The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  He jumped up from his seat at the console and ran across the room. Frank Correll, occupying one of his dispatchers’ desks, was shouting into his microphone. In other parts of the huge loft, the Command Center was running smoothly; after all, there were no problems in the other divisions.

  Prescott tapped Correll on the shoulder. Correll, without turning or looking up, continued his tirade into his mike. Prescott squeezed the shoulder, and Correll whirled around, glaring.

  “Don’t say a word,” Prescott said. “Just listen to me. I have new instructions—”

  “I don’t give a shit about your instructions,” Correll said. He shook Prescott’s hand off his shoulder and turned back to the console.

  Prescott folded back the flap of his sharkskin jacket with his left hand and with his right drew his service revolver. He cupped Correll’s chin, pulled his head back, and placed the muzzle of the revolver in Correll’s eye.

  SEVENTEEN

  BOROUGH COMMANDER

  The borough commander issued orders for compliance with the hijackers’ new instructions, but also arranged for a dozen plainclothes detectives to mingle with the crowd on the South Ferry station platform and for a saturation of police in the area aboveground. Then, in his bafflement, he consulted with TA Police Chief Costello.

  “What have they got in mind, Chief?”

  “Use all sixteen hostages as a shield? Could they possibly swing anything as awkward as that?” He shook his head. “It beats the hell out of me. Myself, I wouldn’t have picked a tunnel to have to make a getaway from.”

  “But they picked it,” the borough commander said, “which presumes they have some well-organized plan for getting away. They want the power back on and the track cleared. What does that suggest to you?”

  “That they’re going to run their car, obviously.”

  “Why did they specify South Ferry?”

  The chief shook his head. “Damned if I know. The Lex local doesn’t even run there at this time of day; they’ll have to be switched at Brooklyn Bridge. The water? Could they have a boat there in the harbor? A seaplane? I just can’t imagine what they’re up to.”

  “South Ferry comes after Bowling Green. What happens after South Ferry?”

  “The track loops around, and heads northward and comes back to Bowling Green. I don’t see how that would help them, there are trains standing in Bowling Green station, they’d simply be blocked.”

  The borough commander thanked him and glanced at the commissioner, who looked worried, but profoundly neutral. He’s giving me my head, the borough commander thought; he’s displaying implicit trust in his subordinates. And why not, since there damn well won’t be any glory at the end of all this?

  “We can tail them in another train,” the TA chief said. “I know we promised not to—”

  “Don’t the signals turn red after their passage, and won’t our train be stopped by trippers?”

  “On the local track, yes, but not on the express track,” the chief said. “Maybe they won’t think of that.”

  “They’ll think about it,” the borough commander said. “They know too much about subways not to. Okay, maybe we can tail them on the express track. But if they make us, they might kill a passenger.”

  “We can also follow their progress on the Model Board at the Grand Central Tower—as far as Brooklyn Bridge Station. After that, Nevins Street Tower takes over southward into Brooklyn.”

  “That tells us exactly when they move?”

  “Yes. And exactly where they are every moment they’re on the tracks. Of course we’ll have TA cops on all the platforms, too.”

  “Okay,” the borough commander said briskly. “Let’s set it up. Your Tower to track their movements. An express train to follow behind. Is it possible to turn off all its lights, inside and out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” The borough commander shook his head. “Hell of a thing to stalk somebody with—a subway train. I’ll put DCI Daniels in charge of the express train. Patrol cars will follow on the surface. The big problem is communication. Tower to here to Central to patrol cars? It stinks. Better place two men at the Tower on separate phones, one to me and one to Central, so a dispatcher can pass it on directly to the cars. I want every car we’ve got on this. Every cop. NYPD and TA, both. Cover all stations, all exits, all emergency exits. How many emergency exits are there, Chief?”

  “About two to a station.”

  “Just one thing.” The commissioner broke his silence. “Every care must be taken. The hostages. We don’t want any of them dead.”

