Born to Run (21 page)

She eyed it suspiciously but decided it would fit under the strap on her bike, only just, and as he handed it to her, she could feel its weight. “What’s in it?” Maxine
asked.

“Who gives a… The really big prize is they get to be on SatTV live tonight. They all love it. They get home and show everyone in the neighbourhood when it’s replayed after
seven. It’s all marketing crap.”

“Yeah, but the box?”

Dwayne glanced over at Gary and shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care,” he said, ending the conversation.

“But I’m the one carrying this,” she said, a wrinkle of worry crossing her forehead.

This was taking too long. No more Mister Nice Guy. Dwayne furrowed his bushy eyebrow into the deepest vee he could muster, “Listen, I don’t set this up; some guy with a big-buck
paycheque tells me what he wants. And my job is to make it happen. If it’s too hard for you, pink hair lady, we got plenty other messengers.” He stabbed his thick stumpy index finger
toward the line behind her.

Maxine took the hint, as well as the hefty box, and left the pair to deal with the couriers jostling behind her.

SHE circled the area around the 42nd Street subway looking for a railing she’d be happy chaining her bike to. It was near the corner of 44th and 8th, at the top of a subway ramp—the
package was heavy and this would save time. It was 5:05 PM. She had twenty minutes to spare. She slid the box off her bike, supporting it on her hip, and headed into the subway, as fast as the
weight of the box would let her.

She used the Metrocard, pushed through the turnstile and found the platform for the A-train heading north.

People crammed together waiting and reading. A few were chatting but most were avoiding eye contact.

Maxine was tetchy. She’d entered at the completely opposite end of the crowded platform and had to shoulder herself down its entire length to get to where the first carriage would open
up.

After pushing hard and persistently, she reached where she guessed the train’s first compartment would stop—only a few stragglers stood beyond that point. Her stomach tightened: no
TV crew. It was 5:12 PM. Thirteen minutes to go.

The tunnel at the other end started to glow. If she didn’t make the drop, she wouldn’t get paid, plus she would’ve wasted ninety damn minutes. She resisted panic and waited,
nervously on edge. They’ll be here. She rocked up and down on the heels of her boots. Maybe the crew was coming in by train, this train.

It wasn’t an A-train; it was a C sharing the same platform. It careered down the track and screeched to a halt in front of her—at least she’d positioned herself correctly.
Swapping the package to her other hip, she wiped her forehead

The crowd surged around her toward the doors and she held back, shielding herself against one of the purple I-beam steel uprights as the doors shushed open to launch the contest between those
pushing their way on and those forcing their way off.

When the closing doors signalled the battle was over, her eyes searched up and down the platform for the TV crew. They’re running late, she decided, but the feigned confidence did nothing
to ward off the mounting despair that she wasn’t going to get paid.

5:18 PM, and still no sign. Maybe she hadn’t heard the bald guy correctly and she was supposed to wait for the A-train going
downtown
? She gripped the box and raced through the
nearby exit, tearing up the stairs and through the pedestrian tunnels. After what seemed like an age she flew onto the other platform, almost slamming into an elderly lady carrying a green Harrods
shopping bag from London.

Her pulse pounded behind her eyes. No camera crew. But down the other end of this platform, she spotted one of her Crisis Courier colleagues with a similar box. Damn! It was someone else’s
platform.

She tried to calm down and pulled out her copy of the delivery slip to check the details. It was definitely the uptown train. Hell! She sprinted back, this time taking the correct stairway to
deliver her direct to the head of the platform.

5:25 PM. On cue. Her head swivelled around and back like a police car beacon, but there was no TV crew in sight. She was in the right place; she was positive. She’d just have to be
patient.

Proof. She needed proof she’d been here on time. She placed the box at her feet and her clammy hand yanked her cell phone out of her pocket and dialled her dispatcher, but there was no
signal. Her hand punched down on her leg: who needs this shit? Maxine was tensed up. This had been a bad week for her. She wiped her face on her sleeve and picked up the box.

Next to her, a calm and Burberry-clad woman in her early thirties cradled a small baby. Oblivious to Maxine’s plight, the mother’s head was bent, cooing sweet nothings to her child.
She started the babble game and hummed a cute, vaguely familiar tune at the same time as repeatedly flicking her fleshy bottom lip with her index finger. The baby gurgled and cackled and those
nearby grinned, apart from one ragged man who, undisturbed—or maybe not—continued rifling through an imaginary trashcan bolted to the wall.

“Excuse me, ma’am. I’ve got to deliver this box to a TV crew. They’re supposed to be here. You haven’t seen them?”

“We haven’t seen any TV crew, have we Sweetpea?” the stylish woman lilted to her baby, not looking Maxine in the eye.

“See, if I can prove I was here from before 5:25, I’ll get my money.”

Maxine’s box was too big not to notice and through the corner of her eye the mother also noted Maxine’s pink hair and sweat-glistened face and the dark threatening circles spreading
under her arms. She’d heard stories. New York went hand in hand with scams. Don’t get involved.

ABOVE them in Times Square, the rush-hour traffic was nearing gridlock. Maxine was lucky not to have gotten caught in it and miss the time for her delivery altogether. On the
sidewalks, motley street vendors hassled passers-by, indifferent to which were tourists, pre-theatre diners or office workers. Their sole concern was peddling assorted products of variable
worthlessness: massive salt rocks pegged into hot pretzels; “gen-u-ine” luxury-brand watches for the price of a Texas Toast in a greasy diner; and pirated DVDs that were filmed with
hand-held cameras in Chinese movie theatres.

