"You can start a shooting war, but most of us will die."
"Especially you," the man said. Sam stepped closer, clos ing the distance. In his fear the man wasn't thinking about the metal breastplate in the flak jacket under Sam's coat. He was aiming right at it.
"Either squeeze the trigger or get out of the way," Sam said with remarkable calm. The hesitation was in the man's eyes and it was all Sam needed. In a fast kick he sent the man's gun hand up and then grabbed the gun hand on the way down. Sam jabbed his solar plexus, and as the strength left the man, Sam swiped his gun away. Quite deliberately he shot the man in the foot and left him screaming. One of the five remaining now grabbed one of the girls and put a gun to her head.
Grady stepped forward with her guns leveled. "Don't touch her!"
The four others were looking uncertain. Sam walked to the nearest, a short, stocky, bald man, and held his pipe low as if he meant to repeat the performance with the leader. The man moved sideways with his head down and his hips back. Without taking his gaze from the man's eyes, Sam brought the pipe up under the man's chin, snapping the jaw. Despite the fractured jaw, the man swung hard at Sam. Sam blocked it with his own pipe and struck the nose palm up with instant results.
The man with the girl was backing away and Grady was moving forward, step for step. The three nearest watched Sam with wary eyes. At that moment feet running on the gravel distracted everyone; in seconds it seemed there were blue suits everywhere. Lugger and the gang members doused their lights. Two of the suits had lights. Sam took three strides and kicked one out while Michael, already surrounded by several men, instinctively went for the only remaining light. He kicked it out of the man's hand and stomped it on the rock. Lugger's dog was snarling and men were shouting as the dog lunged at them with bared fangs.
Sam whirled, knowing that someone had been coming at him from the side and behind. Everything Grandfather had taught him about darkness would be useful in the next seconds. He stepped to the side so that any light-filled memories would be misleading. A body passed close by. The footsteps stopped. He moved to a fighting stance and stood perfectly still. There is a sense that is not touch and is not sound or sight but may be a bit of all three unconsciously ap plied. Grandfather had said that there was an additional sense that, working with the others, created a certain sensation when another living being came within one's personal space. Sam felt that sensation and placed the person at about three feet distant. He crouched. With his left hand he reached out slowly along the ground until he felt a shoe. At that instant he withdrew his left hand, put it to the ground, and pivoted on it, kicking hard where the leg should be. It was a knee-high kick. There was a scream as the knee popped. When the man fell, Sam was on him, first choking him, then using his left hand to line up the chin for a solid right punch to the jaw. He found a gun and threw it into the darkness. Then he found a knife, a switchblade-unusual for a suit-and kept it. He moved straight back to where Grady had been standing and discerned fighting nearby. From the sounds he guessed Michael was picking them off in the dark, much as he had done-only at Michael's location there were many more men and they all had seemed to go for Bowden.
A few feet away, the dog was in a fight for his life. First Sam smelled the perfume, then he felt for and found two hands, each with a gun.
"Grady," he whispered.
"I think they have Michael," she said. Quickly he moved her to the wall.
"Stay here."
When he turned, he heard someone nearby skidding on the rock. No doubt they were turning, trying to see. They seemed within a few feet. He concentrated, took a step back, then delivered a head-high kick with momentum. He pictured the point of impact and his heavy shoe connected with flesh slightly ahead of his anticipated strike point. But it was very solid and probably close to lethal. Whoever had been struck went down. Quickly he felt along the ground, foundthe body, removed and threw away the shoes, and sliced the Achilles tendon with the knife. No scream. The guy had blacked out.
Next, he belly-crawled back to the central struggle. A man moving fast tripped over him. Instantly he felt for the shoes. Ordinary street shoes. Michael and Lugger wore boots. After slashing an Achilles and eliciting a scream, he upended the man, yanked off the shoes, and threw them.
Next he crawled up the thrashing body of the panicked man, found his neck, and choked off the carotids. The man began flailing and throwing wild punches. A fist smacked Sam's jaw, but he held on until the man quieted.
He went back to the fight sounds, again on his belly, and found boots under two or three men. Knowing that Michael was on the bottom made it easy. He cut an Achilles on one man and that started the screaming. What made it even eas ier was that the suits wore no body armor. They weren't cops. Sam unleashed a flurry of fists and kicks on unpro tected backs and flanks.
As near as Sam could tell, the man he had slashed was screaming in French that he had been cut. For the suits, castration would come to mind and fuel the paranoia.
Sam found another man trying to hang on to Michael, felt his ribs, lined up and delivered a powerful kick that broke several. Sam was careful not to puncture the lung with the free-floating ribs. The bodies rolled free now and Sam fol lowed the booted feet to grab Michael, who still had one gun. He could feel the lethargy in Michael's body from the beating. Grabbing him and leading him, he joined with Grady.
He found Lugger by sense of smell. Like Michael, Lugger was held down by three suits. Quickly he broke ribs and left two men in misery, both with a sliced Achilles. Once he got Lugger to the wall, Lugger's dog came on a sharp whistle. In the dog's mouth hung a new plaything, a piece of bloody fabric. They moved a hundred feet down the wall and turned on the lights long enough to grab the girls. They were beat up and didn't look like they could run far. Michael and Sam each carried one. They walked several hundred feet before coming to the wall that now separated the 1 and 9 track. It was an easy jump through a hole to get onto the live track. They went only a short distance before they came to an emer gency escape. They went to the platform below the grate, where Sam got a signal on the cell phone. They called Yodo, who was bandaged and functional, to bring men and sur round the grate. It required a wait of thirty minutes. Grady and Michael took the girls, opened the grate, and emerged onto the sidewalk, surrounded by ex-cops with guns. Sam slipped out another exit twelve hundred feet away.
His next order of business was to find out what a powerful law firm wanted with Michael Bowden-and who they wanted it for.
"What do you suppose is going on, Figgy?" Sam was on the New York end of a conference call with Jill in LA, and Figgy on another phone allegedly at the French offices of the United Nations.
"The guys on the street got by the police pretty fast-that tells me it was something like diplomatic immunity," Sam continued. "The police call it a bizarre misunderstanding. They say people from the foreign service of an unnamed government saw Americans in trouble, followed them to an underground passage, and were injured by parties unknown. Which is a lie."
"Well, it could have been any foreign government."
"Yeah, that speaks French."
"Sam, I hear what you're saying, but either you trust me or you don't. It wasn't France."
"Tell me how you know that."
"I'm on both sides of the ocean. I have it on good authority from both places."
"Uh-huh. Do I have it right that your clients have you at the UN at the moment?"
"That's right."
"In New York, then. This choice of location wouldn't be because Michael Bowden is here or because you think Georges Raval is here."