The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (29 page)

Jay kept moving to stay warm. His breath fogged in front of him as he made for the edge of Chinatown. A fruit shop on the corner was still open. Outside, a wafer-thin Chinese man in a striped T-shirt and sneakers hunched on a foldable chair. Jay became aware of an NYPD squad car rolling past. With the unused parachute and MP7 stashed inside his daypack, he didn’t want to get stopped. He kept his injured arm from their view and pretended to ignore them. They continued onward, headlights shining the road ahead.

Jay checked his smartphone. Sophia’s and DC’s beacons showed them just off the coast of Miami. They hadn’t landed yet. He hoped they hadn’t crash-landed like he had. Damien’s beacon was also visible. According to the GPS receiver that Damien carried in his pocket, he was only half a mile north.

Jay found the dumpling restaurant tucked under a labyrinth of fire escapes and air-conditioning units. The doors were permanently open but it was warm inside, the heat coming from the kitchen at the back.

‘Is Kevin here?’ Jay said to the waitress. ‘I’m Jay.’

She looked puzzled at first, then disappeared into the kitchen. Jay dropped himself into a seat with a view of the entrance and the exit through the kitchen. He was the only customer.

Kevin gave a hushed gasp when he appeared and saw Jay. He didn’t say anything, just sat down, apron hugging the paunch in his stomach. He smelled strongly of ginger and Sichuan peppercorn. His hand slapped over the back of Jay’s hand twice, his version of a handshake. His skin felt like leather. Kevin was an Akhana contact, or used to be. Freeman had kindly put Jay and Damien in touch with him when they’d gone their separate ways after Desecheo Island. Jay wasn’t sure what Kevin was now, but Jay knew two things: his dumplings tasted like shit and he always had his ear to the ground. When you wanted information, you came to Kevin.

‘You’re not meant to be here,’ Kevin said, forehead creasing.

‘I know,’ Jay said.

His face split into a grin. ‘You look like complete shit!’

‘Yeah, thanks, Kevin.’

He arched a silvering eyebrow, inspecting Jay’s arm. Blood had trickled to his elbow and was starting to harden. The sliced skin had congealed under his bandage and the itching sensation suggested it was already healing. He resisted the urge to scratch it.

‘It looks worse than it is,’ he said. ‘Someone’s taken Damien. I need to know who they are.’

Kevin gave a noiseless whistle. ‘You should not have let him be captured.’

‘They were wearing hoods, no helmets, no weapons. Just torches.’

Kevin snorted. ‘That could be anyone.’

Jay slid the blue feather across the table.

‘This?’ Kevin inspected it between two thick fingers. ‘This kids’ game. Mystical warriors. Jaguar knight.’

Jay plucked the feather from Kevin and replaced it with a handful of bills. ‘Where can I find them?’

Kevin rubbed the notes between his fingers and tucked them under the table. ‘You think these guys take Damien?’

Jay waved his smartphone. ‘I have his location. I just need to know what I’m dealing with.’

Kevin regarded him curiously. ‘This unlike you. Why no guns blazing, shoot first, ask question later?’

‘This is my brother,’ Jay said. ‘He could be injured, he could be unconscious. If they find out who he is, they might try to sell him to the Fifth Column. And that never ends well.’

Kevin studied Jay for a moment. He drew a long breath into his nostrils and pried chewing gum from his mouth. ‘Underground. Try subway. This all I know.’

Jay was already out of his seat and walking, daypack in one hand. He stopped. ‘Do you have a jacket?’ he said.

Kevin shrugged.

Jay pulled his unused parachute pack from the daypack. With an exaggerated sigh, Kevin moved stiffly behind the counter and located a puffy black jacket for Jay. It looked somewhat waterproof. He threw it over to him, much to the surprise of the waitress.

Jay shrugged it on, careful not to bend his wounded arm. He felt like a fucking eskimo, but at least it concealed his bandage. He gave the parachute to Kevin, pulled his daypack on over both shoulders and left the restaurant.

