by Sean Black
The door opened, and a wall of perfume with more knock-down power than any bio-weapon preceded Gail Reindl into the trailer as cell phones chirped to life. ‘OK, Carrie, cat’s out of the bag, let’s get you in front of that camera.’
As the TV people headed out, Lock’s gaze fixed on the monitors as, slowly, the news began to filter through to the vast crowd. Cell phones jammed to their heads, some people were already on the move, heading out of the square, pushing their way if they had to. The collective result of so many individuals trying to break away from the crowd was to channel it in great funnels of humanity. They looked like plankton surging in every direction to escape an unseen predator.
Frisk stood behind him. ‘Ah, shit.’
Then Lock spotted something. A closer shot of a small section of the crowd. A few isolated figures. Maybe two dozen. He got to his feet, trigger finger pressed to the screen. ‘There. Top left edge of the frame. Get closer on her.’
One of the remaining techs whispered into his microphone, and the image reframed.
A few seconds later, the woman was caught in the centre of the frame. She was wearing a heavily padded ski jacket. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
‘Closer. The face. The face.’
The woman half turned, and from the screen, Mareta Yuzik stared back at them.
Ninety
‘Southeast corner of 41st and Broadway,’ Frisk shouted as they bolted down Broadway, knocking aside anyone who didn’t get out of their way fast enough.
Two blocks.
‘We have men there now.’
‘OK,’ shouted Lock, already out of breath. ‘They know the drill?’
Dealing with what was known in the trade as a BBIED, or body-borne improvised explosive device, was the same as dealing with a regular IED or any other type of bomb. Confirm. Clear. Cordon. Control. Except, with a bomb strapped to a human being, there was one hugely unpredictable variable involved: the human being.
The closer they got to the location, the stronger the current of people rushing in the other direction. From the snatched comments, it seemed like most of them didn’t even know why they were running, except that everyone else was. Herd instinct kicking in.
A man was pushing his ten-year-old daughter in front of him. Ty saw her trip and go down under a flurry of feet. No one even looked down to see what or who they were standing on. Her father was dragged past her. Ty, with a Marine’s determination, forced his way to her, elbows prominent. He pulled her back on to her feet, battered and bruised. She was crying. Shouting for her father to follow, he pulled her into a storefront doorway where they were reunited, and then ran on.
Lock had lost sight of Ty. And Frisk. But he was almost there. Not that he had to check any signs or get on his radio. He knew because the crowd was thinning out. And then, as if he’d pushed through a paper wall, he was standing in the middle of clear street.
The woman stood with her back to him. A blue line encircled her, weapons drawn. A couple had ballistic shields, most didn’t.
‘Mareta?’
The woman turned round. It was her. She stared at Lock with a look that betrayed nothing. Not even whether she recognized him or not.
One of the men behind the shields shouted over to her. ‘OK, hands up, where we can see them!’
Mareta complied, stretching her arms out, crucifix wide.
‘OK, with your right hand, I want you to open your jacket.’ Slowly, taking her time, and with no sudden movements, her hand fell to the zipper and she started to lower it.
‘What the hell is that?’
Ty and Frisk had caught up and were standing next to Lock. They could see the suicide belt, but at the front, tucked in among the shrapnel, were six stainless-steel vials. Whether they literally did or not, Lock could sense everyone around her taking one very big step back.
‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ said Ty.
‘Could be a bluff,’ said Frisk, clutching.
‘It’s no bluff,’ said Lock. ‘How many people did Richard think that amount of bio-material could take out?’
‘The whole city.’
The Bomb Squad officer continued with his instructions, only the occasional crack in his voice betraying him. ‘OK, keep lowering that zipper. One hand. No sudden moves.’
The slider caught on one of the teeth. Mareta tugged down, freeing it, and pulled the slider all the way down to the box at the bottom. The jacket was open all the way.
‘OK, now shrug the jacket off,’ said the officer, stepping from behind his shield for a moment to mime what he wanted her to do.
