. Five minutes later Jimmy made a U-turn and pulled up to the green-shaded entrance. Cassie was waiting in the doorway.

  Scott leaned forward from the back.

  “I knew you’d come for me, Dad,” was all he said.

  Then he got out of the Lexus.

  But the words meant everything to McCall.

  Cassie ran out of the apartment building and hugged Scott fiercely. Tom Blake came out behind her. Scott squirmed out of his mother’s embrace and Blake hugged him.

  “Not going to get out?” Jimmy asked.

  McCall shook his head.

  Cassie looked at the car. Jimmy hit a button and the window on McCall’s side purred down. Cassie started to move forward. McCall just raised a hand in acknowledgment. She stopped and locked eyes with him. Her eyes were filled with tears.

  She mouthed the words: Thank you.

  “Let’s go,” McCall said.

  Jimmy sighed and hit the button for the window to ascend and pulled away.

  * * *

  It was Granny, of all people, who came to see McCall in the ER at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital on 168th Street. It was just after dawn and McCall was in a cubicle putting on his shirt. He was doing everything in slow motion to avoid pulling out stitches or sending pain rocketing through his head and body. Dr. Bennett’s son Brian, who looked like a younger edition of his dad, had patched McCall up without asking any questions. They’d talked a little bit about his father, Doc Adams of the subterranean tunnels. His son wanted him to come back to the upworld and stay there. He worried about his dad’s own health, down in those sewers. McCall promised to see what he could do. The bleary, dedicated night staff were giving way to the day shift. The ER was quiet. Granny and McCall kept their voices low, but there was no one close enough to hear them.

  “I thought I’d be fighting my way through a phalanx of cops,” Granny said. “You walk into the ER just after midnight with your face all cut up and how many gunshot wounds?”

  “Three,” McCall said. “The one on my left arm was really a deep graze, cut a groove along the bicipital aponeurosis. The one in the right shoulder went through. Not much damage. They dug the bullet out of my right leg. I got out of the OR about an hour ago. They wanted to move me upstairs to a room, but I checked myself out. I left my jacket down here and I wanted to thank Dr. Benneit’s son.”

  “So the ER doc who treated you is so used to seeing victims of multiple gunshot wounds in this area, he didn’t feel the need to call the police?”

  “He’s the son of an acquaintance of mine. Also a doctor. Treats patients in the subterranean tunnels below the city. He’d already alerted his son I might be coming in for treatment. If I was still alive.”

  Granny shook his head. “You can always surprise me, McCall. I hear the body count in City Hall station was eleven. Same ones we faced at Grand Central?”

  “Some of them.”

  “The cops think it was a rival Chechen gang or maybe even the Russian Mafia who took them out. I understand one of the dead bad guys lying on the tracks was Alexei Berezovsky. Control will probably take the credit for that. He’ll say he turned you around and you came back in from the cold and took Berezovsky out for The Company.”

  “He can say whatever he wants.”

  McCall picked up his jacket and shrugged it on. Granny knew better than to offer to help.

  “Did he bring you in for one last mission?” Granny asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s good. I like thinking of you roaming the city looking for windmills to tilt at. Where are you going now?”

  “Home.”

  “Any more Chechens waiting for you there?”

  “They don’t know where I live.”

  “But you can’t be sure of that.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  Granny put an arm around McCall’s shoulders and they walked together through the somnambulant ER.

  “I heard a murmur about hostages in the City Hall station,” Granny said. “One of them was your son.”

  “All safe.”

  “Maybe your ex-wife will forgive you now for past sins.”

  “I doubt it,” McCall said.

  Granny had a 1966 black Ford Mustang convertible at the curb. It was in mint condition. It had a police sign on the windshield as it was illegally parked beside a fire hydrant. McCall slid gingerly into the passenger seat. Granny jumped behind the wheel, tossed the POLICE ACTIVITY sign into the back, and pulled away.

  He drove straight to Crosby Street. McCall didn’t ask how he knew his address. They went up to the third floor together.

  “Wait here,” Granny said.

  McCall didn’t argue and handed him the apartment key.

  Granny went in and came back out again within twenty seconds.

  “Clear.”

  He put an arm around McCall’s shoulders to support him into the apartment. The living room was exactly as McCall had left it. He glanced through the archway into the kitchen. Everything was in its place, what there was of it. Granny helped him into the bedroom. McCall sat down on the bed. Granny looked around the austere room, no pictures on the walls, no books on the bedside tables, no ornaments of any kind.

