The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  The Chechen enforcer took a small pistol out of his pocket. Granny recognized it as a Colt Mustang .380, six plus one capacity. A family loitering between the Chechen and McCall and Gershon moved toward the ticket booths, clearing a space.

  The killer raised the Colt Mustang and aimed it.

  Granny didn’t have the same qualms as McCall about firing into a crowded concourse.

  He took a Steyr SR45 9 mm pistol out of his belt, aimed it two-handed, and fired four rounds of the seventeen-round magazine. Two of them hit the assassin in the back, the other two in the head.

  There was instant pandemonium on the concourse at the sound of the gunshots. People began to run toward the exits. Some just fell to the ground where they’d been standing. McCall half turned, saw the Chechen enforcer on the ground, blood oozing out of his head and back. McCall caught a glimpse of a solitary figure behind him, not moving, blond hair, the sparkle of old-fashioned square-cut granny glasses.

  Then McCall looked ahead.

  Three more young Chechens, in black, with black reflecting sunglasses, were moving fast down one of the staircases from the upper level. They all had M92 9 mm semiautomatic pistols in their hands. Gershon had seen them, too. He drew the .22 Magnum pistol from his pocket.

  Too late.

  The enforcers fired on them. A bullet struck Gershon’s arm. Blood spurted from it. The .22 Magnum spun from his hand and skittered along the polished concourse floor. Panicked feet kicked it around. Gershon stumbled. McCall took his weight, drawing the Sig Sauer, firing at the would-be killers. They scattered and sprayed bullets into the concourse.

  McCall was instantly assailed with a terrifying sense memory.

  He was in a high-vaulted church. Bullets were flying. A stained-glass window exploded. Teenagers were screaming. A bullet hit one of them, causing a fountain of blood to erupt from his chest. McCall leaped forward, throwing two teenage girls to the ground, smothering them with his body to protect them.

  McCall looked up.

  Dutch angles, nothing real, as if it had all been a fever dream at the time. Gunmen firing, innocent people shouting, more young people screaming in terror—a glimpse of Control, in a gray pinstriped suit, red tie with small chess pieces on it, face ashen, taking cover.

  The memory was ephemeral. A split-second’s distraction. McCall fired at one of the Chechen enforcers who had almost reached the bottom of the Grand Central staircase. He pitched over. The other two retreated back a couple of steps. McCall dragged Gershon along with him as he ran, zigzagging across the concourse toward the Forty-fifth Street escalators behind the information kiosk.

  Four more dark-suited young men in sunglasses rode down the escalator. All of them had M92 9 mm semiautomatic pistols in their hands.

  They fired at McCall and Gershon.

  McCall fired twice, dropping one of them, then half held, half carried Gershon back the way they’d come.

  People were still scrambling out of the way of the bullets. Two uniformed cops ran onto the concourse, guns drawn. Two of the assassins from the staircase fired on them. Both went down. McCall turned, fired, took one of the assassins out.

  Granny took out the other one.

  But the three from the Forty-fifth Street escalator were running past the information kiosk, where the pleasant-faced African American woman was crouched down, unsure whether to stay where she was or make a run for it. Everyone on the concourse was down on the polished floor now or had reached the exits.

  McCall turned again, fired at the side of the information kiosk, causing the three assassins there to take cover behind it. Gershon was gasping for breath, blood pumping out of his arm. He was dizzy and becoming a dead weight. McCall looked at the one other person left standing on the concourse—Granny, moving relentlessly forward, his gun held two-handed in front of him. He could not see the three assassins from his position. McCall signalled to him. Three fingers, a circle at the information kiosk. Granny gave him what could have been misconstrued as a nonchalant wave.

  McCall put an arm around Gershon’s shoulders and hauled him through one of the big arched exits, where people were still fleeing. There were more gunshots behind them. McCall turned. One of the assassins was lying dead beside the information kiosk. Another ran for an exit from the concourse. Leaving one more behind at the kiosk.

  Granny knelt beside a young woman in her twenties, a gunshot wound in her chest. He thrust a handkerchief over the wound.

