The Snake Flag Conspiracy Read online

  Chapter Eight

  Behind me the tracks of the trolley line were level with the platform. There was no third rail because the power line ran overhead.

  To my right, the escalator rose to the Arlington Street level, its steps moving in a slow, endless procession. Aside from the fact that one of their men was positioned right beside it, the escalator was a trap. Pinned between its narrow walls while it hauled me slowly upward, I'd have no chance to escape even a bad marksman.

  To my left were stairs that would take me to a second level, then along a corridor whose tiled walls ran without a break for more than half a city block to wind up finally at the Berkeley Street turnstiles. If I made it past the grim-faced young man standing threateningly at the foot of these stairs, I would certainly be trapped in the corridor on the level above. With only an eight-foot width to move in, and with the corridor running almost a hundred yards, I'd be a helpless target in a ceramic-lined shooting gallery! I crossed that one off my list, too.

  Which left just one way to go, and because they weren't expecting it, I got away with it.

  I sprinted down the platform toward the man at the foot of the Berkeley exit, pulling Wilhelmina from her holster.

  There was no mistaking what their orders were this time. His hand came from behind his back, a pistol gripped in his fist. Arm extended, he brought his gun to eye level. Without missing a step, I fired from the hip. I wasn't trying to aim. All I wanted to do was to distract him. I fired again, and then a third time, the boom and whup-crack of the Luger blasting echoes off the walls, reverberating the length of the station.

  He was new at the game. I don't think he'd ever really tried to kill anyone before. He flinched at the sound of the shots, his own going astray.

  I was almost up to him, still firing as I ran, when he suddenly sagged to the concrete floor. Behind me there were other furious echoes as the three men began to shoot at me.

  I leaped into the tunnel mouth, racing as fast as I could into its protective darkness. The firing went on. An occasional ricochet off concrete walls whined its way down the length of the tunnel past me.

  Then the firing stopped. In the silence I heard the shouts and the pound of feet in hot pursuit. They weren't going to give up so easily!

  The ties on the tracks weren't spaced right for the length of my stride. I had to adjust to them. It wasn't completely black. There were lights built into the walls every thirty to forty feet. But the bulbs were low wattage and so covered with years of soot and dirt stirred up by the passing trolleys that their glow was even further dimmed. It's damn hard to run like a gazelle under those circumstances.

  I ran about 200 feet and cut between the steel girders separating the inbound from the outbound tracks. I wanted to be facing incoming trolleys — I'd be able to spot their lights before I heard their rumble.

  There was the terrible stench of ancient debris. The dry dust floating in the air clogged my nostrils. I could feel soot begin to settle on my face. My eyes watered from the sting of grit as the tunnel draft blew microscopic-size particles under my lids.

  It was time to stop running and do some fast thinking if I ever expected to get out of this situation alive. I stepped off the tracks, flattening my back against one of the steel girders.

  They came within ten yards of me before they, too, had to leap off the track.

  First, there was the single yellow eye on the front of the oncoming trolley. And then there was a swelling, racketing noise as it sped down the tracks toward us. The men might have been able to switch to the other track, only there was a second trolley approaching from that direction. The two streetcars would pass each other just about where we were standing between the sets of tracks.

  I don't know if they expected me to try to leap onto the back of one of the streetcars. It can't be done. Not in real life. Not at the speed a trolley goes when it's in the tunnel and has a string of green signal lights in front of it.

  The roar became almost unbearable. My eardrums felt ready to split. There was the rush of air being pushed ahead of the two cars, the rocking of the long steel bodies, and the smashing surge of air pressure as the two great masses whipped past one another.

  In the bellowing, racketing noise, I dropped to the track level, closing my eyes tightly. I couldn't afford to be blinded by either the headlights on the cars or by soot whipped into my eyes from their passage.

  And then the cars were gone. I could open my eyes and I could see.

  The three men were on the right side of the tracks, where they'd dodged into an alcove in the tunnel wall. They were pressed together like sardines.

