The Darkest Day (18 page)

He ran. Sweat and rain made his shirt stick to his back. People and cars and buildings blurred in his peripheral vision. He looked ahead and ahead only. He knew they were chasing. Losing speed by looking back would not help him escape.

The cops were laden with heavy belts of equipment and weapons. Even without, they couldn’t run as fast as Victor. Few could. He turned a corner, extending his lead on them. He could outrun these two, but not every cop and federal agent in the city.

A market up ahead offered sanctuary. Traders were doing big business, taking cash, no shutdown electronic registers denying customers. The market was busy, so packed with people it was difficult to squeeze through. Tempers were frayed and Victor received pushes and elbows as he fought his way through.

A man shouted, ‘Watch where you’re going, dick,’ and shoved Victor in the shoulder blades with both hands.

He fell against a stall, knocking merchandise over and on to the ground. The owner yelled abuse at him as he stumbled away. He lost his balance, falling to his hands and knees, taking a couple of teenagers to the ground with him.

He was up and moving again before they had finished cursing at him.

Any moment now the cops would follow. He pushed on, picturing them debating which way he had gone having lost sight of him, but having the sense to know he would have headed for the cover provided by the market instead of remaining exposed and visible on the streets where he could be intercepted by backup.

He headed to a trader selling hats, fighting his way through the crowd. He grabbed one at random – then stopped and spent precious seconds picking a more suitable garment – and shoved bills into the trader’s hands, overpaying by several times to the man’s delight. Victor pulled the cap down over his head. He had no idea whether the motif was for a baseball team, a band or just a logo. He didn’t care. He cared only that the cap was a dark colour and the motif had been the plainest on offer.

He moved on, the brim of the cap pulled down low to help hide his face, but not so low it affected his vision. Disguising himself was no good if he couldn’t see threats coming his way.

The cap would make it harder for the cops to spot him, and even harder for the ones still looking for a man in a suit. Taking off the jacket had proved useful, but he realised he should be wearing a vest. That way he could remove his dress shirt when he was again identified. The scars on his arms would make him memorable, as would his muscle tone, but only at close range. From a distance, a man in an undershirt and baseball cap looked a lot different to a man in a suit.

He told himself if he got out of this situation, he was going to start wearing one.

He changed direction to avoid knocking over an old man, elbowed between two big guys in construction gear and saw a set of stairs leading down. He shoved and pushed and fought his way towards them, leaping over the railing to save a handful of seconds that could be the difference between death or capture at a later point.

He almost collided with a woman coming up them, but she flattened herself out of the way as he rushed past her.

He heard shouting voices nearby, incomprehensible against the background of sirens and the chatter of trade in the market, but he sensed they were police officers, maybe shouting directions or updates at one another or ordering civilians out of the way. Either way, they were near.

They didn’t know if he was carrying a gun but they would know he was dangerous. They would be scared and pumped up and all had handguns at the least or shotguns taken from their cruisers. Even a grazing bullet could end him here. Ripped clothes and blood would make it impossible for him to blend in.

And if they thought he was a terrorist, if they believed he planned an attack – or even if they weren’t thinking straight – they could shoot him on sight.

He collided into a squat cop coming round a corner.

Victor raised his arms, fast, ready to strike and break and maim and kill if necessary to facilitate his escape, but the cop was shouting:

‘
Clear the way
.’

Victor did as instructed and watched in silent disbelief as the cop rushed away from him while yelling into his radio that he was joining the hunt. The cap and lack of jacket had paid off.

‘Get out of here,’ the cop yelled to Victor without looking back. ‘Shit is going down.’

‘I saw a guy in a suit running towards the river,’ Victor called after him.

The cop raised high a meaty thumb so Victor could see, while he shouted into his radio. ‘Perp was seen heading to the river. Repeat: perp is heading to river.’

A block away Victor found a car he liked the look of. The streets were a lottery in terms of gridlock, but the cops were looking for a suspect on foot. He wrapped his belt around his elbow and smashed the passenger window. He cleared away some stubborn shards and reached inside to the door release. With a knee on the passenger seat, he leaned across to unlock the driver’s door. He then went round to climb behind the wheel and sit on a seat not covered in glass.

The car’s interior was a mess even before he had smashed the windows. Dust was embedded in the grooves of the dashboard and the footwells were full of rubbish. The exterior hadn’t been any better. The bodywork was smeared with grime and spotted with rust.

He tore the panel out from under the steering wheel and hot-wired it blind, knowing from long experience where to find the correct wires and how to cross them.

The car vibrated as the engine woke from its slumber. A sweep of the mirrors and quick look around told him no one had entered the area. For now, he was as safe as he could expect to be. A temporary respite, but he was glad of it all the same.

He eased the car out of the space, still cautious, still expecting an ambush.

His reflection looked back at him, tired but energised, hunted but focused.

In his rear-view, he saw a vehicle turn on to the street behind him. It skidded, spraying rainwater, because it had gone into the corner fast, and was now accelerating hard out of it, back end fishtailing. It was a dark blue Ford sedan. Anonymous, except for the antenna protruding from the roof.

