The train, with Bond attached to the back of it, thundered through the tunnel. It seemed to have picked up speed, perhaps an illusion caused by the walls and ceiling pressing in on three sides – but certainly the R-11 was making a journey like no other. It was stopping at no stations. It was the only train making the journey on the Sixth Avenue line from Coney Island, the points changed and the signals turned green by a trainmaster in Sin’s pay. It was almost a straight line from the northern edge of Brooklyn to the Empire State Building. The bullet had been fired. Nothing could stand in its way.
For the first minute he stayed where he was with his arms spread out, clinging onto the railings, a bit like a fly on a windscreen, it occurred to him. He needed to regain his strength, but at the same time he was already making his calculations, reminding himself of what he had seen. Five carriages. The one in front of him with the engine for the journey back. Then came the carriage with Sin’s taskforce: seven men, probably armed. Bond only had the knife, still pressing against the small of his back, in the waistband of his trousers. Not good. If he could get past them, he would arrive at the carriage which contained the bomb. Two more men were travelling with it. Then the fake rocket. And finally there was Sin and the driver. Think, Bond. Think. You can reach Sin and kill him. Presumably his men will abort the operation. But suppose the C4 explosive is on a timer? Sin had talked about blasting caps but that could mean anything and the bomb might go off anyway. Forget Sin. Think about the bomb. You still have half an hour. Twenty minutes, certainly. Get into the carriage, deactivate the bomb, make New York safe, then worry about the rest of them. Ten against one. You’ve had worse odds than that.
The train erupted out of the tunnel and into a station. Bright lights sliced Bond’s eyes. He saw white tiles, an empty platform, a sign – CARROLL STREET – benches, iron maiden turnstiles. He was rushing through the open space and then, just as suddenly, it was dark again. Cautiously, he looked round the side of the train and was rewarded with a blinding rush of warm air and soot. OK. Time to make a move. Clinging on with one hand, he swung round with the other and tried the handle of the door of what, on the return journey, would be the driver’s cabin. It was locked.
So he was going to have to go over the top. Moneypenny had accused him of the same often enough. Slowly, Bond pulled himself upwards. He was protected while he was on the back of the train but he knew that he would be pulverised by the wind rush the moment he tried to crawl along the roof – and anyway, there wouldn’t be enough room. Much of the subway system had been built using the cut-and-cover method, digging into the soft earth as close as possible to the street surface and then rebuilding over the trenches. The shallower, the cheaper – and the workmen had made sure money wasn’t wasted. The trains were twelve feet and two inches high. The top of the tunnel was only a few inches higher and although it was hard to tell in the darkness, Bond was aware of steel beams, lethal weapons, rushing past. If he raised his head at the wrong moment, it would be knocked clean off his shoulders. Even lying flat, there was every chance that a loose cable or any other projection could scrape him off and send him to an instant, bloody death. With the wind beating at his head, Bond examined the roof of the carriage. Yes. Perhaps it could be done.
The roof curved. It was an integral part of the design, making the R-11 sleeker, more streamlined. If Bond made his way along the very edge, half his body actually touching the side of the train, just above the windows, he should be out of harm’s way. But it would be incredibly difficult to hang on. The aluminium roof was ribbed and that would give him fingerholds. But he would be absolutely dependent on the strength of his right hand. If the train rocked, even slightly, he would be thrown off. If he relaxed for a second, he would simply slide into oblivion. And what if a train came the other way? The blast of compressed air might be enough to dislodge him. Bond could see himself falling between the two silver monsters. A blast of light. A scream of metal. And then minced up between the wheels.
But there was no other way and Bond had already wasted enough time hanging on here. The tunnel was shattered by light as they entered the next station – Bergen Street – and swept through. That was something else to consider. If there was anyone standing on any of the platforms, they would see him as he made his way across the carriages. Better to get started while he was in the dark. The train entered the next tunnel and Bond pulled himself onto the roof, making sure that he was on the edge of the curve, an inch or two below the highest point. He hooked onto the ridges with his right hand and pressed his left palm against the vertical side of the carriage. At least the friction would provide him with a modicum of support. Then he began to edge forward, his eyes closed, feeling the wind hammering at his shoulders and head, desperately trying to force him back. It was even harder than he had expected. If he could have stretched himself out along a flat surface, he would have been able to crawl forward at a steady pace. But he was tilted, on the edge of space. He had to use half his strength and all his concentration simply to stop himself from falling. Looking up, he could just make out the top of the tunnel, rushing past, reminding him how fast he was travelling. There was a sudden crackle and a searing burst of electricity. For a few seconds, Bond was blind, as if his eyes had been burned out. The train didn’t care. It seemed determined to travel ever faster.
