Page 89 of Lion & Lamb

COOPER REMEMBEREDexactly where the service driveway led: to a side street that took you to either Sansom Street or Walnut Street, depending on which way you turned. As he approached the driveway’s end, he flipped a mental coin, then hung a right toward Sansom.

It was the correct move. Cooper caught sight of the shooter as he raced to the left, headed west down Sansom.

Whoever this guy was, he had the speed of an Olympic sprinter. Cooper was surprisingly fast too, especially given his height. But he had to ignore the pounding of his heart and the screaming of his muscles to keep pace with the shooter.

Cooper hoped this guy would hop into a car at some point so he’d have a legitimate reason to give up the pursuit. But no. The shooter continued to run. So, what, had he taken public transportation to the hit?

By the time the shooter reached Twenty-Second and Market, Cooper realized that he might have done just that. The guy was headed down a set of concrete stairs to the underground trolley line.

Cooper skidded to a halt just before the stairs. Could be a trap. Shooter could be waiting at the bottom for Cooper’s silhouette to appear, and thenblam-blam-blam—slaughtered Lamb.

He waited. The seconds piled up again. Cooper hated this. The shooter was probably catching a trolley right now.

Except…wasn’t it too late for that? These lines ground to a halt around eleven p.m. Most likely, the shooter was down there waiting for him.

Screw it.

Cooper crouched and peered down the stairs, Browning in his hands. Fluorescent lights flickered on the grime and litter. There was no shooter.

He bounded down the stairs, ready for an ambush.Where are you?He listened carefully.

The tiled walls of the station echoed with a peculiar sound. Something slapping. It was faint, but it was fast and consistent in its rhythm. Cooper turned the corner and saw that he was right, the station was closed. But there was enough room above a security gate for someone very determined to scale it and jump down to the other side.

Down to the tracks. And that’s when Cooper understood the slapping sound. They were footsteps.

The shooter was escaping through the trolley tunnel.

Chapter95

THIS WASprobably one of the worst ideas in the long, troubled history of bad ideas. Cooper knew this. But he scaled the gate anyway.

The army had prepared him for these kinds of insane activities. Climbing tall barriers. Hunting prey in the dark. Running until you thought your heart and lungs would burst in your rib cage.

But none of those activities usually took place in a cold urban environment like this one: a freezing, grimy commuter tunnel that plowed under the Schuylkill River.

Yep. A seriously bad idea, for sure.

But Cooper knew he couldn’t turn around and make the loser’s march back to his car on Eighteenth Street. When someone tries to blow your brains out, you don’t just turn the other cheek so he can take another shot. Cooper needed to find this bastard and make him explain.

So into the tunnel he went, pumping his legs as fast as he could.

The terrain was dark and treacherous. He had to avoid the rails and trash and vermin (yeah, he could hear them complain and squeak) while still matching the speed of the shooter, who was barely visible at the far end of the tunnel. Why did he have to be so fast? Why couldn’t they have dispatched a weight-challenged hit man, some dude named Mel or Irv who could be caught easily?

Cooper couldn’t help thinking about what Victor had told him about the Atlantic City hit man, aka Tesla or the Quiet One. The assassin notorious for speed (check) and stealth (check). Is that who Cooper was chasing through this damn tunnel?

On top of all that, Cooper idly wondered (as he ran, ran, ran) how wide the Schuylkill River was, how long this tunnel went on. Did the Quiet One have an end point in mind? Or did he think there was no way Cooper would be stupid enough to pursue him down here?

Sorry, Tesla,Cooper thought.I am that stupid.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Cooper wouldn’t have been surprised to see signs for Pittsburgh. But he turned a bend, and the dim glow of the next station appeared in the distance. Thirty-Third Street, right in the heart of the University of Pennsylvania’s campus. Maybe the Quiet One was returning to his dorm in the quad.

The sharp crack of a push bar on a metal gate told Cooper that his quarry was headed to the surface.

Ignore your pounding heart. Ignore your burning lungs. Get up there, Cooper. Go bag yourself a hit man.

When he reached the street, he saw a surprising number of students around. Probably coming home after a long night of post-Eagles-win revelry. Cooper scanned the slowly moving bodies for the one body who looked out of place.Come on, Quiet One, show yourself…

“It’s a cop!” someone cried.

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