The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [64]
One by one the DHS troops dropped through the utility hole. Corvin adjusted the HEPA mask over her mouth and nose and breathed deeply before following the last of her men.
After clearing the bottom metal rung on the tube, she dropped six feet to land in fetid water up to her knees. She sprang forward, chasing the platoon in a cacophony of thuds, splashes, and shouts. The tunnel, alive in her goggles with a ghostly greenish light, stretched ahead in a straight line. “Eight-one, you copy?” she spoke into her mouthpiece.
“Affirmative.”
“Any contact?”
“Negative.”
Corvin hated sewers. Nothing personal; she didn’t give a damn about stench or filth. But having to clean the stuff off was another matter. She had an assistant who would endure most of it, but the guys would swear for hours, swabbing at gear dripping with gunk. Besides, she had a bad feeling about this one. Too easy. “Eight-one, you copy?”
“A—ffirmative.”
Had he tripped or spotted something? “Any contact?”
“Well, that’s it. I have eye contact with ground zero. No marks and nowhere to hide.”
“Are you sure?” She screwed her eyes shut in frustration. Of course he was sure.
“I’m at the spot now.”
Ahead, shapes started to slow down and the noise gradually subsided.
When she reached the group, a few officers stood aside so she could approach a twelve-inch pipe jutting from the wall at waist height and spewing a trickle of cloudy water. Corvin looked at a man standing next to the drain and took in the three narrow stripes on his arm. Eight-one. She moved her mask aside and took a deep breath of fetid air. Might as well get used to the stink they’d carry all the way back to their vehicles, their mess, and probably to their beds.
“No lights.” She doubted anyone would ever forget when a joker, long gone from the force, had struck a lighter and blinded a full platoon on a night exercise. “What’s up?”
“See for yourself.” Eight-one nodded toward the pipe.
She leaned over, her head level with the drain to direct her infrared beam into the tube. Four feet farther in, behind a clump of brambles twisted with tampons and ripped condoms, two dots gleamed like the eyes of the very devil, unblinking. Corvin narrowed her eyes to peer past the rat’s beady irises onto the rippling colors of the tracking devices strapped onto the animal.
“Shit.”
“Now,” Eight-one snorted, “why didn’t I think of that?”
“Neat,” Dennis offered, deadpan.
Nikola sighed. “I had to send in the troops, but it reeked of a red herring.”
“For no reason? Would they plan such a ruse without an objective?”
“You mean besides getting rid of the sensors?”
“No. It doesn’t make sense. They have lead cloth. They could have wrapped the lot and stuffed it down a hole where the sensors would never broadcast. These sensors were deployed for our benefit.”
“You have a point there. Let me see a map.”
“You mean the opposite side?”
“No, the quarter where the troops have found the sensors: north.”
Dennis tapped his fingers and the central screen dissolved into a map.
Nikola’s eyes darted between the railway station and the roads stretching toward the airports and the bus depots. “Keep everything we have on this sector.” He waited for a question from Dennis that never came. “On the south side of town, there’s the police headquarters, the power station, and the army barracks. To the north, the sugar cube. The Potomac is southwest and Chesapeake Bay is to the east. You’re on the run and send us on a wild-goose chase north. Why?”
“The report says the sensors were strapped onto a rat. Unless they can remote-control the animal, my guess is the rodent