She mirrored him perfectly. The jacket tumbled to the ground.
‘Why’s she cooperating?’ asked Frisk.
‘I don’t know,’ was all Lock could say.
Then his eyes fell to her waist.
‘That’s not good,’ he said.
‘What?’ Frisk asked.
Clipped to her waist, and gaffer-taped in place, wires snaking up from it into the explosive charges, was a cell phone.
‘The phone. Last time I saw her she had hand-held contact wires. Now there’s a cell phone.’
‘Which means-’
Lock hushed Ty with a raised hand. ‘Frisk, who else was missing when you did your final tally back at the research facility?’
‘We had one of the other detainees still outstanding, but we’ve located him.’
‘Anyone else missing? Think.’
‘Only Stafford Van Straten.’
Ninety-one
Stafford pulled the Blackberry from his pocket, thumbed across the screen to his address book, clicked it open and thumbed down again to a single name: Mareta.
Below it was another single-word entry: Nicholas. He thought about giving his father a final call. But what did he have to say to him other than goodbye? So the dark band on the screen stayed where it was, a click on the wheel away from history.
A call to the phone clipped to Mareta’s belt and everyone within a half-block radius would be toast. Those not killed by blast wave or shrapnel would be the lucky ones. The vials packed round her would spread the Ebola variant far and wide, open wounds ensuring effective and deadly transfer of the virus into the survivors. Who knew how many might die in the end? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A cool million? He smiled. Enough for him to be remembered.
Stafford was steeling himself, his thumb a tenth of an inch from pressing down on the wheel of the Blackberry, when the screen lit up with an incoming call.
‘Yo, Staff. It’s Tyrone.’
‘I can just hang up on you, Tyrone.’
‘I know you can, Staff. But it’s only going to take one clean shot for us to end you.’
‘Good luck with that. If you knew where I was, you’d have taken it already.’
‘Good point. One more thing though, Staff. Lock and I never got a chance to discuss our severance package with the company.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that now,’ said Stafford, terminating the call.
Lock was on the move, one hand on Mareta’s shoulder, hustling her down the street towards the entrance of the subway a half block away. A small crowd of people were gathered at the top of the steps. Some moved, others just stared as Lock barrelled towards them, pushing Mareta ahead of him.
Some assumed she was injured and he was trying to get her to safety, but one woman caught sight of the rig around Mareta’s chest and started screaming. ‘Oh my God! It’s a bomb! She has a bomb!’
Lock shut out all of them, his vision blurred and narrow. He was way too tired to breathe it clear. A jolt, a fall, and the belt could detonate. No need for the cell to trigger it.
‘Get out of the way!’
Stafford speed-walked parallel to the subway, people running past him in the opposite direction, no one sure of where they should be, the situation unfolding fast enough to make panic total.
He could see Lock pushing through the people clustered near the entrance to the subway. Maybe a hundred of
them, the timing perfect.
Stafford had the Blackberry in the palm of his hand. The whole city, for that matter.
‘Coming through!’
Stafford looked up a second too late to avoid being shouldered out of the way by a thick-necked Guido in a satin Giants jacket with matching ball cap.
He regained his balance, clicked down on the wheel. A second for the screen to read Calling Mareta.
Lock raised his Sig, and pushed Mareta behind him. Wrenching open the shutter blocking the turnstiles, he pushed Mareta on and through the safety barrier, a lone transit worker’s complaints quelled by the sight of the gun.
Down some steps. Towards the platform. Each step taking them deeper into the earth. Deeper and, he hoped, safer.
Caller is out of coverage area.
Stafford resisted the temptation to dash the Blackberry on the sidewalk. Instead, he took off for the subway entrance.
On to the platform. Lock stopped to catch his breath. The irony suddenly hit him. He was now the bodyguard of a suicide bomber. That was one for the résumé. If he lived.