  Still lying prone, dirt, soot and debris of the concrete floor of the tunnel trackage grinding all along the length of my body, I slowly raised my head and right arm. It wasn't quite enough. I brought up my left arm and leaned on both elbows as I aimed Wilhelmina with both hands.

  The targets were only ten yards away from me. At ten yards, even in the semi-gloom, they were hard to miss.

  I didn't miss.

  I got off two, fast, aimed shots and rolled quickly onto my back, the steel girder support giving me the best protection I could ask for.

  The dying echoes of the Luger's crack-crack barely covered their screams. I heard one of them cry out for help, and I saw him stumble along the track. He tripped, falling in a headlong sprawl only a few feet away from me, his face in clear view. His eyes stared appealingly at me for a long moment, and then the begging, helpless look was gone. One hand tried to reach out to me. It fell limply along his side. Black soot was streaked on his face as if he were mourning his own death, and on his shirt the black was mixed with the bright crimson of the blood that gouted from the hole in his chest.

  The other man lay in a heap right in front of the alcove.

  There was still one more to go.

  I looked down at Wilhelmina. Her elbow action was cocked at its furthermost rearward travel. I'd used up the last bullet in the clip! I started to reach into my pocket for another clip of 9mm bullets before I remembered I hadn't taken any along with me. A clip of rounds for a Luger isn't something you want to carry in your pocket for any length of time. It's heavy.

  Wilhelmina was helpless now. And so was Pierre. In a confined space, the gas in that miniature bomb will paralyze anything around, but the tunnel was open at each end and there was a strong draft through it. Strong enough to disperse any of the fumes Pierre could generate.

  That left me with Hugo, so I slid the narrow blade out of its sheath and held the knife firmly in my right hand. If I could get close to my remaining attacker, I'd be able to do more than just defend myself. The trouble was that he had a gun, and I knew he'd do his best to keep me at a distance where he could pick me off at an opportune moment.

  The man lying dead beside me was no help either. I picked up the gun he dropped when he stumbled to his death. It was a Smith & Wesson .32 calibre revolver with a two-inch barrel. It's a weapon to be used at close range only. This one was completely useless to me because the only thing left in each of its six chambers was a cylindrical copper cartridge casing. He'd fired every round. I wondered if he'd known he was coming after me with an empty gun. It's happened before. In the excitement of the chase, a green man will get carried away and forget to keep track of the rounds he's fired. Just when he needs it most, the hammer of his weapon will click harmlessly down on an expended round.

  A quick search of his pockets proved fruitless. He carried no extra ammunition.

  I rolled over to the opposite tracks, trying to keep my last assailant in view. I got a glimpse of him scuttling across the tracks. It was enough.

  I slipped off my loafers. I couldn't afford to have an accidental scrape of leather on concrete betray my whereabouts. Rising to a crouch, I moved out onto the trackage he'd just crossed, trying to come up behind him. I got two girder lengths from him before I heard his heavy breathing and cut back in again, putting the safety of the steel beam between us.

  Now we were separat
ed by only a few feet. I knew exactly where he was. The question was, did he know my whereabouts?

  The gloom began to grow lighter. I realized a trolley was approaching. But on which set of tracks? If it came down the inbound line, the driver would see the dead body and slam on his brakes. He might still hit it, but in any case, within minutes the tunnel would be filled with police.

  I peered down the tracks and drew a sigh of relief. The trolley was speeding down the outbound lane.

  Now, if I could only take advantage of the noise and the dust and dirt whipping the air to get to my opponent!

  Patiently I waited, trying to control my breathing, bringing myself to the fine pitch of tension I needed for the final attack. The streetcar was fifty yards away, then ten, then five. Then it was blasting away beside me, rocking from side to side, metal wheels screeching on metal tracks, the tunnel filled with the violence of its passage. I sprang to my feet and ran after it.

  As I did so, the last man came sprinting out of his niche head on toward me. He'd had the same plan in mind!