  “Yeah,” the borough commander said. “We’ve got to remember they’re still calling the shots.”

  Deflated, he suddenly felt the cold. Shadows had closed in, and the crowd seemed to be congealed; his cops looked like frozen sticks of blue. He recalled what he had told the commissioner earlier—that he wouldn’t be the same man after this was over. It was true. It had taken the mickey out of him.

  TOM BERRY

  The sudden return of full lighting in the car caught the passengers unawares, and they blinked in confusion. The bright neons showed up stresses the emergency lights had softened: tight, trembling mouths, lines of strain, eyes dulled by fear. Tom Berry observed that the girl in the Anzac hat showed mileage; the dimness had been kind to her. The younger of the two boys looked cranky, as though he had waked prematurely from an afternoon nap. The handkerchief the militant spade held to his face was no longer fresh, and its stains were shockingly red. Only the old wino lady was unchanged. She slept noisily, her lips blowing small iridescent bubbles. The hijackers seemed bulkier and more menacing. Well, Berry thought, they were a little bulkier; they were each a quarter of a million dollars larger.

  The cab door opened, and the leader stepped out. His appearance produced an undertone of babble from the passengers, and the old man, who seemed to have appointed himself spokesman, said, “Ah, here’s our friend, now we’ll find out what’s next.”

  “Your attention, please.” The leader waited, poised and patient, and Berry thought: There’s something almost professional about it, he’s used to handling groups of people. “All right. In about five minutes we’re going to move the car. You will all remain seated and quiet. You will continue to do exactly as you’re told.”

  An idiosyncratic emphasis on will snatched at Tom Berry’s memory. Where had he heard it? The army. Of course. That particular usage was standard in the orders of instructors, officers, noncoms. “You will wear Class A uniforms…. You will fall out at oh eight hundred hours…. You will police the area.” Okay, small mystery solved—the leader had been in the army and had given orders. So what?

  “We expect to release you unharmed in a short while. But until then you are still hostages. Conduct yourselves accordingly.”

  The old man said, “Since you’re moving the train, if it’s not too much trouble, can you drop me off at Fulton Street?”

  The leader disregarded him. Without another word he went back to the cab. Most of the passengers were glaring at the old man, disapproving of his levity. The old man smiled sheepishly.

  And so, Berry thought, the ordeal was almost over. Before long the passengers would be taking deep drafts of the polluted air of the surface and plying the police with inaccurate and widely divergent eyewitness details. All except for Patrolman Tom Berry, who would offer a disciplined version, despite the contempt his fellow officers would make no effort to conceal. When he walked in on Deedee, after the interrogation was finished, he would all but officially be unpigged, and that would not be long in coming. What would he do after he was fired from the force? Marry Deedee and settle down to a life of revolutionary bliss, hand in hand chanting antiwar slogans, side by side cussing out the CIA? Two hearts as one protesting welfare cutbacks by throwing ashcans through plate-glass windows?

  The smaller of the two boys began to whimper. Berry watched his mother try to shake him into silence. “No, Brandon, you have to keep quiet.”

  The
boy squirmed and said, loudly, “I’m tired, I want to go out.”

  “I said quiet.” The woman’s whisper was fierce. “You heard what the man said? Quiet, he said!”

  She slapped the boy’s behind.

  GRAND CENTRAL TOWER

  When the trains south of Pelham One Two Three began to move and the red slashes twinkled on the Model Board in Grand Central Tower, a cheer rose from the dispatchers. Marino frowned and glanced over his shoulder, knowing that Caz Dolowicz liked quiet in the Tower Room. But of course, there was no Caz there; Caz was dead. Which, it occurred to Marino, made him senior man. Well, he liked it quiet, too.

  “Let’s keep it down,” he said, and realized he was using Caz’s favorite phrase. “Let’s keep it down in the Tower Room.”

  Marino was holding a telephone pressed tensely to his ear, connected to a dispatcher in the Communications Room at Police Headquarters on Centre Street. Next to him, her brown face impassive, Mrs. Jenkins was connected to Operations at Transit Police Headquarters.

