He couldn’t duck down like the rest; they’d riddle him in seconds, now that they had him spotted. Indeed, his other self had no intention of allowing it.
He was already in motion, mounting the escalator, using the faceless body as a shield. His gun was in his hands, firing up at his enemies. One, two, three, four—and the four goons went down in order, each holed by a single bullet.
Quaid didn’t know who his other self was, but he was beginning to like him. That man was a survivor!
He was safe now, for the moment. He could get out of the subway station and—
A bullet zinged by his ear. From behind! He twisted to look back. There were Richter and Helm running up to the escalator, firing as they went. Now they were on it, climbing over the prostrate commuters, still firing. If they had paused to take proper aim, Quaid would have been dead before he knew they were there.
Quaid heaved up the corpse he had been using as a shield, turned, and hurled it down at the two agents, bowling them over. Then he charged the rest of the way up the stairs. He reached the landing and ran down the hall.
He had maybe a ten-second lead if those were the only ones on his tail. Where could he go? On up and out to the street? There might be more goons posted at the exit. If he made it, he’d still be right in the area; they’d be casting around for him in cars and maybe aircraft. He couldn’t go back to his conapt; Lori would report him immediately, if she didn’t shoot him first.
That left the subway trains. They went all over the city and to outlying points, making connections everywhere. The agents couldn’t cover every exit in the entire subway system! So if he could make it onto a train without them following, his ten-second lead should become a ten-minute lead, and he could be out of the city before they had much notion where he was.
His body already knew this. It was pounding down the passage, heading for another train. He tucked his gun into his pants; he was now inside the security area, so it wasn’t setting off any more alarms.
He came to the landing where there was a train. The last commuters were just squeezing on. He sprinted along the platform, which was mercifully clear at the moment, and for the train.
The last commuter boarded. The departure signal sounded. The door closed.
Quaid made a flying leap and squeezed onto a car at the last second, beating the closing doors by a hair. He had made it! He stumbled, trying to avoid bumping into the other passengers. He was doubled over, but managed to keep his feet.
Bullets shattered the glass of the door just above him and plowed the far side. Richter and Helm had arrived! Had he been standing upright—
“Get down!” he shouted at the other passengers, knowing what was coming.
The train started moving. A series of windows shattered. The passengers decided to take his advice. They ducked down as well as they were able.
The train picked up speed. Quaid peered out a window-hole. He saw Richter and Helm watching, disgusted, as the train left the station. He had beaten them—for now.
He turned to find the other passengers staring at him. He realized that he was covered with blood from the corpse he had used as a shield. Well, he was not about to offer them any explanation. The less they knew about him, the better for him—and them. Richter seemed to have no compunctions about his methods; if he thought any other person knew where Quaid was, he would force that person to talk at gunpoint—and then maybe shoot him anyway.
He avoided their glances and oriented instead on the commercial on the nearest screen. It was a huckster, standing in front of a spaceship. “Don’t settle for pale memories! Don’t settle for fake implants! Experience space travel the old-fashioned way on a real-life holiday you can afford.”
The travel agency’s answer to Rekall! Quaid shook his head and sighed. He wished he could take them up on it. Because one thing that hadn’t changed, in this almost-complete demolition of his life-style, was his fascination with Mars. He still wanted to go there, one way or another, and to find that brunette, if she existed.
Did she exist? All he could do was hope that she did. His tangible life with Lori had become illusion; maybe his dream of the other woman could become real.
CHAPTER 11
Help
Richter and Helm strode angrily out of the station and stepped through the rain to their car. Richter was fuming. They had lost the quarry after all, and then gotten nabbed by the subway security men because their guns had set off the alarms again. They had had to show their IDs to get out of it. That would look bad on the records. Not to mention the four additional lower-echelon agents lost. That made eight total, plus a civilian or two. What a smell that would make for all concerned! The first takeout had been bungled by Harry, obviously a duffer who shouldn’t have been assigned in the first place. But this time it was Richter himself, and he would get no credit for just about succeeding. “Just about” was just about good enough for a demotion!
He hated the man who thought he was Douglas Quaid. He had never liked him. There was something about him he didn’t trust, but Cohaagen just couldn’t see it. He’d promoted the sonovabitch, for Christ’s sake! Richter snorted with disgust.
But he hadn’t started hating the bastard until Lori had been assigned to play the role of his “wife.” After all his Beauty and the Beast jokes, that had been almost too much to bear. And now that the man had eluded and humiliated him, that hate had festered into something white hot and barely controllable. He would see the man’s brains splattered across the landscape before he was done, and it still wouldn’t be enough. If he was lucky, maybe he’d get the chance to see the man sweat before he died.
They climbed into the car. Helm took the driver’s seat, Richter the passenger seat, where the equipment was. The rain on their clothing quickly steeped the interior with its pollution, contributing to his foul mood.
The dashboard was filled with elaborate tracking devices, electronic maps, and communications equipment. Richter furiously turned knobs and punched buttons, trying to get a reading on the quarry. Damn it, the tracking was supposed to be continuous; what was fuzzing it? Was the equipment glitching? Guess who’d get the blame if a bad tracker let him down! He knew Cohaagen didn’t see eye-to-eye with him on this procedure, and if the man got a pretext to take him off the case—
The radio came to life. “Six beta nine, we have a transmission from Mr. Cohaagen.”
Richter looked at Helm and groaned. Think of the devil!
But he couldn’t avoid it. “This is Richter. Patch it through.” He wiped the rain from his face and smoothed his hair, though it didn’t do much good. Modern science was wonderful, but at the moment he wished they hadn’t invented a way to set aside the limitation of lightspeed, making virtually instant communication between planets possible. Then Cohaagen would not be able to second-guess him on this mission, while a chase was in progress.
The video monitor lighted, flickering, then showing a grainy image of Cohaagen’s face. The man was neither as handsome nor as well spoken as he was on broadcast interviews, no surprise. He fixed on Richter, scowling. “What the fuck are you doing, Richter?”
Richter put on an ingratiating smile he knew fooled no one; it wasn’t meant to. “Trying to neutralize a traitor, sir.” And that’s the correct term! Chew on that, sir!
Cohaagen’s scowl expanded into open anger. “If I wanted him dead, I wouldn’t have dumped him on Earth!”
Richter smoothed out his own features, playing the obsequious underling, again without any concern for belief. “We can’t let him run around, Mr. Cohaagen. He knows too much.”
“Lori says he can’t remember jack shit.”