CHAPTER 48

McCall knelt in the elongated hut on the platform and took out the revolver tear gas shell launcher and loaded six 38 mm tear gas shells into it. He didn’t put on the stabilizing stock; it made the weapon 720 mm in length and that was too long. It only weighed 3.5 kg in weight. He knew the effects would be temporary. CS gas caused dizziness, nausea, restricted breathing, burning in the eyes, and disorientation. But that would be enough. He put the tear gas revolver into his belt.

He hadn’t come to the station with any kind of elaborate plan. He had no idea of the location of the hostages. Were they being held together, or separately? If he had been their captor, he would have incarcerated them separately. Why give a rescue squad just one location to find? Except there was no elite Special Forces team coming for them.

Just one man.

McCall only had surprise and stealth on his side. No one would be expecting him to come at them from the platform-end of the station. He had to find the location of the three hostages. He had to attack as swiftly and as silently as he could. Once the gunfire started, he would be virtually out of time to save anyone.

The tear gas might give him a few added seconds.

McCall straightened, being careful not to stand in front of the dirt-streaked window. He heard echoing footfalls and edged to the window and looked out.

Kuzbec was coming down the last of the marble stairs nearest the hut, shaking a ring of keys out of his coat pocket. His AK-47 was slung over his left shoulder. McCall noted his hands were shaking. It wouldn’t be with fear. None of these men were afraid of some older, out-in-the-cold ex-spy riding to the rescue with his heart on his sleeve. It was rage of some kind.

Kuzbec unlocked the door of what must be some kind of a storage room on the platform. He took a Smith & Wesson SD9 9 mm pistol out of the waistband of his suit pants and entered the room.

McCall nodded.

Location of one prisoner found.

*   *   *

Kuzbec didn’t turn on the light, but illumination from the chandeliers over the platform washed into the storage room. Natalya was already on her feet. Kuzbec had the Smith & Wesson pistol trained on her. She shook her head violently, as if that wasn’t necessary. She opened her arms wide, to show him she had no weapon, not a box cutter she might have found, or a piece of broken glass or even a cup of hot coffee. She approached him, as if tentatively, still shaking her head. I’m not a threat. She shrugged. I’m frightened. You can understand that, right? She reached up and gently touched his face where she’d scalded it. She shook her head again. Sorry. He didn’t move. Just stared at her.

She took his left hand in hers, the one not holding the gun.

His lip curled.

“So now you’re coming on to me, you little whore?” He threw off her hand and smiled at her. “Too late. Your father wants to see you. You would be safer in here with me.”

He looked around the storage room. Everything was as he’d left it. He grabbed Natalya’s left arm and pushed her away from him, toward the ajar doorway. She didn’t struggle. She appeared dejected. But he put the barrel of the Smith & Wesson against her left temple as she walked out of the room.

*   *   *

McCall had moved from the window of the hut to the door. He had it open just a crack. He knelt beside it, holding the M16, looking out. It was an oblique view down the platform, but he could see the edge of the storage room door. Natalya came out first, a beaten, shuffling walk, Kuzbec behind her. He closed the storage room door. He had the barrel of the gun pressed against the side of Natalya’s head. Beyond them, down the platform, the three mercenaries were looking their way. One of them had already started forward. He was speaking into a walkie, the words indistinct.

A walkie crackled on the body of the mercenary behind McCall.

Trying to call his comrade.

Get the hell out of that hut where I can see you.

Suddenly Natalya jerked her head away from the gun barrel. She reached down and grabbed Kuzbec by the balls and squeezed. From the expression on his face, she squeezed very hard. Two of the mercenaries at the other end of the platform smirked. The third on his walkie laughed.

Kuzbec doubled over in pain.

Natalya pulled up her sweatshirt at the back, grabbed the Windex bottle from her back pocket, and hit the nozzle, spraying the cleaning fluid directly into Kuzbec’s eyes.

He screamed and threw his hands up to his face, but kept hold of the Smith & Wesson.

Natalya ran.

She stumbled on shaky legs and fell heavily to the platform.

Kuzbec straightened up, his face contorted with pain, and leveled the gun at her back.

