Victor:

#1 Victor
Victor blew on his hands then tucked them under his arms. Shivering, he moved deeper into the doorway in search of warmth. Of all times for the weatherman to be right. He usually couldn’t predict ants for a picnic, but he’d called this temperature drop right on the button. Jeez, it had to be close to freezing. The wind off the East River stung like icy needles. He slapped his arms against his body and tried to hunch deeper into the ribbed neckband of the jacket.
He tensed and cocked his head. Footsteps? The soft scraping sound was followed by a thud and the clink of cans. A janitor dragging garbage out to the curb, or some homeless bum doing his early morning shopping in the trash piled for collection on Third Avenue. Victor lifted one foot then the other to wriggle his toes inside his rubber-soled hiking boots, putting each foot down carefully so it didn’t make any noise to betray him. When he thought he heard something again, he breathed quietly through his mouth. In the distance, the sound defined itself as a car engine. He tensed as headlights swung around the corner a block away.
His gut tightened as the lights moved toward him with the speed of a two-legged dog. He couldn’t see anything behind the glare, but the shape of the car stood out for a minute against the dirty glow of a street light. Not a cop car. The only reason anyone else would drive that slow was if he was looking for somebody.
This was it!
In the pocket of his Yankees jacket, his fingers closed around the gun, and he drew it out slowly. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth without taking his eyes off the approaching headlights still half a block away. No chance Macci had come alone. There’d be the driver and at least two others, one on each side at a window watching the shadows for any sign of movement. How long would it take them to get their guns up and return fire? Three seconds if he was lucky, but that was long enough to kill a man.
Victor pressed back into the recess of the doorway and slid to one knee with the gun shoulder high in firing position. Macci would be in the back seat on the passenger side, where he always sat so he could keep an eye on the driver. That would put the gunman in front on this side with the window open. Him first. Then Macci right behind him. If the other two went down in the line of fire, the world wouldn’t miss them. Victor breathed evenly and sighted down the barrel, resisting the temptation to look past it to see where the car was and how much time he had.
The patch of street visible over the gun sight lightened, got brighter, then dulled again as the hood of the car came abreast. Victor brought the sight up to window level and counted off seconds silently. At three, he saw the outline of a head and fired. Kept firing. The car swerved but its forward momentum and the downhill slope brought the back window onto the sight on the third shot. He squeezed off four more before the car veered toward the opposite sidewalk, bouncing over the curb and plowing through a pile of trash bags.
Victor hit the sidewalk running headed for the mouth of the narrow service tunnel between two shops close to the corner. He’d left the gate ajar after he picked the lock an hour ago. He twisted so he’d hit it with his shoulder. He heard the faint whine of a bullet zing past too close for comfort a moment before the gate slammed against the wall. At the rear of the building, he leaped up the four steps, cut to his left, to the right, then jumped and rolled over the wooden fence separating the littered yard from the one behind it.
His heart pounded like a gong as he raced through the dark yard and down into another service tunnel. Five seconds later, he emerged on the next street. Staying as close to the dark buildings as possible, he shoved the gun into his pocket but kept his finger light on the trigger and headed back toward Third Avenue at pace that wouldn’t attract attention but still put as much distance as possible between him and the guy he hoped he’d lost.
Spat least one of them had survived. Probably the one sitting next to Macci. It might not take him long to figure out Victor would wind up on the next street. If the driver or the car were immobilized, he’d bought a few minutes, but he couldn’t count on it. Pain strangled his chest as he walked faster, staggering slightly and hoping he looked like a drunk instead of someone ready to keel over from exertion. At Third Avenue, he breathed a little easier as he headed for the subway entrance.
He wasn’t sure if he caught some motion out of the corner of his vision or if it was gut instinct, but something made him dive for the stairs. A bullet thudded against the metal sign over the stairwell, ricocheted, then plunked to the landing ahead of him. Victor sailed over it, took the second flight in a single leap, vaulted over the turnstile and was halfway down the platform before he heard the booth attendant’s shout. It was followed instantly by the sound of running feet behind him. Leather soles on concrete. He darted in and out between I-beams so the guy wouldn’t have a clean shot at him. His rubber-soled shoes gave him the traction he needed for speed and compensated for what he lost zigzagging. It made the pain in his chest unbearable, but it was better than a bullet in the back.
