A subway entrance at the end of the street led down to Brooklyn Bridge station. She ran for it, already short of breath. Shouts of alarm rose behind her as other people on the street saw the armed men.
Nina hurried down into the station concourse. The directions to the nearest platform were marked with green-the 6 Train on the IRT line. She followed the signs, racing barefoot through the crowd.
There was no time to buy a ticket, but like any self-respecting New Yorker Nina knew how to jump the turnstiles, even hampered by her priceless cargo. A ticket inspector bellowed after her, but he stopped abruptly at sounds of panic from the concourse. The gunmen were making no attempt to conceal their weapons.
There was a train at the platform. If she could get aboard…
Its doors started to close.
She ran faster, feet slapping on the concrete as she sprinted for the narrowing gap.
The grubby stainless steel doors slammed shut. Nina reached the train just a moment later, banging on the windows, but she knew the driver wouldn’t open the doors again. Brakes released with a clunk, and the train set off, motors whining.
The platform was empty, nobody to help her. Brooklyn Bridge was the terminus of the 6 Train, everyone having just boarded the departing northbound train.
More shouts and screams came from the turnstiles.
There was only one direction she could go.
Nina ran along the platform towards the mouth of the tunnel at its southern end, then leaped, landing on the track bed just inches from one of the rails. She flinched away from it. How many thousands of volts ran through it she had no idea, and had no intention of finding out firsthand.
The surface of the track bed was treacherous, filthy and slick with oily grime. Sharp edges hurt her feet. But she forced herself to keeping running into the darkness.
The tunnel curved, the gleaming rails disappearing around a corner. Feeble, widely spaced bulbs on the walls were the only source of light ahead of her. She looked back.
Two of her pursuers emerged on the platform from the entrance she had used, looking around before spotting her. A moment later, the other two gunmen appeared from a more distant opening. They’d split up to surround her, not thinking that she would risk going into the tunnels.
They jumped down onto the track after her.
Nina kept running, the dull lights flicking past as she followed the curve of the track. She chanced another look back. One of the two closer men was much faster than his companion, quickly catching up.
Too quickly. She knew where she was, what was down the tunnel, but he would reach her before she could get to it.
She could hear his rapid breathing, right behind her-
He snatched at the collar of her jacket. Nina wrenched herself free. But he was already trying again, this time getting a firmer grip on the material.
With a yell as much of anger as of fear, Nina spun around and smashed the sharp corner of the weighty book into the man’s face.
Even in the low light, she saw that she had drawn blood, a large gash across his cheek and top lip. He reeled, the toe of his boot catching a bolt and pitching him over-
Across the tracks.
Nina jumped back as fat sparks briefly lit up the tunnel. The man convulsed, smoke sizzling from his body where it touched the rails and created a circuit. He was being fried alive, cooked as the full power of the subway’s electric current ran through him.
She turned and kept running. The second man was gaining. She hoped he would be dumb enough to try to pull his friend clear, which would electrocute him as well-
He wasn’t. There was a brief pause in his footsteps as he vaulted over the rapidly charring corpse, then he carried on as if nothing had happened. Catching up fast.
Nina became aware of two things at once. Both of them bad.
The sides of the tunnel were lined with red and white stripes. Signs for maintenance workers, warning that there was not enough room to stand between the tunnel wall and a passing train.
Which had suddenly become a life-threatening issue, as she felt wind against her face-
A train was coming!
The tunnel formed a loop, where trains arriving at Brooklyn Bridge could circle around to begin their journey back north. And one was doing exactly that right now.
The glow from the train’s headlights rose as it approached. Metal screeched against metal, the rumble of its wheels becoming a roar.
Nina kept running, trapped between two dangers. She desperately scanned the walls for any kind of exit or alcove, but the warning stripes continued as far as she could see.
The noise was almost unbearable. Light flared ahead, the flat front of the train coming into view around the curve and still nowhere to hide-
Except between the tracks.
A trench, maintenance access for cables running under the track. No more than six inches deep, but it was all she had.
Nina dived into the filthy channel with the book held out in front of her, the driver reacting with shock as she flashed through his headlights. Sparks spat from the train’s underside. The front coupler whooshed over her, catching her hair and tearing out a clump. She screamed, barely hearing herself over the noise of the train as its wheels pounded over joints in the line like colossal hammers.
Then she heard another scream, abruptly cut off by a crunch of breaking bones as her pursuer was hit by the train even as he tried to flatten himself against the tunnel wall.
The driver slammed on the emergency brakes. Nina screamed again, pressing her hands against her ears in a futile attempt to block out the noise. Carriage after carriage shrieked overhead, more sparks spraying out from the wheels, scorching her…
The train stopped. Silence suddenly descended. Nina wasn’t sure whether it was because the train had shut off its motors or she had gone deaf. Cringing, she opened her eyes.
The last car hung over her like a black shroud. Lights inside the carriages illuminated the tunnel. Shaking, taking enormous care not to touch the rails, she lifted herself out from beneath the train. Looking back, she saw a huge splatter of blood along the wall, a ragged smear of red trailing away like a stroke of paint from a giant brush.
Hearing began to return, sounds fading in. The grumble of the train at idle, creaks and moans of metal still swaying from the emergency stop…
And voices.
The second pair of men, temporarily stopped by the train blocking the narrow section of the tunnel, but it wouldn’t take them long to bypass it.
Nina crawled along the side of the track, ducking under the train’s overhanging tail end, then jumped to her feet and ran again. The tunnel opened out ahead, lightbulbs and even a faint sheen of daylight gleaming on ornate patterns of tiles in cream and olive green and brick red…
City Hall subway station.
Nina had been here before, with her parents as a child. The family’s interest in history wasn’t limited to the ancient; New York itself had its own lost treasures. Built as a showpiece for the Interborough subway line, the station had suffered from low passenger traffic compared to its close neighbors, and its sharply curved platform made it impractical to extend when the length of trains was increased. As a result it was closed in 1945, forgotten and unseen by all except a handful of curious visitors on the rare occasions when it was opened to the public.
She had been one of those visitors. And she remembered the layout. Steps from the single platform led to a mezzanine, stairs from there emerging on each side of Murray Street just a short distance from City Hall.
Where there would be cops.
Frosted glass skylights in the vaulted ceiling let in enough illumination for her to see the elaborately tiled walls, but Nina couldn’t spare even a moment to appreciate the sight as she clambered up onto the platform and looked back. The rear lights of the train stared at her like demonic eyes. Somewhere beyond them she could hear her remaining pursuers coming after her, scrambling under the carriages.