A government vehicle, but not a cop car. Two silhouettes the other side of the windscreen had to be federal agents.

He gripped the wheel tight, arms rigid. Ahead, red tail lights glowed through the rain.

He floored it as he approached the intersection, trusting to speed as he shot across and through the slow-moving traffic. Headlights flashed around him. Horns sounded. He glimpsed vehicles braking and skidding and swerving to avoid him, creating unpredictable obstacles that hampered his pursuers.

The car clipped a parked sedan, sheering off metal. Its alarm sounded as Victor rebounded away. He controlled the steering wheel, avoiding a crossing pedestrian, tyres splashing through puddles, spraying up tall fountains of water. He punched the horn to warn the vehicles passing up ahead he was hurtling towards them.

Two cars heading in opposite directions heeded the warning and missed him as he shot between them, but caught each other as they swerved out of the way. Steel buckled and was torn away. Glass shattered. A bumper tumbled through the air. Shrieking tyres sent up clouds of smoke and misting rainwater. Debris scattered across the intersection.

The dark blue Ford hurtled along the street behind him.

Victor shifted into drive and accelerated away, rubber hissing and screeching, the car shaking and swerving. The Ford grew larger in his rear-view, the two silhouettes forming into two men, the passenger black, the driver white. Both suited. Both serious and determined.

He slid into a hard right and the Ford charged, but missed his rear bumper by inches. He worked the wheel and saw the guy driving the Ford doing the same, crossing over his hands as he fought to keep the car under control, going at speed on a slick surface. It clipped the kerb before he managed to control the Ford’s lateral movement.

By that time Victor was already fifty metres along the road, residential buildings flashing by.

Cold air rushing through the smashed-out passenger’s window made his eyes water. The rain soaked his hair and shirt. Pedestrians were blurred smudges of colour in his peripheral vision.

A stationary bus blocked the lane, the driver and passengers having long since abandoned it. Victor swerved around its left side. He jerked as the front wheel jumped the kerb for a second before dropping back down on to the road, hitting a puddle and splashing up a wall of dirty rainwater.

He saw no pursuing vehicle in his rear-view. No headlights sparkled through raindrops on the rear windscreen. He doubted he had lost it with such ease. He wasn’t prepared to fool himself into thinking so. It was still out there. Still close. Where?

The question was answered as he shot across an intersection and the Ford appeared at his side, swerving from the bisecting road.

Horns sounded as they rounded other cars moving at slow speeds, cautious and sensible drivers taking no risks with the lack of street lights and traffic lights.

The Ford nudged into the passenger side, denting bodywork and forcing Victor to fight the wheel to stay straight. The driver threw him a look of satisfaction that said
you’re mine.

The engine roared as he pushed the car for all it had. The Ford stayed with him, the newer vehicle having the advantage in horsepower and torque. He wasn’t going to lose it in a straight-line race.

He yanked the steering wheel, careering into the Ford as it had done to him. Steel buckled. The driver hadn’t expecting Victor to fight back, only to run. Rending metal shrieked. The impact took the Ford driver by surprise and he reacted too hard, fighting the wheel too much. Tyres skidded and screeched on the wet road. The Ford swayed in a lateral back and forth rhythm. The driver, panicking, fought harder to control it. The wrong thing to do.

He lost control. The Ford spun. Black smoke from burnt tyre rubber mixed with the mist of rainwater.

In his rear-view, Victor saw the Ford crash side-on into a parked taxi.

For now, he’d escaped. But the car was a dented, broken wreck. Still drivable, but its plate and description no doubt already gone out to every cop and federal agent in the city. A mile away, he brought the car to a juddering halt and ditched it on a quiet street beneath an overpass.

The air by the river was cold and refreshing. Victor drew in big lungfuls. Looking at the river made him aware of his thirst. His mouth and throat were both dry. He was hungry.

The blackout was helping him in several ways. Without street lights many roads were blocked by traffic or clogged with pedestrians, making the NYPD’s job more difficult. They were struggling to get enough manpower into the area, even if their resources weren’t already strained dealing with an overload of emergency calls. Otherwise there might be forty or more cops in the area by now, sealing it off and searching for him.

He walked away from the car. Even if they weren’t here yet, more agents or cops would be on the way.

Victor headed south. He allowed himself to slow down to a walk. The chase had elevated his body temperature and he was sweating in an attempt to cool down. That would be a problem if not for the rain coming down hard disguising his body’s attempt to regulate itself.

He was fit and as well conditioned as a professional athlete, but fatigue was beginning to take hold. His limbs were feeling heavy. His mouth was open. His heart raced.

Two cop cars formed a loose barricade ahead. He could get around it easy enough, but not the four cops who stood guarding it. He backtracked through the crowd, only to see more NYPD were setting up another barricade at the other end of the street.

He was forced east with the crowd, taking long strides to reduce his height a little. He saw two cops in his peripheral vision cross the road and head towards him.

Accelerating tyres squealed on the wet asphalt. He looked back to see the white minivan coming after him. He ran, veering across the road and heading west.

A blue-and-white cruiser appeared ahead.

