John Hawks - The Dark River

“Something’s going on…”

“What’s the problem?” Maya asked.

“We’re a maintenance train,” Devon said. “I’m supposed to be running it. But the computer took over when we left the last station. I tried to contact the command center, but the radio’s dead.”

Naz jumped up and raised both hands as if he were trying to stop an argument. “It’s no big deal. There’s probably another train up the line.”

“If that was true, then they would have stopped us at Bleecker.” Devon stepped back into the control room and moved the lever again. The subway car ignored his efforts and passed through the Twenty-third Street station at the same moderate speed.

Maya drew the ceramic gun she had taken from Aronov. She kept the weapon pointed at the floor. “I want the train stopped at the next station.”

“He can’t do that,” Naz said. “The computer is running everything.”

Everyone was standing now-even Sophia Briggs and the girl. They held on to the poles in the middle of the car as lights flashed through the windows and the wheels clicked like a ticking watch.

“Is there an emergency brake?” Maya asked Devon.

“Yeah, but I don’t know if it will work. The computer is telling the train to keep moving.”

“Can you open the doors?”

“Not unless the car has stopped. I can release the safety lock and you can open them manually.”

“Good. Do that right now.”

Everyone looked out the window as they rolled through the Twenty-eighth Street station. The few New Yorkers standing on the platform looked as if they were frozen within that instant of time.

Maya turned to Hollis. “Push the door open. When we reach Forty-second Street, we’re going to jump.”

“I’m staying on the train,” Naz said.

“You’re coming with us.”

“Forget that. I don’t need your money.”

“I wouldn’t worry about the money right now.” Maya raised the gun slightly, pointing it at Naz’s kneecap. “I want to keep away from the cameras and get on that train at Grand Central Terminal.”

Devon switched off the safety lock as they left the Thirty-third Street station. Hollis forced back two of the side doors and held them open. Every few yards they rattled past a steel I-beam holding up the tunnel ceiling. It felt like they were traveling down an endless passageway with no way out.

“Okay!” Devon shouted. “Get ready!” There was a red lever with a T-shaped handle mounted on the wall of the car’s control room. Devon grabbed the handle, pulled down hard, and there was a screeching sound of steel scraping against steel. The subway car began to shiver but the wheels kept turning. As they approached Forty-second Street, the New Yorkers waiting in the station backed away from the edge of the platform.

Alice and Sophia jumped first, followed by Vicki, Hollis, and Gabriel. The train was going slowly enough that Gabriel managed to stay on his feet. Looking up the concrete platform, he saw Maya pull Naz out the open door. The wheels of the train kept screeching as it disappeared into the tunnel. People on the platform looked startled, and one man punched out a number on his cell phone.

“Come on!” Maya shouted, and they started running.

The van drove around the concrete security barrier and stopped at the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to Grand Central Terminal. A National Guardsman standing in front of the train station approached them, but Nathan Boone motioned to one of his mercenaries, a New York City detective named Ray Mitchell. Ray lowered the passenger window and showed the soldier his badge. “Got a call about a couple of drug dealers doing business in the terminal,” he said. “Someone said they had a little Chinese girl with them. Can you believe it? I mean-come on-if you’re selling crack, get a babysitter.”

The Guardsman grinned and lowered his rifle. “I’ve been in the city for six days,” he said. “Everyone here is a little crazy.”

The driver, a mercenary from South Africa named Vanderpoul, stayed behind the wheel as Boone got out of the van with Mitchell and his partner, Detective Krause. Ray Mitchell was a small, fast-talking man who liked to wear designer clothes. Krause was his opposite: a large, awkward cop with a flushed face who seemed to be permanently angry. Boone paid a monthly retainer to both police officers and gave them occasional bonuses for extra work.

“Now what?” Krause asked. “Where’d they go after they jumped?”

“Hold on,” Boone said. His headset was relaying continual information from two teams of mercenaries as well as the Brethren’s computer center in Berlin. The technicians had hacked into the New York transit system’s surveillance network, and they were using their scanning programs to look for the fugitives.

“They’re still in the subway station on a transit level,” Boone said. “The cameras are getting a direct feed as they walk toward the shuttle train.”

“So we go to the shuttle?” Mitchell asked.

“Not yet. Maya knows we’re tracking her, and that’s going to influence her behavior. The first thing she’ll do is get away from the cameras.”

Smiling, Mitchell glanced at his partner. “And that’s why she’s going to be caught.”

Boone reached back into the van and took out the aluminum suitcase that contained the radio tracking equipment and three sets of infrared goggles.

“Let’s go inside. I’m going to contact the response team parked on Fifth Avenue.”

The three men entered the terminal and walked down one of the wide marble staircases built to resemble a part of the old Paris opera house. Mitchell caught up with Boone as they reached the main concourse. “I got to make things clear,” he said. “We’ll guide you around New York and run interference, but we’re not taking anybody out.”

“I’m not asking you to do that. Just deal with the authorities.”

“No problem. I’ll check in with the transit police and tell them we’re at the terminal.”

Mitchell took out his badge, clipped it to his jacket, then hurried down one of the corridors. Krause stayed with Boone like a giant bodyguard as they approached a central information booth with a four-faced clock mounted on the roof. The size of the main concourse, its arched windows, white marble floors, and stone walls, confirmed his belief that his side was going to win this secret war. Millions of people passed through the terminal every year, but only a few of them knew that the building itself was a subtle demonstration of the Brethren’s power.

One of the Brethren’s strongest supporters in America during the early twentieth century was William K. Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon who had commissioned the construction of Grand Central Terminal. Vanderbilt requested that the main concourse’s arched ceiling be decorated with the constellations of the zodiac, five stories above the marble floor of the station. The stars were supposed to be arranged as if they were in a Mediterranean sky during Christ’s lifetime. But no one-not even the Egyptian astrologers of the first century-had ever seen such an arrangement: the zodiac on the ceiling was completely reversed.

It amused Boone to read the various theories as to why the stars were shown this way. The most popular idea was that the painter had duplicated a drawing found in a medieval manuscript and that the stars were shown from the point of view of someone outside our solar system. No one ever explained why Vanderbilt’s architects had allowed this odd conceit to appear in such an important building.

The Brethren knew that the ceiling’s design had nothing to do with a medieval concept of the heavens. The constellations were in the correct position for someone concealed inside the hollow ceiling, looking downward at travelers hurrying to their trains. Most of the stars were twinkling lightbulbs in a powder-blue sky, but there were a dozen sight holes as well. In the past, police officers and railroad security guards had used binoculars to follow the movements of suspicious-looking citizens. Now the entire population was being tracked with scanners and other electronic equipment. The reversed zodiac suggested that only the watchers from above saw the universe accurately. Everyone else assumed that the stars were in the right place.