The walk uptown was a little more comfortable with the jacket. It was fairly similar to what others were wearing so it helped Jay blend in. He had his daypack and its contents, which fortunately included his MP7 and one full mag. Other than that, he carried one of Sophia’s Interceptors, three access cards, some first-aid supplies, stationery items, lockpicks, his watch and compass, double-edged knife, a hundred in US notes, his false passport and lingering jetlag.

A UN 4WD rattled past—hard to miss with its gleaming white body and blue lettering. Jay turned right onto Delancey. His arm burned and he could still taste blood in the back of his throat. He checked his smartphone again. The battery was already half gone. He had the US charger in his daypack and a backup battery; hopefully he wouldn’t need it. He looked for Damien’s beacon. It was gone. He turned the phone off and on again, toggled GPS and waited. The beacon didn’t appear. He checked on Sophia’s and DC’s location. They were on the coast of Miami now, their beacons still alive and well. Damien’s was nowhere to be seen.

Jay was standing right where he’d seen the beacon last. He looked down at the pavement. There were only two ways the beacon could disappear: Damien’s receiver was switched off or destroyed, or he was underground where the receiver would struggle to get a fix on satellites. Kevin was right: Damien was underground.

Jay’s stomach groaned and he realized he hadn’t eaten since the packet of beef jerky he’d inhaled during the flight, however many hours ago that was. There was a diner across the road that looked especially inviting. He reasoned he could sit at the window and maintain surveillance while stuffing his face with food and thinking through his plan of action. He wasn’t going to have much luck finding Damien without the right fuel.

He picked out a window-facing seat near the door, then started analyzing the passers-by for visual identifiers and behavioral patterns, anything out of baseline. Nothing had jumped out at him by the time his bacon, eggs over medium and bottomless coffee arrived. He shoved the bacon into his mouth with one hand and kept an eye on the street. The television above him, muted with teletext, covered the crashed Antonov, shot down by terrorists apparently. No mention of survivors recovered except the pilot. So far, this wasn’t going so well. They’d crash-landed, he’d lost Damien and his radio, and here he was wandering around Manhattan in a daze, looking for blue fucking feathers in place of GPS coordinates.

He slurped the last of his coffee. A cluster of four young men materialized on the opposite side of the street. He’d seen them pass by ten minutes ago. They were dressed in dark hoodies and dark jeans, black boots. Nothing suspicious, but the attention to all dark colors and the boots unnerved him. Anyone else might consider white sneakers or something to break up the color. And these guys, they moved a little too discreetly, too aware of their formation. Their training betrayed them.

Jay left the bill and money on the counter and exited the diner. The men were moving east on the north side of the street. He crossed east on his side to keep them in sight. They were likely thieves or vandals, but he knew he had to check it out. Through his peripheral, he watched as one of them looked over his shoulder, checking traffic. Jay crossed the street so he was behind them and switched to infrared. What he saw nearly stopped him in his tracks. Two of them wore sword-shaped objects concealed along their backs, wide like a plank of wood, with jagged edges. The jagged bits were cold against their furnace-like bodies.

Jay kept his head down, never looking directly at them, and maintained a generous distance. They shuffled down the steps to a subway station. He waited a minute, checking to see if they popped up at another corner to shake any tails, but they didn’t surface. Satisfied, he followed them in, taking every corner as wide as possible, hands out of his pockets. The last thing he needed was to be ambushed.

He found them at the end of the platform, laughing and joking. The smell of weed drifted toward him. He cleared his throat and walked to the middle of the platform, a flight of stairs separating him from them. As long as he could hear them, he would stay right here. He tried to listen in to their conversation but could only make out the occasional word in Spanish. Damien’s attuned hearing would’ve been good right now; he might’ve even been able to pinpoint their accent.

A downtown train pulled in. Jay stepped out just enough to see if the men boarded. The doors closed and the train moved onward. He could hear them talking, they were still there. He considered taking them all down and interrogating one with his knife. Damien could be dead or severely injured somewhere. He was running out of patience, but right now he was riding on little more than suspicion. He didn’t want to fuck up his first lead.

A loose string of commuters walked down the stairs and passed him. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to look as bored as everyone else. He couldn’t hear the men any more. He didn’t want to jump out just yet, so he forced himself to stay put for a minute. Still no sound. Fuck it. He had to move. Casually, he approached the edge of the platform and let his peripheral vision widen. He spotted movement, but it came from the tunnel, not the platform. He turned slightly to get a better look. The men had disappeared.