In the doorway of the hut, McCall fired a burst from the M16.

The bullets hit Kuzbec’s body. He jerked around like a puppet and was thrown against the storage room door, sliding down it. The sound of the staccato fire was deafening on the platform.

McCall stepped out of the hut and pulled the tear gas revolver from his belt. He fired two tear gas shells down the platform as the mercenaries unhooked the AK-47s from their shoulders. Tear gas exploded around them. Bullets erupted out of the streaming red smoke, slamming into the wooden hut. McCall heard the coughing and choking immediately. He saw the silhouetted figures staggering as the toxic CS gas enveloped them. They couldn’t see him or Natalya.

McCall motioned Natalya to him. She got to her feet, stumbled again, then ran the ten feet to the elongated hut. McCall grabbed her and threw her inside. More bullets hit the hut, but they were wild. McCall fired the M16 at the silhouetted figures in the streaming tear gas smoke. Two of them convulsed and collapsed onto the platform.

The last man, the one with the walkie, retreated back into the enveloping red cloud.

Four hostiles down.

McCall moved back inside the hut and gripped Natalya’s shoulders. He forced her to look at him.

She nodded. She knew who he was.

An instant later the window on the platform side of the hut blew out in a burst of gunfire. McCall shoved Natalya down. The spiraling glass slivers tore into McCall’s face, lacerating it, blood spitting up from half a dozen deep cuts. Blood spilled from a jagged cut over his right eye, almost blinding him.

He fired the M16 through the jagged window opening.

The last mercenary on the platform was thrown back into the drifting tear gas and lay still.

Five hostiles down.

*   *   *

In the main ticket room, Berezovsky whirled to Salam.

“That can’t be McCall. There’s no way he could get into this station except through the front entrance. Go down and see who the hell they’re firing at. Probably some maintenance workers who came down the track. Find out how many are dead.”

Salam and three of Berezovsky’s mercenaries ran for the first staircase.

That left Rachid with Berezovsky and McCall’s son.

*   *   *

In the hut, McCall ran a hand through his hair, combing the glass debris out of it, gripping a terrified Natalya’s shoulder.

“Run to the end of the platform right here. Jump down and edge along the wall, careful not to step onto the rail. There’s a niche one hundred feet from the platform. You can’t see it from here. There are stairs down to an iron door. It’s unlocked.”

She touched his face with a trembling hand.

“You’re hurt,” Natalya said.

It was so strange to hear her actually speak that it took McCall by surprise.

“I’m fine. Go through the doorway and lock the door from the other side. Wait there. Don’t go into the tunnels. Just wait. If anyone else comes down those stairs, then run. If you’re approached in the tunnels, tell whoever it is you want to see Alicia. You’ve come from City Hall station, sent by a friend. You understand?”

It was clear that she didn’t, but she nodded. She understood enough to get off the platform and into the niche and down the stairs. McCall gave her Jeb’s key to the iron door. He took the Beretta Px4 Storm 9 mm subcompact from the small of his back and pressed it into her hands.

“Thirteen rounds. Just point it and fire if you have to. I’ll get your mother.”

He straightened and opened the door of the hut. Tear gas smoke hazed down the platform, turning it eerily bloodred. Nothing moved in it, but McCall heard footfalls echoing on the stairs. He pushed Natalya out the hut door.

“Go!”

Natalya ran to the end of the platform and scrambled down onto the tracks. She pushed her back into the wall and moved along it until she came to the niche. She didn’t look back. She disappeared into it.

McCall took the mini-pad off the clip on his belt. There were four heat images on the LED screen, unmoving. The bodies on the platform. McCall moved out of the hut and aimed the mini-pad at the first set of marble stairs. There were moving heat forms in the upper left-hand corner.

There was one heat form isolated in the center of the screen.

A figure slumped on the staircase.

Katia or Scott.

McCall ran to the marble staircase, throwing blood out of his eyes. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. Hot trickles of it ran down his face. He looked up the stairs and saw a huddled woman’s figure in the center of the staircase. The lights from the platform didn’t reach as far as her figure, but he had no doubt it was Katia. She looked up, but he couldn’t see her face in the semidarkness.