  “Nothing yet,” Marino said into the phone. “They have begun to clear the track to South Ferry.”

  “Okay,” the police dispatcher’s voice said, “nothing yet.”

  Marino gestured to Mrs. Jenkins. “Tell him nothing yet, Pelham One Two Three is still laying dead.”

  Mrs. Jenkins said into her phone, “Nothing yet.”

  “I want everybody to keep it down,” Marino said. “Right now it’s us who’s carrying the ball. So keep it down.”

  His eyes returned to the Model Board and focused on the red slashes that represented the position of Pelham One Two Three. It was very still in the Tower Room.

  “Keep it down,” Marino said sternly. “Just as if Caz was still with us.”

  DCI DANIELS

  DCI Daniels led a picked squad of thirty men along the roadbed to Woodlawn One Four One, laying dead on the express track 500 feet north of the Twenty-eighth Street station. His force was composed of twenty Special Operations Division specialists and ten blue-helmeted TPF men. The motorman saw them coming and hung his head out of his cab window.

  “Unlock your door,” the DCI said, “we’re coming aboard.”

  “I don’t know,” the motorman said. He was a coffee-colored man with a downcurving moustache and a small chin whisker. “I got no orders to let nobody aboard.”

  “You just got orders,” the DCI said. “What do we look like, the Russian Red Army?”

  “I guess you cops all right,” the motorman said. He left his cab and appeared at the storm door with his key. The door slid open. “I guess you got the authority.”

  “You’re a good guesser,” the DCI said. “Give me a hand up.”

  He clambered into the car, grunting. Half of the thirty or so passengers crowded forward. He held up his hand. “Back up, folks. You’re all going to move back into the other cars.” He crooked his finger at four TPF cops who were already aboard. “Move them.”

  A single voice, outraged, rose above the general protest. “You know how long I been in this goddamn train? Hours! I’m gonna sue the city for one hundred thousand dollars! And I’ll collect, too!”

  The TPF men, experienced at crowd handling, charged forward. The passengers gave ground grudgingly. The DCI breasted the crush of police piling into the train and took a grip on the motorman’s arm.

  “We’re going to chase a train,” he said. “I want you to turn off all your lights, then separate this car from the rest of the train.”

  “Man, I am not allowed to do any of that.”

  The DCI tightened his hold. “All lights out, including your headlights, those colored marker lights, destination lights, everything. I want this car dark inside and out, and then I want it separated from the rest of the train.”

  The motorman might have been disposed to argue further, but the increasing pressure on his arm convinced him otherwise. With the DCI half pushing him he went into the cab and gathered up his brake handle and reverse and cutting keys.

  The DCI assigned a man to accompany the motorman, and they hurried to the rear of the car, where the last of the passengers were being herded through the door by the straining TPF cops like animals through a chute. He told off an additional three blue helmets to help keep order, then instructed the main body of his force to take seats. Carrying rifles, shotguns, tear-gas guns, the men shuffled about awkwardly before settling down. The DCI went into the cab. Through the front window the tunnel was brighter than before, but it was still a gloomy place of occasional lights and an endless procession of pillars like a forest of precisely spaced denuded trees.

  RYDER

  Ryder opened the cab door, motioned, and Longman joined him. He stepped back and Longman squared off in front of the panel. “Go ahead,” Ryder said.

  Longman edged the controller forward to switching position. The car began to move.

  “It’s scary.” Longman spoke nervously but without turning, his eyes fixed on the track ahead, on the signals, green as far as the eye could see. “Knowing there are cops hidden out there.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Ryder said. “They won’t try anything.”

  What he meant, of course, was that there was nothing to worry about as long as the other side had to accept the terms of the strange warfare whose rules he himself had formulated. But Longman seemed reassured. His hands were steady on the controls. This was his element, Ryder thought; this was his strength. And everything else was his weakness.

