Gone Tomorrow

FIFTY-ONE

BY CHANCE I SAW THE GIRL WITH THE RAT TERRIER AGAIN. She was walking south on Broadway, heading for 22nd. The little guy was peeing on some posts and ignoring others. I passed them by and the dog noticed me and barked. I turned around to reassure it that I was no kind of a major danger and I saw in the corner of my eye a black Crown Vic come through the 23rd Street light. Clean, shiny, the spike of needle ante

It slowed to a walk.

Broadway is double-wide on that block. Six lanes, all headed south, divided after the light by a short pedestrian refuge in the middle. I was on the left-hand sidewalk. Next to me, an apartment house. Beyond that, retail stores. On my right, six lanes away, the Flatiron Building. Beyond that, retail stores.

Dead ahead, a subway entrance.

The girl with the dog turned left behind me and entered the apartment building. I saw a doorman behind a desk. The Crown Vic stopped in the second of the six lanes. The car behind it pulled past and the wash of its headlights showed me two guys silhouetted in the Crown Vic’s front seats. They were sitting still. Maybe checking a photograph, maybe calling in for instructions, maybe calling for backup.

I sat down on a low brick wall that ran around a planted area in front of the apartment house. The subway entrance was ten feet away.

The Crown Vic stayed where it was.

Far south of me the Broadway sidewalk was wide. Adjacent to the retail operations it was cast from concrete. The half next to the kerb was a long subway grate. The subway entrance ten feet from me was a narrow staircase. The south end of the 23rd street station. The N and the R and the W trains. The uptown platform.

I made a bet with myself that it was a HEET entrance. A high entry-exit turnstile Not a money wager. Something far more important. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I waited.

The guys in the car sat still.

At one thirty in the morning the subway was well into its night-time hours. Twenty-minute gaps between trains. I heard no rumbling or roaring from below. There was no rush of air. The trash on the distant sidewalk grates lay still.

The Crown Vic turned its front wheels. I heard the hiss of its power steering pump and the squelch of its tyres on the road. It turned sharply across four lanes and straightened through a tight S and stopped on the kerb alongside me.

The two guys stayed inside.

I waited.

It was a federal car, for sure. A pool car. Standard LX specification, not the Police Interceptor model. Black paint, plastic wheel covers. The sidewalk wasn’t busy, but it wasn’t deserted, either. People were hurrying home alone, or strolling more slowly in couples. There were clubs on the cross streets to the south. I could tell, because small random knots of dazed people appeared from time to time and craned out into the traffic lanes, looking for cruising cabs.

The guys in the car moved. One tilted right and one tilted left, the way two people do in a car when they are both groping for the interior door handles at the same time.

I watched the subway grates in the sidewalk, forty yards south of me.

Nothing doing. Still air. No moving trash.

The two guys got out of their car. They were both in dark suits. Their jackets were creased low down at the back, from driving. The passenger came around and stood with the driver in the gutter close to the Crown Vic’s hood. They were level with me, maybe twenty feet away across the width of the sidewalk. They had their shields already clipped on their breast pockets. FBI, I guessed, although I wasn’t close enough to be sure. All those civilian shields look the same to me. The passenger called, ‘Federal agents.’ As if he needed to.

I didn’t respond.

They stayed in the gutter. Didn’t step up on the kerb. A subliminal defence mechanism, I guessed. The kerb was like a tiny rampart. It offered no real protection, but once they breached it they would have to commit. They would have to act, and they weren’t sure how that would go.

The subway grates stayed still and silent.

The passenger called, ‘Jack Reacher?’

I didn’t answer. When all else fails, play dumb.

The driver called, ‘Stay right where you are.’

My shoes were made of rubber, and much less tight and firm than I am used to. But even so I felt the first faint pre-echo of subway rumble through them. A train, either starting downtown from 28th Street, or heading uptown from 14th. A fifty-fifty chance. A downtown train was no good to me. I was on the wrong side of Broadway. An uptown train was what I wanted.

I watched the distant sidewalk grates.

The trash lay still.

The passenger called, ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’

I put one hand in my pocket. Partly to locate my Metrocard, and partly to see what would happen next. I knew that Quantico training placed great emphasis on public safety. Agents are instructed to draw their weapons only in situations of dire emergency. Many never draw their weapons at all, all the way from graduation to retirement, not even once. There were i

The two agents drew their weapons.

Two identical moves. Two identical weapons. Glock pistols, taken smooth and fast and easy from shoulder holsters. Both guys were right-handed.

The passenger called, ‘Don’t move.’

Far to my left the trash on the subway grates stirred. An uptown train, heading my way. The dam of air in front of it moving fast, building pressure, finding escape. I stood up and walked around the railing to the head of the stairs. Not fast, not slow. I went down one step at a time. Behind me I heard the agents coming after me. Hard soles on concrete. They had better shoes than me. I turned my Metrocard in my pocket and pulled it out facing the right way around.

The fare control was high. Floor-to-ceiling bars, like a jail cell. There were two turnstiles, one on the left, one on the right. Both were narrow and full-height. No supervision necessary. No need for a ma