‘Everyone inside, now,’ DC said.
He shoved Aviary and Nasira in, stepped in after them and hit a button to change floors. The mask slipped from his face.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Jay said, prepping the EpiPen.
‘Long story,’ Sophia said. ‘Actually, short story. What are you doing in New York?’
Jay planted the needle on Damien’s thigh, injecting into the muscle.
‘Oh, just doing some close personal protection, which was really a trap because our boss sold us to this deranged Jamaican woman who wants to resell us on the black market or parts of us or I don’t even want to know. Oh and her personal army was dressed as Roman soldiers. Maybe just for today though.’
‘OK,’ Sophia said. That’s a lot to take in.’
Aviary crouched down beside Sophia, removed her mask and watched Damien begin to stir.
‘They look like Batman,’ Jay said. ‘Except they have swords and spears.’
‘Good to know you’re in demand,’ Nasira said.
Jay shot her an annoyed stare. ‘Seriously, I just want to get off this island. Islands don’t work well for me.’
The elevator came to rest. Sophia looked up to see they were on level six. DC was hammering the close door button, but the doors parted anyway. Waiting patiently for them were six people dressed as Roman soldiers. Three of them were pointing swords directly at Aviary.
‘Nope,’ Aviary said.
DC squeezed his trigger. The sound inside the elevator was deafening. Rounds tore through the face of one soldier. The others dived clear. DC found a second target. He clipped the soldier’s shoulder as a spear narrowly missed his chest.
Sophia aimed her Glock and punched two rounds into a soldier’s knee — the only part she could see from where she crouched.
Nasira was standing closer to the open doors, exposed to the Roman soldiers. She drew the sword from DC’s back and caught the spear on its second approach. The spear splintered almost in half, saving DC from being skewered.
‘Get inside!’ he yelled at her.
Nasira pulled back.
He punched the close door button and glared at Nasira. ‘Thanks.’
The doors closed. A small dagger — a puglio — slipped through and bounced off the top of Sophia’s helmet. It narrowly missed one of the bound Blue Berets and fractured the glass on the elevator’s rear wall. The glass held.
The elevator doors were finally closed.
Sophia turned to Jay. ‘Those Roman soldiers.’
Jay nodded.
‘Corinthian if we’re being precise,’ Damien said.
‘They do kinda look like Batman though,’ Aviary said.
Sophia removed her mask. She didn’t like how it limited her field of vision to one-hundred degrees. Jay was staring at her. She remembered the ornately jeweled skull painted on her face.
Jay raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you do something with your hair?’
Nasira snorted a laugh. Jay flushed again.
Damien suddenly gasped and sat upright. The first thing he saw was Sophia and he almost jumped out of his skin. Then he just looked utterly confused. Which was understandable, given he was half naked and crammed into an elevator with masked soldiers, DC, a girl who once stabbed him in the leg and Sophia with her skull-painted face.
Damien squinted and rubbed his eyes. ‘This isn’t the birthday party I planned.’
Sophia popped two aspirin from their blisters and passed them to him. He dry-swallowed gratefully. Then Jay used a fingernail to carefully remove the barbed bee stinger from Damien’s neck. Damien almost reeled from it when he realized what it was, then got to his feet and gathered his clothes.
‘I never thought operatives would be allergic to bees,’ Aviary said from behind her mask.
‘Yeah, well I didn’t think I was either,’ Damien said. ‘Never been stung before.’
Aviary smiled. ‘They need a pseudogene for that,’ she said. ‘The Buzz Vector?’
Sophia looked down at the two bound soldiers sitting in their corners. They were exchanging confused glances, but they refused to speak.
Sophia turned to DC. ‘Where are we going?’
‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ DC said. ‘Or I can tell you now in front of these Blue Berets and then you have to kill them.’ He gestured to the soldiers.
‘I’ll wait,’ Sophia said. ‘So they are Blue Berets? These ones? Not your ones in the SUVs?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ DC said.
‘Hang on, I thought DC was a bad guy now?’ Damien said.
DC glared at him.
‘Do you want a hand?’ Aviary said to Damien.
‘Oh great,’ Damien said. ‘You brought the girl who tied me to a chair and stabbed me.’
‘It was the least we could do,’ Nasira said, monotone.
The elevator doors opened. Sophia looked over her shoulder to check Damien and Jay were dressed. They were trying to pull the pants off the wide-eyed Blue Berets.
‘Leave them, let’s go,’ Sophia said.
The Blue Berets looked relieved.
Damien and Jay didn’t seem to have their own weapons so they carried the carbines stolen from the Berets. Sophia would have to explain to them later that they wouldn’t work.
DC led them through the underground garage of the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Jay tried to ask what was going on but DC shushed him. They weren’t out of danger yet, not until they were out of the hotel completely.
DC loaded them into a freight elevator that Sophia suspected wasn’t in working order. She was surprised when it sparked to life and rattled them to the depths below.
They disembarked onto a dimly lit subway platform smeared with grime and strewn newspaper. The platform hadn’t been used in quite some time. DC jumped down onto the tracks and started down the large tunnel. It seemed to stretch into infinity before them.
‘Hey!’ Sophia yelled.
She stopped yelling when she heard her voice carry through the tunnel in waves.
DC stopped and turned. He removed his mask completely, strapping it to his belt.
‘I can just call them in, tell them we’re waiting for them if you prefer,’ DC said.
Sophia jumped down onto the tracks beside him, her Glock hovering somewhere over his black kneepads.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said.
‘You don’t have the ammunition to spare and we need to get away from the hotel as quickly as possible,’ DC said. ‘I’m not the only person who knows this location.’ He turned to the tunnel ahead of them. ‘The next tunnel, we talk.’
‘Hand over the ruck and maybe I’ll let you.’
She could feel his frustration — and apprehension — as he shrugged his ruck off and slung it to the tracks.
‘Stay off the third rail,’ he called out to the others.
Most of the third rails in these tunnels looked inactive, but the ones that were active had enough electric charge to kill. She made sure to avoid them just in case. Picking up the ruck, she slung it over her own slim ruck and, Glock in hand, followed DC from a safe distance. The boys took up rear security in silence.
‘Those weapons won’t work,’ she called out to them in a low voice. ‘Fingerprinted.’
She heard Jay swear. They still carried them, if only as a deterrent. Seeing their tuxedos she couldn’t help but think of James Bond.
‘Where are your weapons?’ Sophia asked as she walked behind DC.
‘In the lobby,’ Damien replied.
‘We’re not going back there,’ Sophia said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Yeah, we figured,’ Jay said.
Chapter 21
Dust particles floated in front of Sophia as she moved. DC was using a torch with a red lens to light the way. She walked behind him with her own torch and red lens. Nasira was behind her another twenty paces, relying on Sophia’s beam of red light. Aviary was only a few steps behind. The boys had nothing, not that Jay needed a light. Damien followed a few paces behind his partner and stepped wherever Jay stepped.