Stone uncapped the water and drew slow, short sips, swishing the icy liquid to get rid of the cotton mouth. “Shit. I don’t have a gun anymore, either. I lost mine in the fight with Cervantes, and never replaced it.”
Wren drank her own water in long gulps, then paused. “What do we do?”
Stone shrugged. “Get on the train. Hope he doesn’t see us.”
“What if he does?”
Stone gathered his good leg beneath him and held on to Wren’s outstretched hand, climbed laboriously to his feet. “I’ll deal with that if we come to it.”
He realized as he spoke that he still had the knife in his pocket. He withdrew it and held it in his palm. Stone was ready to be done with violence. He wanted to be home, to lay in his bed and watch ESPN. Work on his Monte Carlo. Take Wren out for ice cream, find an empty meadow in the countryside and make slow love to her on a blanket beneath the stars.
He stuffed the water bottle in the cargo pocket of his shorts and held on to Wren as they moved toward the northbound train rails. Stone spotted the man Wren had seen. He was thick and brawny, but on the short side, with bare, tattooed arms and low-hanging shorts. He was turning in slow circles, scanning the crowd like a man looking for someone in particular. He let the crowd slurry around him while he stood on his toes and consulted a cell phone every once in awhile. Stone halted behind a pillar, hiding from view in a place where they could still wait for the train to show up.
Wren buried her head against his chest and breathed in, breathed out, fighting panic.
A deafening roar and the shrill squealing of grinding brakes announced the northbound train’s arriving from the Baclaran end of the line. The announcer squawked, and Stone found it easier to translate the Filipino than to understand the garbled, accented English: “
The blue, white, and red train ground to a stop, and the knotted mass of people waiting to board shifted forward. Stone hobbled forward as fast as he could, letting the crowd guide him while he kept an eye on the man looking for them. Wren was hidden in the crowd, blending as well as she could considering her skimpy garb. Stone, however, towered head and shoulders above most of the crowd, and his face, neck and shoulders were covered in blood. He stood out like he was wearing a flashing neon sign.
The man saw him, glanced at his cell phone and frowned in clear confusion, then followed the crowd onto the train, shoving through to make headway. Stone pushed Wren through the crowd to the end of the car, put her back to the wall and stood in front of her, watching as their pursuer pushed and shoved toward them through the jam-packed car.
A warning burbled on the overhead PA, and the doors closed with a hiss. The car jerked, and lurched into motion, quickly picking up speed as it left the station and moved out into the daylight. It was well past dawn now, with the sun washing over the landscape, shedding long shadows. Riders exchanged desultory conversation, listened to iPods, spoke on phones, swayed in silence, stared out the window, all unaware of the unfolding danger.
Stone held the folding knife in his palm, pressed his thumb to the nocked edge, ready to snap it open. The other man kept his hand in his shorts pocket, which Stone realized was hanging low, misshapen by the weight of must be a small handgun of some sort, a Walther PPK or similar.
Adrenaline rifled through him, making his blood sing. He planned out his movements. In close quarters like this, with such a small blade, his best bet was the femoral artery. It would be quick, low-profile.
The two men were face to face now.
“Where you gonna go?” The man had a soft voice, contrasting oddly with his brawny, tattooed physique.
“Let it go,” Stone warned. “Let us go.”
“You come now. Be easy. Or dere be trouble.” The man lifted his fist from his pocket, letting silver flash.
Stone readied himself, unfolding the blade slightly. “You haven’t heard from your boss in awhile, have you?” The thug narrowed his eyes. “No, you haven’t. Know why? He’s dead.”
“
“Call him. Right now.” Stone lifted an eyebrow. “See if he answers.”
“You try pool me. Shut up now.”
Stone forced a laugh. “Would I joke about something like that? Cervantes is gone, man. I pumped an entire clip into his sorry ass. Give him a call. See what happens.”
“Maybe he dead, maybe not.” The gun came out entirely, held flat against the man’s thigh, mostly disguised by his hamhock-fist. “Maybe I kill you, take her.”
“Maybe you can try. You’ll die like all the rest who’ve tried.”
People around them shifted, hearing the tension in the voices, some understanding the words. Stone held his palm against his thigh and unfolded the knife. The soft
Stone was a heartbeat from pouncing when the train jerked and slowed, the PA announcing, “Libertad!”
Bodies pressed and crushed and jostled, shoving and ducking. He caught a glimpse of the man holding on to a rail, fighting the motion of the crowd like a leaf stuck against a rock in a rushing river. Then the crowds waiting at the Libertad stop boarded, and the rush began in reverse, the two bunches of travelers mixing and merging like meeting waves, congealing momentarily and then parting. The door closed, and Stone held his ground while the tattooed thug pushed toward him, his eyes hard, glittering with the threat of violence.
“Why are we doing this, man?” Stone asked. “Cervantes is gone. You have to know how many of your friends I’ve taken out at this point.” Stone murmured the words, pitched just loud enough to be heard. “Put it away and get off at the next stop. Nothing has to happen. Just let us go. We just want to go home.”
“I don’ tink so. Not so easy. Many of prends, yes. For dem, you die.”
Gunfire would result in injured bystanders. Stone had to hit first, and hit hard, so that wouldn’t happen. Some men just thrived on the violence, the conflict. When those kind of men had the promise of bloodshed in their teeth, they wouldn’t let it go, wouldn’t back down, logic be damned.
A breath, a pause, time slowed to treacle as Stone shifted his weight with the motion of the train, ignoring the screaming in his thigh as he forced his weight on the muscle. Another breath, and he lashed out, blade held low, hammer-style, extended from the bottom of his fist with the blade toward his body. Strike into the thigh, high on the leg, near the crotch, drag the blade through meat. Withdraw. Step back.
The pistol clattered as it fell from surprised, limp fingers. Stone bent and scooped up the dropped weapon and shoved it into his waistband, watched as the man sagged back into the crowd. No one screamed, no one saw. The man’s eyes glazed, fluttered, his mouth worked vacantly, silently, voice leached by agony. Pants leg darkened by blood, the liquid sliding underfoot, pooling unnoticed. Someone shoved, and the tattooed man stumbled, lurched, fell into someone else, who shoved him as well, thinking he was drunk.
The train stopped again, and Stone grabbed Wren’s wrist, pulled her with him into the exodus. The crowd dispersed outside the train, and others boarded. The doors closed, and the train chuffed as it began drawing away. Now a scream rent the air, audible even over the noise of the crowd and the roar of the train. The human body held a lot of blood, and the femoral artery carried much of it, especially in the Scarpa’s triangle, where Stone had sliced him open.
It was peak morning hours, so another train arrived within three minutes, and Stone and Wren followed the crowd on board. Adrenaline still ran rampant through Stone, who noted that security guards were already swarming through the station, walkie-talkies held to mouths. The transit authority security guards had a much quicker response time than the city’s police, it seemed.
The map of stops printed on the wall of the train informed Stone that they had only two more stops before the United Nations stop, which was where he was planning on exiting, since it was closest to the Embassy. Wren held on to his arm, both supporting him and herself.
“Is it easy for you?” she murmured up to him, her liquid brown eyes conflicted.
“Is what easy? Killing someone?” Stone rubbed his hand on his shorts, feeling the blade in his pocket. “No. It’s never easy. I do what I have to, to keep you and me alive, but it’s never easy.”
