The Equalizer (71 page)

“Robert…”

“Where's my son? Where's Scott?”

“In the ticket office on the street level.”

There was no time for more. Bullets exploded around them from the staircase. McCall shoved Katia down the platform toward the wooden hut and turned.

Salam and the other mercenary were halfway down the staircase, Salam firing his AK-47.

McCall took two bullets.

One passed through his right shoulder, searing pain through his body. His legs buckled. The second bullet hit the thigh of his right leg. He fell backward onto the platform.

On his back, McCall fired the M16 up the stairs at the shadowy figures running down them. He heard a cry and the mercenary fell to the bottom. McCall rolled away.

His M16 clip was empty.

He had two seconds.

Salam came through the entranceway onto the platform.

No sign of McCall.

Salam looked at the wooden hut end of the platform.

Katia was climbing down onto the tracks.

Salam raised his AK-47.

McCall came out of the drifting smoke behind him. His eyes were streaming and his throat felt like it had been sliced open. He drew and fired the Sig Sauer P238, putting four slugs into Salam's back. The AK-47 fired as the enforcer's finger jerked on the trigger. The bullets flew up into one of the glowing blue skylights, smashing the heavy glass, raining it down onto the tracks.

Salam pitched forward onto the platform.

Nine hostiles down.

McCall looked beyond Salam's body.

Katia was gone.

McCall grabbed his fallen M16, took another mag from his pocket, and slammed it in. Then he limped back toward the second set of stairs at the other end.

Rachid came down them onto the platform. He fired on McCall's eerie figure emerging from the streaming red tear gas smoke, face bleeding, body bleeding, limping, eyes wild, like some vision from Hell.

McCall was hit in the upper left arm. He stumbled to his knees and the M16 went flying out of his hands, over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks.

Rachid raised his AK-47 for the kill shots.

McCall still had the Sig Sauer in his right hand. Without having to aim he shot Rachid three times, two in the chest, one to the head.

Rachid fell back in a fountain of spurting blood.

Ten
.

McCall dragged himself to his feet. He was in a great deal of pain. Everything echoed, the sound of the gunshots ringing in his ears constantly. He kept throwing the blood out of his right eye. His right leg was almost useless when it came to walking. He dragged it behind him, his left leg having to compensate. At first his body had been on fire; now it was getting numb, cold waves emanating from the shoulder and arm wounds.

He was out of bullets.

McCall reached the staircase and slammed another magazine into the Sig Sauer with trembling fingers. He started to climb the staircase, gun held out in front of him in his right hand, clutching the iron railing with his left, his right leg dragging behind him.

He made it up to the fare control area.

Drifting tear gas smoke and dead bodies.

McCall continued to climb in agony. It felt like he was climbing to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but he was close, so close, just a few more steps, Scott would be there.

McCall made it to the top of the staircase and entered the main ticket room.

It was deserted.

He noted a broken handcuff on a railing beside the closed ticket booth.

McCall stood still, putting his weight on his left leg, listening. He could hear a kind of muffled shuffling down the other staircase. He turned and went back down his staircase, faster this time, working through the pain, putting it in a place where it could not reach him.

He had staggered through the fare control area and was halfway down the stairs to the platform when he heard Berezovsky's mocking raised voice.

“I have your son, Mr. McCall. We're on the platform. Do join us.”

McCall half jumped, half staggered down the rest of the marble stairs and out onto the station platform.

Berezovsky was standing in the center of the platform, the red smoke dissipating around him. The platform was littered with bodies. Berezovsky had hold of Scott's shoulder and the barrel of the Makarov pistol was pressed against the side of his head. Scott stood absolutely motionless. The light filtering down through the blue skylights, one of them shattered now, barely reached the platform. The two of them were backlit, like ghostly images on a battlefield.

“I know my wife and daughter are not upstairs.” Berezovsky's voice echoed on the platform. “Katia's your lover. You set her up in a beautiful apartment at the Dakota. She betrayed me. My daughter is a stranger. No doubt you have them hidden in a room somewhere on the platform. I will find them and kill them. But what to do about your son?”

