The Schwarzschild Radius (46 page)

Brazos checked on them when he returned, then got to work. He made several trips back and forth from his car unloading the items he had bought.

A plastic drop cloth, a nylon towing strap, thick rubber gloves, a propane torch, a pick, quick drying cement, several D-clamps, and a fence post. Next he hauled in a hundred pounds of river rocks. Then, two Macy’s bags.

What followed was the equivalent of prisoners, condemned to hang, watching their gallows being erected. But Brazos wasn’t going to hang them.

Brazos swung a pickaxe at the concrete floor until he had made a foot-deep hole. After picking out the debris, he put in the fence post and emptied a bag of Quikcrete and a gallon of water into the hole. Next he fired several anchors into the concrete ceiling and inserted steel hooks through them. From the hooks, he hung ropes. He tested the ropes with his own weight. Over the next two hours, he built the set of their executions, arranging the cameras to take in all the action.

The client requested that the girls dress up in school girl outfits, then Rachel would be put on trial for espionage. There was a script for this. After the jury of her peers found her guilty, she would be condemned to a series of tortures which included the pear of anguish, a medieval instrument recommended by Brazos which was inserted into body cavities. As a handle was turned, the spoon-shaped lobes opened, causing excruciating pain. She would then be given a choice between this and rape. She would of course choose rape. Brazos would do the honors in all of her openings. Finally, the victim would be impaled through the anus on the sharpened fence post. This had to be done carefully or death would come quickly. If done properly, the victim could last several days. While impaled, the other girls would stone her.

Sonia and Olivia were to undergo the full panoply of medieval torments. Finally, all were to be dismembered alive.

Brazos approached with a knife in his hand. The girls started screaming for mercy. With one slice, he cut their bonds.

“Put those on,” he commanded, pointing to the school uniforms. They undressed in silence while Brazos shined lights on them and took readings.

“That’s no damn good. It has to be ten inches above the knee.” He disappeared behind one of the steel doors which was the storage room and returned with two scissors, thread, and a tape measure.

“Ten inches above the knee and hurry it up.” He tossed scissors, needles, and thread on the bed.

“I need my medicine,” said Olivia. “I can’t move without it.”

Brazos again entered the storage room and returned seconds later with insulin and a hypodermic needle. He tossed it on the bed.

They cut the dresses while he positioned three video cameras on tripods.

Brazos inspected them. “Good.”

While Brazos was looking, Rachel put the scissors and thread on the edge of the bed.

“Turn around. Nice. He reached into a Macy’s bag and pulled out shoe boxes. Put these on with the white socks.” Brazos grabbed the scissors and measuring tape, and started toward the storage room. As soon as he entered the room, the door slammed shut behind him. “Lock it!” Rachel screamed to her sister.

Brazos threw himself against the door but it wouldn’t budge. That voice had come from below, so she had to be on the floor, wedging herself between the door and the wall. It was the only way she could possibly hold it shut.

He could see Olivia through the crack, pushing against the door, trying to lock the slide bolt, but he was throwing off the alignment. Then she dropped to the floor too and braced her legs against the door. The tool box was just out of Brazos’ reach. If he abandoned the door, they would lock it. Keeping one hand on the door, he stretched for the toolbox. It crashed to the ground. He stuck a screwdriver through the small crack between the door and the frame. Now it would be impossible to lock. He had had enough of this game. He quickly removed a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun from a canvas case. The shells were right above him. With ten rounds of double-O buckshot loaded, he pointed the weapon at the door knob.

The explosion sheared the hardware off its mounting screws and sent it crashing into the wall behind the girls. A second and third shot came, each time sending its shattering force through the door and into the girls’ bodies. The slugs didn’t penetrate the steel of the heavy door, but the impact against the girls’ feet was like bastinado.

“The tripods,” Rachel yelled. “Tighten them against the door.”

