The Second Life of Nick Mason (18 page)

The cop caught up to Mason by the first corner. The car edged its nose in front of his Camaro and tried to ride him right off the street.

This wasn’t the usual unmarked police sedan, either. It was a Dodge Hellcat. Mason couldn’t see the face of the driver. He didn’t need to.

Swinging his car to his left, he felt the scrape on his driver’s-side door as he edged back in front of the other car. The Dan Ryan Expressway was just ahead of them, but Mason wasn’t going to head that way. If this guy didn’t have help, he’d have it pretty fucking soon and they’d be able to run Mason down if he was stupid enough to get on the open road. They’d put him into the guardrail and then shoot them both. They wouldn’t even let him get out of the car.

Mason cut the wheel, made a hard right, and then another right. Angela screamed as she was thrown against the passenger’s-side door.

“Hold on,” he said.

The two turns had Mason doubled back and heading west. He couldn’t see the car behind him, but he knew it wasn’t far away. Angela snapped her seat belt on and slid down in the seat, her eyes closed, as Mason gunned the accelerator.

I’ve got one good chance here, Mason thought as he headed toward Forty-fifth Street. The embankment came up fast and he barely slowed down as he went under the bridge. The Berlin Wall, this same boundary he’d known since he was a kid. The girders flew by, just inches from either side of the car. When he came out on the other side, he was in Canaryville. He was home. Now he had both the fastest car on the road and home-field advantage.

Mason cut down to Forty-seventh, where he’d have some room to run. He passed every car in his lane, swerving into oncoming traffic and then back, hearing a dozen different horns blaring behind him. It was late enough at night, he figured he could just barely make this work.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the Hellcat two blocks behind him. Its flashers were still on and some of the other cars on the road pulled over to let it pass.

I need some space, he thought, before I can start using the side streets. He went around the cars waiting at the next red light, coming so close to an oncoming truck that he felt it tick against the corner of his rear bumper. He swung back hard to the right and gunned it up Halsted. It was a good open stretch where he could really fly and he ran through two more red lights. When he looked in his mirror, he could barely see the flashing lights a few blocks behind him.

Time to show you Canaryville, he thought as he took a hard right on Pershing. He looked back to make sure he was clear, threw the car onto the first side street, then took another turn and headed down through the heart of the neighborhood. He knew the streets
were narrow here. He had to be careful where he was going. One car backing out of a driveway and he’d be fucked.

But he knew which streets ran all the way through and which streets ran into dead ends. He even remembered the alleys he used as shortcuts when he was a kid.

He went down one of those alleys, working his way past the backyard garages and squeezing past a dumpster that almost blocked him dead. He finally looped all the way around and pulled into the loading dock of the old meatpacking plant that had been standing there for a century. He wedged the car in tight between two semis. Nobody would see them here. He turned off the car so that even the low, growling idle wouldn’t be heard.

He caught his breath for a moment while Angela slid up in her seat and looked out the window.

“Where are we?” she said.

“Someplace safe,” Mason said. “We’ll let them run for a while.”

“They would have killed me,” she said. “If they had found me in that house . . .”

Mason nodded.

She closed her eyes and put her head back against the seat. He could see her whole body shaking. Her hair seemed to glow in the near darkness.

“How did this get so fucked up?” she said. “Jordan was just trying to get me out. To get us
both
out.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine. The man was assigned to protect this woman. He spends that much time with her alone in a car. He smells her perfume, laughs at her jokes. She starts really talking to him. She sees something in him. Something different.

“He didn’t want to be in the life anymore,” she said. “We were going to go away together. This was our chance. That’s why I . . .”

She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to. They both knew the parts they’d played that night.

Mason reached behind him and grabbed the black box from the backseat.

“Are you gonna tell me what that is?”

“That was Tyron’s insurance policy.”

Looking it over more carefully, Mason saw access ports along one edge, where you could plug in a power supply, and then another cord to connect it to a computer.

Or a laptop.

“He kept records of every meeting he had with those guys,” she said. “Every deal he made. Every payment.”

“It’s a backup drive,” Mason said. He pictured Harris, walking down the street with his laptop. Going from one place to the next. Doing his daily business.

“It was more than just the deals,” she said. “He had this . . . thing on his laptop. Whenever he was with any of them, he’d turn it on and it would record the whole conversation. Even when the laptop was closed. It’s all there.”

Mason remembered the coffee shop near Homan Square. The man in the suit, his arm around Harris’s shoulders. That conversation, whatever it was about, was stored inside this box, too.

“He thought it would protect him,” Angela said, looking down at her hands. “He thought it would protect
everyone
. All of his men. And me.”