The end of the platform loomed, and he heard the pounding feet behind him slow. Victor grinned. The guy was taking aim, figure his quarry was trapped. With a quick glance at the green signal light, Victor wondered how much time he had. Without breaking stride, he changed direction at the last possible second and ran straight off the end of the platform.
Landing knees bent, hands already pushing him into a crouched run, he raced between the tracks into the mouth of the tunnel. Counting the tunnel beams as they flashed by in his peripheral vision, he slowed just enough to duck through an arched opening fifty yards down the tracks, arms outstretched to pull himself to a stop on the other side of the filthy opening. Gasping, he covered his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and leaned against the inside of the wall.
If the gunman had jumped onto the tracks to follow, he could be right behind him. But it wasn't likely. Not with leather-soled shoes that could send him sprawling. Besides, there wasn’t much chance he’d ever been on the tracks before. He’d move carefully. He might not even spot the opening, but that was another chance Victor couldn’t take. He drew the Beretta from his pocket and pointed it directly at the opening, running his hand across the grimy concrete so he could aim a few inches below the top of the arch. Head level for anyone coming through.
His heart was beginning to slow down so the blood wasn’t pounding in his ears anymore. He listened. Nothing. He bent down far enough to look out toward the tracks. Everything was dark and quiet. The guy probably had matches but was smart enough not to risk giving away his position and make himself a target. He wouldn’t know what size magazine Victor’s gun had, but he’d know there’d been plenty of time to slide in another one these past few minutes.
Victor straightened and leaned against the wall, then realized suddenly he felt vibrations in it. A train— The guy out there would feel it, too. And he’d see the headlight growing in the tunnel at the other end of the station, hear the thundering roar of wheels on the track. The motorman would spot someone on the track when he stopped in the station. If the gunman panicked and tried to run back now. It would be a fatal mistake.
Victor wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his empty hand. If the guy had any brains, he wouldn’t try to cross over to the downtown track. Only an idiot would risk crossing the third rails. If he kept coming this way, the train would light up the tunnel enough to show him this opening. Any New York subway rider had seen hundreds just like it all over the system. Victor put both hands on the gun.
Outside the opening, the roar of the train grew deafening, then stopped. The darkness became muddy shadows. Funny, he’d have thought the headlight beam would slice through this far and then some. With a start, he realized the opening was blocked. The guy had backed into it wait until the train went past. He had more brains than Victor had given him credit for. Too bad it didn’t occur to him that Victor was behind him.
This hour of the morning, few passengers rode the subway. In less than a minute, the train was underway again If the motorman had seen the guy, he probably figured him for a track worker who knew what the hell he was doing.
The man in the opening squeezed back to take give himself a safety margin The train picked up speed and the noise echoed and bounced against the tunnel walls. Victor moved felt his way along the ceiling until he was directly behind the man. The tunnel shook. A narrow halo of light outlined the crouched man. Victor braced himself, lifted his foot and kicked straight forward like a battering ram.
The guy flew out of the hole, spread-eagled for a second, then curling in a ball as his scream was swallowed by the train thundering down on him.
The motorman never saw him, never could have stopped if he had. When there was no screech of wheels locked in an emergency stop, Victor leaned against the wall and put his sleeve over his mouth to bar the stench as he took a few breaths to let his stomach stop dive bombing.
When the noise of the train finally died in the distance, he put the safety on the pistol and slipped it into the back of his belt, then took a small flashlight from his pants pocket. Snapping it on, he flashed it around the cave-like room. A rat the size of a rabbit stared beady-eyed, then scurried out of the path of light and disappeared into another opening at the back of the cave. The opening Victor had to crawl through to get to the other tunnel. He shuddered.
No time to be squeamish. He hunkered down, gripped the end of the plastic flashlight case in his teeth, lay flat and began crawling.

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