The Manhattan Hunt Club (29 page)

She had no idea where they were. Though she’d done her best to keep track of every turn they’d made, every passage they’d crept through, every ladder they’d climbed or crumbling wall they’d scaled, she had long since lost any sense of direction. The semidarkness itself was disorienting, though it hadn’t been too bad when they’d still been near the surface, when she’d actually been able to catch glimpses of daylight now and then. Even the few rays of afternoon sun that penetrated through the scattering of grates that appeared here and there over her head were enough to keep her from feeling utterly lost. But since they’d fled down the shaft after hearing the sound of a door closing—a sound that would have been perfectly ordinary on the surface, but had seemed alien to the strange world of the tunnels—she’d been struggling against a rising tide of fear that was now edging toward panic.

Stop it,
she told herself.
We’ll be all right. We will find Jeff, and we will get out.
But when Keith, leading her by half a step, stopped and put a hand out to keep her from moving forward, all the fears she had barely held in check nearly broke free. She might even have cried out if Keith hadn’t clamped his hand over her mouth, then held his finger to his lips. Her heart pounding, she strained to hear whatever it was that had spooked him, and a moment later, when her pounding heart finally began to settle back into a normal rhythm, she heard it.

Footsteps.

Slow, irregular footsteps, as if whoever was making them was frightened of something.

Or stalking something?

The thought came to Heather out of nowhere, and she tried to banish it.

They were approaching a crossroads where the passage they were following intersected with another. The dimly lit area ahead was empty, and she couldn’t tell from which direction of the tunnel the footsteps were coming, but they were definitely getting closer. She was afraid that at any second whoever was approaching would appear around the corner, and then—

Keith’s grip tightened on her arm, and when Heather turned to look at him, his eyes were boring straight into hers and his lips mouthed two words.

Two words that her rising panic made utterly incomprehensible until he spoke out loud a second later.

“Where’s tha bottle?” Keith slurred. “Didn’t lose it, didja?”

Then the words he’d mouthed came into perfect focus:
Play drunk!

“Threw it away,” Heather mumbled back. “Was empty anyway.”

“Fuckin’ bitch,” Keith said, a little louder now, and moving unsteadily toward the cross tunnel that lay ahead. “Thought I tol’ you not to drink it all.”

Heather shuffled after him, her hair over her face.

A figure stepped out of the intersection then, turning to face them. Heather knew he wasn’t one of the people who lived in the tunnels, for there was nothing about him that suggested that he was a drunk or a junkie, or any of the other down-on-their-luck people who had been exiled to the tunnels.

This man faced them with a demeanor of utter self-confidence and authority, an authority strengthened by the ugly rifle he cradled in his arms. Its hard metal surfaces gleamed even in the dim light of the overhead bulbs, and the magazine protruding from beneath its stock told Heather it was some kind of automatic. There was a telescopic sight mounted above the short barrel, and the ease with which the man held the gun told her he would have no trouble using it. He carried a small backpack and was clad entirely in black like a figure out of a movie. His face was so smudged with black makeup that his features were totally obscured. He seemed puzzled that he’d run into them.

“Hey!” Keith said, a goofy smile spreading across his features. “Got anything to drink?”

The man ignored the question. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice every bit as imperious as his stance. “There’s a hunt going on—you people are supposed to stay clear of this sector.”

Keith raised his hands in mock horror. “Well, pardon me all ta hell. Nobody didn’t tell us about no—” He wove slightly, leaning forward as if he couldn’t quite make the man out. “Wha’d you say was goin’ on?”

The man’s expression darkened. “Never mind. Just get out of here.” He jerked the muzzle of the rifle toward the far end of the passage they were in. “There’s a shaft about three hundred yards farther along. It will take you up to the subway tunnel. After that, just find a station and get out.” His lips twisted into an unpleasant smile. “And try not to get hit by a train—it messes up the tracks.”