  “Cosy.”

  He walked over to the dresser where the two photos still sat against the wall of Serena Johanssen and Elena Petrov. He nodded and smiled a little sadly and glanced at his watch.

  “I gotta go.”

  “Thanks for coming to get me, Granny.”

  “Not a problem. You need me, McCall, you know where to find me.”

  Granny moved to the doorway to the living room.

  “The girl you sent to keep an eye on me in Prague?” McCall said. “Did you know her name, Andel, means ‘angel’ in Czech?”

  Granny turned back. He took off his square-cut glasses and polished them on a handkerchief. His bright blue eyes regarded McCall frankly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Granny put the glasses back on and left.

  McCall thought he was telling the truth.

  He hoped so.

  * * *

  McCall slept for two hours, then Jimmy picked him up. He dropped him outside the Chase Bank on Madison Avenue, popped the trunk, and handed him the Adidas sports bag. McCall walked into the bank. Bill Littman personally showed him down to the vault room, then left him alone. McCall transferred the M16, the tear gas gun, and more tear gas cartridges from the Adidas bag back into the safe-deposit box. He put the $250,000 back into their envelopes and rang the bell. Littman came back down and they both used keys to return the safe-deposit box to its slot.

  Littman smiled at McCall with secret knowledge.

  When McCall walked out of the bank Jimmy was still waiting for him, double-parked with the engine running.

  “Want a lift somewhere?”

  “No, I’m going to take a stroll through the park.”

  “How’s the right leg?”

  “I can walk on it.”

  “Sarah says come to dinner one night. You’re alone here in New York. She makes an awesome lasagne.”

  “I’ll have to pass, but thank her.”

  “You can’t isolate yourself forever, McCall. You reached out to me. To Mickey. You have friends, whether you like it or not.”

  Jimmy got into the Lexus and drove away.

  McCall walked up Seventy-seventh Street, over Fifth Avenue and up to Central Park. His right leg hurt, but not too badly. He walked across the park to Strawberry Fields just beyond the Seventy-second Street entrance. He sat on a bench to wait for her near the Imagine Mosaic built in honor of John Lennon, adorned with flowers donated from a hundred and twenty countries. He could see the imposing Dakota building from where he sat.

&n
bsp; Katia entered the park and spotted him immediately. She was wearing a dark blue trench coat over jeans and a black pullover. As she got closer McCall could see her left eye had opened and the swelling around it had gone down a little. She’d put on makeup to cover the bruises on her face. Her lip was still split, but not bleeding.

  She sat down on the bench beside McCall and looked over at the John Lennon Memorial.

  “I didn’t know there was a tribute to him here.”

  “I guess this was his favorite area in the park, he and his wife.”

  There was silence between them for long moments.

  “I keep expecting the police to come knocking on my door,” she said.

  “They won’t. They don’t know what happened at City Hall station except there was a firefight and eleven men were killed. They don’t know about the hostages and they’re not going to find out. My ex-wife works for the district attorney’s office, but I guarantee you she won’t be having a heart-to-heart talk with her boss. Berezovsky made it personal. She’ll keep it that way. The police will investigate, but they’ll hit a dead end.”

  “Your friend Jimmy asked me to give this back to you.”

  She opened her purse and started to take out the Sig Sauer P238 with the Rosewood motif. McCall stopped her.

  “You keep it. Home protection. I’ll get you a permit. Where’d you learn how to shoot?”

  “My father taught me at our farm in Shali. I was six years old. He said you cannot pick up a gun unless you know how to aim and hit what you’re firing at. Of course, then it was pieces of wood balanced on the top of our fence in the backyard.”

  “He was right,” McCall said, his mind momentarily going somewhere else. “Rossovkaya is your family name?”

  “Yes.”

  Katia closed her purse over the Sig Sauer pistol. She had still not looked at him. But now she reached out a hand and he took it tightly.

  “I shot the father of my only child in the back,” she said softly.

  “I wouldn’t be sitting here if you hadn’t.”

  “I loved him once. I was very young and impressionable. A country girl. I got pregnant with Natalya right away. He was very caring at first. But I knew. Even then, I could sense the darkness in him. He kept the business side of things away from me. But I watched that darkness overtake him.”