With half his body hanging off the edge, Bond pulled himself forward. His progress was painfully slow. He felt something swipe across the top of his head, shockingly hard. A loop of wire must have been hanging down. If he had accidentally raised his head at that moment and allowed it to catch around his neck he would have been garrotted. Another thought scratched away at his consciousness. How long did he have? How many stations would he pass before the train dipped under the river and entered Manhattan? As if to answer him, they burst into Jay Street. Bond saw the name, black letters on a white panel. They were going faster and faster. He wasn’t imagining it. They were no sooner in the station than they were out again, another tunnel reaching to swallow them up.
He reached the end of the first carriage and manoeuvred himself across the narrow gap that separated it from the second. Now he had to be more careful. Sin’s men were directly underneath him and although the noise of the train would cover almost any sound, there was still the chance that one awkward move, his foot striking metal, might give him away. The effort of keeping himself on the sloping surface was taking its toll and Bond’s right hand, supporting most of his weight, was aching. The pain was spreading to his shoulder. It was hard to breathe. It felt that as much soot as air was entering his throat and his eyes were smarting. He pulled. He shuffled forward. He pulled again. But another two stations had shot past before he found himself at the next gap in the carriages, on the other side of Sin’s men.
The gap was barely eighteen inches wide. Bond had to contort himself to fit into it. There was only one porthole window in the centre of the door and he was careful to avoid it so that Sin’s men would not catch sight of him as he wriggled down. He glanced at the rails, flashing along beneath the spinning wheels, then lowered his foot onto the coupling. It was a tight squeeze. He was trapped between two metal walls, both of them vibrating, shifting, as if about to crush him. He found the handle of the door and pressed down. This time, it moved. The door was unlocked. He glanced in through the window and saw the guards sitting about halfway down, facing each other with the dull faces of two commuters on their way to work. The bomb was at the far end of the carriage, beyond them. Bond checked that the knife was still in his waistband. Then he pressed the handle, threw open the door and tumbled in.
He was only vaguely aware of the inside of the compartment as he propelled himself forward: a bright red floor with empty seats, battleship grey, scattered around him, facing different directions. Three lines of neon lights. Advertisements. Slender silver rods reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The two guards hadn’t heard him enter. How could they have with the roar of the train in the tunnel? But now they saw him and rose to their feet, scrabbling for their weapons.
Bond dealt with the smaller one first, guessing that he would be the faster of the two. His hand reached behind him for the knife and, as the man drew his gun out of a shoulder holster he’d been wearing outside his coveralls, Bond plunged the blade into his chest, aiming for the on/off button that was his heart. Blood fountained out and the guard fell back, carrying the knife with him. The second guard had also produced a gun, moving surprisingly quickly given his bulk. He brought it round and fired. Bond felt the bullet pass over his head as he plunged forward, slamming his shoulder into the man’s stomach. The guard twisted round, trying to break free. The train rushed on and, propelled by its momentum, the two of them were sent in a macabre dance, spinning down towards the door through which Bond had come in.
They crashed into the metal surface. The guard was trying to bring the gun round to aim at Bond but the angle was wrong and Bond was gripping him too tightly. Instead, he pounded it against Bond’s head and the back of his neck. Bond chose his moment and jerked upwards, one hand flying out to seize the guard’s wrist, the other closing against his throat. The two of them were trapped in a recess with the door behind them. It seemed that Sin’s men in the next carriage hadn’t heard the shot but surely one of them would look up and see the fight taking place on the other side of the porthole windows. Bond tried to free the gun with one hand while the other burrowed through the folds of flesh that surrounded the guard’s neck, searching for the larynx. He had it! Bond pushed with all his strength, cutting off the airflow. The guard panicked and grabbed hold of Bond’s wrist. At once, Bond let go of the gun and, straightening up, used his extended fingers to jab the guard three times, viciously, in the throat. The man went down. Bond hit him again for good luck. He wouldn’t get up again. That much was sure.
