Gone Tomorrow (35 page)

SEVENTY-FOUR

TWENTY MINUTES INTO MY FORTY I SAW THE NYPD’s counterterrorism squad begin to assemble. Good moves. They came in beat-up unmarked sedans and confiscated minivans full of dents and scrapes. I saw an off-duty taxicab park outside a coffee shop on 16th Street. I saw two guys climb out of the back and cross the road. Altogether I counted sixteen men, and I was prepared to accept that I had missed maybe four or five others. If I didn’t know better I would have suspected that a long late session in a martial arts gym had just let out. All the guys were young and fit and bulky and moved like trained athletes. They were all carrying gym bags. They were all inappropriately dressed. They had on Yankees warm-up jackets, or dark windbreakers like mine, or thin fleece parkas, like it was already November. To hide their Kevlar vests, I guessed, and maybe their badges, which would be on chains around their necks.

None of them eyeballed me directly but I could tell they had spotted me and identified me. They formed up in ones and twos and threes all around me and then they stepped back in the dark and disappeared. They just melted into the scenery. Some sat on benches, some lay in nearby doorways, some went places I didn’t see.

Good moves.

Thirty minutes into my forty I was feeling pretty optimistic.

Five minutes later, I wasn’t.

Because the feds showed up.

Two more cars stopped, right on Union Square West. Black Crown Vics, waxed and bright and shiny. Eight men stepped out. I sensed the NYPD guys stirring. Sensed them staring through the dark, sensed them glancing at each other, sensed them asking:
Why the hell are those guys here?

I was good with the NYPD. Not so, with the FBI and the Department of Defense.

I glanced at Gandhi. He told me nothing at all.

I pulled out the phone again and hit the green button to bring up Theresa Lee’s number. She was the last call I had made. I hit the green button again to dial. She answered immediately.

I said, ‘The feds are here. How did that happen?’

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Either they’re monitoring our dispatcher or one of our guys is looking for a better job.’

‘Who takes precedence tonight?’

‘They do. Always. You should get the hell out of there.’

I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket. The eight guys from the Crown Vics stepped into the shadows. The square went quiet. There was a faulty letter in a lit-up sign to my left. It sputtered on and off at random intervals. I heard rats in the mulch behind me.

I waited.

Two minutes. Three.

Then thirty-nine minutes into my forty I sensed human movement far to my right. Footfalls, disturbed air, holes in the darkness. I watched and saw figures moving through shadows and dim light.

Seven men.

Which was good news. The more now, the fewer later.

And which was flattering. Lila was risking more than half her force, because she thought I would be hard to take.

All seven men were small, and neat, and wary. They were all dressed like me, in dark clothes baggy enough to conceal weapons. But they weren’t going to shoot me. Lila’s need to know was like body armour. They saw me and paused thirty yards away.

I sat still.

In theory this should have been the easy part. They approach me, the NYPD guys move in, I walk away and go about my business.

But not with the feds on the scene. At best they would want all of us. At worst they would want me more than them. I knew where the memory stick was. Lila’s people didn’t.

I sat still.

Thirty yards away the seven men separated. Two stood still, anchored half-right of my position. Two scooted left and looped around and headed for my other flank. Three walked on, to get around behind me.

I stood up. The two men on my right started to move in. The two on my left were halfway through their flanking manoeuvre. The three behind me were out of sight. I guessed the NYPD guys were already on their feet. I guessed the feds were moving too.

A fluid situation.

I ran.

Straight ahead, to the subway gazebo twenty feet in front of me. Down the stairs. I heard feet clattering after me. Loud echoes. A big crowd. Probably close to forty people, all strung out in a crazy Pied Piper chase.

I made it into a tiled corridor and out again into the underground plaza. No violinist this time, just stale air and trash and one old guy pushing a broom with a threadbare head a yard wide. I ran past him and stopped and skidded on my new soles and changed direction and headed for the uptown R train. I jumped the turnstile and ran on to the platform and all the way to the end.

And stopped.

And turned.

