Chapter 5 - THE BLUE LINE CRAWL
The green laser dots danced across Matteo’s soaked shirt.
He didn't dive.
He shoved me through the narrow steel transformer door, slamming his own body into the door frame behind me.
Ting-ting-ting!
High-velocity rounds chewed into the heavy sheet metal.
Sparks flew from the hinges like angry hornets.
Matteo dropped the heavy iron crossbar into place.
The door shuddered under the impact of three breaching rounds.
“Move!” he wheezed.
His voice was losing its resonance.
The blood on his chest had turned from dark crimson to frothy, oxygenated red.
His lung was leaking air into his pleural space.
I grabbed his belt, throwing his massive left arm over my shoulder.
My right wrist screamed with agony, the rubber splint biting into my swollen flesh, but I didn't let go.
We stumbled through the narrow brick corridor.
The air grew thick with ozone, damp earth, and the bitter copper tang of old railroad iron.
We broke through an iron grating into the dark expanse of the subway service tunnel.
Sixty feet beneath Boston.
The tracks stretched into black infinity in both directions.
Above us, the rhythmic rumble of a passenger train shook the limestone ceiling, sending showers of dry dust down our necks.
Matteo stumbled.
His knees buckled.
He went down onto both hands and knees in the gravel ballast between the steel rails.
He coughed violently, dark blood splattering the wooden ties.
“Matteo!” I dropped to my knees beside him.
His skin was clammy, translucent as wax under the dim emergency tunnel lights.
His radial pulse was thready, racing at one hundred and forty beats a minute.
He was going into hypovolemic shock.
“Leave the revolver,” he rasped, his eyes glassy.
“Take the tunnel south... to State Street station...”
“Shut up,” I said.
My voice was shaking, but my hands were steady.
The panic that had lived in my throat for two years vanished.
The doctor took over.
I ripped the silk tie from my splint.
I pulled off my blouse, leaving myself in a thin black tank top in the fifty-degree tunnel air.
I tore the silk into strips with my teeth.
I laid Matteo flat on his back on the gravel.
I unbuttoned his soaked shirt.
The wound on his left lower ribcage was bubbling.
A tension pneumothorax.
If I didn't vent the pressure within three minutes, his heart would stop from venous compression.
I had no scalpel.
No chest tube.
No sterile gloves.
I searched my pockets with trembling fingers.
Nothing.
Then my gaze fell on the heavy silver Montblanc pen tucked into the inner breast pocket of his vest.
Solid silver casing.
Hollow ink cartridge inside.
I unscrewed the pen with my teeth.
I discarded the brass nib and the ink reservoir.
I was left with a four-inch hollow silver cylinder with a tapered, sharp point.
“Matteo,” I said, leaning over his face.
His eyes flickered open.
“This is going to feel like a red-hot iron,” I whispered.
“Do it,” he breathed.
I located the second intercostal space in the midclavicular line.
Two finger-widths below his left collarbone.
I positioned the silver point between his ribs.
I used the heel of my uninjured left hand.
With one brutal, downward thrust, I drove the silver tube through the intercostal muscle into his chest cavity.
POP.
The hiss of escaping pressurized air sounded like a punctured tire.
A spray of dark blood misted across my face.
Matteo’s back arched off the gravel with a strangled, animal roar.
His hands clawed the iron rail beside his hip.
Then, his chest expanded.
Deep.
Full.
Unobstructed air rushed back into his collapsed lung.
He slumped back onto the ties, gasping, color slowly returning to his gray lips.
The silver pen remained protruding from his chest, acting as a makeshift flutter valve.
I sat back on my heels, wiping his blood from my forehead with the back of my forearm.
My hands were covered in gore.
My right arm throbbed with a dull, sickening ache.
Matteo looked up at me through the dim amber light.
He raised his right hand.
His fingers, trembling and bloody, brushed my cheek.
“You’re a terrifying woman, Clara Vance.”
“I’m an unemployed waitress with a broken arm,” I choked out, a dry sob escaping my throat.
“Now get up before the next train cuts us in half.”
Down the dark tracks behind us, three flashlights clicked on.
Boot steps crunched on the gravel.
A voice echoed through the tunnel like a tomb opening:
“Dr. Vance!”
Dominic.
He was walking down the center of the rails, holding an unsuppressed Kimber .45 in his right hand.
Beside him walked two men in trench coats.
“You really should have stayed in the kitchen, Clara,” Dominic called out, his voice smooth and playful.
“I offered Gus five thousand dollars for your address on Monday.”
“He told me you were a sweet girl who never caused any trouble.”
Dominic stopped twenty paces away.
He raised the pistol.
The black barrel was pointed directly between my eyes.
“Now look at you,” Dominic smiled.
“Covered in blood, playing hero for a dead man.”
May you like
“Drop the pen, Clara.”
“Or I blow your pretty face across the third rail.”
