Now I sprint full out, cross in front of the locomotive and run back toward the station. Stop, look and listen. No—I can’t stop, but I make sure there are no other trains coming. A string of high-level Amtrak cars sit on another track but they’re not moving. I double back and run along the other side of them, wishing I didn’t have the duffel, knowing I can’t lose it. The station now sits on the other side of the railroad cars, to the west. A concrete wall prevents any break to the east; it’s at least twenty-five feet high and supports the edge of Fourth Avenue South. I move north toward the dark.
Realities confront me. Away from the passenger spurs, the train tracks are built for heavy freight trains. They have thick, rocky ballast and heavy, high rails. They sit on a raised roadbed to ensure easy drainage. It’s great for trains and treacherous for a running man. I find this out the hard way as I trip and nearly go down, catching myself but still losing precious seconds to escape.
The second problem is that King Street Station sits snug against a sharp rise in Seattle’s topography. Beyond the terminal, downtown rises on a hill. Maybe a hundred yards north of the station, the two main-line tracks disappear into a tunnel that runs under it. Without going back to the station, there’s no other way out. So I run as fast as I can toward the thirty-foot-high half-circle tunnel portal. The train cars that had sheltered me fall behind, but nobody else seems to notice me. The Jackson Street bridge passes high overhead with the sounds of cars and safety. Then another bridge that carries Main Street over the tracks. There’s no time to look back. It’s all I can do to keep from falling. I reach the portal and slip inside, momentarily leaning against the wall.
Stu appears at the end of the Amtrak cars and stands looking south, toward the stadiums, with his hands on his hips. Laura and Bill join him. I move deeper into the darkness of the tunnel. The wall is concrete: rough, cold, and damp to the touch. There are no cameras or alarms that I can see. The tunnel is more than 100 years old and runs a mile. I don’t want to run that mile. My hand finds the butt of the .357 in its pocket holster. I leave it there as the three look around and confer. Rachel is not with them.
Then Bill says something but all I can make out is “tunnel,” and he heads my way. Somehow the wind shifts so I can clearly hear his orders: “Go around the other end, to Alaskan Way!” Stu and Laura run back toward the depot. Bill breaks into a slow trot but nearly smashes his churchy face on the rails. He regains his footing and walks toward me. I’m already moving, hoping like hell a train doesn’t come.
The last ambient light from the outside fades. The tunnel has no lights. The tops of the rails conduct the outside glow the longest, then even that disappears. I try moving in the center of one of the railroad tracks. It’s flat and stable. Until it curves slightly and I nearly fall again. So I move over to the wall and run my hand along it as I make my way along the uneven terrain where the roadbed falls off toward the ground close to the edge. The space smells of diesel fumes and emptiness. It gives no hint of the roof or far wall. Who knows what I might find in here? There might be an alcove that opens up and lets me into a homeless camp nobody’s ever heard of, or at least some maintenance room for the railroad. But the wall stays smooth and faithfully engineered close to the edge of the tracks, and I calculate there’s enough room for one man to survive if he stands as flat against it as possible when a train is passing.
I move as fast as I can in complete darkness. My shoes make too much noise on the gravel ballast of the tracks. Rocks get kicked against the wall. I stop and listen: the walls hum and a sound like muffled wind is barely audible. No footsteps behind me. I heft up the duffel and keep moving. Just a mile. How fast can I walk a mile in darkness?
A train whistle wafts into the tunnel. There’s no way of telling where it’s coming from. I push down the spike of panic and walk faster. Then I’m making good time, catching a rhythm, feeling the edges of the ties under my feet but not tripping. Step, tie, step, tie.
I spot a blue light and walk toward it. It marks some kind of sensor for the tracks, but in this gloom it might as well be a lighthouse. I step out on the tracks—maybe that will keep Bill from seeing my silhouette against it. Stop—no sound of walking behind me. But I can hear the rumble of a locomotive engine, growing closer. By the time I pass the blue light and move back to my trusty path by the wall, a whistle sounds much closer. It might as well be Gabriel blowing his horn.
Then the tunnel walls in front of me are bathed in bright yellow-white light.
That’s when I see it. I don’t know if it was part of the original tunnel or added in the ensuing years. I don’t give a damn. It’s a slight setback in the concrete behind the bulge of a pillar—there’s no more than two feet of extra space, but I’ll take it. I duck in front of the pillar as my forward vision is temporarily lost to the bright stars of locomotive headlamps. I don’t want the engineer to see me and call the cops. My body is pressed tightly against the concrete as the engines thunder past doing an easy speed. The horn doesn’t sound; maybe I am invisible. The ground shakes and the noise is nearly unbearable. I cough against the fumes.
But the locomotive lights become my ally: I turn to look back down the tunnel they are now illuminating.
No one is behind me.
Now all I have to do is keep from falling backward into the train as the freight cars trundle by. Metal hits against metal and a screeching sound comes every few seconds.
