P Deutermann - Darkside

Ev parked the car and got out. The night was very still now, with enough humidity in the air to give nearby lights a soft penumbra. Not quite fog yet, but soon, he thought. He went up to the darkened house and let himself in. He turned on the porch lights behind him, then turned them off. No point in porch lights-no one was coming to see him tonight. He walked down the darkened hall to the kitchen, through whose windows he could see the dock lights, which came on automatically at dusk. The furniture was all gray in the dim light. He stood at the kitchen sink and considered what he’d done this evening: alienated his daughter, and very possibly Liz as well. Could he have phrased it differently? Been more diplomatic? Explained it to Liz first, and not said anything to Julie? Yes.

He stared unseeing though the windows, knowing that it was dumb to be just standing here in the dark. He wanted to call Liz, but that wasn’t on, not tonight. He found himself wondering what else he didn’t know about his daughter. He turned on a light, fixed himself a snifter of scotch, and then went down to the dock to sit by the water. The highly varnished bottom of his upturned scull glistened in the dock lights.

At just past midnight, the main tunnel looked and sounded familiar: sterile concrete walls and ceilings, smelling faintly of ozone and steam, with the hum of electronic equipment racks and the quiet rush of steam permeating its entire length. They walked slightly uphill toward the King George Street interchange with the city utility vaults. They passed the big shark graffito, which remained unchanged. They did not speak, in deference to the possibility that Booth had the tunnels wired for sound as well as visual and electronic surveillance. The big steel doors leading out to the city tunnel were locked. Jim unlocked them and tried to pull them open. Neither of them budged.

“Okay! Chief,” Jim murmured.

“Hope we don’t get a fire down here tonight,” Branner whispered, looking at those locked doors.

“We do, we call for help,” he said, holding up his radio. He keyed the transmitter three times. There was a moment of silence, and then both of their radios clicked three times back at them. He stepped into an alcove to mask his voice.

“All the doors blocked?” he asked the chief.

“Affirmative.”

They walked back toward the intersection where the Mahan Hall grate door was, checking equipment room doors and generally looking around for signs of anyone else being down there. Then they continued down the long stretch under Stribling Walk, Jim watching in front of them and Branner walking backward, keeping an eye out behind them. When they got to the dogleg turn, Jim stopped, put his fingers to his lips, and listened hard. He’d felt a change in the air pressure. Something had been opened. Then he remembered the storm drain. He pointed back up the tunnel and whispered that he was going to check the storm drain’s flap doors. Booth might have figured out a way to open them from the drain side. She indicated she’d wait for him, just out of sight in the dogleg turn.

Jim yanked out his own weapon and went back up the tunnel. He walked to one side of the steel plates running down the center of the tunnel to avoid making unnecessary noise. The vestibule above the storm drain did not have any sort of door or hatch leading from the main tunnel down to the drain itself. The whole point was to have an immediate draining point for any water that got loose in the tunnels. But all the main grating access doors should be closed and locked. So what had been opened?

He got to the vestibule and the spring-loaded, sloping flap doors. He got down on his hands and knees and pushed on the center of the crack between the two metal flaps. They moved, but not easily. Putting a foot on one flap, he pushed against the hinge hard enough to expand the crack enough to get his hand into it. He could feel air streaming past his head. He ran his hand up the full length of the right-hand flap edge, but there was nothing but smooth metal. He switched his foot and tried the left-hand side.

Bingo, he thought. He felt a crude U -shaped handle bolted to the other side. So someone coming up from the river would have access from the main drain pipe. He was withdrawing his hand when his wrist was seized in a viselike grip and he was pulled headlong right through the two flaps. He yelled, dropping both his Glock and his radio, as his body hurtled down through the doors into a sloping circular concrete pipe. It was pitch-black in the storm drain once the spring-loaded doors snapped shut behind him, and the bottom of the pipe was slippery with ancient moss and the trickle of water that was constantly draining out of the utility tunnel complex. Whoever had grabbed him had essentially flung him down the drain, and he skidded on his backside for an unknown distance until he gathered his wits enough to spread out his arms and legs and stop himself. He immediately flipped over onto his stomach and snatched out the Maglite. He shot it up the tunnel and saw nothing at all except his gun and his radio. It felt as if the storm drain was sloping down at about a ten-degree angle. Easy enough to maintain his position, but steep enough to have slid him almost sixty feet from the doors. Whoever had grabbed him probably had gone up through the doors once Jim had opened them. Branner. He had to warn Branner.

He scampered back up the drain, staying low enough not to hit his head, and recovered the radio first. He called Branner, but the thing didn’t seem to be working. He turned it over. The battery compartment had opened and the battery pack was missing. He swore and retrieved his Glock. He shone the light up and down the tunnel, looking for the cigarette pack-sized battery, and finally saw a flash of shiny metal. He recovered the battery, his hands fumbling because everything was wet. Son of a bitch had moved the doors to attract his attention, then simply pulled him into the tunnel. Strong son of a bitch, too. While Jim had been skidding down the drain, their quarry had gone through the flap doors and now was loose in the tunnel.

Hunched over beneath the flap doors, he fumbled to get the battery back into the radio, and then, realizing he was wasting time, swore again. Stuffing the radio and battery into a pocket, he pulled the flap door with the handle down into the drain. The yellow lights of the main tunnel flooded the drain. He stood up through the opening and yelled for Branner to look out, but she didn’t respond. Then he realized he’d screwed up again: Branner had probably heard the commotion when he went through the flap door, but now Jim had just given away her presence to Booth, who must have heard him yell. Screw it, he thought. He hoisted himself through the flap doors, fighting with the spring hinges, which were pinching into him like aluminum mandibles. He got up and trotted down toward the Bancroft Hall end of the Stribling tunnel. When he got to the dogleg, Branner wasn’t there. Now what? he wondered. He called her name, but she didn’t answer. Had Booth managed to take her down? He couldn’t have-she’d been waiting for him.

He pulled out the radio, dried off the battery contacts, and put the thing back together again. Where the hell was Branner? Then he had an idea. Maybe she was not answering in order to make Booth think Jim was faking it, trying to make Booth think he had backup. He put the radio up to his mouth but did not squeeze the transmit key. Then he gave a series of orders to a host of imaginary backup people. Then he did squeeze the key and said, “Lights-out.” Two seconds later, when the entire tunnel went dark, he flattened himself between two equipment cabinets.

At least the radio system is working, he thought. Branner should have heard him doing his deception routine and figured it out. Booth was in the tunnel. But where? And where was Branner holed up? She should be close by. He tried to think of the layout of the tunnel walls in the vicinity of the dogleg. Around the corner was the cross tunnel that led out toward the harbor area and the old Fort Severn doors. Branner could be anywhere. Hell with it. It was time to get it on with young Mr. Booth.