The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [46]
Laurel saw a large clump of condoms floating past and cast a thin smile back at Floyd.
After another ten minutes of slow progress, something new crept into the fetid atmosphere. A flurry of soft noises traveled over the surface of the water. Laurel froze and switched her flashlight off. “Quiet!” Darkness crashed down on them. Tiny yellow lights scuttled across her eyes. She blinked and the lights faded.
“What is it?” Floyd whispered, almost on top of her.
“I don’t know. I thought I heard something.”
She toggled the flashlight to its minimum setting before switching it on again. They continued in silence for twenty or thirty feet, finally landing in a vast rotunda, its domed ceiling curving a good twenty feet overhead. The walls were jagged, the bricks splintered and fissured, with tufts of brown moss growing in the cracks.
“An exchange,” Lukas said.
“What?” Raul asked.
“Minor branches empty here to flood into the main line.” He pointed to a tunnel mouth gaping to their left. They waded to the edge of the rotunda and climbed a set of slippery concrete steps onto a dry sidewalk.
“So this is it?” Floyd asked.
Laurel checked the computer, glanced at the flooded tunnel they had just left, and switched the flashlight back on full beam. “No. Now we climb.” She held the light’s beam on rusty ladder rungs to an opening ten feet off the ground.
“Now you climb and we do the Sherpa routine,” Raul said.
Laurel edged along the sidewalk to the rungs and tried them. Although covered in a thick layer of crunchy rust, the metal looked sound enough to hold their weight. When Laurel reached the opening at the top, she shone the flashlight down as the men struggled to maneuver the stretcher up the steps and parallel to the wall, Russo’s shape firmly secured with straps.
The narrow passage they entered was set on a slight incline and was dry, without watermarks. After a couple of minutes, they found themselves in a vast tunnel, the air warm and thankfully lacking the stench of sewage, although they carried plenty of the gunk dripping from their suits. A glint flashed a few feet ahead and she killed the flashlight.
“Now what? You saw something?” The rich timbre of Floyd’s voice was laced with irony.
In darkness, Laurel advanced one foot in front of the other to a point where she squatted and reached with her hand. “A fucking rail.” Again she ratcheted down the light setting and pressed the flashlight’s power switch. A dim glow highlighted two sets of standard railway tracks: an abandoned subway tunnel.
As she straightened, a distinct snap sounded a few yards ahead. Not the soft scurrying sound of an animal, but a heavy step. Once more, she switched the light off and retreated toward the men. They must have heard the noise. She bumped into a shape.
“Shhhhhh.” A whisper.
Long fingers sought hers. She gripped them like a castaway would driftwood.
Another crack, closer this time. She gripped the anonymous fingers tighter.
Ahead of them something moved, followed by a cackling laugh. “Plan to hold hands all night?”
chapter 18
01:32
“Resourceful.” Dennis Nolan fingered a sample of the lead apron used to shield the transmitters.
“How would you have done it?” Nikola asked.
Dennis leaned over and dropped the sample on Nikola’s lap.
“Ouch!”
“Yes, lead is a good electromagnetic shield, great density, but they could have wrapped foil around their necks or wound up a copper wire a few times. I suppose the radiation apron is more elegant and foolproof, though.”
Nikola glanced at one of the overhead clocks and turned to peer through the van’s tinted window at the imposing Nyx building. The DHS scientific team would be sifting through the crime scene, and their silence could only mean there was little, if anything, of importance in the reanimation rooms or the basements. He sniffed and ran his hands over the remains of the lead apron. Not that he expected a trail of crumbs, but often frightened people behaved in the dumbest of ways.
Without a clue to their whereabouts