He doubled back and hurried north, the only way left. He heard the helicopter again, or maybe it was another. He felt the net tightening around him. No escape from capture or death.

The sound of sirens, rotor blades and revving engines filled his ears. Nowhere left to go. Nowhere to hide.

Stealing a vehicle was no good. The streets here were too gridlocked to escape behind a wheel. He would only trap himself.

But that gave him an idea.

He headed on to the road and pulled open the back door of a yellow taxi stood still in a line of unmoving traffic.

‘We ain’t goin’ nowhere,’ the driver told him before he had sat down. ‘Power’s down across the whole city. No lights. It’s gonna take a damn week just to get off this street.’

Victor shut the door. ‘That’s fine by me.’

The driver turned round in his seat, disbelief further creasing his worn face. ‘What you say?’

The man appeared to be in his late thirties, with a face worn down by hard experiences. His head was shaved but he had several days’ worth of stubble on his face. His neck was covered in tattoos.

‘I’m happy to sit here.’

‘Are you nuts? What do you think this taxi is, a damn park bench? Take a hike.’ He gestured.

Victor took out a hundred and held it up for the driver to see. ‘Park benches are free though, are they not?’

The taxi driver’s eyes were wide as he took the bill. ‘True that.’ He shoved the bill into his pocket. The firm wouldn’t be taking their cut because the meter wasn’t running. He turned back.

They sat in silence until the driver said, ‘Say, you wanna listen to some tunes while you sit?’

‘Sure. Do you happen to have any Brahms?’

His gaze met Victor’s in the rear-view mirror ‘Any
what
?’

‘Silence will be fine.’

‘Suit yourself, brother. It’s your park bench.’

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in a practised rhythm, supplying a beat to the silent melody his head was moving back and forth to.

Running footsteps made the driver stop and check his wing mirror. Three cops ran by on the pavement and disappeared into the distance. Then four more did the same.

None of the cops so much as looked at the line of traffic, let alone who was sitting in the back of any taxi. They were pursuing a man on foot, at least that’s what they thought.

The driver sat still for a long beat, thinking, deciding, then made eye contact in the mirror and said, ‘Are they…?’

‘Yes.’

It would have been pointless to pretend otherwise. Victor held the driver’s gaze in the rear-view.

The driver burst out laughing. ‘Man, that is some funny shit.’ He slapped a palm on the steering wheel. ‘Now, I knew you were crazy when you climbed into my ride. But I had no mind that you were
that
crazy. You must have balls as big as balloons to pull off a stunt like this.’

‘I don’t like to brag.’

The driver laughed louder, and Victor managed to smile in the rare moment of calm and humour, sitting in the back of a stationary taxi while a legion of cops hunted for him nearby.

The driver stopped laughing and frowned. ‘Say, you’re not some kind of terrorist or some such shit, are ya?’

‘Do I look like a terrorist to you?’

‘I don’t know,’ the driver said. ‘I’m not sure how a terrorist is rightly supposed to look. You wearing one of those suicide vests under that shirt? Nah, I guess I could tell.’

Victor thought of a time in Italy. ‘Not necessarily.’

He unfastened a few buttons so the driver could see a section of chest.

The driver smirked and waved a hand. ‘Put that shit away, bro. I don’t need to be seeing that. I guess you’re no terrorist.’

Victor refastened the buttons. ‘I’m glad we can agree on that.’

‘But if you ain’t no terrorist looking to blow yoself up, what the hell are you to be on the run from Five-0?’

‘How long do you have?’ Victor asked.

‘I got as long as you sit there, don’t I?’

Victor risked looking over his shoulder to check the street. No more cops had appeared. The sound of sirens had faded as the search headed away.

He said, ‘I think we’ll have to save it for next time, I’m afraid.’

The driver looked too. ‘Coast clear now, is it?’

Victor nodded. ‘Looks like it.’

The driver grinned. ‘All part of the service. Tell your friends I’m the best damn cab driver in this town.’ He used a thumb to point at himself. ‘I’m Leo.’

Victor said, ‘Now, you’re not going to tell anyone about me, are you?’

‘Do I look like a snitch to you?’

‘No,’ Victor said. ‘You don’t look like a snitch to me.’

‘Damn straight I ain’t. I know the rules. I know how shit works on the street. I didn’t always drive a cab, you know?’

‘That’s good, Leo,’ Victor said, ‘because I really didn’t want to have to kill you.’

The driver didn’t laugh or smirk. He looked at him, intrigued, like he believed Victor hadn’t been joking and in that fact saw far more about his passenger.

He said, ‘Next time I see you I’ll buy you a beer and you can tell how you ended up hiding in the back of my ride. I got a feelin’ that story is worth listenin’ to.’

‘Some things are best left unsaid.’ Victor reached for the door handle. ‘Thank you for this.’

‘No problem, amigo.’

‘I owe you one,’ Victor said. ‘I really mean that. If we ever cross paths again then you can cash it in.’

The driver nodded, thoughtful, then said, ‘Hey, don’t you go nowhere without telling me your name, brother,’ as Victor began to climb out. ‘Not after I saved yo ass.’

For fun, Victor told him.