“Hey, anything you say,” Keith slurred amiably. “Don’t want no trouble . . .” He took Heather’s arm and began steering her along, and she did her best to match his shambling stagger. “Jus’ lookin’ for a drink,” he muttered as they started past the man. Then, just as he came abreast of the man, Keith appeared to stumble, bumping into him. The man, startled, instinctively pulled away, raising his gun as if to fend Keith off. In an instant, Keith’s foot lashed out, his shoe catching the man in the dead center of his crotch.

Wracked by a spasm of agony so paralyzing that only a strangled sound escaped his throat, the man collapsed to the floor, his fingers reflexively tightening on the rifle as he went down. Even before he hit the ground, Keith had pulled his own gun from the waistband of his pants and lashed it across the man’s temple. Shuddering, the man sprawled onto the floor. His whole body trembled for a second, then he lay still, blood oozing from the deep gash in his scalp.

Heather stared at the crumpled body in horror. “Is he . . . dead?”

“Doubt it,” Keith muttered, already on his knees, rifling through the man’s pockets. “He’ll be asleep for a while though—it’s not like in the movies, where they wake up two minutes later and start chasing people again.” He took the man’s wallet and put it in his own pocket, then pulled the backpack loose and handed it to Heather. Last of all, he took the man’s braided nylon belt and used it to tie his wrists and ankles behind his back. “Just in case he wakes up,” he said. Picking up the rifle, he stood and peered down both the intersecting corridors. There was nothing in the darkness, at least as far as he could see. He nodded in the direction in which the man had been moving. “Unless you’ve got a better idea, it seems like we ought to go wherever he was headed.”

Heather gazed down at the unconscious man lying in the muck on the floor. “What if someone finds him?”

“Then they’ll know it’s not going to be quite as easy as they thought.”

As he started down the passage, Heather fingered the backpack. “Shouldn’t we see what’s in here?”

“We will,” Keith assured her. “But if any of this bastard’s friends come along, I don’t want to have to explain what I did.” Turning away, he moved deeper into the tunnel, Heather following him.

T
he first rat had caught the scent of blood within a few seconds after Keith’s gun had slashed through the fallen man’s scalp, and by the time Keith and Heather had disappeared into the gloom, half a dozen of the creatures were slinking toward the unconscious body.

They approached it warily, knowing that this kind of animal could be dangerous, but as they crept closer and it failed to move, they became bolder.

Two of them slithered close enough to sniff at the blood, dipping their tongues into its warm saltiness.

Three more joined them.

Soon four more appeared out of the darkness, and another dropped down from a ledge where it had remained concealed from the moment the man had first arrived.

They began nibbling at the man’s fingers first, and when he made no move to jerk away, moved quickly on to his arms and his face, his legs and his torso. Then, as the skin and flesh were torn away and the internal organs were exposed, the cockroaches and ants began to swarm out of the darkness to join in the feast.

By the time the man in the coal black clothes died, nearly a quarter of his body weight had been consumed by the voracious creatures of the darkness.

He was awake for the last few minutes of his ordeal.

Awake, but not screaming.

His vocal cords had already been eaten away.

CHAPTER 34

“T
hat man is going to die, isn’t he?”

Heather and Keith had been moving swiftly since leaving the fallen man lying unconscious in the muck, both of them silently keeping track of the turns they took, counting their steps. Keith had come to a halt a moment ago, pausing just outside one of the pools of light cast by the widely spaced bulbs in the low ceiling of the utilities tunnel. His body had fairly quivered with tension as he held up a finger to keep Heather from speaking, and both of them had strained to hear, searching for any noise that might betray the presence of another human being.

All they had heard were the faint scraping sounds of rats creeping along the concrete.

Satisfied that they were at least temporarily alone in the tunnel, he moved closer to the light, and while Heather dropped down to rest on a large pipe, Keith rifled through the backpack the man had been carrying. Only when Heather asked her question did he look up.

“He might,” he said. “He would have killed us. As soon as we were past him, he was going to shoot us.”

