The Coffin Dancer

laugh. “Not a check. No. Cash.”
    The jelly beans of eyes were considering something. “How much?”
    The little crud was negotiating.
    “Five thousand.”
    The fear remained in the eyes but it was pushed aside by shock. “For real? You’re not shitting me?”
    “No.”
    “What if I get you out and you kill me so you don’t have to pay?”
    Stephen laughed again. “I’m getting paid a lot morethan that. Five’s nothing to me. Anyway, if we get out of here I could use your help again.”
    “I—”
    A sound in the distance. Footsteps coming closer.
    It was the S&S cop, looking for him.
    Just one, Stephen could tell, listening to the steps. Made sense. They’d be expecting him to go for the first-floor office with the open window, where Lincoln the Worm would’ve stationed most of the troopers.
    Stephen replaced the pistol in his book bag and pulled out his knife. “You going to help me?”
    A no-brainer, of course. If Jodie didn’t help he’d be dead in sixty seconds. And he knew it.
    “Okay.” He extended his hand.
    Stephen ignored it and asked, “How do we get out?”
    “See those cinder blocks there? You can pull ’em out. See, there? It leads to an old tunnel. There’re these delivery tunnels going underneath the city. Nobody knows about them.”
    “There are?” Stephen wished he’d known about them before.
    “I can get us to the subway. That’s where I live. This old subway station.”
    It was two years since Stephen had worked with a partner. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t killed the man.
    Jodie started toward the concrete blocks.
    “No,” Stephen whispered. “Here’s what I want you to do. You stand against that wall. There.” He pointed to a wall opposite the doorway.
    “But he’ll see me. He checks in here with his flashlight and I’ll be the first thing he’ll see!”
    “Just stand there and put your hands up.”
    “He’ll shoot me,” Jodie whimpered.
    “No, he won’t. You’ve got to trust me.”
    “But . . . ” His eyes darted toward the door. He wiped his face.
    Is this man going to buckle, Soldier?
    That is a risk, sir, but I’ve considered the odds and I think he won’t. This is a man who wants money badly.
    “You’ll have to trust me.”
    Jodie sighed. “Okay, okay . . . ”
    “Make sure your hands are up or he will shoot.”
    “Like this?” He lifted his arms.
    “Step back so your face is in the shadows. Yeah, like that. I don’t want him to see your face . . . Good. Perfect.”
    The footsteps were coming closer now. Walking softly. Hesitating.
    Stephen touched his fingers to his lips and went prone, disappearing into the floor.
    The footsteps grew soft and then paused. The figure appeared in the doorway. He was in body armor and wore an FBI windbreaker.
    He pushed into the room, scanning with the flashlight attached to the end of his H&K. When the beam caught Jodie’s midriff he did something that astonished Stephen.
    He started to pull the trigger.
    It was very subtle. But Stephen had shot so many animals and so many people that he knew the rippleof muscles, the tension of stance, just before you fired your weapon.
    Stephen moved fast. He leapt up, lifting the machine gun away and breaking off the man’s stalk microphone. Then he drove his k-bar knife up under the agent’s triceps, paralyzing his right arm. The man cried out in pain.
    They’re green-lighted to kill! Stephen thought. No surrender pitch. They see me, they shoot. Armed or not.
    Jodie cried, “Oh, my God!” He stepped forward uncertainly, hands still airborne—almost comically.
    Stephen knocked the agent to his knees and pulled his Kevlar helmet over his eyes, gagged him with a rag.
    “Oh, God, you stabbed him,” Jodie said, lowering his arms and walking forward.
    “Shut up,” Stephen said. “What we talked about. The exit.”
    “But—”
    “Now.”
    Jodie just stared.
    “Now!” Stephen raged.
    Jodie ran to the hole in the wall as Stephen pulled the agent to his feet and led him into the corridor.
    Green-lighted to kill . . .
    Lincoln the Worm had decided he’d die. Stephen was furious.
    “Wait there,” he ordered Jodie.
    Stephen plugged the headset back into the man’s transceiver and listened. They were on the Special Operations channel and there must have been adozen or so cops and agents, calling in as they searched different parts of the building.
    He didn’t have much time, but he had to slow them up.
    Stephen led the dazed agent out into