The next sensation comes beyond surprise: in that sensory zone where noise and nearby movement are so overpowering that awareness is lost. My right knee gives way and I fall to the ground, then I feel a strong grip around my neck.
I’m nearly face down on the rocks and Bill is on my back and in control. He’s got good moves—a classic foot in the back of the knee to drop me, then he puts me in a choke hold, where the pressure of his arm is starting to cut off the oxygen to my brain. I outweigh him and I’m taller, but I feel the deadly strength in his arm around my throat and I’m so stunned that I can’t even fight back. The gun in my pocket might as well be on the moon.
“It’s all over, motherfucker!” he yells above the din of the passing railcars. I am vaguely aware of a gun barrel at my left temple. He presses on my neck and I see light at the edges of my eyes.
“Don’t pass out on me yet!” His mouth is so close to my ear I can feel his breath.
“I liked killing your whore girlfriend,” he yells. “I want you to know that before you die. It was your fault that I had to do it, but I enjoyed it! I woke her up. Know that? You were both asleep. I went to her side of the bed and touched her shoulder.” He repeats himself over the noise. Out of my peripheral vision I can see the wheels of the train go by, their flanges heavy and sharp on the rails. They screech, steel meeting steel. “She had this sleepy-eyed look, your bitch girlfriend.” He eases the pressure. I gulp in diesel-tainted oxygen. My forearms and hands are able to gain some precious purchase on the ground beneath me.
“Don’t pass out on me! I want you to know how she died. She died afraid! She saw me right there over her with a gun in her face and she was about to scream. She was raising up, starting to scream and turning toward you for help. And that’s when I did the bitch—right in the back of the head…”
And that’s right when I use every bit of oxygen left in my brain to force up my arms and swing slightly to the right. Some crazy grace has turned fear and anger into purpose. The weight atop me disappears instantly, effortlessly.
Bill screams and his gun discharges harmlessly against the concrete wall, just a pair of piercing sounds and a spark in the distance. But by that time he is under the train. The huge wheels don’t even register the fragile human body they are grinding apart.
Chapter Forty-two
After the train passes, I slowly get to my feet and lean against the wall. Whether it’s because I am getting nearer to the end of the tunnel or my eyes have adjusted, I can see more clearly: the shiny tops of the rails, the murky edges of the concrete. The oxygen slowly returns to my brain, making the train fumes stronger than ever. I hold the wall, letting the scarred, cold surface calm me. It’s a long time before I stop shaking and begin to breathe normally. Awhile longer and my hearing returns. Then I sweep the dust off my clothes, find the duffel, and continue walking toward the north portal. Another fifty steps and I can see it, a crescent of city light against the darkness.
I have made my choice. Going back the other way means another dangerous walk through a mile of darkness and then, perhaps, questions from cops at the station. Going forward might be worse. Stu and Laura will be there. They might have backup, with all the weaponry that would make Fitz envious, and all I have is the small revolver, five rounds in the chamber, and another five reloads—if I get that far. But there’s an advantage in being underestimated. Bill made that mistake and gave me the edge I needed. Now I count on it again. I walk to a quarter mile of the end of the tunnel and lay an ambush.
***
The sound of shoes crunching on gravel reaches me even before I see them. Stu and Laura enter the tunnel’s portal walking down the middle of the tracks. Laura’s blond halo disappears as they leave the outside light. Stu has a flashlight, but he’s aiming it at the ground. Their hands are otherwise empty. It’s amazing: I have given them every reason to believe I am slow and witless. That I am weak. Now they walk down the middle of the railroad tracks expecting to meet up with Bill, who will tell them, mission accomplished. The last thing they expect is for me not only to be alive, but in a comfortable shooting position, concealed in the darkness.
The .357 is out of my pocket now, slipping silently and easily from its holster. It is the lightest gun I have ever held and I have never fired it. I wish I had taken time to go to a range in Phoenix, even squeeze off a few with Fitz when we were in the desert. But I was always afraid of using ammunition I might need later. And, as always, there was no time. But Fitz, who loved the pistol, gave me some advice about how to fire it. I make use of that now, as I hold it two-handed and spread my elbows wider than if I were shooting the heavy Combat Magnum. Both of their silhouettes are clear and black against the city light emitted by portal. The trigger gets as warm as my finger. I let them walk closer.
Years ago, in that other life, I was taught that most firefights take place within fifty feet. I wait until they are half that distance before I make the final alignment of my sights, aiming for the torso. I exhale and smoothly pull the trigger.
The revolver explodes twice in quick succession, echoing eerily through the tunnel. The gun kicks very hard but my wide-armed stance controls it. Instantly, Stu goes off his feet, a dark, viscous shadow flying out from behind his body, then he falls straight back and down as if a wall had become animate and run into him at fifty miles an hour.