Jaywalking pedestrians darted across the choked roads, dodging the honking Yellow Cabs, themselves ritually jerking from lane to lane.

The same chaotic picture screened all the way up past Central Park, and all the way back down Broadway to Wall Street where elevators worked overtime as neck-straining office buildings spewed
out their human guts into the streets, into teeming rivers of floating workers bobbing home, thirsting for a cool can and a warm TV for tonight’s big game.

THE train slithered in from Connecticut, against the tide of suburbanites on their rush-hour flow out of Manhattan. With busted airconditioning, thank you for nothing,
Metro-North. Despite the outside temperature, it sweltered inside the railcar like a foil-wrapped string of frankfurts left out in the sun, with passengers’ eyes drooping from the fixed
windows as they wished the journey was over.

D
ESPITE THE BADGERING from the dwindling line of couriers, Dwayne and Gary completed their task on time, as Isis expected. In their circle,
Dwayne’s planning was revered, as was Gary’s dogged execution. Usually. The episode with Jax Mason in London had been a rare exception.

With no more messengers or boxes, they ripped down the SatTV sign they’d hung outside the warehouse. After rolling it up and shoving it into Gary’s backpack, they walked briskly into
the loading bay, fired up the truck they’d stolen earlier that day and hammered it the six miles to LaGuardia airport’s freight terminal, where twenty or so cargo planes were lined up.
To anyone not blinded by the pink-washed glints of sunset, the odd-looking pair scurrying between the planes was like a silhouette of the nursery-rhyme dish running away with the spoon.

The pilot whose plane they were pacing toward was pumping his money into the vending machine in the waiting bay, a solemn pre-flight ritual that involved concentration and dexterity but, with
years of practice, even this reformed drunk could manage it.

Three dollars for a cup of tepid coffee was a bit rich, he bellyached. Yet one more setback. He’d become a shit magnet he decided and, no longer caring, he dressed the part. His standard
issue navy, tan and gold uniform was designed so even the most shapeless individual could impress; on most, it evoked the image of neat hospital corners, but on him it was an oversized blanket
tossed over a sagging torn mattress. Self-esteem was not his strong suit. He hadn’t seen a razor for at least three days yet no one would dream of complimenting him as fashionably
unshaven.

He was in luck for a change. The click signalled the coffee was about to drizzle out. Gut-warming sludge it might be, but he loved the burnt aroma.

One of the planes taxiing off the apron shot a glint of the low sun into his bloodshot eyes and, as they swung over to check his own plane he puzzled, squinting at the two shapes he thought he
saw clambering into his cockpit. “Hey,” he yelled, abandoning his coffee. It was a reckless move. And they say that coffee kills.

He puffed and wheezed up to his Cessna just as its engines fired. Even if Gary and Dwayne hadn’t been wearing headphones, the roar of the motors would have blocked out his screams. His
fists slammed against the cabin door. Dwayne, focused on take-off, sneered at him and signalled to Gary to deal with the inconvenience. Smiling, Gary unlatched the door so it smacked the pilot in
the head and yanked the dazed man up into the small two-seater cockpit.

Gary’s serrated grin stayed fixed. With crazed eyes, Gary poked his scraggy nose into the man’s terrified face and, without warning, roughly shoved the hysterical fumbler into the
narrow space behind the seats that he and Dwayne had commandeered. “Shut the fuck up!” shouted Gary as his hand closed round the pilot’s throat. Dwayne neither heard nor felt the
pilot slump. He looked at his watch and remarked, “On time.”

THE sweat dripped down the parcel courier’s pink hair and trickled under her collar. The appointed 5:25 PM had passed and not even a hint of the expected TV crew had
materialised. Maxine’s eyes scoured the subway platform again. “Damn it,” she blasted, out loud, but no amount of cursing would alter fate… that in three minutes’
time nothing would matter to Maxine Powers.

When Maxine involuntarily stamped her foot in frustration, the already nervous young mother close by edged back and nuzzled even deeper into her baby’s neck, as if their private bond would
block out this crazy woman.

“Excuse me,” Maxine persisted, shoving a crumpled dispatch voucher forward.

The mother flinched, keeping her eyes down.

“If you’d just initial this for me,” she pressed, “to confirm I was standing here at this particular time.” Her fingers tapped at her watch. “I’d be
real grateful.”

Out of the corner of the mother’s eye, she could see that balancing against Maxine’s hip was a strange white box strapped with black duct tape, but she still didn’t look up;
eye contact would only get her in deeper, embroil her, and she wrapped her arms even tighter around her boy. “Signing?” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a bit
diffic…”

As Maxine shook the ticket at her, the carton slipped and, despite her fumbling for it, it fell to the ground, breaking open.

The two women peered down at the contents and froze. They didn’t need to know specifically that the exposed putty-like slab was a restricted-use, military-grade variant of the
hyper-explosive C-4. But if they had known that impact couldn’t trigger it, even if it smashed against the platform floor, their hearts might not have exploded into their mouths, gagging
their screams.

Maxine’s eyes were drawn to the blue blasting cap that was pressed into the white explosive. Bizarrely, she noted it was the same blue as the baby’s bonnet and the candy petals on
her cousin’s wedding cake last month. Yet this would be no party. And only one of these two women would survive it.

With the presidential election in its final countdown, panic and terror were about to crack themselves across the nation like a bullwhip. It was calculated to spur a stampede, millions of
skittish votes once again hurtling toward security.