Once clear of the highway gantry, Mac had swung the coach nose-first around the wide concrete outer apron, and now the heavy iron bumper of Coach #404 hissed to a halt thirty yards from the gates.
Julian Vance braced his feet against the rubber floor mat behind the driver’s partition. Outside, the yellow floodlights from Terminal 9 washed across the windshield like liquid sulfur.
Through the glass, the depot loomed like an iron mountain.
Blackened concrete buttresses rose forty feet above the river bluffs. Rusted steel girders supported an immense flat roof that extended over the churning black rapids of the Marrow River.
Above the entrance hung the main depot sign, stamped into heavy bronze plate:
NEW MARROW MUNICIPAL TRANSIT AUTHORITY — TERMINAL 9 (CENTRAL OVERHAUL & DISPATCH) — ERECTED 1968.
“Thirty yards to the threshold,” Mac Cole said.
His hands did not leave the controls. His right palm held the wheel; his left Globe punch rested against the Bendix paddle. His eyes scanned the reinforced gatehouse.
