Contents
Cover
Title Page
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
About the Publisher
Map
Chapter One
Grady McGowan hunched behind the controls of the tunnel-boring machine and wiped sweat from his brow. A giant cutter wheel slowly rotated in front of his cabin’s shatterproof window. Twin conveyor belts rumbled beneath it, transporting the excavated bedrock back to the waiting supply trains.
The cabin’s digital temperature reading flicked to ninety degrees, eight times higher than the brutal winter aboveground. His T-shirt clung to his body, and he banged his fist against the faulty vents for the hundredth time.
Eleven hours of gouging a path below the Hudson River had mentally and physically drained him, and he still had one to go, but double shifts went a long way toward paying for college tuition. He glanced at the photo on the console, showing his wife and daughter at the top of the Empire State Building. Caitlin was so small in that picture, but Daddy’s girl was growing every single day.
Grady straightened in his seat and focused. Drilling was about timing: knowing when to push forward, when to pull back, when to readjust. He increased the cutter wheel’s revolution speed and pressure, powering the machine as hard as possible without compromising its integrity or direction of travel.
Construction of the Z Train subway line extension had progressed around the clock for two years. Grady loved the overtime, but cash wasn’t his only driving force. One day in the future, he imagined sitting around a crackling campfire with his grandkids, telling them how Grandpa helped build the most advanced subway system in the world.
This boldly conceived expansion, capable of handling eight subway trains at speeds of over seventy miles per hour, would connect four of New York City’s boroughs with New Jersey in a matter of minutes, with express stops in the city going as far as Jamaica Center and the Bronx and expanding the actual subway service into places like Jersey City and Hoboken (thus sucking more and more of New Jersey into the “official” metroplex). It was the most ambitious infrastructure project since the time of Robert Moses . . . and probably just as controversial. The cost alone was a staggering number. But to hear the politicians speak of it, the benefits would outweigh the expenditure in a matter of months. Especially with the pièce de résistance: the state-of-the-art underwater Visitors’ Pavilion, the crown jewel of the Z Train—and the place Grady and his team were close to reaching. He was a small component of the overall plan, but knowing the importance of this current push, he couldn’t help but feel he was playing a vital role in a project that could completely change the city.
It was a good feeling.
A screen on his console displayed the progress of the other four drilling teams, each closing in on the same location. The onboard GPS calculated his arrival in fifty-five minutes at the current speed of thirty feet an hour. It left just enough time to get home and see the Giants fail to make the playoffs. Some called his football predictions cynical; he called them inevitable.
Grady nudged the power lever, upping it to the maximum safe level.
The axle’s grind increased in pitch.
Smaller rocks bounced on the conveyor belts. Shards of granite spat in every direction and battered his window. Everything held steady, though, and the machine churned him inches closer to the taste of buffalo wings and an ice-cold Coors Light.
Suddenly, the cabin jolted.
A warning alarm buzzed on the console and the controls shuddered in his hands. The cutter wheel’s normally steady rotation increased to a blinding whir.
“What the f—”
The machine lurched downward before he could finish his thought.
Grady slammed forward, the harness that the union insisted he wear knocking the wind out of him. He gasped, reached out his left hand, and, going by feel more than anything, yanked the emergency brake.
Nothing happened.
The geology had been surveyed precisely, and he had expected a wall of dense bedrock for the remainder of this stretch. Whatever was happening, though, meant the survey was very, very wrong.
He grabbed the gear lever, downshifted, and slammed the machine into reverse—but its momentum continued without slowing.
Grady tried the brake and gears again, forcing the levers backward and forward, attempting to gain any kind of traction, any kind of control. The left side of the machine jolted against jagged rock formations, throwing him sideways, and his shoulder smashed against the locked door, hard enough for him to know there was going to be a nasty bruise tomorrow. He hung there, leaning against the door, tensing for the inevitable crash.
Rocks pounded the glass, leaving white shatter marks.
Thank God for protective glass . . .
And then a length of rigid steel flipped from the cutter wheel, speared through the cabin’s window like it was paper, and impaled itself into the part of his seat where his shoulder would have been if the machine hadn’t been tilted.
The machine continued to plummet on its side, letting out a deafening metallic screech. Grady swallowed hard and closed his eyes. Images of his family raced through his mind:
Standing by a hospital bed as a proud father . . .
Snapping out a picnic blanket in Prospect Park for his two favorite girls . . .
The heart-bursting joy of hearing his daughter’s first words . . .
The cabin bucked hard. His handheld radio hit the ceiling and shattered into pieces. A booming crunch came from the axle area, and—finally—the machine juddered to a halt.
Shouts echoed in the distance.