Behind me three separate groups followed one after the other. First came Lila Hoth’s seven men. They raced towards me. They saw I had nowhere to go. They stopped. I saw looks of wolfish satisfaction on their faces. Then I saw their inevitable conclusion: too good to be true. Some thoughts are clear in any language. They turned suddenly and saw the NYPD counter-terrorism squad hustling right behind them.

And right behind the NYPD guys were four of the eight federal agents.

No one else on the platform. No civilians. On the downtown platform opposite was a lone guy on a bench. Young. Maybe drunk. Maybe worse. He was staring across at the sudden commotion. It was twenty minutes to four in the morning. The guy looked dazed. Like he wasn’t making much sense out of what he was seeing.

It looked like a gang war. But what he was actually seeing was a fast and efficient takedown by the NYPD. None of their guys stopped running. They all piled in yelling with weapons drawn and badges visible and they exploited their big physiques and their three-to-one numerical advantage and simply swamped the seven men. No contest. No contest at all. They clubbed all seven to the ground and threw them on their fronts and slammed cuffs on their wrists and hauled them away. No pauses. No delays. No Miranda warnings, just maximum speed and brutality. Perfect tactics. Literally seconds later they were gone again. Echoes clattered and died. The station went quiet. The guy opposite was still staring but suddenly he was seeing nothing except a silent platform with me standing alone at one end and the four federal agents about thirty feet from me. Nothing between us. Nothing at all. Just harsh white light and empty space.

Nothing happened for the best part of a minute. Then across the tracks I saw the other four federal agents arrive on the downtown platform. They took up position directly opposite me and stood still. They all smiled a little, like they had made a smart move in a game of chess. Which they had. No point in more cross-track exploits. The four agents on my side were between me and the exit. At my back was a blank white wall and the mouth of the tunnel.

Checkmate.

I stood still. Breathed the tainted underground air and listened to the faint roar of ventilation and the rumble of distant trains elsewhere in the system.

The agent nearest me took a gun out from under his coat.

He took a step towards me.

He said, ‘Raise your hands.’

SEVENTY-FIVE

NIGHT-TIME SCHEDULES. TWENTY-MINUTE GAPS BETWEEN trains. We had been down there maybe four minutes. Therefore arithmetically the maximum delay before the next train would be sixteen minutes. The minimum would be no delay at all.

The minimum delay didn’t happen. The tunnel stayed dark and quiet.

‘Raise your hands,’ the lead agent called again. He was a white man of about forty. Certainly ex-military. DoD, not FBI. Similar type to the three I had already met. But maybe a little older. Maybe a little wiser. Maybe a little better. Maybe this was an A team, not a B team.

‘I’ll shoot,’ the lead agent called. But he wouldn’t. Empty threat. They wanted the memory stick. I knew where it was. They didn’t.

Median delay before the next train, eight minutes. As likely to be more as less. The guy with the gun took another step forward. His three colleagues followed. Across the tracks the other four stood still. The young guy on the bench was watching, vacantly.

The tunnel stayed dark and quiet.

The lead agent said, ‘All this hassle could be over a minute from now. Just tell us where it is.’

I said, ‘Where what is?’

‘You know what.’

‘What hassle?’

‘We’re running out of patience. And you’re missing one important factor.’

‘Which is?’

‘Whatever intellectual gifts you have, they’re hardly likely to be unique. In fact they’re probably fairly ordinary. Which means that if you figured it out, we can figure it out too. Which means your continued existence would become surplus to requirements.’

‘So go ahead,’ I said. ‘Figure it out.’

He raised his gun higher and straighter. It was a Glock 17. Maybe twenty-five ounces fully loaded. By far the lightest service pistol on the market. Made partly from plastic. The guy had short thick arms. He could probably hold the pose indefinitely.

‘Last chance,’ he said.

Across the tracks the young guy got off his bench and walked away. Long inconsistent strides, not entirely in a straight line. He was prepared to waste a two-dollar Metrocard swipe in exchange for a quiet life. He made it to the exit and disappeared from sight.

No witnesses.

Median delay before the next train, maybe six minutes.

I said, ‘I don’t know who you are.’

The guy said, ‘Federal agents.’

‘Prove it.’