  “Lie still and slow your breathing down,” Granny whispered to the ashen girl. “You’re going to be fine. Paramedics are on the way. Okay? Stay with me here. Okay?”

  She looked up at him with brown eyes, terrified, but calm, and nodded. Granny smiled. Then he grabbed a heavyset balding man, in his thirties, who was crawling away. Granny hauled him back as if he weighed nothing at all. He said something to him that couldn’t be heard in the screaming that was still going on. The heavyset guy looked scared, but nodded and put his hands on the handkerchief over the girl’s wound and held them there, pushing down hard.

  Granny looked over at the cops. The first uniformed officer was not moving. His partner was on his knees, hit in the shoulder, conscious and radioing for an ambulance and backup.

  Granny got to his feet. The last assassin behind the information kiosk moved around to get a better shot. Took aim on the cop using his radio. Granny fired. One head shot. The assassin sprawled to the floor. Granny pocketed the Steyr and walked to one of the exits. The second cop staggered to his feet and turned, coming off his radio. The cop did a 360, his gun held steady. No other young men were coming onto the concourse with guns.

  Granny was gone.

  McCall and Gershon ran down the Forty-second Street passage corridor that had shops on both sides. From behind them there was a submachine gun-like blast. Windows in a stationery store blew out, raining glass shards like pieces of sharp glistening confetti. McCall practically threw Gershon onto a bench, turned, and fired at the second assassin from the information kiosk. He crashed to the polished floor and lay still.

  McCall pulled Gershon back to his feet. They ran up a marble staircase and then onto a broad marble passageway. Above them, on the arch it said 42ND STREET—VANDERBILT HALL. On the arches over the doors it said 42ND STREET—BUSES AND TAXIS.

  McCall pushed through the big exit door with Gershon and they were out on the street. Above them was the three-way sign—one pointed to EAST 42ND STREET, the others to PARK AVE and PERSHING SQUARE. They ran under the signs, down the street, past the Satellite Airlines Terminal building. Sirens were blaring, getting closer. Also the whoop whoop of an ambulance.

  A black Lincoln town car pulled up to the curb. Salam, Rachid, and two others from the Dolls nightclub got out. McCall and Gershon changed direction, running down a narrow alleyway. Salam pulled a walkie out of his pocket and spoke softly into it.

  McCall, still carrying Gershon’s dead weight, changed direction again when a second Lincoln town car pulled up at the other end of the alleyway. He dragged the wounded agent into a café called Java Joe’s. It was packed inside. McCall weaved through the tables. Gershon was leaving a trail of blood. A couple of men at one of the tables stood up fast. McCall showed them the gun in his right hand. They stayed where they were. McCall reached a narrow passage beside the mahogany bar. There were two doors on the left-hand side to the restrooms and another door to the kitchen on the right. Ahead was the back door to the coffeehouse.

  McCall pushed through it.

  Outside, the sunlight was almost blinding after the gloom of the passageway. Gershon blinked in it, trying to stand without McCall’s assistance. It looked to Gershon as if McCall knew exactly where he was going, but when they turned another corner, what was in front of them was a high wall with graffiti scrawled on it. It sealed off the street. There were no doors into the building on their left and a high fence on their right. Too high to climb.

  At least in time.

  Behind them, they could hear movement in the café
. Footsteps pounding through it.

  They were trapped.

  McCall gently set Gershon down on the concrete.

  “Get out of here, McCall,” he said, trying to force strength into his voice. “Any bad guys who saw you with me on the concourse are dead. Kirov won’t make the connection.”

  McCall ignored him.

  He crawled a few inches over to a manhole cover. The cover was not flush with the hole. McCall heaved it up and moved it to one side. Below were iron stairs, painted rust, leading down into darkness. McCall pulled Gershon over to the edge.

  “Climb down.”

  Gershon climbed down the first few rungs. McCall climbed in after him. He reached up, gripped hold of the manhole cover, and dragged it across. It came down flush with the opening.

  “Hold on to the ladder with both hands,” McCall told him. “I’m going to climb over you.”