A tunnel either end of the platform. Deeper into the bowels. Safer. No coverage in the tunnels. He took a big gulp of air and propelled Mareta down the platform towards it, away from the steps.
Stafford had it figured. Plan B. He didn’t need to call the cell. They needed one clear shot? So did he. A single round to anywhere on Mareta’s chest would do the trick.
He was at the top of the steps now. A middle-aged woman in a Transit Authority uniform stood at the bottom, unbelievably having to repel a knot of people headed down into the subway, New Yorkers’ sense of entitlement and an open gate having done the trick. ‘Folks, step back. The subway isn’t open.’
A fat man in a suit asking, ‘So why’s the gate like that?’
Stafford edged his way through the crowd.
The woman lowered her arm across his chest. ‘Subway’s closed.’ Stafford produced Caffrey’s revolver, shot her in the head at point-blank range, then vaulted the turnstile. Screams filled the air, followed by a mad rush to regain the street. Looking back, Stafford saw Ty taking the main entrance steps three at a time, gun drawn, looking ready to dish out his very own severance package. Stafford kept running.
The end of the platform for Lock and Mareta. The reek of stale urine and a single rat splayed dead between the rails.
‘What happens if I live?’ Mareta asked.
Lock had no energy to lie. ‘You die in jail.’
Mareta’s hand went up and she broke free, jumping down on to the track. The electrified rail was inches from her feet. Lock’s heart shuddered almost to a halt as she reached down, half lifted her injured leg over it and kept going.
Lock jumped down after her, losing his footing in a slick brown puddle of water. By now Mareta was pulling herself up on to the other side with a grunt. Stranded between the uptown and downtown tracks, Lock heard a clatter of feet down the steps at the far end of the platform. Then Stafford Van Straten appeared.
Hidden from Ty but visible to Lock, Stafford ducked behind one of the grimy white-tiled pillars.
Stafford saw Mareta on the other side of the platform and raised the stainless-steel revolver, tracking her with metal sights. Best shot in the ROTC. Four years straight.
Lock raised his Sig, punched it out with his right hand towards Stafford. He didn’t track. He didn’t have to. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
The round caught Stafford in the face, pulling up through his right cheek before carrying on through his back teeth, splintering enamel and root, then moving up through his cheekbone and out.
Before Stafford hit the ground, before the revolver clattered on to the platform, Lock gave him the good news twice more.
Tap. One in the throat — a hint of luck to that shot. Lock in the zone.
Tap. A final round in the sternum.
As Ty’s boots hit the platform, Stafford Van Straten’s dead body met concrete.
Mareta had taken off, running back towards the steps. Lock made to go after her, signalling to Ty to go the other way and catch her coming out the other side.
As Lock struggled to climb up off the tracks there was suddenly a hundred yards of platform between them, Mareta limping the whole way but somehow finding speed. The air ahead raged black in Lock’s eyes. His body calling time. Too much time spent on red alert.
Ty shouting his name from what seemed like a million miles away. Confusion. His mind willing his body to work. Willing itself to explain what was happening to him. The vaccine. The bomb. A flip book of possibilities.
Then, a sudden change of direction from Mareta. Away from the steps. Away from the light. Towards the tunnel at the other end of the platform. Lock snapping back inside himself, inside the zone, as Mareta disappeared into the maw of darkness.
Determined to stop the Ghost from performing one last vanishing act, Lock ran down the track.
Ninety-two
A hand clamped down on to Lock’s shoulder. He spun round.
‘Chill,’ said Ty. ‘It’s me.’
‘You see her?’
‘Can’t see shit down here. Got some good news, though.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘They’ve switched off the juice to the third rail and we’ve got JTTF making a push on up from 34th Street. She’s got nowhere to go.’
‘Remember who we’re dealing with here. You got a flashlight?’
‘Yeah. Hang on.’
Ty pulled a Mini-Mag from his belt and rotated the end ring. He shone it down the tunnel, but the beam died ten yards out.
‘Have to do,’ said Lock, with a complete lack of conviction.