Though she heard the words clearly, Heather’s mind rejected what Keith Converse had said. Why would the man have killed them? He didn’t know them, had no idea who they were.

“It’s why he didn’t send us back the way we came,” Keith explained, sensing Heather’s uncertainty. “He wanted us close to him, close enough so he couldn’t miss.”

“You don’t know that,” Heather said, her voice low. “Why would he—”

“We saw him,” Keith said. “We saw his face. As soon as he said we weren’t supposed to be there, I knew what he was going to do.”

“Then why didn’t he just do it?” Heather demanded, and Keith could hear her desperation, her need to believe the man would have let them pass unharmed.

“Because he’s a coward,” Keith said. “What other kind of person would hunt for an unarmed man with an automatic rifle?” He glanced around at the tunnel stretching away in both directions. Save for the shadowy areas of darkness between the pools of light, there was no place to hide. He reached back into the bag and continued removing its contents.

Night vision goggles—not the cheap Russian variety he had seen in hunting magazines, but a fancy-looking setup whose price he couldn’t even guess at.

A two-way radio, smaller than any cell phone he’d ever seen.

A canteen of water and a packet of food—the kind hikers carried with them, weighing almost nothing but packing a lot of energy.

A neatly coiled length of rope.

A pint of scotch—Chivas—which Keith suspected wasn’t part of the standard issue of whatever group the kit’s owner was a part.

And at the bottom, a small leather-bound book, like a diary. Though its color was indistinguishable in the darkness of the tunnel, the softness of its grain told Keith it was of the same quality as the goggles and the scotch. It bore an elegant monogram stamped in gold:

MHC

Below the monogram, in the same lettering, but in a smaller size, appeared the words:

THE MANHATTAN HUNT CLUB

Keith flipped the book open. It wasn’t a diary, but rather, a kind of logbook, and as he scanned the first page, his blood ran cold. When he was finished, he wordlessly handed it to Heather. As she silently began to read, he tried to grasp everything that first page implied:

Heather read through the page twice, wishing she could find a reasonable explanation for what she was reading, but unable to ignore the cold, clinical directness of the log. Her heart racing, she flipped through the book until she came to the most recent entry.

The last of her doubt faded away as she read the words that had been so carefully written on the page.

In the space for identifying the “Quarry,” Jeff’s name was neatly inscribed.

The “Date of Extraction” was three days ago, the date that Jeff had supposedly died in the crash of the Correction Department transport van.

The “Dates of Hunt” entry was only partially filled in, with today’s date as its opening.

The closing date was still blank.

The “Hunting Party” consisted of Adder, Mamba, Rattler, Viper, and Cobra.

“I wish you’d killed him,” she said coldly. “But who are they? What kind of people would do such a thing? What kind of people could even think of such a thing?”

Keith held out the wallet he’d taken from the man’s pants. “His name’s Carey Atkinson,” he said.

Heather’s eyes widened with shock, and when she exchanged the logbook for the wallet, her hands were trembling. She stared at the driver’s license for several long seconds, and when she spoke again, her voice was as unsteady as her hands.

“Keith, I know Carey Atkinson. He’s a friend of my father’s.”

Keith frowned. “How good a friend?”

Heather took a deep breath, then she met Keith’s gaze. “Very good,” she whispered. “He’s the Chief of Police.”

Keith’s lips compressed into a grim line. “I guess we know how they got Jeff out of the van.”

As the truth of what Keith had just said sank in, Heather felt cold fury. “Could you have killed him?” she asked. “If you’d wanted to?”

Keith nodded. “If I’d known who he was and exactly what he was doing, I would have. I’d have broken his neck.”

Heather took the gun out of her pocket and gazed at it. “Until just now I wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to use this. But if we find the rest of those men . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Let’s just hope we find Jeff before they do,” Keith said. He flipped through the book, then stopped. “Holy Jesus,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Look.” He held out the book. “Maps.”

