Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (39 page)

Lazaro and his familia had been in
the Floresta for years before the war. He had the people and the
time.

It took us about five minutes to
get to the other end of the tunnel. We stepped through another low doorway
into a big, empty basement. Lee started up the metal staircase against the
wall.

As he reached the top, he turned
off the flashlight and shoved it in his jacket pocket. A few seconds later,
daylight and cold air poured down as he lifted the plywood
covering the hole and pushed it to the side.

We clambered out of the hole and
stood, surrounded by the naked concrete-block walls of the unfinished first
floor. Lee went to an open doorway and peered out for a moment.

“Looks clear. Let’s go.”

I followed him out the door and
across the broken ground to the sidewalk on Walton. We crossed
58
^th
and headed west, toward The Hole.

“So what made you decide to come on
board with the commander?” I asked as we walked. “From what you said, it
sounds like you jumped at it.”

“You have family,
Charlie?”

“Not really. I’m an only child and
both my parents died before the war. Almost got married a couple of times,
but one thing or another tripped that up.” I paused. “Why?”

“I had a family,” he said. “Wife
and a son. My son went out to man the barricades when the skeeters showed
up. Came back the first night, went out again the next. Didn’t come back.
Then we went into the camp. My wife got sick there. After a while, she
died.”

“Sorry.”

“Skeeters took everything that
meant anything to me,” he said. “When Kat showed up at my door, I saw a
chance to do to them what they did to me.”

“So you believe this is going to
work?”

Lee was silent for a moment, then
said, “It might,” he said. “Hell, if there’s even one chance in a hundred,
it’s better than just sitting on our asses doing nothing, isn’t
it?”

“I guess,” I said. “But I have to
be honest. I’m all for the part about killing skeeters, but that racist
bullshit the commander spouts doesn’t sit right with me.”

He was silent for a moment. “It’s
not my way either, but I don’t blame Kat. She grew up in one of them white
supremacist compounds in Idaho or wherever. Aryan Nation, Christian
Identity, whatever they call themselves. It’s how she was raised. It’s the
only thing she knows.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, If we’re
able to drive the skeeters out, and then we turn on other humans, that’s
when I hit the road.”

“You and me both,” he
said.

Ahead of us, I could see the
chainlink fence that surrounded The Hole. The fence was clear along Walton,
but the section on 50
^th
, between Walton and Sampson, was
obscured by heavy brush. It was somewhere in there that Ralphie Suarez had
been shot up by one of Schleu’s men.

Lee turned onto 50
^th
,
then crossed the street. I could barely see the path, but he knew where he
was going and slipped between a couple of big bushes. A few moments later,
we were at the fence.

To the right, movement caught my
eye. A man stood back in the brush, rifle slung over his shoulder, eating
an apple. He watched but didn’t say anything.

Lee followed along the fence to a
hole. “You ever been down here?” he asked, holding the fence back so
I could climb through.

“No, they found a homicide victim
in here once, but I didn’t catch the job. Usually just kids getting high,
making out, and raising hell. Not my problem.”

He followed me to the edge. “This
would have been a really nice station,” he said. “Big central platform,
loop for the inbound trains to swing around and go back to Second
Street.”

I looked down into The Hole I
couldn’t see a subway station there, just a gaping pit with a pair of holes
on the far side. The subway tunnels leading west toward Second
Street.

Lee brushed past me and started
down a well-worn path to the bottom. I fell in behind him.

When we reached the bottom, he
angled for the tunnel on the right. From the outside it looked open, while
the other tunnel was clearly blocked. It took us a few minutes to
reach the opening.

“I heard that both tunnels had
collapsed,” I said as we stepped into the concrete tube.

“Never finished the outbound line,”
he said. “We were digging about half a mile from the end here when they
shut down the project.” He paused. “We did finish the inbound line
though.”

He took out his flashlight and
turned it on. The concrete walls were covered with colorful graffiti, phone
numbers, crude pictures. It reminded me of the inside of a gas station
toilet. Lee started to walk.

“This one was supposedly blocked
too,” I said. “About a hundred feet in.”

“That’s true,” he said, his voice
echoing off the curved walls. “When they pulled the plug, we dropped about
fifty feet of the tunnel, to keep people from going further.” He stopped
and shined the light ahead. For a stretch, the concrete was replaced by
wood. “Digging that out and shoring up this section of tunnel was my first
job for Kat.”

We continued down the tunnel. It
curved to the right, and when it did, I saw that the way ahead was lit by
irregular light fixtures in the ceiling. Lee turned off the flashlight and
put it in his pocket. “Getting the lights back on was my second job,” he
said with a smile.

“So it’s clear from
here...”

“Right to where it merges with the
Second Street line,” he said. “Didn’t lay any track, of course. That would
have come later, while they built the Sampson Street station.”

“You didn’t drop the tunnel at the
Second Street end?”

He shook his head. “Nah, just put a
big iron gate there. Project manager hoped that the city would pick up the
project again, and didn’t want to make more work than necessary to get
things up and running again.”

We’d walked for nearly half an hour
when he asked, “What time you got, Charlie?”

I checked my watch. “Just after
seven-thirty.”

“We’re okay, then,” he said. “Just
going to be the three of us this morning, so we’ll move quick. Tomorrow, we
leave a whole lot earlier.”

“What does that mean?”

“Kat will fill you in.”

Ten minutes later, I could hear
sound echoing down the tunnel from somewhere ahead of us. A voice. As we
got closer, I recognized the voice. Schleu.

I also recognized a smell coming
down the tunnel. Faint, but getting stronger the closer we got. Body odor.
A lot of it.

