“I want to propose a deal,” he said.
CHAPTER XVII
The road through Central Park was crowded with bicyclists and pedestrians, people walking or riding north toward Strawberry Fields. Many carried burning candles or glowing flashlights, and rainbow flags flapped in the chilly wind. Among the Iffers were clumps of young toughs in leather jackets; Pierce saw the golden glint of a Wabbie symbol on one man’s baseball cap. For a few minutes the Plymouth made slow, steady progress as part of a line of cars. Then someone noticed what kind of car it was, and threw a rock. It bounced off the window on Jasmin’s side, making her wince.
“I was afraid of that,” Pierce muttered. Another rock struck the windshield, and in the glare of the headlights he saw pale, hostile faces turn toward the Plymouth. Something banged against the right near fender.
“They know it’s an Agency car,” Jasmin said. “How do we get out of this?”
“Reach under the seat. Should be two gas masks. Good. Put one on and pass me the other.” Another rock thumped on the roof. “We’re both getting out on my side,” he went on, and then pulled the mask over his head. It was an Agency special, with a non-fogging, shatterproof faceplate. “Ready?”
“God, no, but let’s get it over with.”
Pierce pulled the car sharply to the right, onto the sidewalk between two clusters of marchers. Tilting his seat all the way down, he reached back and pulled down the backseat cushion. The ignition key opened a lock; in a compartment between the backseat and the trunk was an armoury with an Agency book value of close to five thousand dollars. Pierce passed two grenades to Jasmin, then pulled out a couple of clips of Mallory.15 flechettes, a Streetsweeper shotgun with a twenty-round clip, and a five-cell flashlight. More stones were banging on the car, and angry faces pressed close against the windows.
Pierce pressed a button on the dash. Tear gas sprayed out thirty feet from nozzles under the sides of the Plymouth. The breeze would dissipate it quickly, but it cleared the immediate vicinity in seconds.
“Now,” Pierce said, pulling Jasmin after him.
The cars behind the Plymouth had stopped suddenly as the gas reached their drivers. The marchers meanwhile, screaming and crying, were retreating into the park, trying to get away from the blinding mist.
“Keep the grenades in your pockets,” Pierce shouted through the faceplate. “Take the flashlight. Hang on to my hand and don’t let go.”
She obeyed, feeling the gas prickle and sting on her exposed skin. Pierce dumped his extra ammunition in the chest pocket of his anorak, and casually slid the stubby-barrelled shotgun up the anorak’s right sleeve. The muzzle, protruding a couple of inches, he cupped in his hand.
Walking quickly, they left the road and followed the marchers into the darkness. Dead grass hissed under their feet. Soon they found a footpath along the lake and joined other people hurrying north. Pierce pulled off his mask and tossed it into the bushes; Jaz did the same.
“Now we’re just another couple of marchers,” he murmured.
She coughed as a wisp of tear gas caught in her throat. “Get me out of here.”
“As fast as I can.”
A helicopter clattered overhead, its searchlights sweeping over the lake and then locking onto the path. Over a hundred people squinted up at it and then walked on. The buildings overlooking the park were dim outlines against the black sky; a few windows showed the glow of candles or lanterns. Sirens wailed in the distance; as the helicopter moved on, the ceaseless rumble of the city again filled the darkness.
“Clement really timed it,” Pierce said quietly. “Another day, and we’d have been home free. The Wabbies would’ve knocked off ExComm, we’d have knocked off the Wabbies, and Bill 402 would’ve passed in a matter of hours.”
“Is Eric that important?”
“He’s supposed to coordinate the whole thing. He’s the only one who really knows what’s going on.”
They could begin to hear loudspeakers blaring in the darkness up ahead: the Iffers had wisely brought their own generator, and someone’s amplified speech echoed raggedly off the dark buildings along Central Park West. Pierce remembered the Wabbie demonstration in Mountain Home.
“You’re hurting my hand.”