Heather took the book and studied the hand-drawn maps carefully. There were eight pages of them, meticulously detailed, and as she moved back and forth from one page to another, the maze of passages and tunnels began to make some sense. Her finger touched a spot on the first map, pointing to where the men must have entered the labyrinth that lay beneath the streets.

A suspicion began to grow inside her.
He wouldn’t do something like this. He couldn’t!

But she couldn’t dispel the suspicion that had taken root in her mind.

J
agger froze, turning his attention away from the pain of his burns, focusing on the footsteps. When he’d first heard them, echoing so quietly that he almost failed to catch the sound at all, he was so sure it was Jeff returning that he’d nearly whispered to him. But an instinct deep within him had issued an alarm, and he stayed silent.

The approaching footsteps slowed, became more cautious.

Now he knew it wasn’t Jeff.

Then who?

A hunter?

Maybe just a drunk.

It didn’t matter. The important thing—the only thing that mattered—was that it wasn’t Jeff.

He inched back, shrinking his huge frame deeper into the alcove, pressing against the end wall so hard his spine started to go numb.

As the footsteps came closer, he almost stopped breathing, concentrating every nerve in his body on the dark space beyond the alcove.

Whoever was approaching seemed to sense his presence as well, for whoever was hidden in the gloom paused after each step, as if to listen, to take stock.

Then the footsteps stopped altogether, and Jagger held his breath, afraid that even the air moving through his lungs might give him away.

The tense moment stretched, and when it finally ended, it wasn’t a sound that broke it at all.

Instead, it was a tiny spot of brilliant red that crept into the edge of Jagger’s vision like a drop of glowing blood oozing slowly through the filth that covered the rough concrete floor of the tunnel.

Or some sort of predator stalking its next meal.

As Jagger’s eyes followed it, the crimson spot veered toward the wall opposite his lair and began climbing, moving back and forth, patrolling the wall like a soldier tacking across a battlefield. When it came to the ceiling, the spot abruptly vanished, but Jagger neither released his breath nor let himself relax.

The spot reappeared, now on the wall of the alcove directly opposite his face, no more than six feet away.

It began creeping downward, once again moving back and forth, and when it paused, Jagger was certain it had found him. But a second or two later it continued its progress until it reached the floor of the alcove. Instead of moving closer to him, however, it went the other way, edging closer and closer to the lip of the alcove’s floor, until it disappeared, almost as if it had fallen over the edge.

His lungs burning, Jagger slowly began letting his breath escape, struggling against the urge to exhale in a sudden burst and gulp in a fresh supply of oxygen. He could sense the presence in the darkness now, feel it edging closer. Keeping his back pressed against the end wall, he twisted his head until his neck started to cramp, straining his eyes against the darkness and his ears against the silence.

The barrel of the rifle appeared first. It crept into the range of Jagger’s vision and paused, as if the cold metal itself sensed danger. Then it began to move again, lengthening until Jagger could see the end of the weapon’s telescopic sight and the hand that gripped its stock.

Still he didn’t move, waiting until his instincts told him the moment had come.

The fingers of one hand closed tightly around the wide end of the railroad spike, while the fingers of the other flexed in the darkness, readying themselves.

The hunter’s other hand appeared, its forefinger curled around the weapon’s trigger, and Jagger knew this was his chance. He whipped one arm up, his fingers closing around the stock of the gun, and jerked it forward so fast that the hunter had no time even to release it from his grip. In almost the same movement, Jagger’s other arm arced around, his hand wielding the point of the spike as if it were a stiletto, plunging it deep into the man’s chest.

The gasp that escaped the man’s lungs was his final breath, for the spike had already slashed through his heart before he even knew what had happened. His lifeless fingers slipped away from the rifle and he crumpled to the floor, leaving his weapon in the hands of his executioner.

T
he tunnel containing the alcove where he’d left Jagger was only a few yards ahead now, and Jeff froze, his arm coming up to stop Jinx, who was half a pace behind him.