Ty lowered the beam so the light pooled at their feet, just enough so they could pick their way over the rails and assorted debris.
Lock glanced back over his shoulder as voices echoed behind them. Reinforcements. Four Transit Authority cops. No bio-suits. Their courage not in question, their judgement less so.
The beam from one of their flashlights caught Lock flush in the eyes. He put his hand up. The cop on point motioned to his colleague to lower it. ‘Jesus, put that damn thing down.’
Ty jogged back to liaise. ‘You guys should have bio-suits on if you’re gonna be down here.’
‘Yours must be invisible,’ said the cop with the flashlight.
‘Our situation’s a little different.’
‘How so?’
‘We’ve both already been exposed,’ Ty told them.
Two of the cops took a step back. The cop with the flashlight made a point of standing his ground. ‘We had a fellow officer killed tonight,’ he said, his voice cracking.
‘All the more reason to let us do this right,’ Ty responded.
One of the flashlight cop’s colleagues started to pull him away. ‘Let’s go.’
The flashlight cop shrugged him off, slowly raising the beam of light and angling it past Lock. ‘So if everyone down here should be in bio-suits, maybe you and your buddy should tell all those people.’
Ty spun back round and tracked the light all the way to where it dead-ended, illuminating a subway train packed with people.
Ninety-three
Six cars. Each with a total capacity of two hundred and forty-six people. Plus a driver. Even allowing for it being two-thirds full, a low-ball figure on New Year’s Eve, that made a thousand people. All underground, in the dark, with Mareta lurking in the shadows giving a whole new meaning to the term Ghost Train.
Lock inched his way towards the side of the first car. It was crammed. Faces distorted against the glass of the carriage window; some terrified, others expectant, most stoic. Lock figured the stoic ones as native New Yorkers. The four cops Lock had asked to hang back and establish a cordon in case Mareta tried to slip past them edged their way up again as Lock reached the rear car.
‘We need to get these people out of here,’ said one of them.
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ muttered Lock, waving Ty round to join him from
the other side of the final car.
‘She’s deep in the cut, if she’s even in there at all,’ said Ty.
Lock looked from the cars back to the Transit cops. ‘We got any more trains on this stretch?’
‘Just this one.’
He closed his eyes for a moment, thought back to what Mareta had told him in the cell when he’d probed her about her ability to escape detection, even when the odds seemed impossible. She couldn’t walk through walls, he knew that. But somehow she did.
When they look low, I stay high.
She hadn’t meant it literally, he was sure of that. She’d worked out one simple fact: the art of escape lay in first understanding where your enemy would look.
‘You OK?’
Ty’s voice snapped Lock back into the present. The Transit cops were inspecting the train now. He let them get on with it and pulled Ty to one side. He lowered his voice so no one could hear. A moment later they broke their two-man huddle.
Lock walked back to the cops. ‘Can I borrow your flashlight for a moment?’ The Maglite Nazi handed it over like it was his first-born, and Lock turned to the officer in charge. When he spoke he made sure it was loud enough that they could all hear. ‘You’re right, let’s get the juice back on and move this puppy up back to the platform. But tell the driver to take it slow. She’s in there somewhere. Has to be.’
As the lead cop jogged down to speak to the driver, Lock stayed close to Ty. ‘Soon as it’s stopped at 42nd Street, get the power shut down again.’
‘Roger that.’
Lock directed Ty to walk alongside the lead car while he crouched down next to the southbound tracks. From there he’d get a good view of the underside of the cars as they rolled past.
A few minutes later six hundred volts of direct current passed back through the third rail with a fizz, and the lights inside the cars flickered to life.
As soon as the last car had trundled slowly past, Lock made a point of following it back in the direction of the platform, catching up so that he was parallel with the third car. Two hundred yards up the track he switched off the Maglite. A hundred yards after that, he stepped into a service alcove abutting the tunnel wall, out of sight. Then he waited.