“Let him go,” McCall said, dragging himself closer, the Sig Sauer pointed down at the platform floor.

“Men like us cannot have families. It is too dangerous. Both of us should have known better.”

“Let my son go and you can walk out of here,” McCall said.

“You would never allow me to do that. I was told you'd resigned from The Company. That you'd come to finally understand your real enemies were your own people. I was proud of you. A shame that wasn't true. Throw down your gun.”

McCall remained unmoving.

Berezovsky prodded Scott in the head with the barrel of the Makarov.

His voice was suddenly raging.

“Do it
now
!”

McCall opened his shaking fingers and tossed the Sig Sauer onto the platform floor.

He tossed it in a particular place, calculating the distance it would take him to reach it when he threw himself to the ground.

“I did resign,” McCall said, stalling for time.

“And yet you murdered an employee of mine outside of Prague. To save the life of an American government official.”

“That was a bonus.”

“I see. No doubt you felt some closure about Elena Petrov in ending Durković's life. He did indeed kill her. But he was acting on my orders. So you see, there will be no escape from your pain, Mr. McCall. Not that it matters now. After I kill your son, who doesn't even know you, you will die. I will open another nightclub. I will find a new assassin. Life goes on.”

“Not for you,” McCall said.

His eyes had flicked beyond Berezovsky's figure.

Out of the ghostly darkness behind him Katia had appeared. She was holding the Beretta Storm 9 mm that McCall had given to Natalya in both hands, pointed at her husband's back. She halted and her hands stopped shaking.

Berezovsky could not have heard anything, but he started to turn, never taking the gun barrel from Scott's head.

Katia shot him twice in the back.

Berezovsky staggered.

Scott twisted out of his grasp and fell to his knees.

Berezovsky brought the Makarov pistol back around to the boy's head.

McCall dived to the ground, grabbed the Sig Sauer, and fired three times. All three bullets hit Berezovsky's forehead. The force of them spun him to the edge of the platform. He toppled over it onto the tracks.

Eleven hostiles dead.

McCall tried to get up, but couldn't put any weight on his right leg. Scott scrambled to his feet and ran to his father's side. He gripped him under his left arm and hauled him up to his feet. McCall transferred all of the weight onto his left leg and hung on to his son.

It was as close to a hug as they'd probably ever get.

McCall looked past him. Natalya had walked up behind Katia. She took her mother's trembling hand as she looked at Berezovsky spread-eagled on the subway tracks. Neither of them spoke.

“There's an Adidas sports bag in that hut at the other end of the platform,” McCall said to Scott. “Can you get it?”

Scott nodded and ran down the platform, jumping over the bodies there. He ducked inside the hut and came out carrying the sports bag. He ran back to where McCall stood.

“How about that M16 rifle? Can you reach it?”

Scott looked at the tracks.

“Sure.”

He ran to the edge, knelt down, reached far out, and picked up the fallen M16 by the barrel.

“Got it.”

He jogged back to McCall, knelt, and slid the M16 into the sports bag. McCall took the tear gas revolver out of his belt. Scott took it from his father's shaking hands, dropped it into the sports bag, and picked the bag up. Katia and Natalya walked to where McCall and Scott stood. Katia took off the belt of her dress, knelt down and tied it tightly at the top of McCall's leg wound as a tourniquet. The bullet had gone through his right shoulder, but there was a lot of blood. McCall pulled up his turtleneck and jammed a handkerchief over the wound. Rachid's bullet that had hit his left arm had also gone through the skin at the top and the bleeding there was minimal. Katia finished tying the tourniquet. McCall nodded and pulled her to her feet. He motioned to the stairs behind him. There were no bodies on those stairs. Scott supported McCall on one side, still carrying the Adidas bag, Natalya on the other. Katia led the way.

No one spoke.

In the echoing tomb of the City Hall subway station they walked up the marble stairs to the dark main ticket room, up the stairs to the street, emerging from the enclosure that had
ENTRANCE
still stamped on it and out into the New York night.