  We met in full collision. His arm came swinging at my head, his gun clenched in his hand, and I flung my fist and forearm up at him with Hugo pointing into his soft guts.

  My left arm knocked his hand away. His left arm knocked my right arm to one side. Neither of us succeeded in striking a fatal blow. But he made me drop Hugo.

  Then we were together, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, pounding at each other's faces, forgetting for the moment every fighting trick we knew.

  You have to be sure of your footing to engage in karate, kung fu, judo or any of the other martial arts. You have to be sure that you're not going to stumble over any one of a dozen things that can turn an ankle or twist your foot when you least expect it. That tunnel trackage, with its steel rails and old wooden ties and loose gravel between them, and dirt and debris strewn everywhere in the darkness, was no place to take a chance on losing your balance. One slip and I'd be dead.

  My opponent was strictly a street fighter, a barroom brawler, a back alley thug. Fists, elbows, knees and teeth. I kept his arms too busy to give him a chance to fire his pistol. He should have reversed his hold and tried to slug me with the butt.

  He punched at me. I grabbed his wrist and tried to bend it back. He was too strong for that trick to work. I slugged him in the gut. It was like hitting a canvas sack of sand. There was a little give, but that's all.

  He tried for my eyes with his fingers. The nails raked my cheek as I twisted my head away and grabbed at his fingers. I caught two of them and bent them backwards. I heard the crack of knuckles being dislocated and his choked-off cry of pain.

  Then the back of a forearm caught me across the bridge of my nose. An elbow slammed into my ribs, knocking the air out of my lungs. I grabbed him tightly and pulled him close to me so he wouldn't have room to swing. I felt his hands come up around my throat. He began to squeeze.

  I tried to kick him in the groin, but I was too close to get any leverage. The pressure tightened. Straining every muscle in my neck in resistance, I tried to force my forearms between his to separate his arms and break the hold.

  I couldn't get through. I tried punching two knuckles into his eyes, but his head was turned away, so it didn't have much effect.

  The fingers of my right hand found his chin and then his mouth. I pushed the first two fingers of my hand inside his lips. My thumb found and pressed against the cartilage of his throat. The pain of that hold is normally unbearable. But despite the intense pain he must have been feeling, he held on to my neck.

  My vision began to black out. I heard a roaring in my ears. It took a moment for me to realize that the sound was not inside my head. The gloom began to lighten. The roar grew louder.

  Over his shoulder, down the track, I could make out the yellow glare of an oncoming streetcar headlight.

  A trolley will do about forty miles an hour when the track is clear and the lights ahead are green for a long way. This one was rocking along at full speed, hurtling down on us like a blind metal leviathan.

  He heard the noise at the same time, but he wouldn't let go. Neither would I.

  If we had been standing still in the middle of the track, the conductor would have seen us in time to throw on his brakes. Streetcars are powered by DC current. There's no other land vehicle that can accelerate so fast in so short a distance — or come to a halt so quickly when the brakes are applied and the current is reversed.

  The trouble is, we weren't standing still. One minute we'd be struggling in the middle of the tracks, and the next second we'd be bouncing off the steel girders or the concrete tunnel walls. No one inside a trolley could have peered into the murk ahead and seen us in time to stop.

  He wouldn't let go of my neck, and I wouldn't let go of his jaw.

  It became a contest to see which of us would let go first, to see how close each of us dared come to the very edge of death!

  He gave way first. Because he was facing away from the oncoming trolley, he couldn't gauge how close it was. The sound was terrifying. He released his grip on my neck and threw himself headlong to one side, off the tracks.

  I wasn't a second behind him, except that I flung myself in the opposite direction into a niche in the wall. As I did so, the bulk of the trolleycar barreled past me, a huge, blind, monstrous thing that could have destroyed us both, mindlessly, in a fraction of a second.

  It was gone as fast as it had come. One moment it was a horrible, death-dealing instrument; the next, it was a harmless carriage rolling away from us with its terrible sound fading to merely an irritating racket.

