a passenger tries to board the train at the last minute and gets hung up in the door instead.
“Please let go of the doors in the rear of the train,” the conductor warned.
The doors closed again (all the way this time) and the train rolled into the dark tunnel.
“Wait a minute!” I said. “We’re at the rear of the train, aren’t we?”
Roman saw my alarmed expression and turned pale. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t think our adventure is over yet.”
I rose to my feet. The floor lurched under my heels, and I stumbled to the door at one end of the train car. Through its window I saw Dragon Man in the middle of the last car, walking down the aisle in our direction. His mask was off, and he appeared to be part-Hispanic, part-Asian, with angular features, a shaved head, and the hard, catlike gaze of a predator.
I turned. “Run, Roman!”
“Run? Run where?”
“To the next car!”
I grabbed his wrist and pulled him up the aisle. When we reached the end, I slid aside the heavy steel door. The roar of the tunnel filled the car, along with a whooshing blast of musty underground air.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn’t like riders crossing between the subway cars. On every line in Manhattan, the doors between the cars are locked. But for some reason—tradition, maybe, or because it’s an elevated train—the doors between the cars on the 7 line are never locked.
That deviation in transit system procedure might just save our lives, I thought, but it wasn’t over yet. Roman and I had to cross a gap between one car and another while the rocking train flew across the ancient track at forty miles per hour. There was plenty of incentive to risk the move. Dragon Man had just entered the car we were about to vacate.
I turned to Roman. “Go!”
The heavy man stepped through the door and over the frightening gap. The thundering rumble was deafening, and the wind whipped through his thick hair as he moved to the door of the next car. He took hold of the latch, muscled the door open, and stepped through.
Now I moved onto the small, open platform, closing the door behind me. Through its Plexiglas window, I saw Dragon Man in the middle of the aisle. He paused to reach into his jacket, pull a gun from his belt, and take off the safety.
I moved quickly to the next car, realizing something awful. Even if we ran full out to the other end of this car, Dragon Man’s bullets would be faster.
“He’s coming!” I yelled to Roman over the roar of the train. “And he’s got a gun. We can’t outrun him. We’ll have to fight!”
I felt the temperature changing and realized the train had emerged from the underground tunnel. A blast of chilly nighttime wind ripped through my hair, and I saw we were racing up an incline to an elevated position, heading for the sprawling auto junkyards of Willets Point.
Dragon Man was stepping out now onto the ledge between the two train cars. Grinning at me, the punk waved the gun in the air, making sure I saw it.
He stepped forward, and I suddenly remembered that scumbag from the White Horse Tavern, the one who’d jammed his motorcycle boot into the back room’s doorway. Only this time, the door in my hand wasn’t flimsy wood, it was heavy steel on a sliding track. I reached up to release the overhead safety latch. As Dragon Man’s foot moved into the car, I slammed the door on the gunman’s instep.
The man’s bellow of surprise and pain was loud enough to be heard over the clatter of the metal wheels on the track. Cursing, the man slammed the butt of his weapon against the window. The Plexiglas cracked but didn’t shatter. He repositioned the gun in his hand.
“He’s going to shoot us through the window!”
Roman’s eyes narrowed. “The hell he is!”
The big man yanked the door back open, stepped around it, and with a shriek of pure fury lunged at the gunman, arms flailing like windmills.
Dragon Man’s weapon discharged, but the bullet went wild, ricocheting off the train’s metal framework. Roman kept flailing, and the gun was knocked free. It dropped down between the cars, swallowed up by the night and the ancient tracks.
The train kept rolling, and Roman continued fighting. Dragon Man lunged backward, desperate now to get away, but the door behind him was shut, and Roman kept coming, using his girth to slam