The man glared at him and muttered something, but it was under his breath.
“Try that again. Talk to me, big guy, tell me all your secrets.”
The man wriggled beneath him, like he was trying to break free, and as Jake backhanded another slap across his face, he thrust out his jaw to take it and bit down hard.
In the silence of the back room, Jake distinctly heard something go
pop.
Something inside his prisoner’s mouth. He realized what it meant a second too late to do anything about it, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing the guy’s chin and trying to force his jaw apart.
But the guy just lay there, a froth of foam bubbling between smiling lips and streaming from his nose, before he shuddered and his eyes rolled back into his skull. He stopped breathing altogether a few seconds later.
“Fuck! Just . . . fuck! Fuck!” Jake yelled at the dead man, slamming a clenched fist down on its chest. “I only wanted a couple of answers . . . Jesus . . . Was that
really
worth killing yourself over?”
The dead man had thought so.
So had the guys who’d given him that golden iris pin on his lapel and whatever other death-before-dishonor crap they’d fed him.
Cyanide capsules hidden in fake teeth? It was straight out of James Bond.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
FINN PUSHED THROUGH THE PAIR OF NOT-SO-AUTOMATIC DOORS that lined the front of Port Authority. The chill of the coming winter night crept in with her.
Okay,
she thought,
if I wanted to cause maximum chaos, where would I start?
This was unlike her. She couldn’t quite remember why she’d volunteered to chase shadows with Jake. She wasn’t even with him. She was out here on her own and the shadows she was chasing had guns. She was trying to impress him. He was a glorified goddamn electrician, he should have been the one trying to impress
her
. It was all ass-backward.
She paused at the second set of doors that opened into the terminal’s central hall.
He shows up after a year and suddenly I’m acting like he’s the last man on earth and my hormones are off the chart. Get a grip on yourself, woman.
She shook her head.
No time for remonstrations. She could beat herself up later. Right now, she needed to ditch the pseudo self-analysis and concentrate on the task at hand: looking for the bad guys. She could figure everything else out later. Assuming she didn’t get herself shot first.
She focused on her surroundings.
Port Authority didn’t change. It was always the same wretched hive of humanity, a little darker with most of the lights out, but the soaring central space with its wide columns and sturdy inner balconies managed to make the gathered horde look inconsequential. Even at its most crowded, the building felt airy and open.
Tonight, it was as crowded as she’d ever seen it. Everywhere she looked there were people wrapped up against the elements: some walked, some stood and leaned, some talked huddled around candles, some crouched or kneeled or sat, some full-out sprawled on the worn tiles. A few actually slept in corners or huddled up against columns.
She couldn’t help but wonder how bad their homes were that they’d rather be here in a glorified bus station. Then she realized that for some, if not most of them, it had nothing to do with the state of their homes. It was about seeing other people, about knowing you weren’t alone. And in Port Authority, you were never alone.
These were strange days.
They had been ever since the first dogs had howled and the first bullets of that deluge of rain had fallen. No wonder people were calling it the end of the world. Now, plunged into darkness, it was as if everything they’d ever known was slowly coming undone. They weren’t equipped for this. They weren’t made to forage and fend for themselves. Their survival skills involved forming lines in Walmart and using credit cards to gather what they’d hunted down. At best they were lethal with coupons.
On one of the far walls she noticed a spray of graffiti. Any other day she’d have completely ignored it as just one more piece of senseless vandalism, but there was something eerily familiar about the swirls of the pattern—she’d been staring at the same thing for hours that morning. Only then it had been below the waterline, way down south off the coast of Cuba, carved into the walls of an impossible pyramid fifty thousand years ago. She’d never seen it before today. Now here it was again on the wall of Port Authority.
It stopped her dead in her tracks, causing a couple of people to grunt and complain as they nearly walked into her back.
She didn’t move for a full minute, unsure what to make of it.
How could it be here? Coincidence?
She was shaking her head, telling herself no, it couldn’t be a coincidence, when she remembered something Jake had mentioned about the guys he’d chased at Times Square: they’d been spraying graffiti on the subway wall.
They were here somewhere. She looked around, still not sure what she was looking for. They were hardly going to be wearing night-vision goggles and gas masks.
They’d need privacy to hack into the systems and a terminal with the right kind of access. It wasn’t like they could just surf into the system from the free Wi-Fi at Cinnabon or Au Bon Pain.
And with that realization the entire mission changed. She wasn’t looking for a bunch of terrorists anymore, she was looking for their access point to the system.
Finn stepped to the side to avoid more grunts and complaints, and leaned against the wall. She scanned the faces of everyone that passed her. She needed to think. She was supposed to be good at that.
What do you know about Port Authority? List it. Everything. Go!
She closed her eyes and started ransacking her memories, looking for something she could use, anything, some clue to point her in the right direction. It didn’t matter how big or seemingly small.
She’d lost count of how many times she’d been through here, how many buses she’d ridden out to New Jersey or upstate or down to DC or even to Atlantic City. She knew the station well enough to navigate through it, knew where the bathrooms and escalators were, where to go for coffee, where to get snacks, where to get a little real food too. But she’d never tried looking at it from the perspective of someone intent upon doing harm.
Come on, woman. Think. Think!
And then she had it.
Upstairs.
She headed straight down the hall, past the Hudson News kiosk to the two long escalators framing Au Bon Pain. The escalators weren’t working, and a few people were sprawled across the bottom steps. The buses weren’t running and most of the shops were closed. That meant it was quiet up there. Quiet and full of doors that led into the guts of Port Authority, passageways like arteries that kept vital services running.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped over the people at the bottom and started up.
It took her two minutes to rise up through the levels.
