Max Payne

Roscoe Street Station

My head snapped up. Voices were coming from the station. I crept to the door, which hadn’t closed all the way, and tugged it open.

Two men now stood at the platform, guns in hand. The sheer brazen display of firepower another indicator of a professional operation.

“I swore I heard something—wasn’t Jake supposed to take care of this?” one of the men said, a tight beanie wrapped around his skull. He was marching in place and rubbing his hands together.

“Nah,” the other man said slowly, cigarette dangling from his lip. “He and Mickey’re having too much fun taking care of the cop up there. It’s gonna be a slaughterhouse by the time they’re done.”

“Great,” the beanie-head man said. “Who gets to clean that up?”

“Hell if I care,” the other spat. “As long as they do their damn job they can crucify the son-of-a-bitch.” He flicked his cigarette into the subway tracks.

“Damn, it’s cold,” the beanie-head said, following the cigarette’s blazing trail. “W-w-what’s the friggin plan, anyway?”

The other laughed. “Simple, gun down every mother-loving bastard that gets off the train.”

“Sweet. But didn’t the train go already?”

“No idea, let’s just wait and see.”

As usual my timing was impeccable. I’d walked in on some big time crime operation with nothing but a smile and my service piece. And from my vantage point these guys were packing serious hardware. I could only guess what the boys upstairs had in store. 

Still peering from the maintenance closet I noticed the thugs had unlocked the subway gate to the surface levels. Well, that was something.

I backed from the door, letting it close. This couldn’t have been what B.B. wanted me to meet Alex for. 

Alex?

Had he gotten caught up in this late night drama?

The distant metal-on-metal scream of an inbound train brought me back to the two hired guns blocking my escape. My only chance would be to take them by surprise, slip by as the train roared through the station. If the train was bound for Roscoe Street the thugs had promised to deliver Murder One in spades. My cold hand slipped into the holster under my leather jacket As I thought about the imminent carnage. Three years ago I would have called for back up, no risks. But that was then, and tonight was going down hard. 

With any luck, so was the Valkyr case.

The train was screeching her approach, seconds away. Onboard, the packed carts were cattle trucks bound for slaughter. I cracked the door one last time—the noise masked by the squeals of rapid transit—and slipped from the maintenance closet.

“Here they come!” the beanie-headed murderer cried. The other said nothing but leveled a gun by his hip.

I sprinted and slipped behind a bench, crouching next to a tiled pillar. The two were close to the platform’s edge, beyond the yellow warning line. My gun went to beanie-head first. 

Crunch! 

I’d gotten too close to the trash can, the sound of leather and rubber sole crushing a soda can broke through the crescendo of the arriving train. There was no time to hide. Beanie-head was already spinning, gun drawn.

“What the Hell...?”

I still had the advantage. Two shots from the Beretta sent the skinny man spinning into his compadre, who was in the act of his own ungraceful pirouette. The beanie-head caught the other’s gun arm, knocking him backwards hard enough to send them both over the edge of the platform...