P Deutermann - Darkside

“Can he get directly out into town, down at the other end?” she asked, speaking quietly. “Down by those old brick arches under Dahlgren Hall?”

“He could, except I locked out the interchange doors last night after that rocket. Assuming he has the regular series lock key, the new locks will defeat him, so he’ll have to come out via St. John’s.”

“And the other detector will get him coming back in, assuming he’s already out there?”

Jim nodded. “It being Saturday night, this may be a waste of time,” he said. “If this is a firstie, he could just come back through the gates.”

“Not dressed up as a vampire, one assumes,” she said.

Jim shrugged. “Yeah, but if he’s operating with those Goth freaks, he may have a base of operations in the student ghetto somewhere. My guess is that he’ll be in costume in the tunnels only if he’s on the run. Like after busting some civilian heads in an alley. And it’s a little early for that shit.”

“How do these things work?” she asked, indicating the receiver box for the detectors.

“The sensors themselves are out there in the tunnels. They get a hit, they send a signal here over those wires, and we get a channel light. Tells us which one is getting the hit.”

“Why wire? Why not a transmitter?”

“A wire signal can’t be detected. If the detector used a radio to get back to this receiver, it could be intercepted.”

Branner was skeptical. “You’re assuming your mid would have some pretty sophisticated gear,” she said.

“They get to play with sophisticated gear in the double-E labs all the time. You go to any of the football games?”

She nodded.

“You catch the Navy-Air Force game last year? The bus drivers like to put on a falconry display at halftime. The falcons are their mascots. Last year, some mids built a high-powered radar transmitter dish. Mounted it on the back of a pickup truck, with a parabolic antenna and an optical tracking telescope. Parked it outside the stadium, out with the tailgaters. When the falcon started doing his thing, they turned it on, locked a tracking beam on the bird, and drove it nuts. Damn thing went up into the light towers and wouldn’t come down.”

“Damn.”

“Well, we don’t especially like the Air Farce. But all of that gear, that was just bench stuff from a missile fire-control lab. Homework assignment. So, yes, he could have a detector that could pick up the fan beams from my motion detectors, if he’s worried about stuff like that. I don’t think so, though.”

“You think he’s getting overconfident?”

“I’m hoping so. Although he did surprise me fairly easily, and he had to have preplanned that rocket business.”

“He won’t surprise me,” she said. “And if he comes up with any bullshit like that rocket, I’ll cap his young ass.”

Jim grinned. “The objective is to apprehend subject young ass, not blow holes in it. Got enough dead mids this week already.”

She grimaced at the reference to Dell.

“My chief said he’d heard some stuff about the postmortem. Said that was where the homicide vibes were coming from.” He kept his voice casual, his eyes on the receiver.

“It’s cumulative,” she said, suppressing a yawn. “There was the panties bit, plus some, um, anatomical aspects that might indicate the kid was no stranger to wearing panties, if you catch my drift. Main thing was the bruising. Upper arms grabbed from the front, probably right before he died. One interpretation would be that he was lifted and thrown. But there are some S and M situations that could cause those bruises.”

“Wow,” he said. “What’s ambiguous about all that?”

“Well, there you are, Mr. Security Officer,” she said. “That’s why we’re looking into it as if it might be a homicide. Tell me, are you technically a cop?”

“Nope. Government civilian, grade twelve. I supervise the people who have police jurisdiction in the Yard and on other Academy property, but I personally don’t have a badge. I pack a Glock on occasions like this, but probably not legally. That help?”

She frowned. “Can you make arrests?”

“Not normally. If I get into that situation, I’d be calling the Yard cops, or maybe even you guys. But, no, I’m not a cop. I’m technically an administrator.”

“So what’ve you been doing down here chasing this shitbird? Why not your own cops?”

“Because he made it personal?”

She stared at him for a moment and then nodded. Personal, she understood. “Okay,” she said. “So if we catch this guy tonight, and especially if he did Bagger, he’s mine, right?”

“Absolutely. As long as you don’t shoot him right off. We won’t know he’s the guy who did Bagger until there’s been an arrest and some questions asked, right?”

“Right,” she said, touching her weapon again. “But if it is…”

“We subdue him, cuff him, you take him into custody, read him his rights, and then you can shoot him. But do it over in your holding cell, not one of ours, okay? Ours doesn’t have a drain.”

She grinned, although it wasn’t a pleasant sight just now, Jim thought. Then the receiver beeped, and the channel from the detector pointed at Annapolis lighted up.

“Hello,” Jim said softly. He moved up to the edge of the tunnel junction, with Branner right beside him. The nearest overhead light was fifty feet down the main tunnel, in the direction of the St. John’s campus. Branner had her weapon out. Jim saw it and leaned over to whisper in her ear. “You fire that thing down here in a concrete tunnel and it’s as likely to get you as him,” he said.

“Only if I miss,” she whispered back. “I’ll go down that way. Let him go by; then yell halt. If he rabbits, he’ll run right into me.” With that, she slipped into the main tunnel, turned left, and hurried silently down to a dogleg turn fifty feet toward Bancroft, where she disappeared around the corner.

Okay, I guess we now officially have a plan, Jim thought. Although it would have been nice to have had a vote. On the other hand, she was a trained police agent, and he was not. He waited.

One minute stretched into two, and then three. Shouldn’t have taken the guy this long. He reviewed the layout of the tunnel complex to see if there was another branch he could have taken, and decided there wasn’t, not if he was headed back to Bancroft. Four minutes. Then he heard a distant clang of metal, as if one of the interchange doors was being closed.

More silence. Three vehicles in succession bumped over the road above his head. Five minutes. He wanted to look around the corner toward the sound of that door, but he held back. The guy would probably see him as he went by the entrance to the branch tunnel, but by then, Jim would be coming at him. He touched the Glock but decided not to draw it. Once he called the guy out and Branner made her presence known, a mid would give it up for Lent. Six minutes.

Then a soft shuffling sound to his right. Something coming down the tunnel. He crouched into a ready stance and drew out his big Maglite. Nothing like a little white light to disorient his quarry for a crucial second or two. Another sound. Closer. Then silence. Then a very soft giggle.

Giggle? Before he could even blink, a stumpy figure in flowing black robes slipped by the entrance to his tunnel, a smallish figure, with a painted white face. He got only a momentary glimpse, then stood up and roared for her to halt just as she went out of sight to his left. He jumped into the main tunnel, saw the figure’s back ten feet away, and snapped on the Maglite just as the girl spun around. It was one of those Goth girls, looking like some kind of alien in the harsh blue-white beam.

“Put your hands out where I can see them,” he ordered, staying put while he held the blinding light in her face. To his amazement, she screamed. Really screamed. She took a deep breath, clenched her fists, and let one fly, a continuous, top-of-the-lungs, “My baby is being ripped from my womb before my very own eyes” scream. That brought Branner out from behind the dogleg, her own flashlight blazing up the tunnel and partially blinding Jim. Then a jet airplane fired up its engines in the tunnel behind him and he could hear nothing but a huge roar of sound as the girl ran right at him, her face still contorted in the act of screaming, even though the blast of sound from behind him in the tunnel was overwhelming all his senses. He managed to grab her as she tried to slip by, and then both of them were down on the deck plates as he tried to hold on to her billowing robes and keep his sanity in the midst of the incredible noise. His flashlight went flying and he was left grappling in the dark with this surprisingly strong girl. He managed to pin one of her arms and then a second one. She started kicking out, and he ended up dropping across her back, still gripping both her arms, until she stopped it.