Mason hefted the thing in his hand. A couple pounds of hard plastic and computer parts, whatever else was in one of these things.

And enough evidence to bring down a whole squad of dirty cops.

“You need to get out of town,” Mason said, “and never come back.”

“Take me to 2120 MLK. This guy’s gonna let me stay there for a few days, then get me out.”

No surprise, Mason thought. There will always be a man to help you when you look like that.

They waited another twenty minutes. Then Mason pulled out from the loading dock and went back up the alley. When he got to Forty-seventh, he looked up and down the street, trying to spot the Hellcat or anything else fast enough to chase him down. He made the turn and drove at normal speed, hoping to blend back in. But he was ready to run again. One flashing light and he’d gun it.

He went to MLK and found the address. He pulled over in front of the house and waited for the door to open. When he gave her the bag, she unzipped it and took a quick look at the contents. She let out a breath and nodded her head.

“See ya around,” she said as she got out quickly and went to the door of the house.

Mason watched her go inside. Then the door closed behind her.

His cell phone rang. He took it out, expecting Quintero. I got your fucking package, he was ready to say to him. Tell me where you are.

But it was Diana.

“Nick,” she said.

One word and he could already hear the fear in her voice.

“Diana, what’s going on?”

“They want to talk to you. Nick, get me out of here.”

Mason didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. He could already feel it burning a hole through the bottom of his stomach.

“Mason,” a voice said.

“Who is this?”

“This is Bloome. Bring that hard drive to me. We trade, the two of you walk away.”

Mason knew it was a lie. He wasn’t going to question it. It wouldn’t help him. It wouldn’t help Diana.

“Where are you?” Mason said.

He listened carefully as he was told exactly where to go.

“Your men are looking for my car,” Mason said. “You have to call them off.”

“Already done,” Bloome said. “No need to do this in the streets.”

“I’m on my way.”

He ended the call. Then he pulled out the M9 that Angela had given him. He checked the load. It looked like the clip had been full when she had fired it at him. So with one round in the chamber, that left him fifteen.

Fifteen shots.

As Mason looked down into the depths of the enormous quarry, he was already standing in the crosshairs of a high-powered sniper rifle. His friend Eddie Callahan was waiting in his vehicle by the gate, a Precision Pro 2000 trained at Mason’s back.

It felt like he was standing at the edge of the world. There was a four-hundred-foot drop straight down this sheer wall to the quarry’s floor. A thin line of cars ran along the highway on the northern rim, tiny pinpoints of light like distant stars. The space between here and there just empty darkness.

They’d been taking limestone from this place for almost a century, grinding it into powder, using it for roads, for cement, to build the skyscrapers of the city. He could taste it in the air as he scanned the canyon for any light, for any movement, for any sign at all that would tell him where they were. Where Diana was.

He had come through at the southeast corner, had gotten out of the car and unlooped the gate’s chain. The padlock had been unlocked, as Bloome had told him it would be. He had driven through
the swirling dust to the edge, where a vehicle could start the long descent down the narrow shelf cut into the wall.

Mason took a breath and tried to clear his head. His plan was simple. He was going to save Diana. He was going to kill everyone else. Everyone he could find.

The hesitation he felt at the motel, that would be gone. The horror he felt at the strip club, that would be gone.

He would take all of the violence that had been forced into his life by Darius Cole and he would turn it all back on these men.

This is why he chose me, Mason thought. It finally makes sense to me. He didn’t want some premade killer from the cellblock. He wanted to make his own.

He saw the raw materials in me even then, sitting across the table from me in a prison cafeteria. Everything he’d ever need.

And now here I am.

Mason shook out his hands and took one more breath. Then he went back to his car.

As he drove down, crossing the city line, he had gone over everything he knew. He knew these cops wanted the black box that was sitting on his backseat. They needed to protect themselves. Once they had that, then they would kill him. They had to eliminate this threat, this soldier Cole had sent to fight in this war.

And then they would kill Diana. No other way to see it. Not only would she be a witness, even more important, she would be the one way they could strike back at Cole. She was his only weakness.

They couldn’t touch Cole directly, not if he was sitting in a federal prison two hundred miles away. They could kill Mason, they could kill Quintero, they could kill any man Cole sent to Chicago. Cole would just send someone else.

Diana was the one person in the world he cared about. The one
person who couldn’t be replaced. Kill her and you’ve taken the war right to him.

Mason couldn’t imagine where the war would go after that. But he knew he’d be a part of it.

And you don’t go to war without someone covering your back.

“Where are you?” he said as he touched the Bluetooth headset in his left ear.

“I’m stopped at the gate,” Eddie said. “I see you.”