He blinked to infrared. Immediately he was rewarded with four orange-red blobs in the depths of the subway tunnel.

‘Shit,’ he said.

He moved quickly for the edge of the platform. There was a rusted iron ladder bolted to the wall. He checked behind him, saw headlights in the distance. A train was approaching the platform. If he waited for the train to pass he’d risk losing them altogether. He had to move now.

Climbing down the ladder, he hit rocky ground. He was in the tunnel, his night-vision just enough to make out the tracks and walls. There were loose rocks underfoot so it was difficult to run. He kept to one side of the tunnel and moved as fast as he could. He switched to infrared and checked on the blobs in the distance. He caught the last one disappearing somewhere into the left wall ahead.

Infrared wasn’t much good when there were no heat sources to bounce heat off walls. All Jay could see now was a prickle of light in the distance. The headlights from the train brought some light into the tunnel, just enough that he could make out the opening up ahead, on the left. He heard the train doors open on the platform. He was running out of time. He could barely see the ground beneath him as he ran. All he could hear was his own heavy breathing and the crunch of rocks underfoot. Headlights splashed the tunnel walls. The train was accelerating right toward him. He tracked the walls, kept running. The alcove appeared on his left. He ducked inside.

The train punched through the tunnel. Jay hugged the alcove and caught his breath, watching the blur of windows fly past, carriage by carriage, and then the train was gone. He switched to infrared and found nothing but a long maintenance tunnel. Checking the ground, he was pleased to find smooth concrete underfoot. He made it to the other end of the tunnel and found himself at a triple intersection buffered by graffiti-scrawled archways. Taking the MP7 from his daypack, he moved across the tunnels, careful to step over the third rail and not electrocute himself.

The right-hand tunnel was disused, littered with mattresses and mountains of forgotten junk. Above him, through the metal grates, he heard people on the street talking about inappropriate Facebook requests. Moving in and out of infrared, Jay caught sight of burning hot figures in the distance, in the far left tunnel. He stepped through the archway into the tunnel and kept his eyes on the spark of light ahead.

It sounded like an incoming wave. As it grew louder and louder he realized it was a train. Headlights painted the tunnel ahead. It was coming straight for him.

‘Not again,’ he groaned.

He legged it over the tracks and through the archway into the center tunnel. Another train, this time coming from behind him. He almost tripped over his MP7 as he scrambled back to the archway and tucked his arms in over his weapon. The first train rattled past, inches from his elbow and leg. He didn’t move. The other train shot past on his other side, trapping him between the two. He held still and shut his eyes to keep the light from destroying his night-vision.

Almost as quickly as the trains had arrived, they disappeared. In their place, silence.

He checked his pockets and his belt. Knife, passport, money, his pouch of useful bits, his emergency sachet sewn into his jeans. All still intact. Stepping back out into the left tunnel, MP7 in one hand, he switched to infrared again. The men were nowhere to be seen. He had some catching up to do.

He covered a good half mile in near-darkness, his night-vision struggling. The triple tunnels converged into a large hangar before they split off again. It was open ground, lit by the occasional green, red or purple light. As far as he was concerned, it may as well be lit like a stadium. He could be spotted in the open, but there wasn’t much choice. He moved fast, tracing a flat concrete path to the next split and hugging the divide between the left and center tunnels.

He could hear the faint announcement of train times from a platform in the distance. Peering into the left tunnel, he switched to infrared and caught a sliver of warmth as someone moved. The sliver disappeared into a haze of hot white light, which looked to be a brightly lit section of tunnel. It wasn’t until he got closer that he realized it was another subway station.

He moved carefully over the rocks, as soundlessly as possible. The platform was deserted. He stuffed his MP7 in his daypack and climbed the ladder extremely slowly, eyes on the platform the whole time. His hands came away black. The platform was lit end to end by still-active fluorescent tubes, but was coated in a fine layer of grime and powdered plaster. The tunnel walls on either side were adorned in brilliantly colorful graffiti, the likes of which he’d never seen topside.