  “You know exactly where we’re stopping?”

  “Exactly,” Longman said. “On the dime.”

  GRAND CENTRAL TOWER

  When the little red blips denoting the position of Pelham One Two Three began to flicker on the Model Board in the Grand Central Tower Room, Marino gave a hoarse shout into the phone.

  “What’s the matter there?” the police dispatcher on Marino’s line said.

  “She’s moving!” Marino waved excitedly at Mrs. Jenkins, but she was already speaking over her connection to TA Police Headquarters. Her voice was level and carefully modulated. “Pelham One Two Three has begun to move southward.”

  “All right,” the police dispatcher said to Marino. “Continue to report as she moves, but calm down.”

  “Still moving,” Marino said. “Moving pretty slow, but not stopping.”

  “Keep talking. But keep it cool. Okay?”

  240 CENTRE STREET

  In the Communications Room at NYPD Headquarters, a lieutenant signaled the borough commander. “Sir, the train is moving. Patrol cars are pursuing according to plan.”

  “It’s too soon,” the borough commander said. “They’re supposed to wait until the track is cleared to South Ferry. What the hell’s going on?”

  “Sir?”

  The borough commander, sounding agitated, said, “Stay with it,” and rang off.

  “Still moving?” the lieutenant asked the dispatcher connected to Grand Central Tower.

  “Still moving.”

  NERVE CENTER

  At Transit Police Headquarters, Operations Lieutenant Garber held the phone to his ear and listened to Mrs. Jenkins’ calm voice.

  “Okay,” he said. “Hold it for a minute.” He turned to a dispatcher. “They’re moving. Every available man to be alerted. Patrol cars, too. NYPD is tracking them, but so are we. Make sure patrolmen on the Twenty-third Street station get the word fast.” He looked at his watch. “Damn it, they jumped the gun. They’re up to something.”

  The Operations Room was bustling. Lieutenant Garber observed it with dour satisfaction. Christ, he thought, wouldn’t it be beautiful if we got them? I mean us, and not the NYPD.

  “I want every ass in this place moving,” he shouted.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Jenkins’ voice said. “They are moving, Lieutenant.”

  COMMAND CENTER

  At Command Center there was a flurry of excitement when a dispatcher at an IND desk casually remarked that he had figured out how the hijackers planned to make their getaway.
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br />   “They’re gonna use Beach’s old tunnel.”

  His announcement drew the immediate attention of his fellow dispatchers. For the benefit of those among them who wanted to know what the hell Beach’s old tunnel was, he shifted his cigar to speaking position in a corner of his mouth and expounded. In 1867, one Alfred Ely Beach, unencumbered by a railroad franchise or other legal inconvenience, rented a basement in a building at Broadway and Murray Street and proceeded to construct New York’s first subway, a tunnel that ran a distance of 312 feet to Warren Street. He brought in a single railroad car and blew it back and forth through his private tunnel by means of compressed air. The public was invited for a ride but showed scant interest, and the project died.

  “The Lex local goes right by where that old tunnel is,” the dispatcher said. “These fellas go into that tunnel and hide—”

  The IND desk trainmaster, who had been listening, put his own cigar in speaking position and said, “That old tunnel has been gone for at least seventy years. They destroyed it when they started to dig the first real subway back in 1900, thereabouts. Don’t it figger?”

  “I admit it figgers,” the dispatcher said. “But just because it figgers don’t mean it is. You got proof?”

  “Proof,” the desk trainmaster said. “Some of the original bricks of Beach’s old tunnel are built right into the regular IRT tunnel wall. Next time you ride down there, look out the window, just past City Hall, and you’ll see the old bricks.”

  “I never looked out a subway window in my life,” the dispatcher said. “What’s to see?”

  “The bricks of old Beach’s old tunnel.”

  “Well, it was an idea,” the dispatcher said, and shifted his cigar to the center of his mouth.

  “Better go back to work,” the desk trainmaster said.