“I’m going down. Hang back until I tell you.”

Mason had remembered what Eddie had told him when the two of them were catching up over beers in his garage. How he still got to the range once in a while even though he’d been out of the Army for years.

He just hoped Eddie could still hit anything inside a thousand yards.

“You’re too far away,” Eddie said in his ear. “Too dark to cover you.”

“Do your best,” Mason said. “Don’t get too close.”

He was inching his way down the shelf. You couldn’t call it a road. It was too steep a drop, with no rail on the side. One slip and the car would go over the edge and fall for five seconds before finally hitting the bottom.

He was glad Eddie was trailing behind him in a four-wheel-drive Jeep.

“Hey,” Mason said, gritting his teeth as he kept the wheels dead straight. “While I got a chance . . .”

“What?”

“Shoot anybody you want. Just not me or Diana, okay?”

He heard a nervous laugh on the other end.

Mason came to a place where he had to make a tight turn and
head in a new direction. He could see nothing past his headlights. When he finally crawled all the way to the bottom, he stopped for a moment and got out of the car to take a look around.

The quarry floor was mostly flat and empty, with dark mounds of broken limestone scattered in the distance. As he looked up, he could barely see the thin line of cars on the highway that passed along the north rim.

He had just driven into his own grave.

“I’m down,” he said. “Nobody here.”

He got back in the car and drove across the quarry, his car bouncing on the rough ground. As he got closer to the north wall, he saw nothing but a sheer cliff rising forty stories above him. He turned and traced along the edge of it until he found a pass-through leading under the highway.

He found himself in another canyon, just as vast as the first, just as deep, but now there were ponds of standing water all across the floor, and in the far corner, he could make out a dim circle of light.

“Pass-through under the highway,” he said, picturing Eddie in his Jeep somewhere behind him. “I’m on the other side.”

“You’re too far ahead of me. Wait up.”

Mason didn’t bother answering. As he moved the car forward, his headlights played against the construction vehicles, all standing idle for the night. He weaved his way past a giant backhoe, the tires ten feet high, then a dump truck just as large. He was a tiny figure in a tiny car, a speck moving across this vast chasm. But he kept going. There was no turning back.

•   •   •

M
ason still couldn’t see why they were doing this here. A quiet place, with nobody else around—that much he got. But they could
have done that almost anywhere. Even in the middle of Chicago you find an abandoned house, with known drug traffic. Just like the house in Fuller Park. Bring Mason there. Kill him. Throw him down the stairs with the rest of the dealers. Even Diana. Just two more people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caught up in something they should have had no part in. Let the uniforms sort it out.

But no, it was all going to happen here. In a fucking limestone quarry.

Mason made a tight turn between two more construction vehicles and saw a circle of light in the distance. It could have been a mile away or it could have been suspended in outer space.

He kept driving toward it, splashing through the standing water, then passing by one construction trailer, then another. The circle kept growing, kept getting brighter. Until Mason came close enough. Stopping his car, Mason stepped out onto the ground.

He stood at the mouth of a tunnel.

The circle was forty feet high. A perfect round hole cut into the side of the cliff. A strand of braided rebar, as thick as a tree, reinforced its perimeter. A half-dozen halogen lamps were mounted around its rim, giving the entrance an eerie glow.

Mason just stood there, looking up in wonder at the size of this tunnel.

“Where are you?” Eddie said.

“Find the tunnel,” Mason said. “Can’t miss it.”

This was the Deep Tunnel he’d been hearing about since he was a kid in Canaryville. Because Chicago was built on a swamp, the sewers and the storm drains would overflow every time it rained hard enough. They’d been working on this tunnel for forty years, so they could bring all the rainwater and piss and shit and fuck knows what
else in a giant pipe away from the city and apparently right into this quarry. The whole thing would be flooded soon. Any dead bodies left in this quarry would be swallowed up under four hundred feet of water and never seen again.

Now I get it, Mason thought. This is why they chose this place. He took the gun from his belt.

Then he walked into the tunnel.

The ground had been cut flat here. Flat enough to walk on. Flat enough for a vehicle to drive on. The walls rising on either side and coming together in an arc high above his head, the coiled rebar like the ribs of a great whale. Thick cables ran along the ground on the right. Electricity, water, maybe even air. There were more lights spaced every few feet, but only a few of those were lit. Every hundred feet, there were two bulbs mounted high on the arc, one left, one right, together creating a single ring of light. These rings ran one after another, the lights getting dimmer and dimmer as they stretched off into infinity. Just enough light to see your way through in a nighttime emergency. During the day there’d be workers coming through here, vehicles going back and forth, fans blowing, every light turned on. A busy underground street. Now the place had been given back almost completely to darkness.