  Tired as I was, I forced myself out of the niche toward my attacker. The battle still wasn't settled. One of us had to die.

  Something had gone out of him. He saw me lurching toward him, and he quit. He turned and began to run down the track back to the Arlington station. Hugo gleamed dully at me from the wood of a crosstie where he'd fallen. I stooped, retrieved the knife and straightened up, holding the blade balanced in my fingers.

  There's a way to throw a knife quickly, and another way to throw it powerfully. If a man's running at you, you throw it quickly because you haven't much time and there's a lot of soft, vulnerable surface to hit: his stomach, his throat, his face, his groin. And you don't have to hit him hard with a sharp blade for the steel to penetrate mortally.

  If he's running away from you, the targets are his back, thighs and legs. The only really vulnerable point is the nape of his neck, which is much too small a target to aim at, especially when you're in the semi-dark and have to act fast. So you throw for power.

  I made the throw, leaning into the pitch as I hurled Hugo through the air. It was perfect — blade over handle with half a turn in the air, point driving forward at the moment of impact with the full force of the throw behind it and with the heaviness of the haft adding its weight to the point of the knife.

  It buried itself almost to the hilt, through the cloth of his jacket and shirt into the cartilage of his spine.

  He stumbled for a pace or two, his knees bending a little more with each step until he hit the gravel of the trackage and sprawled full onto his face.

  I came up to him. Bending, I pulled Hugo loose and turned him over.

  He wasn't quite dead. His eyes looked up into mine, surprise, astonishment, bewilderment on his face. He made an effort to focus on me.

  "We… we'll get… you… get you…" he mumbled. "Too… too many of us… You… you're trapped, you know… Can't… no matter what station… get… get you…" and then his voice trailed away.

  Swiftly I searched his body until I found what I was looking for. I ran back up the track to the man who'd died beside me. I found what I wanted on him, too. There was no need to search the third man. Two would be enough. Picking up Wilhelmina, I left the bodies there, a gruesome trio to surprise the next trolleys that came down the tracks in either direction. I began to trot toward the next station. It was about a city block away.

  Just bef
ore I got there, I stopped. If what the dying man had said was true, there'd be more of them waiting for me to come out of the station. I couldn't stay underground. It wouldn't be long before the bodies were reported and police would swarm all over the subway line. I had to get out into the open, and I had to do it without my exit being observed.

  There was one way to do it. I don't know which French general said it first, but he was right. Audace! Toujours l'audace! Do the unexpected. Audacity pays off!

  I peeled off my jacket, shirt and socks. Hugo's sharp edge sliced away the legs of my slacks, cutting them at mid-thigh, and then I picked at the rough hem with the point of the blade to fray them even more. Picking up handfulls of dirt from the tunnel floor, I smeared what remained of my slacks until they were thoroughly grimy. I disheveled my hair with both hands. Then I made a headband out of my necktie, looping it around my forehead, Indian style. When I was through, I looked like a barefoot, suntanned, dirty "street person" — and Boston has more than its share of them.

  I wrapped Wilhelmina in my jacket and shirt, and tucked the package away in the upper reaches of a steel girder support. I'd be back for the gun later.

  In the meantime I had to get out onto the street where I could blend with the crowd. Barefoot, I trotted up the track and cut onto the platform of the Copley Square station at the Dartmouth Street exit. There were a few people on the platform who stared at me. Most of them paid no attention at all. The street people are everywhere in the Back Bay area of Boston, and they're concentrated around Copley Square. They've been known to do crazy things like walking the tunnel.

  I went up the first set of stairs and waited at the bend. In a few minutes I heard a trolley screech to a halt on the level below. In a minute a crowd of students and "street people" and hippies surged up the stairs. I melted in with the crowd as we came up onto the street. About the only thing I didn't have was a guitar, but several of them did. No one looking at the group of us could have picked me out from the others.

  Right across the street from the exit was Copley Square. Alone with the rest of the group, I headed across to the plaza.