Grady grasped the still swinging emergency cord and ripped it down. An air horn blasted, alerting workers of a tunnel collapse.
His next priority was to get the hell out of wherever he had crashed. He swept the photo off the console, slipped it into his jeans pocket, and unlocked the door, which was now pretty much his roof. The machine had come to rest at a forty-five-degree angle in thick mud. Its body and working parts resembled scrapyard junk. A hundred feet above, thin light streamed into the darkness, marking the beginning of his violent descent.
The machine vibrated and he sensed downward momentum again. Looking over the edge, he saw that mud was consuming the cutter wheel at a startling pace, and the cabin was slowly sinking toward the same fate.
Grady heaved the door open, maneuvered
around the steel jutting out from the back of his seat, and leaped out, his boots squelching against the ground. His ribs and shoulder hurt, but that didn’t stop him from running as hard as he could for solid rock, racing to get clear of the twisted wreckage before a part snagged his clothes and dragged him into the same filthy grave.
Workers in hard hats appeared at the top of the collapse. Their four flashlight beams crisscrossed through the dusty darkness.
“Down here,” Grady shouted, throwing up his arms.
The beams focused on him, and he found solid ground.
Adrenaline fueled him as he clambered up a steep rocky incline, ignoring the nicks on his arms and legs from the sharp outcrops. As he made his ascent, someone threw down a length of cable, and it slithered to within thirty feet. He found his next foothold and thrust upward . . . but the ground gave way, snapping like a shell, and the loose gravel swallowed his calf.
Grady’s heart thumped against his chest and beads of sweat rolled down his face. He hauled himself free and climbed to a small plateau. Cries of encouragement echoed down as the workers waved him forward. The end of the cable neared, and he rushed the final few steps toward it.
A deep rumble reverberated inside the collapse. The ground shook and cracks forked across it.
He peered over his shoulder for one last look at the machine, but all that was left was a deep void. Shuddering, he looked back up only to see fist-sized rocks dropping from the ceiling. He ducked his head and tried to press flat against the wall, but one battered his thigh, causing Grady to cry out in pain.
The workers shouted and pointed, but the noise of splitting granite drowned out their words. The ground beneath Grady’s feet disintegrated. He lunged for the cable, clutched it in a white-knuckled grip, and dangled over the newly formed black abyss.
A moment of silence followed.
“Pull me up,” he yelled.
The workers’ lights disappeared from the ledge, now an overhang with only darkness beneath, and he was close to all-out panic, thinking they had abandoned him. Despair washed over him, knowing he didn’t have the strength to climb up by himself, but then the cable rose a foot at a time as they heaved.
Grady hung twenty feet from a future with his family.
After five shuddering breaths he reached within ten feet.
He couldn’t face the idea of a cop knocking on his front door and delivering the news of his death to his wife. Or not living to see his daughter grow up.
Eight more pulls brought him within an arm’s length. He stretched out his right hand and grabbed the ledge. A heartbeat later, he viewed the smooth, dimly lit tunnel. Four workers crouched forty feet away, by the side of a supply train, tug-of-warring the cable in single file.
Grady scrambled onto solid ground. Cuts peppered his body, his palms stung, and his head throbbed. He was certain he had at least one cracked rib, and his shoulder and thigh were a mixture of burning and numb. As he lay on firm footing for a second, he was pretty sure he’d never felt better in his whole life.
Grady pushed himself up, only to pause once more. He rested his hands on his knees and exhaled, puffing his cheeks at the enormity of what he had just experienced and had barely escaped from.
The man at the front of the cable dropped it and removed his hard hat. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch.”
“Tell me about it,” Grady said, and they both forced a smile.
An earsplitting crack quickly wiped away those expressions.
A black fracture line tore between him and the workers, and his side of the ground dropped a few inches. He thrust forward, realizing the overhang had snapped, and he had only seconds, if that, to reach a secure part of the tunnel.
Grady went to plant his boot and make his final lunge for safety, but the rock disappeared below him.
His boot hit stale air, and he plunged into the abyss.
Chapter Two
Three years later
Pride swelled inside Mayor Tom Cafferty as he gazed at the vast steel-and-glass vaulted ceiling of the underground Visitors’ Pavilion. Today was a landmark day. Today was the moment his legacy finally came to fruition, three hundred feet below the Hudson River. Even President Reynolds’ party crashing could do nothing to take away from his moment of triumph. He watched as the president, wearing his trademark gray suit, climbed the steps of the temporary stage and joined him behind the microphones.
His smile never wavered.