On the left-hand side of the staircase, near Katia’s figure, was the door McCall was looking for. He’d only had a chance to briefly look at the blueprints of the City Hall subway station on the Internet, but this had to be the right one.

If he was wrong, they were dead.

He ran up the stairs to just below Katia’s figure and pulled on the door.

Locked.

McCall heard the echoing footsteps reach the top of the staircase above him. He knelt down, aiming up the M16. He squinted through the sight, but the blood obscured his vision. He took the sight from his right eye, wiped away the blood, put it back, and saw two men moving down the stairs. McCall fired at them, but his aim was off and they jumped back around the corner. McCall, still crouched, turned and fired at the door on his left, lacerating the lock.

Then he straightened and kicked it in.

One of the mercenaries edged back around the top of the staircase and fired down at where McCall’s figure had been.

It was gone.

McCall was in a narrow room filled with equipment. There were electric boxes along one wall and panels of switches. McCall just opened up on the boxes and panels with the M16, disintegrating them.

Immediately all of the lights on the station platform went out.

*   *   *

In the main ticket room Berezovsky, Scott, and Rachid were thrown into darkness. Only the wan illumination from the city lights filtering down the staircase from the street above touched them. Berezovsky whirled to Rachid.

“Get down there!” he ordered.

Rachid took the AK-47 off his shoulder and ran to the staircase on the left-hand side of the big empty room.

Berezovsky took a small silver key out of his pocket, at the same time pulling the Makarov pistol from its holster. He unsnapped the cuff holding Scott’s wrist to the iron railing by the ticket booth. He grabbed the kid and thrust him forward, the gun at his head.

“You were right,” Berezovsky whispered. “Your daddy did come for you. Now you can die together.”

*   *   *

McCall ran back out onto the staircase. The only illumination was the pale radiance coming through the skylights on the platform, which didn’t carry far up the stairs. He ran up to Katia, firing bursts with the M16. No one came down the stairs above him. He pulled Katia to her feet. That’s when he saw what Berezovsky had done to her. Her lip was split and swollen. Her left eye was completely closed and the skin around it was turning purple. There was dried blood around her nose and lips. She tried to take a step down, but staggered, and McCall had to grab her before she fell down the staircase.

“Can you reach the platform?”

“Men there,” Katia mumbled, barely able to speak.

“All dead. Natalya’s safe.”

McCall pushed her down toward the bottom. She held on to the iron railing with both hands and climbed down as fast as she could.

McCall leaped up the rest of the stairs.

At the top was the entrance to the fare control area.

Two of the mercenaries were running through it.

McCall fired, sending them back under a hail of bullets. Salam and another mercenary were taking cover behind some stacked ladders. Architecturally the room was a continuation of the Guastavino vaulting and black-and-gold tiling. Like entering some kind of gorgeous Fabergé Easter egg.

The men fired at the entranceway to the stairs.

McCall fell back, pulled the tear gas revolver from his belt, and fired. Two shells exploded into the room. Red smoke streamed across the space with frightening alacrity, like an out-of-control fire. The coughing and cries started immediately as the men’s throats burned, their eyes streamed, mucus gushed from their noses and nausea set in.

McCall fired at two of the fiery silhouetted outlines. The mercenaries convulsed and fell to the tiled floor.

Seven hostiles down.

McCall retreated back down the stairs, bullets erupting around him, chipping the beautiful tiles adorning the staircase, spitting slivers at McCall’s already lacerated face.

When he got to the bottom Katia was waiting for him on the platform. She was staring at the dead men lying prone in the last remnants of drifting smoke.

McCall caught her arm and turned her toward the other end of the platform.

“Climb down. Walk a few steps with your back against the wall. Be careful not to touch the live rail. You’ll find a niche set back in the tunnel. There are stairs at the end of it. At the bottom is an iron door. It’ll be locked. Call Natalya’s name. She’s on the other side waiting for you. She’ll unlock the door. Lock it again behind you and wait for me. If I don’t come down those stairs, run into the tunnels. It’s a maze, but someone will find you and Natalya knows what to say to them.”