Olivia unscrewed the cameras and braced the tripods between the door and the wall. This was repeated with the second and third tripods. The shotgun blasts were deafening. Rachel motioned for Olivia to push the point of the screwdriver in with a camera. She slammed the camera into the screwdriver and it fell inside the storage room. The door shut and she slapped the sliding bolt into its bracket.

“Retighten the tripods.”

The girls sprang to their feet.

They backtracked to where they had entered the dungeon. The steel door was locked from the inside with two huge padlocks and chances were that Brazos had the keys.

“Forget it. The other door,” yelled Rachel.

They threw off the crossbar and pulled open the door. There was total blackness in front of them.

They stood in a subway platform that hadn’t been used in decades. They felt their way to the end. A dead end.

“Watch it here,” said Rachel. “It’s the track.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” said her sister.

“We go down.”

Rachel climbed down the sheer wall of the platform onto the derelict track.

“Come on.”

Another shotgun blast. In the tunnel, the report was transformed into a fusillade. Rachel hoped that in a few moments their eyes would adjust to the dark, enabling them to run.

Brazos put the shotgun away and wheeled an oxy-acetylene torch into position.

It took twenty minutes to slice through the steel door. He opened a small leather case and removed a pair of AN/PVC-5 night vision goggles. The night-vision system consisted of a self-contained image intensifier. Forty feet into the tunnel there was no light.

He cut several feet of nylon rope, which he fastened to his belt and then slipped a thirty-eight revolver into his waist. He’d try not to use it––slaughtering them in the subway tunnels wasn’t profitable.

Brazos wasn’t worried about them getting very far. When he moved to New York years ago, he toyed with the idea of burrowing into a bank vault via the city’s maze of abandoned subway tunnels, some of them going back to the Civil War when the cars were pulled by mules. He had embarked on a study of the abandoned tunnel systems, some of which weren’t even in the official records because they were privately funded by entrepreneurs. He collected every map, scoured every website and now knew the location of every abandoned subway tunnel in the five boroughs. This one was part of the IRT line that serviced the old Polo Grounds. The defunct tunnel ended two levels below an active subway station.

With a few simple modifications, it became the perfect dungeon for Brazos’ executions. The tunnel was pitch black with lots of broken glass and rubble. And they had no shoes.

hey were blind, lost, and barefoot.

“Give me your hand,” Rachel told her sister.

“This is just a fucking tomb,” said Sonia.

Searing pain shot up Rachel’s spine as something pierced her foot. It was a hypodermic needle. Her hand felt around and there were dozens of them on the ground along with used condoms.

As they entered deeper into the tunnel, an overpowering stench engulfed them. Suddenly Rachel’s foot pressed down on something soft. A dead rat. Her back spasmed at the realization and only a greater fear enabled her to stifle a scream. Her hands groped ahead of her, flailing as though drowning in the thickness of odor.

“What is it? What?” asked Olivia.

Rachel didn’t want to open her mouth to speak.

“Don’t scream. Dead rat.”

The slightest hint of moving air brushed Rachel’s face and she wet her parched lips to get a bearing on it.

They walked for over twenty minutes, hands flailing before them in the total darkness. Travel was slow as every step had to be tested for something sharp that might stop them altogether. Rachel understood now why POWs and discalced nuns had to surrender their shoes––few things humbled a person as much. A sliver of glass or a sharp pebble had the power to stop a man. It made you give respect to small things you had always crushed underfoot.

Where did this tunnel lead? Was there a connection with the outside world or was it just a long dead end?

“You’ve got to believe me when I tell you I never knew anything about him,” said Sonia. “I never knew who he was.”

“Let’s just try to get out of this. Do you know anything about this tunnel that would be worth sharing?” said Rachel.

“Nothing.”

“Can you see me at all?”

“No.”

Rats swarmed around their feet. Sonia inhaled to deliver a scream, but Rachel found the other girl’s face and clamped a hand over her mouth.

Everywhere she stepped, there was a tail, a soft body, the chatter of fleeing things no higher than an ankle. The smell, the fear from behind, from below, sent Rachel reeling into a wall, vomiting on her insteps.