“Sorry.” He loosened his grip, but didn’t let go. People were thick around them now, many holding candles or flashlights. Faces floated, glowing, in the darkness. Angry voices called out far ahead, almost drowned out by the loudspeakers. Then the loudspeakers went dead with a squawk, and a pistol went off with an unmistakable crack. People started screaming.
“Damn. Turn on the flash. We’d better cut across before we get to the Iffers.”
Now she guided him behind the pool of white light as they made their way through shrubs and little groves, their feet crackling through drifts of dead leaves. Off to the north, more shots sputtered low over Strawberry Fields.
“They’ll probably gas everyone,” Pierce said. “Let’s get out of here.”
She quickened her steps, grunting a little when a branch struck her in the face or a root tripped her. The weight of the grenades was obscenely heavy in the pockets of her duffel coat.
Now they crossed another path; hundreds of people were running south, away from the demonstration. The helicopter had dropped a flare, throwing yellow-orange light over the park above the coils of tear gas.
“Get him!” someone bawled, as a young man ran past Pierce and Jaz. The man was wearing an old army fatigue jacket with a rainbow armband; six teenagers, with shaved heads and wearing black turtleneck sweaters, were close behind him. They carried aluminium baseball bats.
Pierce let the shotgun slide out of his sleeve as he stepped into the path of the teenagers. The flare swung lazily down under its parachute; the boys saw Pierce bring the shotgun up to his shoulder. They stopped.
“Put the bats down.”
People behind the teenagers, seeing the shotgun, scattered frantically. The teenagers obeyed, their faces shadowed by the flare behind them.
“Turn around and run like hell!” Pierce roared.
They ran. A second later Pierce grabbed Jaz’s hand again and led her at a trot toward Central Park West.
People were pouring out of the park toward the west, many weeping and coughing from tear gas, some bleeding. Gunshots echoed off the Dakota and other apartment buildings facing Strawberry Fields. Pierce led Jaz through the jammed traffic and down West 86th. Within half a block they were groping their way in blackness; using the flash might invite snipers or police. As they crossed Broadway the helicopter passed overhead, and its searchlights revealed dozens of people huddled in doorways or peering from windows. They ducked back, away from the light, as Pierce broke into a run up the west side of Broadway.
“They’ll shoot us,” Jaz protested.
“No. Come on.” He wasn’t bothering to conceal the shotgun, and two Iffers, seeing it in the glare of the searchlights, turned and bolted east across Broadway.
Two blocks north, Pierce and Jaz stopped in the doorway of an abandoned delicatessen. She was panting from the run.
“Why are we going this way? The building’s back on 84th.”
“We’d never get in from the street. We’re going a different way.”
“Ah — through the repository.”
“Right.”
“Can we do it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do it?”
He turned to look at her, his face in shadow. “That’s why I need you.”
“Oh…Wait a minute, Jerry. If you’re afraid of cracking up in there, I don’t think I want to be around.”
“I won’t crack up. You’re just insurance.”
“Insurance my ass. If you crack up, what good am I going to be? Think I can rescue Wigner on my own, plus hold your hand?”
“Just get me through the tunnel, Jaz. I’ll look after the rest.”
“Christ.”
At 100th Street they turned west, crossing West End Avenue in to
tal darkness. Across the river the lights of New Jersey still burned. At Riverside Drive Pierce guided Jaz across the road to the edge of the park, and they walked quickly south.
“I had to learn the whole underground layout of this neighbourhood,” he explained quietly. “Good thing I did. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble finding the manhole.”
Close to 96th Street, the manhole cover was exactly where he had found it on Ulro. Pierce turned on the flashlight and swept it quickly around them. Trees, stumps, and shrubs surrounded the site, and a couple of concrete benches stood down a little path.
“It’ll look different in a couple of centuries. Come on.”
The cover was heavy but manageable. Pierce lifted it and swung it aside into the dirt beside the path. He paused for a moment, listening to the occasional shots ringing out to the south. The immediate neighbourhood was very quiet, and the apartment house windows showed no lights.