  McCall found a foothold on the ladder on one side, then the other. He managed to climb down, over Gershon’s body, to the rungs right below him. He could hear the running footsteps echoing above them, getting closer. They turned the corner of the street.

  “Sixteen rungs,” McCall said in the darkness. “I’ll go first. Put your good arm around my shoulders and climb down after me. If you fall, I’ll catch you.”

  “They’ll follow us.”

  “It’ll take them a few minutes to figure out where we went.”

  McCall felt Gershon’s good arm snake around his shoulders. He climbed down the sixteen rungs of the narrow iron ladder, virtually carrying Gershon on his back, into reeking darkness.

  CHAPTER 21

  McCall reached the bottom, stepping into stagnant water ankle-deep on the concrete floor. He swung Gershon down beside him. Directly in front of them were three huge pipes, two of them a pale blue, the third rust red, snaking off to the right like long fat slugs into semidarkness. Work lights cast a sparse radiance across the dank tunnel. There were smaller pipes in the ceiling above them. Pieces of broken plaster and splintered concrete were strewn across the tunnel floor. The air was fetid and heavy. And hot. Gershon looked around. Their voices echoed.

  “What is this place?”

  “Utility and steam tunnel,” McCall said. “Runs all the way to beneath Columbia University. Can you walk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With me.”

  McCall put his arm around Gershon’s shoulders again. They half walked, half ran down the narrow tunnel, following the three fat pipes. There was no sound of pursuit behind them yet. McCall could hear rats scuttling through the tunnel, most of them above his head, amid the small pipes. He felt a shudder at the thought of them falling on top of them, scrabbling through their hair, crawling down their faces. Gershon’s breathing was labored, but he seemed to be walking better.

  They came to another tunnel with pipes barring their way. They had to climb over them. McCall stopped to listen. Gershon held on to the pipes, his hands trembling. It was colder here. There was no sound except for a constant dripping, echoing all around them, like fifty faucets leaking tiny putrid splashes onto the concrete floor.

  “Maybe they don’t know where we went,” Gershon said, his voice echoing in the cramped space.

  “Maybe,” McCall said. “Let me look at this.”

  He took off Gershon’s leather jacket. Pulled up his sleeve. He had to unbutton and pull his shirt off his left shoulder to get to the wound on the upper part of his arm. It was still pumping blood. McCall jammed his handkerchief over the wound, then took the belt off Gershon’s jacket and tied a tourniquet around his arm above the wound.

  “I thought the tunnels beneath the city carried the sewage away to big treatment plants,” Gershon said.

  “Lots of them do. That’ll stop the blood loss until we can get you to a doctor.”

  McCall put back on the shirt, buttoned it, and slid back on the leather jacket.

  “Doesn’t look bad,” Gershon said, but his voice was fainter.

  “It wouldn’t be if we were anywhere near an ER and not down in the bowels of the city.”

  McCall took Gershon’s weight again and they walked quickly down the narrow tunnel, one side of it covered with gray pipes, the other a brick wall where the pipes were only at the bottom. This tunnel was dissected by four more. McCall stopped, as if trying to get his bearings. He guided them down another secondary tunnel.

  There was a faint, throbbing sound.

  The walls of the tunnel vibrated.

  “Subway train,” McCall said.

  “Great,” Gershon muttered.

  The train was in a tunnel close to them. The sound and the vibration grew in intensity. The subway train thundered by, unseen, then the noise diminished and the vibration ceased.

  McCall led the way through overlapping shadows farther down the steam tunnel and came to an iron door set into the wall. It was half ajar. He laid Gershon against the pipes. He staggered a little. His face was streaming perspiration. His eyes closed.

  “Stay with me, Danil!”

  Gershon nodded. Opened his eyes. McCall hauled on the iron door. It opened a few inches. Just wide enough for one of them to squeeze through. McCall shoved Gershon through the narrow opening. He waited for one long moment, listening in the semidarkness. Still no sound of pursuit. But that didn’t mean some of the killers hadn’t descended the iron ladder and were walking the tunnels.

  They were trained to be quiet.

