Woo-woo.
The freight train wasn’t slowing. It would blow right through the station, giving even more sound cover. The girl was isolated there at the end of the platform. That provided relative privacy to get the job done.
Woo-woo.
They converged on her, now shoulder to shoulder, linemen coming in for the sack.
Fifteen yards away.
Woo-woo.
She saw them only now. Alarm flashed across her face, but even so she stepped back into a fighting posture, hands raised, jaw set.
The man in the middle reached inside his loose-fitting jacket.
They swept forward.
Ten yards away.
Behind them a form swung down from the metal overhang and crouched on the landing to break his fall, one hand pressed to the concrete.
Soundless.
Evan couldn’t fire his ARES. Not with Joey in the background. But that was okay. He was eager to use his hands.
Joey spotted him through the gap between the advancing men. They read her eyes, the change in her stance.
They turned.
Three men. One pistol drawn, two on the way.
Evan moved on the gun first.
A jujitsu double-hand parry to a figure-four arm bar, the pleasing snap-snap of wrist and elbow breaking, and—
— Jack sways in the Black Hawk, hands cuffed behind him, wind blasting his hair when—
— the pistol skittered free across the tracks, the guy on his knees, his arm turned to rubber. The second man gave up on the draw and came at Evan with a haymaker, but Evan threw a palm-heel strike to the bottom of his chin, rocking his head back. He firmed his fingers, drove a hand spear into the exposed throat, crushing the windpipe. The man toppled, crashing through a trash can, and made a gargling sound, his access to oxygen closed now and forever and—
— Jack reeled back, a parachute rip cord handle clenched in his teeth, his eyes blazing with triumph, when—
— the third man’s gun had cleared leather, so Evan grabbed his wrist, shoved the pistol back into the hip holster, hooked his thumb through the trigger guard, and fired straight down through the tip of the holster and the guy’s foot. The man was still gaping at the bloody mess on the end of his ankle when Evan reversed the pistol out of the holster, spun it around the same thumb, and squeezed off a shot that took off half the guy’s jaw. Evan blinked through the spatter and the image of—
— Jack’s parting nod to the men pinballing around the lurching Black Hawk, a nod filled with peace, with resignation, before he stepped out into the abyss.
People were screaming now, stampeding off the platform, the express train bearing down. Two corpses on the concrete, a glassy puddle of deep red spreading, smooth enough to reflect the clouds in the sky. The first man remained on his knees, straddling the yellow safety line on the platform, gripping his ruined arm as the hand flopped noodlelike on the broken stalk of the limb. Despite all reason he was trying to firm it, to make his wrist work again, when Evan wound into a reverse side kick, driving the bottom of his heel into the edge of the man’s jaw and sending him flying over the tracks just in time to catch the—woo-woo—freight train as it blasted through, flyswatting him ahead and grinding him underneath in what seemed like a single hungry lunge.
Joey stared at Evan across the expanding puddle and the sprawled legs of the third man. Furrows grooved the skin of her forehead. She had forgotten to breathe.
The engagement had lasted four seconds, maybe five.
The other man had landed to the side, propped against the toppled trash can, one hand pawing the air above his collapsed windpipe. The motion grew slower and slower.
Joey looked at him and then back at Evan, her eyes even wider.
“He’s dead,” Evan said. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”
She cleared her throat. “Thanks.”
“Grab your rucksack. Let’s go.”
She did.
They barreled through the doors into the waiting room. Chaos reigned. People shoved and elbowed to the exit. A homeless man was bellowing to himself, stuffing his bedding into a shopping cart. Workers cowered behind counters.
There were sirens outside already, flashing lights coloring the parking lot. Lead responders spilled through the front entrance, bucking the stream of humanity.
“This way.” Evan grabbed Joey’s arm, ushered her up the corridor to the bathrooms.
They were halfway there when a service door swung open and two cops shouldered through. Their eyes lasered in on Evan and Joey, Glocks drawn but aimed at the floor.
Evan swung her around, reversing course. They didn’t get three steps when, up ahead, responding cops filled the waiting room.
They were trapped.
18
Short on Time and Short on Crowbars
Behind them one of the cops shouted, “Wait! Stop right there!”
Evan and Joey froze, still facing away. The corridor was empty, squeaky clean save for a dropped newspaper and fresh plug of gum stuck to the wall.
“What now?” Joey said to Evan out of the side of her mouth.
“We don’t kill cops.”
Ahead, PD started locking down the big hall. Behind them the cops’ boots squeaked on the marble as they approached cautiously.
“I know,” Joey whispered. “So what do we do?”
“Get arrested. Face the consequences, whatever they are. We go down before we break a Commandment.”
The cops were right behind them. “Turn around. Right now.”
Joey reached up and flipped her hair over, exposing the shaved side of her head in its entirety. She brushed against Evan as she pivoted around, and when he followed her lead, he saw that she had his RoamZone in hand.
“This is totally not fair,” she said. “Some big guy ran past us, all freaking out, and whammed into me. I dropped my phone and it’s, like, ruined.”
Her posture had transformed, shoulders slumped, twisty legs, head lolling lazily to one side, a finger twirling a tendril of hair — even her face had gone slack with teenage apathy.
And she was chewing gum. With teenage vigor.
Evan shot a look at the spot on the wall where the fluorescent green plug had been a moment before.
Joey yanked on Evan’s arm. “Dad, you are buying me a new phone. Like, now. There’s no way I’m going to school with the screen all cracked.”
Evan cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Officers.”
The cops looked behind them. “A big guy ran past you? This way?”
“Yeah. You, like, just missed him.”
The cops exchanged a look and bolted back down the corridor to the service door.
Joey called after them, “If you find him, tell him he’s paying for my new phone!”
The door banged shut after them. Joey swept her hair back into place, blanketing the shaved side. “‘Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.’”
“Odysseus?”
She took the gum out of her mouth, stuck it back on the wall. “Bruce Lee.”
He nodded. “Right.”
They moved swiftly out through the service door, skating the edge of the parking lot just before more cops swept in, setting a perimeter around the building.
Evan peered across to the outer fringe of the lot. Even through the windshield glare, he could discern the outline of the man in the rent-a-car. He was trapped for now; the cops had blockaded the exits.