A large assembly of people had been shuttled through the brand-new subway tunnel to witness the opening ceremony and inaugural run of the rechristened Z Train. The press’ TV cameras rolled and their rapid-fire flashes flickered. Beyond them, several of the sixty handpicked guests, made up of New York’s elite and the Z Train’s MTA team, extended their phones in the air to capture the moment. Cafferty shook President Reynolds’ hand and held the pose for the array of lenses.
Reynolds leaned close, away from his mic, and increased the power of his grip. “I was amazed you invited me, Tom.”
That almost made Cafferty frown, but he kept it together. “I didn’t. You invited yourself, Mr. President.”
The splendor of the Pavilion outshone the presence of Reynolds. On the far side, past the central platform that separated the east and west lines, twenty glass-fronted stores lined the wall, including the likes of Cartier, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Prada. A food court that opened up to their left was for shoppers with any money left over to enjoy the array of international flavors on offer. To the right of the stage, an IMAX screen displayed the silver-and-blue MTA logo, and the semicircular walled command center, designed to withstand a nuclear blast, radiated an aura of quiet authority.
Everything sparkled. Everything was perfect. It was hard to believe all this was built underneath the intersection of the Hudson and East Rivers.
A cool breeze blew through the crowd, courtesy of the two hundred ventilator fans refreshing the air every few minutes. Cafferty tugged his hand free from Reynolds’ grip and nodded toward the New York Times reporter.
“Mr. Mayor,” she said, “how do you feel now that the big day has arrived?”
“Like I’ve been working on this all my life.”
Some laughed, though he meant every word. A protracted eight-year fight had been the prologue to this day. Partisan political disputes, territorial pissing contests, construction problems, and slipping timelines had all dogged the project through its various stages. Yet Cafferty and his team had fought hard to overcome every obstacle and hit their deadlines—miraculously for government work, some of the talking heads opined. He had defied the critics who had claimed it would take over two decades, and now he had the proof of his promise kept.
How many politicians can claim that?
“Are you pleased with how the Pavilion came out?” a reporter asked.
“More than pleased. I’m elated.”
“Lucien Flament from Le Figaro,” another reporter said in a thick French accent. “Mr. President, ten years ago you fought funding for the Z Train. Have you changed your mind?”
Reynolds cleared his throat. “I helped pass one of the largest transportation bills in the last fifty years, granting more money to this and many other mass-transit projects. Personally, I consider the Z Train one of my administration’s greatest achievements.”
These bullshit words raised Cafferty’s pulse a couple of notches, but he maintained his grin as the president continued to reel off his other nationwide successes. A decade earlier, both attended a Senate committee meeting about the costs and benefits of the Z Train. The then senator from Virginia was as stubborn as a mule. He called it a vanity project and wanted federal appropriations spent on highway construction and improvements . . . in Virginia, of course. Thankfully, his motion was struck down. Everyone else saw the logic of extending the subway to New Jersey, finally bringing a single, integrated interstate network to one of the busiest cities in the world.
“I’ve known the mayor for ten years,” Reynolds said
in closing. “He’s always been courteous and the epitome of professionalism. Isn’t that right, Tom?”
Some of the press gave the president a quizzical look after his final comment, likely remembering the two as old sparring partners. Tom knew Reynolds’ real motivation, for he had retained the same grudge for years: Cafferty, a city planner at the time of the Senate meeting, had left a voice mail for Reynolds a few months later. “I just received word that Congress approved a full funding grant agreement for the Z Train. So on behalf of all New Yorkers: go to hell.” His message felt petty the next day, and he momentarily considered sending an apology. This morning, though, he smiled at the thought of his brash thirty-six-year-old self still rattling Reynolds after all these years. But that was just icing on the cake, and he wasn’t going to let anything steal his thunder today. “Thank you for those kind words, Mr. President. Now, let’s get this show on the road.”
On the giant screen, a digital timer flashed through a luminous ten-second countdown. Stirring music pumped through speakers at either side of the stage, composed by one of Broadway’s preeminent talents, Lin-Manuel Miranda. No expense had been spared.
The timer reached zero. An animation played showing the construction phase of the numerous tunnels throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey, the Bronx—even the start of the next phase from Staten Island. Machines ground through the rock and met at the Pavilion, and the image transformed into a three-dimensional diagram of the newly created extension. It spun five times before melting into the brushed-metal MTA logo.
The introduction ended and the screen switched to a live video feed of the Jersey City station. A train, silver in color, with a sleek bullet nose and red trim around the doors and windows, sat on the track by the spacious platform (also brand-new and state of the art, though not quite as grandiose as the Pavilion). A marching band played the same song at the far end. Sixty-five specially selected travelers, including Cafferty’s wife, Ellen, waited to board.
The three sets of doors on the front car smoothly parted. All passengers embarked for an event Cafferty knew would go down in the city’s history.
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