  McCall wedged himself through the narrow doorway.

  He stepped out into an unused subway tunnel. Water trickled obscenely down the clammy walls. The air was thick with cold.

  “This where the subway train came through?” Gershon asked.

  “No, that was farther away. This tunnel has been abandoned for years. But be careful of the live rail. And if you feel the vibration of an oncoming train, step into one of the niches.”

  “You said it was abandoned.”

  “It is, but service trains still come through it and unscheduled locals.”

  Halogen lights were placed in the tunnel wall across from them at intervals, most of them blown out, but an occasional light burned, throwing phosphorescent radiance across the glowing tracks. McCall and Gershon walked down the center of the tunnel.

  “You look as if you’re lost,” Gershon said, his voice still shaky with pain.

  “I haven’t gone down below the streets from that location.”

  “You go down into these tunnels?” Gershon asked incredulously.

  “Alice down the rabbit hole,” McCall said. “It’s seductive to come down here. Leave behind the upworld with its hatred and violence and noise. I like the serenity of walking the tunnels.”

  “How about the stagnant water and the filth and the stench?”

  “There is that. Part of the experience.”

  “You’ve lost it, McCall.”

  “Kostmayer said the same thing.”

  McCall gripped Gershon’s arm and indicated a door set back in a niche. A red light glowed over it. They climbed up onto a very narrow platform and McCall dragged the iron door open.

  They stepped into a vault with rusting steel girders holding up a low ceiling. There was more debris strewn across the concrete floor, pieces of steel, split wooden timbers, fragments of plaster. The only light came through the ajar iron door leading out into the abandoned subway tunnel. In the echoing vault paintings glowed on a brick wall—one of a child holding her mother’s hand as they walked through a field of daisies. The little girl’s hair was golden and the daisies were yellow; the rest was all in charcoal. It was somehow stunning. Next to that mural was a golden bridge spanning from nowhere to the skyscrapers of Manhattan, also in charcoal, the bridge itself the only glowing color.

  “What bridge is that?” Gershon asked.

  A sepulchral voice said: “Williamsburg Bridge. Not sure who painted it, but I’m told it’s accurate.”

  McCall whirled. Gershon stumbled back. From out of the milky darkness a figure emerged. He was Afr
ican American, dressed in black jeans, a black NYU torn T-shirt, heavy brown workmen’s boots. His face was like a skeleton’s over which the skin had been stretched too tight. His eyes were black holes in the gloom. His hair was the same color as the charcoal on the brick wall, cropped close to his skull. He was probably in his sixties, but he could have been in his seventies, or even his eighties—he was timeless. If this underworld was ever made into a movie, McCall thought Morgan Freeman was the only actor who could play him. The old skeletal face split into a wide grin.

  “Mr. McCall! You don’t usually come down into the tunnels this way!”

  “An impromptu visit. Danil, this is Jackson T. Foozelman.”

  “My friends call me Fooz,” the old man said. He pointed at the mural of the little girl and her mother in the field of daisies. “Old Jacob painted that one. Took him better than six months. He just needed a few more brushstrokes down in the right-hand corner. See there? That shape is supposed to be a dog followin’ the mother and daughter. Golden retriever, he said it would be. Then one morning Jacob went topside. Wanted to walk in Central Park. Can you imagine that? He hadn’t been in the upworld for years. Don’t know what got into him. He never came back. Never had the chance to finish that golden retriever. I heard he’d been hit by a taxicab crossing Central Park West. I wanted to finish his mural for him, put in the pooch, but I can’t draw for shit. Damn shame.” He shook his head. “Dangerous in the upworld.” Then he said it again: “Damn shame.” He looked at Danil’s face in the dimness, frowned, and reached out a bony hand. His long fingers, like claws, pulled Gershon’s coat back from his arm. “What’s happened here? Your friend’s been bleedin’ pretty bad, Mr. McCall.”

  “He was shot,” McCall said.

  Fooz shook his head, sighing, as if that’s what you get for living up in the city.

  “Have you got a doctor in the tunnels?” McCall asked.