The door handle rattled and a furious Korean face appeared at the window. Sin’s men had finally seen what was happening. They had opened the door of their own carriage and were attempting to enter this one, but they had reacted too slowly. The body of the guard – dead or unconscious – had slid to the floor and was lying inside the recess, blocking the second door. Well, that was useful. They could push all they liked. There was no way they were going to get it open. But it was only a brief respite. One of the men raised his gun to fire and Bond only just had time to step out of the way before a torrent of broken glass came rushing in with the wind. A hand reached through, searching for the handle. Bond snatched up the fat man’s gun and fired three times. The hand fell away. That would show them! The door was stuck and the porthole was too constricting to allow them to aim and fire simultaneously. The moment they showed their faces, they would make themselves too obvious a target. Nor could they climb through. They would have to come at him another way.
Bond had no doubt that they would find it. He had perhaps minutes to deal with the bomb, with Sin, to stop this whole thing in its tracks. Being careful to keep out of the line of the window, he lurched through the carriage, jerking the knife out of the body of the man he had stabbed. As he moved forward, the advertising billboards mocked him with their inane, irrelevant messages BET YOU COULD DO BETTER IN A HAT. 84 OUT OF 100 WOMEN PREFER MEN WHO WEAR HATS. SUNNY BROOK WHISKEY. CHEERFUL AS ITS NAME. SUNKIST CALIFORNIAN LEMONS. INSTEAD OF HARSH LAXATIVES.
Ahead of him, the bomb sat like a church altar. It was utterly alien, dominating the space around it, warning him not to come close.
Bond took out the knife, then spun round as the sound inside the carriage changed. Had the Koreans somehow managed to open the door? Had Sin himself heard what had happened and come to investigate? No. Bond turned his attention to the bomb. C4. Sin had volunteered the information, as always giving too much away. What did Bond know of it? It was a British invention. Cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine. Also known as RDX. He had handled one of its precursors during the war and still remembered the feel of the putty, the smell of almonds. It was stable and insensitive. He could set fire to it. Nothing would happen. He could empty the gun into it. The same.
He used the knife to cut the string holding the tarpaulin in place, then pulled it back to reveal the block itself. The substance was a dirty white colour and Bond saw that there were half a dozen detonators pushed into it, with wires leading to a single battery pack. These were the blast caps, first developed in Germany but now in use across the world. In essence, they were little more than oversized matchsticks. A spark from the battery would fire the ignition charge – silver acetylide or lead styphnate. The result would be a small explosion which would immediately cause a chain reaction, setting off the whole thing. Sin didn’t need six blast caps. He was taking no chances. One would have done.
But for the first time in a while, luck was on Bond’s side. Sin had expected to prime the bomb without any interruption. Nobody would know it was there. The tunnel would be empty and he would have plenty of time. So he hadn’t needed a complicated detonation system with fake wires or a capacitor concealed inside the C4. In fact the whole thing was connected to a simple, cheap alarm clock sitting between the blasting caps and the battery. Sin would set the minute hand to give himself enough time to leave, and that would be it. It was about as crude a device as Bond had ever seen and it would be simple enough to defuse . . . provided he concentrated and kept a steady hand. The trouble with blast caps was that they were unreliable. During the war, Bond had seen trainee agents crimping the fuses with their teeth before inserting them into the ignition mix. It hadn’t been that uncommon for them to blow their own heads off.
He glanced at the door. It was being rocked back and forth, thudding into the body of the man who lay across it. But he wasn’t moving. A face appeared behind the shattered window and Bond fired off a fourth round, smiling to himself as the head jerked back with a bright red crater between the eyes.
Quickly, he disconnected the battery. Then, crouching in front of the altar, he gently removed the first blast cap and laid it on the floor. He wished now that the train wasn’t moving so quickly. He could feel every jolt, every vibration and knew that even without an electrical charge, the detonators could all too easily go off. The train howled through York Street. Was the R-11 accelerating or were the stations getting closer together? Keeping half an eye on the door, Bond focused on what he was doing. One after another, he removed the other blast caps, laying them gently on the nearest seat. The last one came out. For good measure, Bond threw the alarm clock on the floor and smashed it.