A sound had stopped him, an expulsion of breath, as if someone had just taken a blow that knocked the wind out of him. But now, instead of hearing low moans of pain, or the gasping of someone struggling to regain his breath, all he heard was silence.

Jinx remained frozen beside him as they both listened, but the silence stretched on, and Jeff began to wonder if he’d really heard anything at all. He started forward again, moving more slowly than before, still sensing that something ahead had changed.

He came to the intersection of the two tunnels, with the alcove several paces in from where the passages met. He paused there, listening.

Nothing.

Finally, he stepped out of the shelter of the cross passage and turned toward the alcove.

A shaft of red light shot out of the darkness, and Jeff’s heart leaped as he realized what it was.

The hunters had found Jagger, and now he himself was pinioned by the slim shaft of a rifle’s laser sight. But instead of a shot, he heard a voice.

“I got one of ’em,” Jagger said, his voice echoing off the hard concrete walls.

The shaft of red abruptly disappeared, and Jeff felt the tension drain from his body as Jagger appeared. “Jesus, Jag, I thought you were going to shoot me!”

“An’ I was startin’ to wonder if you were comin’ back at all,” the big man replied. A second later he was sucking the last drops of moisture out of the cup Jeff had brought him.

Jeff saw the crumpled figure of a man sprawled on the floor of the tunnel and moved closer, feeling oddly numb as he gazed at the dead man on the floor.

The man was dressed in black clothing and had a small pack strapped to his back. Jeff could see that he wasn’t one of the normal denizens of the tunnels, if there was anything normal about the strange tribe of society’s detritus that had accumulated beneath the streets. Clearly, this man was one of the hunters, and as he stared at the fallen figure, Jeff felt not even a twinge of remorse at what Jagger had done.

He knelt down and pulled the backpack loose, then began going through it.

There were a couple of sandwiches in a bag from a deli on Broadway, and a bottle of expensive spring water whose flavor wasn’t quite as good as what came out of the city’s taps but would certainly slake Jagger’s burning thirst as well as his own. In addition to the food and water, he found a flashlight, a pair of night vision goggles, some kind of two-way radio, and a notebook. He turned on the flashlight and was just opening the notebook when Jinx swore softly.

“Jeez! It’s that priest!”

Jeff, puzzled, shined the flashlight in the ashen face of Monsignor Terrence McGuire.

“It’s the guy from that place on Delancey Street,” Jinx went on. “You know—they’ll give you a free meal if you let them preach to you awhile.”

“You sure?” he asked.

But before Jinx could answer him, Jagger spoke up, his voice full of suspicion.

Suspicion, and menace.

“What’s she doing here?” he asked, his eyes fixed on Jinx as his right hand tightened on the railroad spike, which was still stained with the priest’s blood.

“She knows the tunnels,” Jeff replied, still trying to digest this new information, and overlooking the menace in Jagger’s voice. “She can help us get out.”

E
ve Harris hovered restlessly behind the small bar in the room deep beneath The 100 Club that served as the sole meeting place for the Manhattan Hunt Club. In fact, she had been responsible for the design of the room. It had been an empty storage chamber when she first saw it, the walls and floor constructed of the same cold, moldering concrete that made up the catacomb of tunnels beneath the streets. She’d seen the possibilities of the space at once, the huge beams supporting the concrete of the first basement reminding her of a hunting lodge, and as she chose the paneling, the carpet, and the furniture, she never wavered from the lodge motif. It was more elegant and urbane than one might find in Montana, but perfectly matched the sensibilities of the members of the Hunt Club. The fireplace had presented no difficulties at all, since there was already a chimney for the furnace directly overhead—the masons only needed to tap into it. Its mantelpiece, from a Victorian gamekeeper’s lodge in Northumberland, fit the room perfectly, and the bar, replicating one she’d seen in a small pub outside of Ulster, complemented the fireplace perfectly as well.