She brushed her hair back from where sweat matted it to her neck. She had too many layers on. She teased the scarf down from her chin and looked around, reorienting herself: a shoe repair place, a jewelry stall, a Café Metro, a florist, and beyond those, the one place that always seemed to be a little haven of peace and quiet—because the one thing you didn’t do in New York was piss off the cops right in their own backyard.
She strode off in that direction, ignoring the row of old homeless guys.
One of them called out, asking her for money. She just kept on walking as he flashed her a gap-toothed grin. “Send me a postcard, beautiful,” he cackled.
She shuddered, moving another step farther away from him, which brought her closer to a derelict whose teeth had all rotted away. His beard contained the remnants of his last few meals.
None of the bums followed her; habit kept them away from where she was headed. It was ingrained in them, another layer of filth coating their skin: stay clear of the cops if you want to take advantage of the heating, the benches, and the bathrooms. Don’t cross them and they won’t toss you out on your ass.
Port Authority was a carefully balanced ecosystem.
All the levels from bottom to top were essential to its continued harmonious existence. Bears did indeed shit in the woods. The pope was Catholic. Port Authority was full of the kind of people and practices the city had been trying to stamp out since the seventies, but as long as they were careful and didn’t flaunt themselves on the steps of a police station, blind eyes were turned.
She walked through the last real blind spot before she reached the cop shop. The hall consisted of unadorned redbrick walls and a pale square-tiled floor. Nothing flashy, no ostentation. It was purely functional, a large, unassuming space with floor-to-ceiling opaque glass windows all around.
And a small sign overhead read,
Operations Control Center.
She stood outside the door, staring at the façade, and licked her lips. Her heart was hammering. What if there were still cops inside? She needed an excuse. The best she could come up with was ignorance, pretend she was lost and frightened and looking for help. If that didn’t work she could tell them Jake thought they were at risk. But that only worked if those guys weren’t already in there.
She took a deep breath, let it out, brushed her hair back, took another deep breath, delaying the inevitable.
It’s just a door.
You can do this. All you’ve got to do is open a door.
Like Pandora opened a box,
she thought bitterly, wishing she was back in her office.
When she reached for the knob, a hand clamped down on her shoulder before she could turn it.
“And where do you think you’re going, miss?” The voice was deep and resonant. Intimidating.
She turned to face the speaker. He couldn’t have been less intimidating if he’d tried. He was short, barely taller than her, and looked like he’d been living up here for a few weeks, his oversized army coat ragged, his frayed jeans falling apart, his shoes bursting at the seams, his fingerless gloves a sooty gray that had nothing to do with their original color.
But the pistol tucked into his waistband was all the intimidation he needed.
His stubble was carefully cultivated, and even if his hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a few days, the natural oils kept it thick and glossy. His eyes were dark, sharp, and cold.
He wasn’t panhandling for loose change.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A VICIOUS EXPLOSION BOOMED OUT ACROSS LONDON, dragging Sophie from her thoughts.
She pushed herself up from her seat, rushing toward the door. Most of the café’s other patrons did the same, crowding around the double glass doors that served as the outer wall.
She went out into the street. And stopped, staring.
A tongue of flame writhed above the buildings, lighting up the night sky. A thick column of dark smoke rose above it, choking the fingers of flame.
People pointed, murmurs of disquiet rippling through the crowd as they came to the logical conclusion: looters. The city had had its fair share of disenfranchised plaguing the streets, smashing up shops, tearing down fences. Fire was a natural extrapolation of that violence. She knew better. Looking at the fire rise, she knew she had to move.
She started to make her way toward the flames, but only got as far as the median strip in the middle of the road, then stopped on the white line, surrounded by other confused people staring up at the burning sky.
She was already too late to influence events there—the fire was raging, she wasn’t a firefighter, she wouldn’t be able to do anything even if she could get close to the source. She’d just be another face in the crowd, gawking, kept at a distance by the authorities as they scrambled to prevent the flames from spreading.
Worse, she’d be trapped if anyone spotted her.
She went back inside the café as others streamed out to look. She ran over to the counter, flipped on the flat-screen television mounted above it. Normally running a constant cycle of ads for lattes, low-fat mochaccinos, low-carb salads, and other healthy alternatives, it had shut down along with everything else. But since the power was back on, if the TV was working again . . .
If there was news broadcasting . . .
It would be a huge step toward the world returning to some semblance of normality.
The standby light at the screen’s lower edge illuminated, then the black screen resolved into the image of a serious-looking man in a suit shuffling papers at a news desk.
Exactly what she needed.
A couple of people from outside had noticed the television and peered up at the screen.
Sophie found the remote and hit the volume as the man glanced up, saw that the camera was on, and smiled. It was a reassuring smile, promising everyone that no matter how desperate things appeared, it was going to be okay. He was a terrible liar.
“Welcome back,” he said, his voice rich and deep. He was an image of perfect calm, no hint of the sheer scale of disasters that had gripped the world over the last day. It was all about perception. If he appeared panicked, people would feed off it. By being calm he was telling the world that this too shall pass. “Reports are coming in that suggest a large-scale explosion in the vicinity of London’s financial district. This is unconfirmed at the moment, but it is believed that a bomb has exploded within the stock exchange. Emergency services are on the scene, and investigators are en route. There are no reports of casualties yet, as the building had been closed due to the power outages across the city. We’ll keep you up-to-date as we learn more. As of now no group has claimed the attack, but the Metropolitan Police are advising people to stay away from the area if possible, and the country’s threat level has moved up from Substantial to a current level of Severe.”
The only level above that, Critical, she knew, meant they were expecting an imminent nuclear strike.
If only they knew . . .
Sophie turned away from the program and sank back into her chair. The stock exchange, gone? She couldn’t quite believe it, despite the evidence of her own eyes.