“Robert…”

“Where’s my son? Where’s Scott?”

“In the ticket office on the street level.”

There was no time for more. Bullets exploded around them from the staircase. McCall shoved Katia down the platform toward the wooden hut and turned.

Salam and the other mercenary were halfway down the staircase, Salam firing his AK-47.

McCall took two bullets.

One passed through his right shoulder, searing pain through his body. His legs buckled. The second bullet hit the thigh of his right leg. He fell backward onto the platform.

On his back, McCall fired the M16 up the stairs at the shadowy figures running down them. He heard a cry and the mercenary fell to the bottom. McCall rolled away.

His M16 clip was empty.

He had two seconds.

Salam came through the entranceway onto the platform.

No sign of McCall.

Salam looked at the wooden hut end of the platform.

Katia was climbing down onto the tracks.

Salam raised his AK-47.

McCall came out of the drifting smoke behind him. His eyes were streaming and his throat felt like it had been sliced open. He drew and fired the Sig Sauer P238, putting four slugs into Salam’s back. The AK-47 fired as the enforcer’s finger jerked on the trigger. The bullets flew up into one of the glowing blue skylights, smashing the heavy glass, raining it down onto the tracks.

Salam pitched forward onto the platform.

Nine hostiles down.

McCall looked beyond Salam’s body.

Katia was gone.

McCall grabbed his fallen M16, took another mag from his pocket, and slammed it in. Then he limped back toward the second set of stairs at the other end.

Rachid came down them onto the platform. He fired on McCall’s eerie figure emerging from the streaming red tear gas smoke, face bleeding, body bleeding, limping, eyes wild, like some vision from Hell.

McCall was hit in the upper left arm. He stumbled to his knees and the M16 went flying out of his hands, over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks.

Rachid raised his AK-47 for the kill shots.

McCall still had the Sig Sauer in his right hand. Without having to aim he shot Rachid three times, two in the chest, one to the head.

Rachid fell back in a fountain of spurting blood.

Ten.

McCall dragged himself to his feet. He was in a great deal of pain. Everything echoed, the sound of the gunshots ringing in his ears constantly. He kept throwing the blood out of his right eye. His right leg was almost useless when it came to walking. He dragged it behind him, his left leg having to compensate. At first his body had been on fire; now it was getting numb, cold waves emanating from the shoulder and arm wounds.

He was out of bullets.

McCall reached the staircase and slammed another magazine into the Sig Sauer with trembling fingers. He started to climb the staircase, gun held out in front of him in his right hand, clutching the iron railing with his left, his right leg dragging behind him.

He made it up to the fare control area.

Drifting tear gas smoke and dead bodies.

McCall continued to climb in agony. It felt like he was climbing to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but he was close, so close, just a few more steps, Scott would be there.

McCall made it to the top of the staircase and entered the main ticket room.

It was deserted.

He noted a broken handcuff on a railing beside the closed ticket booth.

McCall stood still, putting his weight on his left leg, listening. He could hear a kind of muffled shuffling down the other staircase. He turned and went back down his staircase, faster this time, working through the pain, putting it in a place where it could not reach him.

He had staggered through the fare control area and was halfway down the stairs to the platform when he heard Berezovsky’s mocking raised voice.

“I have your son, Mr. McCall. We’re on the platform. Do join us.”

McCall half jumped, half staggered down the rest of the marble stairs and out onto the station platform.

Berezovsky was standing in the center of the platform, the red smoke dissipating around him. The platform was littered with bodies. Berezovsky had hold of Scott’s shoulder and the barrel of the Makarov pistol was pressed against the side of his head. Scott stood absolutely motionless. The light filtering down through the blue skylights, one of them shattered now, barely reached the platform. The two of them were backlit, like ghostly images on a battlefield.

“I know my wife and daughter are not upstairs.” Berezovsky’s voice echoed on the platform. “Katia’s your lover. You set her up in a beautiful apartment at the Dakota. She betrayed me. My daughter is a stranger. No doubt you have them hidden in a room somewhere on the platform. I will find them and kill them. But what to do about your son?”