The guy kept his gun aimed at my centre mass but nodded over his shoulder at the agent behind him, who stepped out and moved forward into the no-man’s-land between us. He paused there and put his hand in his inside jacket pocket and came back with a leather badge holder. He held it eye-height to me and let it fall open. There were two separate pieces of ID in it. I couldn’t read either one of them. They were too far away, and both of them were behind scratched plastic windows.

I stepped forward.

He stepped forward.

I got within four feet of him and saw a standard Defense Intelligence Agency ID in the upper window of the wallet. It looked genuine and it was in date. In the lower window was some kind of a warrant or commission that stated the holder was to be afforded every assistance because he was acting directly for the President of the United States.

‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Beats working for a living.’

I stepped back.

He stepped back.

The lead agent said, ‘No different than you were doing, back in the day.’

‘Back in prehistory,’ I said.

‘What is this, an ego thing?’

Median delay before the next train, five minutes.

‘It’s a practical thing,’ I said. ‘If you want something done properly, you do it yourself.’

The guy dropped the angle of his arm below the horizontal. Now he was aiming at my knees.

‘I’ll shoot,’ he said. ‘You don’t think or talk or remember with your legs.’

No witnesses.

If all else fails, start talking.

I asked, ‘Why do you want it?’

‘Want what?’

‘You know what.’

‘National security.’

‘Offence or defence?’

‘Defence, of course. It would ruin our credibility. It would set us back years.’

‘You think?’

‘We know.’

I said, ‘Keep working on those intellectual gifts.’

He aimed his gun more precisely. At my left shin.

He said, ‘I’ll count to three.’

I said, ‘Good luck with that. Tell me if you get stuck along the way.’

He said, ‘One.’

Then: the rails hissed in the track bed next to me. Strange metallic harmonic sounds speeding ahead of a train way back in the tunnel. The harmonics were chased all the way by the push of hot air and a deeper rumbling. A curve in the tunnel wall was lit up by a headlight. Nothing happened for a long second. Then the train rushed into view, moving fast, canted over by the camber of the curve. It rocked and straightened and came on at speed and then the brakes bit down and moaned and shrieked and the train slowed and pulled in right alongside us, all bright shining stainless steel and hot light, hissing, grinding, and groaning.

An uptown R train.

Maybe fifteen cars, each one of them dotted with a small handful of passengers.

Witnesses.

I glanced back at the lead agent. His Glock was back under his coat.

We were at the north end of the platform. The R train uses older cars. Each car has four sets of doors. The lead car was halted right next to us. I was more or less in line with the first set of doors. The DoD guys were closer to sets three and four.

The doors opened, the whole length of the train.

Way down at the back end two people got out. They walked away and were gone.

The doors stayed open.

I turned to face the train.

The DoD guys turned to face the train.

I stepped forward.

They stepped forward.

I stopped.

They stopped.

Choices: I could get on through door one, whereupon they would get on through doors three and four.
Into the same car
.

We could ride together all night long. Or I could let the train go without me and spend a minimum twenty more minutes trapped with them on the same platform as before.

The doors stayed open.

I stepped forward.

They stepped forward.

I stepped into the car.

They stepped into the car.

I paused a beat and backed right out again. Back to the platform.

They backed out.

We all stood still.

The doors closed in front of me. Like a final curtain. The rubber bumpers thumped together.

I felt the draw of electricity in the air. Volts and amps. Massive demand. The motors spun up and whined. Five hundred tons of steel started to roll.

The R train uses older cars. They have toe boards and rain gutters. I ducked forward and hooked my fingers into the gutter and jammed my right toes on to the board. Then my left. I flattened myself against the metal and the glass. I hugged the car’s exterior curve like a starfish. The MP5 dug into my chest. I clung on, fingers and toes. The train moved. Breeze tugged at me. The hard edge of the tunnel came right at me. I held my breath and spread my hands and feet wider and ducked my head and laid my cheek against the glass. The train sucked me sideways into the tunnel with about six inches to spare. I glanced back past my locked elbow and saw the lead agent standing still on the platform, one hand in his hair, the other raising his Glock and then lowering it again.