He looked back. The Koreans had given up trying to open the door. The window was clear. Bond could imagine them trying to work out a plan. Would they pull the emergency handle? No. Stopping the train was the last thing they would want to do. Should he pull it himself? He dismissed the idea. If the train came to a halt, it would only make him an easier target. But even as he’d been working on the blast caps, he’d forced himself to realise the truth of the situation. It wasn’t enough just to dismantle the bomb. For Manhattan and the Empire State Building to be completely safe he had to get rid of the plastic explosive altogether.
There was one way he could do that. At the same time he could separate himself from the Koreans before they found a way to reach him. And he could give Sin the shock of his life. Bond half smiled as he worked out his strategy. He wasn’t just going to neutralise the C4. He was going to use it.
He used the knife to cut off two pieces, the blade easily slicing through the soft putty. Working as quickly as he could, he used his hands to mould the pieces into balls, each one about the size of a hand grenade. And that, of course, was exactly what they were about to become. He grabbed two of the detonators and pushed them into the putty. Would it work? Why not? All it would take was the pressure of 81,000 pounds of steel pressing down – that and a sniper’s eye.
They were under the river. Bond knew it from the change of pressure in his ears. They had left Brooklyn and were on their way to Manhattan. He cut a makeshift sling out of the tarpaulin, carefully suspended the two missiles inside and slung the whole thing over his shoulder. It was still horribly dangerous but he had no other way to carry them. He made sure they were secure, then hurried to the far end of the carriage and the other door. There was a gunshot – he barely heard it above the sound of the train – and a bullet slammed into the back of the seat closest to where he was standing. Bond twisted round and returned fire but whoever had taken aim at him had already gone. He had just three bullets left. Should he search for the other gun? He decided against it. If this was going to work, it had to be done now.
Bond opened the door. This time there wasn’t a conventional carriage in front of him. Instead, he found himself leaning into the full expanse of the tunnel with the wind tearing past, the wheels and undercarriage clattering, the tunnel walls a continuous, black streak. The maintenance vehicle carrying the rocket, chained into place, was in front of him. Ahead, there was the carriage with Sin and the driver. Well, very soon, if Bond had his way, they would be parting company with their precious load. It almost amused him to think of Sin turning up at the Empire State Building with nothing but the engine and the carriage in which he sat.
Bond had tucked the gun back into his trouser pocket, knowing he might need it. He started forward, inching his way as quickly as possible in the narrow space between the rocket – concealed beneath its tarpaulin – and the edge of the lowboy. He had just reached Sin’s carriage when the train burst into East Broadway, the first station in Manhattan itself. There were just six more stops until 34th Street, where Sin had planned to stage the fake crash of the Vanguard. Bond grabbed hold of the rail that ran across the door. He was tempted to look in through the porthole, just to check that Sin was there. But he didn’t need to put himself at risk. He had seen the train leave. He knew where everyone was. Bond was filthy again. The wind had blasted him with years of accumulated dirt and soot. He could taste it in his mouth. It had penetrated his skin. The very clothes he was wearing had turned black. But he didn’t care. He grinned and his white teeth flared in the darkness. This was the moment of reckoning.
He reached the roof and almost split his head open on a low metal girder that came rushing past. He actually felt it swipe across his hair and cursed himself for the moment of over-confidence that had brought him within an inch of getting himself killed. It was so nearly over. Don’t make mistakes now. He twisted round so that his feet were stretched out towards the front of the engine and his head and shoulders were protruding over the edge of the roof, above the replica Vanguard rocket. He reached round and took one of the makeshift hand grenades out of the sling. It shouldn’t be too difficult. All he had to do was drop it onto the rail. The maintenance truck carrying the rocket would run over the C4 and the huge pressure would set it off. If he had got it right, there would be a small explosion which would shatter the coupling between the rocket and the carriage with Sin and the driver. By the time the train stopped, there would be half a mile between the engine and its payload. And Sin’s remaining men would be out of the picture too.
It was so easy. The rail was right underneath him. But then, before he could do anything, there was a spark in the darkness and a bullet ricocheted off the stainless steel, inches from his hand. He looked up and saw one of the Koreans on the other side of the rocket, lying sprawled on the roof of the carriage that Bond had just left. There were two more men behind him. They had realised that the only way round the blocked door was to climb over the top. They were crawling towards him even now. The man aimed a second time.
Bond had to choose. Shoot back or use the grenade?
He took careful aim, then threw the first of his two missiles towards the rails.