 

CHAPTER 49

McCall waited until they were four blocks away from the old station before he stopped. The blood had congealed over his right eye. The tourniquet on his leg had stopped the bleeding there. But his right shoulder and left arm were leaking blood. He wouldn't be able to walk another ten feet. He took out his iPhone and dialed.

Twenty minutes later Jimmy pulled up in a 2009 silver Lexus. He got out, tugging a Yankees jacket tighter around him. There was no one else on the street. Traffic was light. Katia and Natalya stood together, shivering a little in the cold, but mostly with shock. Scott stood with a hand on McCall's arm, steadying him.

“Sorry to get you out of bed, Jimmy,” McCall said. “I'm sure Sarah didn't appreciate a call from me after midnight.”

“To be honest, McCall, she doesn't appreciate a call from you at any hour.”

“This is Katia Rossovkaya and her daughter, Natalya. They're living at the Dakota. They need a ride home. I need to know no one's waiting for them at their apartment. Are you armed?”

“If I'd taken a gun to meet with you I'd be divorced.”

McCall took the Sig Sauer P238 out of his pocket and handed it to him.

He kept losing guns.

“Does she need to go to the hospital?” Jimmy asked, looking at Katia's face.

Katia spoke directly to McCall. “Natalya will look after me. She always has. Alexei was my husband.”

“I know,” McCall said.

“He used to beat me regularly.”

“Not anymore.”

“No,” she said softly. “Not anymore.”

“Who's this?” Jimmy asked, indicating Scott, but McCall was pretty sure he knew.

“My son, Scott. He needs to go home, too.”

“No problem.”

Jimmy looked at the Adidas sports bag that Scott was still carrying. He knew what was in it. He popped the trunk, took the sports bag from Scott, dropped it into the trunk, and slammed it.

“Get in.”

Katia and Natalya climbed into the back of the Lexus, then Scott. McCall slid painfully into the front passenger seat. Jimmy got behind the wheel. He didn't ask any questions. He didn't comment on McCall's face, his injured right leg, or the fact there was blood soaking through his clothes. He just pulled away from the curb.

Jimmy dropped Katia and Natalya at the Dakota. There were no good-byes. They walked quickly into the lobby, Natalya supporting her mother. Jimmy walked with them, disappeared for five minutes, then came out, got back into the Lexus, and drove away.

“All clear.”

McCall made his second call when Jimmy turned onto Park Avenue. The Blakes lived at 1000 Park Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street. Five minutes later Jimmy made a U-turn and pulled up to the green-shaded entrance. Cassie was waiting in the doorway.

Scott leaned forward from the back.

“I knew you'd come for me, Dad,” was all he said.

Then he got out of the Lexus.

But the words meant everything to McCall.

Cassie ran out of the apartment building and hugged Scott fiercely. Tom Blake came out behind her. Scott squirmed out of his mother's embrace and Blake hugged him.

“Not going to get out?” Jimmy asked.

McCall shook his head.

Cassie looked at the car. Jimmy hit a button and the window on McCall's side purred down. Cassie started to move forward. McCall just raised a hand in acknowledgment. She stopped and locked eyes with him. Her eyes were filled with tears.

She mouthed the words:
Thank you
.

“Let's go,” McCall said.

Jimmy sighed and hit the button for the window to ascend and pulled away.

*   *   *

It was Granny, of all people, who came to see McCall in the ER at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital on 168th Street. It was just after dawn and McCall was in a cubicle putting on his shirt. He was doing everything in slow motion to avoid pulling out stitches or sending pain rocketing through his head and body. Dr. Bennett's son Brian, who looked like a younger edition of his dad, had patched McCall up without asking any questions. They'd talked a little bit about his father, Doc Adams of the subterranean tunnels. His son wanted him to come back to the upworld and
stay there
. He worried about his dad's own health, down in those sewers. McCall promised to see what he could do. The bleary, dedicated night staff were giving way to the day shift. The ER was quiet. Granny and McCall kept their voices low, but there was no one close enough to hear them.