Zero Game - Brad Meltzer [99]
“Hypothetically? I’d say you get points for the bendy straw, but it’s still pretty darn gross.”
“Yeah,” she says proudly. “It was.” Looking at me, she adds, “Nobody’s perfect, Harris. Even if everyone else thinks you are.”
I nod, continuing to hold her hand. There’s only one light between us, but as long as we stay together, it’s more than enough. “So you ready to see what they’re digging for down here?” I ask.
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice.”
As she shoves her shoulders back, there’s a new confidence in her silhouette. Not from what she did for me—what she did for herself. She looks out toward the tunnel on my left, her mine light carving through the dark. “Just hurry up before I change my mind.”
I plow forward along the rocks, deeper into the cavern. “Thank you, Viv—I mean it . . . thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah, and more yeah.”
“I’m serious,” I add. “You won’t regret it.”
45
KICKING THROUGH THE gravel of the Homestead mine’s parking lot, Janos counted two motorcycles and a total of seventeen cars, most of them pickup trucks. Chevrolet . . . Ford . . . Chevrolet . . . GMC . . . All of them American-made. Janos shook his head. He understood the allegiance to a car, but not to a country. If the Germans bought the rights to build the Shelby Series One and moved the factory to Munich, the car would still be the car. A work of art.
Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket and taking another hard glance at the trucks in the lot, he slowly sifted through the details: mud-covered wheel wells . . . dented rear quarter panels . . . beat-up front clips. Even on the trucks that were in the best shape, stripped wheel nuts betrayed the wear and tear. Out of the whole lot, only two trucks looked like they had ever met a car wash: the Explorer that Janos drove . . . and the jet black Suburban parked in the far corner.
Janos slowly made his way toward the truck. South Dakota plates like everyone else’s. But from what he could tell, the locals didn’t buy their trucks in black. The beating from the sun was always too much of a paint risk. Executive cars, however, were an entirely different story. The President always rode in black. So did the VP and the Secret Service. And sometimes, if they were big enough names, so did a few Senators. And their staffs.
Janos lightly put his hand on the driver’s-side door, caressing the polished finish. His own reflection bounced back at him from the shine in the window, but from what he could tell, no one was inside. Behind him, he heard a crush of loose gravel and, in an eye blink, spun to follow the sound.
“Whoa, sorry—didn’t mean to surprise you,” the man in the Spring Break ’94 T-shirt said. “Just wanted to know if you needed some help.”
“I’m looking for my coworkers,” Janos said. “One’s about my height . . .”
“With the black girl—yeah, of course—I sent ’em inside,” Spring Break said. “So you’re from Wendell, too?”
“Inside where?” Janos asked, his voice as calm as ever.
“The dry,” the man said, pointing with his chin at the red brick building. “Follow the path—you can’t miss it.”
Waving good-bye with a salute from his mining helmet, the man headed back toward the construction trailers. And Janos marched straight toward the red brick building.
46
RETRACING MY STEPS, I take Viv on the quick tour to catch her up to date.
“They can run a phone line down here, but they can’t build an outhouse?” she asks as we pass the red wagon. With each step, she tries to maintain the brave face, but the way her sweaty hand is gripping my own . . . the way she’s always at least a half-step or so behind me, it’s clear adrenaline fades fast. When she picks up the oxygen detector from the floor and looks down at the readout, I expect her to stop dead in her tracks. She doesn’t. But she does slow down.
“18.8?” she asks. “What happened to the 19.6 from the elevator?”
“The cage connects to the surface