“Let him go,” McCall said, dragging himself closer, the Sig Sauer pointed down at the platform floor.

“Men like us cannot have families. It is too dangerous. Both of us should have known better.”

“Let my son go and you can walk out of here,” McCall said.

“You would never allow me to do that. I was told you’d resigned from The Company. That you’d come to finally understand your real enemies were your own people. I was proud of you. A shame that wasn’t true. Throw down your gun.”

McCall remained unmoving.

Berezovsky prodded Scott in the head with the barrel of the Makarov.

His voice was suddenly raging.

“Do it now!”

McCall opened his shaking fingers and tossed the Sig Sauer onto the platform floor.

He tossed it in a particular place, calculating the distance it would take him to reach it when he threw himself to the ground.

“I did resign,” McCall said, stalling for time.

“And yet you murdered an employee of mine outside of Prague. To save the life of an American government official.”

“That was a bonus.”

“I see. No doubt you felt some closure about Elena Petrov in ending Durković’s life. He did indeed kill her. But he was acting on my orders. So you see, there will be no escape from your pain, Mr. McCall. Not that it matters now. After I kill your son, who doesn’t even know you, you will die. I will open another nightclub. I will find a new assassin. Life goes on.”

“Not for you,” McCall said.

His eyes had flicked beyond Berezovsky’s figure.

Out of the ghostly darkness behind him Katia had appeared. She was holding the Beretta Storm 9 mm that McCall had given to Natalya in both hands, pointed at her husband’s back. She halted and her hands stopped shaking.

Berezovsky could not have heard anything, but he started to turn, never taking the gun barrel from Scott’s head.

Katia shot him twice in the back.

Berezovsky staggered.

Scott twisted out of his grasp and fell to his knees.

Berezovsky brought the Makarov pistol back around to the boy’s head.

McCall dived to the ground, grabbed the Sig Sauer, and fired three times. All three bullets hit Berezovsky’s forehead. The force of them spun him to the edge of the platform. He toppled over it onto the tracks.

Eleven hostiles dead.

McCall tried to get up, but couldn’t put any weight on his right leg. Scott scrambled to his feet and ran to his father’s side. He gripped him under his left arm and hauled him up to his feet. McCall transferred all of the weight onto his left leg and hung on to his son.

It was as close to a hug as they’d probably ever get.

McCall looked past him. Natalya had walked up behind Katia. She took her mother’s trembling hand as she looked at Berezovsky spread-eagled on the subway tracks. Neither of them spoke.

“There’s an Adidas sports bag in that hut at the other end of the platform,” McCall said to Scott. “Can you get it?”

Scott nodded and ran down the platform, jumping over the bodies there. He ducked inside the hut and came out carrying the sports bag. He ran back to where McCall stood.

“How about that M16 rifle? Can you reach it?”

Scott looked at the tracks.

“Sure.”

He ran to the edge, knelt down, reached far out, and picked up the fallen M16 by the barrel.

“Got it.”

He jogged back to McCall, knelt, and slid the M16 into the sports bag. McCall took the tear gas revolver out of his belt. Scott took it from his father’s shaking hands, dropped it into the sports bag, and picked the bag up. Katia and Natalya walked to where McCall and Scott stood. Katia took off the belt of her dress, knelt down and tied it tightly at the top of McCall’s leg wound as a tourniquet. The bullet had gone through his right shoulder, but there was a lot of blood. McCall pulled up his turtleneck and jammed a handkerchief over the wound. Rachid’s bullet that had hit his left arm had also gone through the skin at the top and the bleeding there was minimal. Katia finished tying the tourniquet. McCall nodded and pulled her to her feet. He motioned to the stairs behind him. There were no bodies on those stairs. Scott supported McCall on one side, still carrying the Adidas bag, Natalya on the other. Katia led the way.

No one spoke.

In the echoing tomb of the City Hall subway station they walked up the marble stairs to the dark main ticket room, up the stairs to the street, emerging from the enclosure that had ENTRANCE still stamped on it and out into the New York night.