He had no idea how far he’d have to walk to find someone. He had no idea how long he’d live.

He walked through great puddles of standing water. It was cold and as his shoes got more and more soaked, his feet started to get numb. He could hear more water dripping all around him. He could smell it in the dense, humid air.

Go back, he said to himself. Get the car, drive it right down this tunnel’s throat. Get as much speed as you can. But then he saw a
shadow appearing ahead, and as he got closer, he saw it was a great orange-painted crane that had been parked there for the night. There was no way he’d ever get around it.

Mason put the gun back in his belt and climbed up the ladder to the cab. What the hell, he thought. Maybe they left the keys in this thing. But there were no keys. And he had no idea how to operate it, anyway. He jumped back down to the ground.

As he looked back, he couldn’t see any trace of the entrance anymore. He’d been swallowed by the earth.

“Nick!”

It was all he heard from the Bluetooth. He was starting to lose the signal.

“Here.”

“Can’t see . . . Bad light . . .”

Shit, Mason thought, looking down the tunnel. A faint ring of light, then full dark. Another ring, then full dark. No matter what kind of scope Eddie’s got, how do you see to the other end?

But I’m not letting him get any closer. This is my war, not his.

Mason walked through another puddle of cold water, saw another shadow, this time high along the right side of the circle. As he got closer, he saw that the wall had been cut away and a flight of metal stairs had been set into the rock. He climbed the stairs and went along a catwalk until it came to a door. It was thick metal, with a large wheel in the center, like the door of a submarine. He tried turning it but it wouldn’t budge.

He went back down the stairs to the ground. He took a few breaths to reset himself, the air even thicker here, so wet and filled with the smell of limestone it was like drinking mineral water.

“Where the fuck are you?” he said out loud. His voice disappeared
into the void, bouncing off the rock walls and echoing in both directions.

He took off the headset and yelled,
“Where the fuck are you?”

Not a smart thing to do, but he didn’t care anymore. He’d come too far. It was too dark in here and Eddie would have to get too close for any kind of shot. Mason’s feet were now completely numb and he was choking on the thick air. He knew he’d never have any advantage on these men no matter what he did. They knew he was coming. They’d see him long before he got close. There was no surprise. They were probably wearing their tactical vests, too. They’d be fools if they weren’t.

No match for Eddie’s rifle, but any body mass shot from Mason’s M9 would be blocked by the Kevlar.

So all they have to do is wait for him. Then gun him down.

If that’s the way they wanted to do it.

Mason thought about it. Maybe they don’t do it that way, he said to himself. Maybe I’ve got one slim chance.

“I’m right here!”
he yelled, hearing the words echo again.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?”

He waited. He listened. Finally, he heard a voice.

“Down here, Mason! Walk slowly! Hands on your head!”

The words reverberated and could have come from either direction, but he knew they had to be coming from up ahead.

You already made your first mistake, Mason thought. You just proved to me you’re gonna do this like a cop.

He put the Bluetooth back in his ear and the gun in his belt, left hip, handle forward. He started walking again. He heard more water seeping down the walls, felt a fine spray of drops hitting his face. A chill ran down his back.

You’re cops, he thought as he moved forward from one dim ring of light to the next.

Dirty cops, clean cops—you are all still cops.

And I know cops.

He saw the slight flicker of a shadow in the distance ahead of him. It was impossible to know how far ahead—three lights, a dozen lights—but there was something up there. He kept moving.

The shadow grew as he continued on. It became bigger and then split into two separate shadows. Mason again shook out his hands to release the tension from his body. He took in deep breaths of the cold, wet air.

In. Out. Breathe. Heart rate down.

As he walked through one more passage of complete darkness, he reached over with his right hand and adjusted the gun on his hip.

Right here. Exactly right here.

He was surprised they hadn’t stopped him yet. Surely they could see him as he stepped under the next light. But nobody said a word. Nobody moved except Mason.

Forward. Forward. Shoes splashing through another icy puddle. He couldn’t feel anything. It was all motion. Reaction.

“I said hands on your head!”

The unmistakable voice of a cop. This is how he’d been trained. He’s done it this way a thousand times. Even if he’s a fucking mile below the ground, getting ready to gun down a man in cold blood, he’s still gonna do it the same way.

It’s a routine to him. It’s practically hardcoded into the man’s DNA. He’ll tell Mason to turn around next. To keep his hands on his head. To walk backward toward him until he’s close enough. Then to get down on his knees.

“Hear them,” said the voice in his ear, the signal almost gone. “I’m coming . . .”