The tunnel curved again and I could
see that whatever was ahead was well-lit.

“What is that?”

“Jenkins Avenue station,” Lee said.
“They finished it up while we were working on the tunnel to Sampson Street.
Plugged the surface access when the project closed down. We left it
plugged.”

“...more questions?” Schleu
called.

We stepped out of the tunnel into
the station.

People. Hundreds of them. The six
hundred recruits. Crowding the platforms on either side. Behind them I
could see rows of bunk beds, reaching almost to the ceiling.
Homey.

Schleu turned to us when we came
out of the tunnel. “Take a look at the man in the leather jacket,” she
said, pointing at me. “His name is Charlie Welles, and he’ll be in charge
of the operation tomorrow morning.”

The people on the platforms stared
down at me. No smiles. No curiosity. They just looked. I smiled and gave a
little wave. No response.

“Friends, this time tomorrow you’ll
be striking the first blows of the second American Revolution!” Schleu
yelled. “You are the new patriots. You are the new minutemen. You will
herald the return of the United States of America to it’s place as leader
of the world!”

There were a few cheers, but not
many. Either they were all cheered out, or they’d heard Schleu’s rah-rah
stuff so much that it just rolled over them.

“I’ll see you all soon,” she said.
Then she turned and started down the tunnel. Lee and I followed.

As we left the station behind, Lee
said, “There was a marked lack of enthusiasm from the troops.”

“They’re tired and bored,” Schleu
said. “Some of them have been there for almost two months under spartan
conditions.” She paused. “I wish we’d had someplace else to keep them until
the operation started, but this was it.” She paused again. “It’s fine.
They’ll have fire in their bellies when they go out tomorrow
morning.”

“Yeah, about tomorrow morning,” I
said. “What, exactly, am I supposed to be doing?”

“We’ll have a full briefing later
after we get back,” she said. “You’ll hear the whole plan, from beginning
to end.”

“How about a preview?”

She didn’t say anything and I
thought she was going to ignore my request. Then she said, “You’re managing
this part of the operation. You make sure the teams get to their locations
at the right time, you touch base with the uptown police officers who will
be assisting us, and you stay in touch with me so I know how things are
going.”

Schleu stopped walking and turned
to face me. “I’ll be honest with you, Charlie. As far as I’m concerned,
this part of the operation is the most important. Things will be
happening in other parts of the city, things that will have as much or more
impact on our final success. But it is in uptown that we will strike our
first direct blow against the skeeters, a blow that will be repeated again
and again, here and across the country.”

I wasn’t really listening to what
she was saying. It had occurred to me that there was just the three of us,
her, Lee, and me, standing here in an empty subway tunnel. I could take her
down fast, bury my fist in her throat, crush her windpipe, then deal with
Lee. He was stocky, but he was old, and probably hadn’t been in a fight in
long time. He wouldn’t be a problem.

Then back down the tunnel, past the
recruits, out into The Hole. I didn’t think the guards would give me any
trouble when I came through the fence. I was one of them.

From further up the tunnel, I heard
the roar of a subway train passing on the Second Street line. It was
perfect timing. Nobody would hear any shouts or cries for help while I did
what I had to.

I stepped a little closer to Schleu
and was just about to make my move when a man called, “That’s the eight
o’clock just passed, Cap’n.”

“Thanks, Freddie,” she said,
turning to him.

I turned too, and saw one of her
men, an M-16 hanging across his chest, standing thirty feet down the
tunnel.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We’ve got
about ten minutes to get to the platform.”

It took us a few minutes to get to
the end of the tunnel and through the open gate.

As we walked along the narrow
concrete strip beside the subway tracks, Schleu said, “Sunrise is at 6:48
tomorrow morning. Your teams will be in the tunnel here, waiting. After the
seven o’clock train comes through, they’ll follow this path to the
platform, then up and out onto the street.”

“What if there are people on the
platform?” I asked.

“Christmas morning,” she said.
“We’ll have people on the platform. There shouldn’t be anyone getting off
the seven o’clock train. If any humans do get off that train, they’re
collaborators and they’ll be executed.” She paused. “Nobody is coming home
to uptown at seven in the morning unless they work for the skeeters or are
in tight with them. Either way, they don’t deserve to live.”

“Platform is clear, Cap’n,” Freddie
said from ahead of us.

Schleu picked up the pace and in
minutes we were climbing the metal rungs set into the side of the subway
platform. The Ryer Avenue station, the same station where Randy
Sheppard, her former second-in-command, had been gunned down. She paused at
the top and waited for me and Lee.

“Our people will continue to hold
this platform through the morning and into the afternoon,” she said.
“They’re there for security, and will take no overt action while your teams
are doing their work. When your people are finished, we’ll move them back
down the tunnel to Jenkins Avenue, where they’ll wait till Saturday
morning. Then we’ll do it again.”

“I hate to be the one to say this,
but if everything goes right tomorrow, there’s not a chance in hell that
you’re going to be able to do it again. Uptown will be flooded with cops.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if the Security Force shows up to
help.”

She smiled. “Tell me that when
you’ve heard the full plan,” she said. Before I could reply, she turned and
headed up the stairs.

Between the turnstiles at the top
of the steps and the stairs to street level, there was a short passage,
watched over by a man in a subway token booth. As we passed, he nodded. I
couldn’t tell if he was just friendly or another one of Schleu’s people.
She seemed to have them everywhere.

It was cold on Ryer Avenue, with a
stiff, damp wind. Schleu stood, arms folded, staring at the buildings
around us.