Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Karp found that the hole led to a narrow shaft just a little wider than his shoulders, descending at an angle of about forty-five degrees, so that he proceeded downward in a kind of controlled slide. His flashlight was on, but useless, as he could not lift his head enough to see where his feet were going. The ceiling was two inches from his nose to begin with, and it got closer for a breathless while and then receded, as did his incipient panic. He tried not to think of New York pressing down upon him, or of getting stuck or being buried alive. Time seemed to slow down. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. He thought, I'm a lawyer, this is not what lawyers do, and then he imagined a professor in a law school class saying something like, yesterday, you'll recall we discussed the difference between strict and vicarious liability as expressed in Liparota v. United States; today we'll deal with sliding down your ass through a narrow, gravelike passage down to a sewer to find a crazy witness.

Giggling uncontrollably, he suddenly found himself falling through a blackness pierced by the wobbling beam of the flashlight. Something smashed against his thumb, and the flashlight was gone. Something grasped and skittered across the top of his helmet, and then his feet hit solid ground. The flashlight, still lit, had rolled some distance away. He went to get it and cast the beam around. He was in a cylindrical, brick-lined vault, perhaps eight feet high. The bricks were old, and the mortar was crumbling; there were heaps and spills of brick within the range of his beam, the results of abandonment and perhaps shoddy work-a typical grafting bid of the last century. There was a sound of flowing water and a penetrating stench he could not identify-decay maybe, and earth, and something sharper, a burnt odor on top of that. The air was absolutely still, cold and clammy against his skin. A noise attracted him to the hole he had come in by. He saw booted feet emerging and something else-some playful soul had jammed a skeleton's arm and hand into a crack. That was what had struck his helmet when he'd come down.

He pulled the thing out of the wall and was in time to grab Marlene's arm as she dropped. He offered her the skeleton.

"Need a hand?"

She gave a gratifying shriek. "Oh, stop! I can't take you anywhere."

"Bag it-it's important forensic evidence," he said, tossing it away. "Where's your guy?"

"Tran. He's not coming."

"What! Jesus, Marlene! You mean we're down here with just us? Where is he?"

"I don't now!" she said curtly. "Maybe he had to go to a bar mitzvah. We'll be fine. Who's this, Lucy?"

Yes, and then the dog, and Father Dugan brought up the rear. After determining that everyone was all right, the priest marched off to the left, the rest following, Karp staying within arm's reach of his daughter, who did not object. Marlene hung to the rear, occasionally turning and casting her light back the way they had come. She saw nothing unusual, except for the complete absence of rats. They moved in silence, clambering over brick-falls, jumping cracks. Their path seemed to go downward, although it was hard to tell.

The sound of flowing water gradually grew louder, and then water itself glittered in their light beams. They saw that the brick casing of the sewer had been shattered, and the farther end displaced by several feet, as if some sideways force had pushed it over. Naked rock showed through in the gap, and a deep cleft in the floor was partially filled with cracked boulders, over which flowed a stream of dark water at least ten feet wide. What looked like tree limbs stuck up here and there among the rocks.

"This can't be right," said Marlene. "Trees? We must be sixty feet below the surface."

"I've read about this," said Father Dugan. "When they excavate for tunnels in the city, they occasionally come across tree trunks. They're the remains of a preglacial forest, squashed into the earth by the ice. What this looks like is that someone was blasting up above and the shock waves cracked the casing there and released a buried stream. It's really quite wonderful. This must be one of the original-"

Marlene interrupted him and in a curiously flat voice said, "Look, there are human bones down here." She pointed her beam, and there they were, dumped in the ravine, like something out of Cambodia: skulls and bones, and not only dumped, but arranged; skulls on fossil tree limbs, leg bones neatly stacked. As the priest voiced a prayer and started to clamber down toward the ossuary, the tunnel ahead was lit by a bright flash, followed an instant later by a painfully loud blast. They all ducked instinctively as small, hard objects flying at speed whined and clattered.

"That's Canman," cried Lucy.

"What? What?" they all gabbled.

"He makes bombs, booby traps to guard his stuff. It's him!" She had scuttled down the ravine, forded the stream, climbed the other side, and was away down the tunnel before they could stop her.

Both Karp and Marlene raced over the gully; both tripped and scrambled up the other side, their boots sloshing with water. The mastiff cleared the obstacle in a bound and ran alongside Marlene, panting. Lucy was a winking yellow figure ahead, leaping like a doe over rubble. Both of her parents were in reasonably good shape, but they could not close the distance. The tunnel curved slightly, and the yellow blur with its light vanished.

As Lucy rounded the curve, she saw the ruddy glow of a fire. She slowed and turned off her flashlight. She saw the shapes of people milling around and the sound of angry shouts and screams of pain. The people were waving sticks and what looked like spears. The fire was not in one place, but scattered around in burning clumps. Acrid smoke stung her nose.

She saw one of the people pick up a brand and fling it toward the tunnel wall. It bounced and became a shower of sparks, but in the instant before it did she could see that the wall there was pierced by a narrow conduit, not more than four feet wide. This was barricaded two-thirds of the way up by what looked like bales of newspaper. In the opening thus formed she saw a face she recognized only briefly, for it ducked down to avoid a shower of missiles from the group below.

Steps behind her, and the stabbing bright beams of flashlights. She spun around. "Turn off your lights," she called out in a hoarse stage whisper. Too late. The beams illuminated the scene, the figures frozen for a moment like a tableau vivant in hell.

Lucy, like all Americans a veteran of innumerable horror movies, found herself surprised at how normal they looked. Except for their weapons and the expressions on their faces, they could be waiting in line at any soup kitchen in the city. Karp, Marlene, and Dugan snapped off their flashlights.

For a moment they were almost blind. Karp groped for his daughter's arm and missed. Then a bright red spark appeared above them, flying in a parabolic arc over the heads of the mole people and landing ten feet away from them with a dull, metallic clatter, still sparking merrily.

The word fuse popped into Marlene's head, along with a colossal terror. "Bomb!" she yelled, and dropped to the ground. Karp made a grab for Lucy's arm, clutched a fold of nylon, and did the same. A flash filled the chamber, followed instantly by the blast, and the hum of shrapnel overhead.

"Oh, Jesus! Oh, God!" That was Dugan. Marlene switched on her light. The priest was on his back, writhing and clutching his thigh. Bright blood was spurting from between his clenched fingers.

"Someone give me light!" Marlene shouted. Lucy rushed to her side and did so. Marlene knelt by the stricken man, unzipped her coverall, tore off her T-shirt, made a pad of it, and pressed it to the spurting wound. The fabric was black with blood in ten seconds. Marlene slipped out of her bra, wrapped it around Dugan's leg near the groin, knotted it, and used his flashlight barrel to wind it tight. The blood stopped spurting, but there was still a steady dripping from the wound.