“I’ll go first,” he said, slinging the Streetsweeper over his shoulder. He used the flashlight to find the top rungs of the ladder, then passed it to Jaz. “It’s not very far.”
She stood in the darkness, listening to his feet rasping on the metal bars. At the bottom, his footsteps echoed slightly.
“Okay,” he called softly.
The rungs were cold and slippery. After she had descended for what seemed a long time, hands gripped her waist and she almost screamed.
“You’re down,” Pierce said calmly. “Flashlight.”
“This is crazy. I want to go back.”
“God, so do I.”
“Well, let’s go.”
“We can’t. Everyone’s counting on us.”
“Bullshit. Nobody even knows where we are, and nobody cares.”
“We’ve got to get Eric out of there. Come on.”
She shivered in the damp darkness, listening to the drip of water from the roof of the tunnel. Pierce took her hand and led her down the tunnel, following the bright ellipse of the flashlight beam. When they reached the doorway, Pierce started shaking.
“Through here. Open it.” His voice was hoarse.
She tugged at the handle, which moved silently and easily. The door swung open, and air of a different scent puffed coldly in their faces.
“Now you have to take the flashlight. Hold my hand. You have to guide me.”
“Why?”
“I’m scared. I don’t want to look.”
“Jerry, it’s okay. It’s just a tunnel, nothing’s wrong with it.”
“Do what I said.”
In the reflected light of the flash, she saw he had closed his eyes. He did not look frightened, Jaz thought; more like someone grief-stricken. She took his hand.
“Okay, let’s go. It’ll be fine.”
They walked slowly down the tunnel, side by side. Jaz remembered going on a blind walk in some junior high class, and felt the same awkward solicitude. This time, though, it was mixed with fear. She thought of quitting, going back, and decided Pierce would be more dangerous then than he would be if he cracked up in the tunnel.
“Almost there. Almost to the door.” Her voice echoed in the metallic silence.
“I had to blow it open on Ulro,” Pierce whispered.
“God. Is that why we brought the grenades?”
“Best I could do.”
“Okay, stop.” She tried to release her hand from his, but he clung to it. “Jerry, I need to use both hands now, okay? I’m just going to try to open the door. Here, you hold the flashlight. Right there. Right. Good.”
The door opened with a scratching noise on the concrete floor. Beyond it was more blackness, colder still, and a musty smell.
“Left.” Pierce’s voice was barely audible. Obediently Jaz guided him through the doorway and turned to the left. The floor underfoot was covered in fine silt, dotted with tiny craters where water droplets had fallen from the overarching roof.
Something living made a noise: a quick, scratchy noise. Pierce gasped.
“Hey, come on, Jerry, it’s just a rat or a mouse. God, you’re scaring me more than anything else down here. Come on.”
They shuffled across the silted floor, staying on the edge of the ellipse of illumination. Occasionally Jaz lifted the beam and saw only more silt, more damp stone walls, the arching vault of the roof. Pierce said nothing.
Something glinted up ahead: the north wall of the repository.
“What’s that noise?” Pierce demanded.
She listened. “Sounds like an air conditioner.”
“Must be. Good.”
A minute later they stood by a plain cement-block wall. Protruding from it at shoulder height was an air conditioner, its top covered with caked dust. The silt below it was wet from condensation.
“Isn’t there a door or something?”
“No. Put me next to the air conditioner.”
She guided him to it and he put out his hands, gripping its sides. Then he heaved himself away from it, and its supports squeaked from the strain. Twice more, and on the fourth heave the whirring metal box suddenly broke away from the wall and crashed into the mud below it. Light stabbed out from the rectangular hole.
“Okay?” Pierce asked. “Can you see inside?”
“Wait till my eyes get used to the light. Yes. Is anyone going to be in there?”
“Just us. I’m going to boost you in. Then help me get in.”
