Gone Tomorrow

A Benchmade 3300. A black machined handle. An auto-opening mechanism. Illegal in all fifty states unless you were active-service military or law enforcement, which I wasn’t. I thumbed the release and the blade snicked out, fast and hard. A double-edged dagger with a spear point. Four inches long. I am no kind of a knife fetishist. I don’t have favourites. I don’t really like any of them. But if you asked me to rely on one for combat, I would pick something close to what Springfield had supplied. The automatic mechanism, the point, the two-edged blade. Ambidextrous, good for stabbing, good for slashing either coming or going.

I closed it up and put it on the bed next to the H amp;K.

There were two final items in the bag. A single leather glove, black, sized and shaped for a large man’s left hand. And a roll of black duct tape. I put them on the bed, in line with the gun and the magazine and the knife.

Thirty minutes later I was all dressed up and locked and loaded and riding south on the R train.

SEVENTY-TWO

THE R TRAIN USES OLDER CARS WITH SOME FRONT- AND rear-facing seats. But I was on a side bench, all alone. It was two o’clock in the morning. There were three other passengers. I had my elbows on my knees and I was staring at myself in the glass opposite.

I was counting bullet points.

Inappropriate clothing, check. The windbreaker was zipped to my chin and looked way too hot and way too big on me. Under it the MP5’s strap was looped around my neck and the gun itself was resting diagonally grip-high and barrel-low across my body and it didn’t show at all.

A robotic walk: not immediately applicable with a seated suspect on public transportation.

Points three through six: irritability, sweating, tics, and nervous behaviour. I was sweating, for sure, maybe a little more than the temperature and the jacket called for. I was feeling irritable, too, maybe even a little more than usual. But I looked at myself hard ill the glass and saw no tics. My eyes were steady and my face was composed. I saw no nervous behaviour, either.

But behaviour is about external display. I was a little nervous inside. That was for damn sure.

Point seven: breathing. I wasn’t panting. But I was prepared to accept that I was breathing a little harder and steadier than normal. Most of the time I am not aware of breathing at all. It just happens, automatically. An involuntary reflex, deep in the brain. But now I could feel a relentless in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth rhythm. In, out, in, out. Like a machine. Like a man using equipment, underwater. I couldn’t slow it down. I wasn’t feeling much oxygen in the air. It was going in and coming out like an inert gas. Like argon or xenon. It wasn’t doing me any good at all.

Point eight: a rigid forward stare. Check, but 1 excused myself because I was using it to assess all the other points. Or because it was a symbol of pure focus. Or concentration. Normally I would be gazing around, and not rigidly.

Point nine: mumbled prayers. Not happening. I was still and silent. My mouth was closed and not moving at all. In fact my mouth was closed so hard my back teeth were hurting and the muscles in the corners of my jaw were standing out like golf balls.

Point ten: a large bag. Not present.

Point eleven: hands in the bag. Not relevant.

Point twelve: a fresh shave. Hadn’t happened. I hadn’t shaved for days.

So, six for twelve. I might or might not be a suicide bomber.

And I might or might not be a suicide. I stared at my reflection and thought back to my first sight of Susan Mark: a woman heading for the end of her life, as surely and certainly as the train was heading for the end of the line.

I took my elbows off my knees and sat back. I looked at my fellow passengers. Two men, one woman. Nothing special about any of them. The train rocked on south, with all its sounds. The rushing air, the clatter of expansion joints tinder the wheels, the scrape of the current collector, the whine of the motors, the squeals as the cars lurched one after the other through the long gentle curves. I looked back at myself in the dark window opposite and smiled.

Me against them.

Not the first time.

And not the last.