Black Market

27

Manhattan

At 3:40 A.M., while Caitlin and Carroll were hurrying downtown, a restless David Hudson was riding aboard the strangely crowded Eighth Avenue subway.

The rattling, gray metal cars were filled with staggering, vacant-eyed drunks. There were clusters of Forty-second Street prostitutes. Here and there a late night Irish bartender or transit worker sat in wary silence.

In order to avoid the unpleasant sweet-sour liquor smells, Hudson had stationed himself in the open bridge between two of the jouncing cars. Sometimes when he couldn't sleep, he would ride the mesmerizing subways for hours like this-nothing on his mind but the passing stations and the speed. It was a little like walking a night patrol in Vietnam.

He'd worked late at the Vets garage. It was down to the agonizing final details now, always the last details to get exactly right.

It all happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, on the train…

As the subway relentlessly raced north, the heavy metal door between the cars suddenly opened. Two black men in their middle twenties squeezed into the swaying space between the cars.

“Mind movin' on, my man!” One of the two sniffled and showed a row of dull gold caps.

Hudson said nothing. The train was just braking into the Fifty-ninth Street station, a maze of co

“I said-move on, my man!”

Colonel David Hudson's feet shifted slightly on the throbbing steel plates. He automatically slipped into the combatstance. The train bucked and squealed loudly to a stop, and the one with the gold caps started to move.

The rest was like a familiar dream for Hudson. His clenched fist shot forward, followed immediately by a martial-arts kick.

The lightning blows were lethal. One accurately smashed into the group leader's temple; the second crunched his jaw. He reeled backward and fell from the train.

The second man pulled a knife. Hudson struck before the man could use it. Blood exploded over the attacker's right eyebrow.

“You! Hey, you! Stop right there!”

David Hudson heard shouts as the subway doors slid open. Two transit authority police in black leather jackets, a man and a woman, were ru

The police officers had their nightsticks out. The heavy wooden Billy clubs were flying, pumping up and down as they ran.

Colonel David Hudson burst from the gaping train doors before they could reach him.

“You! Stop! Stop!” The transit cops screamed their sharp commands from the rear.

David Hudson felt incomprehensible terror as he pushed and stumbled along the jammed subway platform. The Lizard Man was flashing back. The lessons of the Lizard Man…

For it to all end like this was so absurd. So impossible to foresee. He had a “sample” bond inside his jacket, and they'd search him for certain.

How could Green Band end here? In a mundane New York City subway station?

David Hudson could see the careful pla

The stone floor was slick with rainwater that had drained down from the street. The smell of urine was overpowering in the endless, fetid tu

For it all to end like this was unthinkable.

“Stop! Stop, you!”

Not a single person dared to help the trailing police team. Hudson looked too determined, too potentially dangerous, to grapple with. He was a flying, one-armed madman!

His legs were pumping furiously high, and his face was fearsome in its intense concentration. He sideswiped a weaving drunk and didn't feel the insubstantial body bounce off.

It was too absurd for the mission to end here! Wasn't it too absurd?

An explosion suddenly echoed through the long stone tu

The cops had actually fired warning shots.

They were shooting inside the late night subway station.

Dark stone stairs were off to his right! Stairs to what though? Hudson could see the street looming above, a patch of purplish gray sky. He ran three steps at a time.

Up, he screamed at himself. Outside! Out of this careless, stupid trap he'd stumbled into.

Hudson sprinted blindly down West Sixtieth Street. He ran across the empty street against the red light, trailing rags of his own breath. He continued down Sixtieth Street, past Columbus, slipping into a maze of high-rise beige and gray apartment buildings. His heart pounding, he finally stopped in a darkened doorway.

Seconds later the two cops spun around the same corner of the gray brick building. He hadn't lost them, after all.

Hudson slid his gun from his coat and trained it on the male. His finger curled round the trigger… Heart shots would be necessary here. He watched as they searched among the buildings' shadows.

“Where the hell did he go?” the cop asked, breathing hard. wheezing like a much older man.

Colonel Hudson continued to watch from the building's doorway… They only had to start walking toward him, and they were dead. Both of them…

“You wa

The female cop shrugged as she pulled off her duty cap.

David Hudson held his breath. Don't come any closer, he thought. Not another step closer.

Please, don't.

“Yeah. He's probably miles away. That creep could run.” the patrolwoman said in a shrill voice.

Hudson listened to their footsteps slowly fading. Cruel pain exploded inside his chest. He finally had to sit down on the curb.

If he'd had to shoot those two cops…

He stuck the gun inside his jacket. No need for that now. He didn't need any kind of disaster.

Everything was going to come soon. The high-and-mighty United States was going to come crashing down to reality Colonel David Hudson thought it was a fate well deserved.

28

“What's happening, Arch, I think, is a disorderly, almost a riotous market condition. Everybody desperately wants to sell. Except there's a corresponding lack of buyers,” Caitlin said.

“What exactly does that mean?” Carroll asked. “What happens now?”

“It means the bottom-line price of stocks and bonds has to plummet dramatically… The crash that's apparently coming could last a few hours, days, or drag on for years.”

“Years?”

“Back in sixty-three, on the day Ke

Carroll and Caitlin Dillon were hurrying across the immense marble lobby of the World Trade Center. It was here, on the ground floor and mezzanine, that the fiduciary nerve center of the banks and trust companies had been established after the bombing on Wall Street.

The escalator stairs to the mezzanine were frozen to a stop. An impromptu sign over a red arrow read FINANCIAL SECTION and pointed straight up.

Carroll and Caitlin started to jog up the motionless metal stairs. It was just past 4:00 A.M.

“This looks a little more organized than number Thirteen. Not much, though,” Carroll observed.