She scrambled through the hole, supporting herself on the top of a filing cabinet as her feet found the floor. The light seemed less intense now, just a scattering of fluorescent panels in the false ceiling. The ordinariness of the place, with its neutral lighting and pastel cabinets, seemed stranger to her than the tunnels.
Jaz turned and took Pierce’s hand as he hoisted himself in. His eyes were still tightly shut, and he was breathing fast.
“Take a deep breath,” Jaz commanded, but he ignored her. As he wriggled through the hole, his weight put her off balance and she stepped back. Pierce fell to the floor, hands out to stop his fall. Then he moaned.
“Jerry, are you hurt?” Jaz gripped his shoulders and helped him rise. He was shuddering, and his eyes were open but blank, with nothing in them but terror: That was what she had seen, she thought detachedly as she held him tightly. Deep in those calm eyes, simple terror. He shut his eyes but his expression did not change.
She picked up his shotgun and began pulling him along an aisle between two endless rows of filing cabinets. The repository looked natural and welcoming after the tunnels. Their footsteps clattered on the plastic-honeycomb flooring, and the hum of the fluorescents seemed loud. If anyone did show up — she did not know what she would do. The thought of using the shotgun seemed insane.
At a gap in the rows of filing cabinets, she turned left into a wider aisle that led straight to a broad door painted orange.
“We’re here,” she panted. Pierce seemed to be shivering with cold inside his tan anorak. “I’m going to open this door and then you’ve got to open your eyes, Jerry. You’ve got to open your eyes.”
“No. Please.”
“You bastard! I’ll leave you down here if you don’t open your eyes when we go through this door!”
She leaned on the handle and shoved. The door swung open on the access tunnel. It was just another corridor, with worn carpeting and cinder-block walls. It sloped up at a gently grade to another orange door almost a hundred yards away.
Pulling Pierce into the tunnel, Jaz shut the door firmly behind them.
“Here’s your shotgun. I’ve still got the grenades.”
He opened his eyes, blinked, and silently took the Streetsweeper. For a moment he stood still, breathing deeply and looking at nothing in particular.
“Thanks. It was worse than I thought it’d be. I’m okay now.”
“Sure,” she said quickly, with an anxious grin. “Now let’s go find Eric and get out of here, please.”
He led the way up the corridor. Beyond the door, he knew, was a small storeroom and then the subbas
ement where the I-Screen had been. An elevator was located on the north side of the subbasement, and beside it was a stairwell. The building’s emergency generator was one flight up, in a comer of the parking basement.
They reached the door; Pierce turned to her. “We’re going to have to look for him floor by floor. He’s probably not in the apartments, so that leaves the first three floors. If we’re lucky we’ll find someone who knows where he is, but more likely we’ll just have to check each floor and see how it goes.”
“What if we get in a fight?”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens.”
“No, you dope!” she hissed. “If we get in a fight, the whole building will know about it. We could get shot by some idiot while they’re moving Eric down a flight of stairs somewhere.”
He thought for a moment, and she saw the terror in his eyes recede but not disappear. Then he smiled slightly.
“Chances are no one in the building knows about this except the guys who took him. If we’re very relaxed, everything will be fine. Do you know anyone who lives here?”
“A couple of people, I guess. East 52nd doesn’t have much to do with these guys.”
“Okay, if anyone asks questions we’re looking for one of your friends. Just knowing the name should be enough.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Let’s go.”
The storeroom was a silent cube of metal shelving modules; beyond it was the subbasement. Pierce went first, and found no one. The I-Screen was still in place, but the room looked deserted. As he and Jaz crossed it, he ran his fingers over a control console: dust.
The stairs were equally quiet. Pierce tucked his shotgun up his sleeve again and looked out into the parking basement. A few cars stood there, but no guards. He could see that the gate was in place at the exit to Riverside Drive. They would assume that any assault or infiltration would come through the gate or through the main floor entrance; otherwise they would have locked the door to the repository as well.
The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2) Page 21
