Arriving at the uptown platform, he glanced at Tatiana. “Have you ever seen a French film?”
She responded in French. “Professeur, ce n’est pas parce que je suis mannequin que je suis inculte.” (Professor, just because I am a model does not make me illiterate.)
He responded in kind. “Je n’ai jamais dit ça. La majorité des Americains n’en ont pas vu un seul.” (I never said you were. Most Americans have never seen a foreign film.)
Barry interjected. “English, please, or I’m going to start getting jealous.” He smiled playfully.
Tatiana glanced at him, then at Jacob. “I am not American.”
“Yeah, I gathered that. I was only offering to give you some background in case you weren’t familiar with what we’re about to see.” Jacob said it without any airs. He was genuinely trying to be helpful.
“I have seen many French films, but never an avant-garde one.”
“Well, you’re in for a treat,” he said loudly over the cacophony around them. “That or you’re in for the most god-awful time you’ve ever experienced, in which case I’ll buy you both a drink.”
Barry chimed in, practically yelling over the noise of the approaching train. “In that case, I’ll be calling a car.”
“Maybe then you’ll have to bring the professor out clubbing with us.”
“Who said we were going out?”
“Who said we weren’t?” she purred.
Considering the possibilities of where this night might go, Jacob didn’t notice the homeless guy making his way toward them again.
Ever since the Twin Towers went down, New York City had been on constant vigil for the next terrorist attack. The subway system was widely considered one of the most likely targets, simply because of the scale of the thing. There were 468 different stations along 842 miles of track. Over five million passengers rode the trains every weekday, making it the seventh-busiest subway system in the world, behind Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Guangzhou, Seoul, and Moscow. The points of vulnerability were simply too many to count.
Jacob, Barry, and Tatiana listened as a train neared the station. Local trains slowed their approach and weren’t nearly as piercing as express trains, which zoomed right on by. The approaching train was clearly not going to stop.
The homeless guy yelled as loud as he could above the shrill of the approaching train. “It is time America paid for its sins!”
Nobody gave much attention to him until he put on a gas mask, which had been hidden beneath his tattered coat. The gas mask looked brand new.
By the time he held a canister high above his head, he had the attention of every single person on the crowded platform.
Most were frozen with panic. One woman screamed. Another man raced up the stairs, knocking over several kids. A businessman close to the bum charged toward him, trying to tackle him. But not before the homeless guy pulled the pin on the canister and dropped it to the cement floor.
Fsssssssss. It was a horrifying sound.
The gas dispersed rapidly. This was really happening.
Smoke immediately filled the subway tunnel as the screeching express train entered the station. It was hard to see anything. People’s eyes were burning. So were their lungs. So were their minds.
They thought they were dying.
Passengers scrambled over each other to get out of the station. Many went the wrong way. It was pandemonium.
In the middle of the melee, just as the express train reached the platform, the bum lunged for Jacob, grabbing the back of his coat. The grungy man’s grip was incredibly strong. Much stronger than it should have been.
In one swift, violent motion, he hurled Jacob onto the tracks in front of the express train traveling at thirty-eight miles per hour.
CHAPTER 27
Sheridan Square Subway Station, New York City, May 24, 7:13 p.m.
The screech of the express train passing in front of the platform jumped several decibels the moment the conductor hit the emergency brake. He’d worked for the MTA for twenty-three years and conducted for the last eleven. The only other time he’d pulled the emergency brake was also for a body on the tracks. That one was a suicide. This one was different.
He’d pulled the brake on instinct. And immediately wished he hadn’t. Had he thought about it a moment longer, he would have kept right on going, because he was sure the rapidly spreading white gas cloud was lethal.
They were all going to die.
The squeal of the brakes was punishing. Sparks flew off the tracks where the giant steel wheels skidded down the rails.
The passengers inside the train were thrown violently forward as the train rapidly slowed. Several would later require hospitalization, one in critical condition. Their screams were loud, but not as loud as the hundred or so people on the platform.
Almost no one saw the man get thrown in front of the train. Most weren’t sure what had happened. They were too busy running away from the ever-expanding cloud of noxious white smoke. Only those nearest Jacob actually saw him tumble to his death. The gas cloud was too thick. Everything was too chaotic.
In total, thirty-seven New Yorkers would be treated for injuries sustained during the stampede. The unfortunate were trampled, including Tatiana, who was screaming at the top of her lungs. She was one of the few who had seen Jacob fall to the tracks and watched the train cut him in half. Her eyes were glazed. She was going into shock, and mumbled incoherently.
The gas was everywhere. “Hold your breath!” Barry screamed at his catatonic girlfriend. He grabbed her hand and pushed and shoved his way through the throng struggling to get out of the danger zone. She moved like a zombie, but somehow managed to hang on.
The paranoia worked in favor of the homeless man who had pushed Jacob to his death. He was not among those worried about a chemical attack. Because he knew it wasn’t lethal. It wouldn’t be until eleven hours later that a joint task force of federal, state, and city officials would determine the smoke was only tear gas, probably stolen from the NYPD. The entire event wasn’t anything more than a stunt, a desperate act by some crazy guy who wanted attention. It was not unlike the fake bomb incident that had shut down LaGuardia for seven hours in the summer of 2009.
Only no one had died in that one.
The killer was gone before anyone gave much thought to pursuing him. He had disappeared among the fleeing hordes by concealing his gas mask and acting like the rest of the herd running for their lives. The homeless man bounded up the steps swiftly, with no sign of a limp. He quickly reached the top of the stairs and continued along with the swell of other terrified passengers, until he ducked inside a men’s room. He locked himself in a stall and removed his disgusting, matted wig. It wasn’t until he pulled off his fake beard that Michael Barnes became recognizable.
He removed his tattered coat and pants, revealing a Brooks Brothers suit beneath it: Mr. Businessman. He stuffed the ratty garments, along with the gas mask, into a nylon sports bag, which had been folded up inside a pocket. When he stepped out of the stall, no one would suspect that he was the crazy bum who had faked a terrorist attack and pushed an innocent man to his death.
Barnes moved to the sink, where he splashed cold water on his face. He showed no emotion whatsoever. The assignment was not finished. He still had to get out of the station, but that was the easy part.
He stepped out of the bathroom, coughing into his hand like so many others around him. He looked just like every other New Yorker caught up in the chaos at what was supposed to have been the end of another ordinary workday. The nylon gym bag he was carrying suggested he had been on his way to Equinox or some other fashionable gym to work off the stress of the day, before the incident occurred. Like everyone else, he now acted more like he was heading to a bar.
Michael Barnes exited the station, just one of a herd of terrified people. Some dropped to their knees to catch their breath, or to thank God that they were still alive. Most were on their phones, letting loved ones know what had happened and that they were unharmed. That was the pose Barnes adopted, appearing to be on his phone for the entire walk to his beige Impala parked near New York University, which now had one less professor than it had at the start of the day. As he pulled into traffic, he passed the first of dozens of emergency vehicles that would be arriving on the scene.