P Deutermann - Darkside

He decided to leave it as he’d found it. Turn the old Fort Severn tunnel into a trap. He backed out of the magazine and got the door shut and latched. Wait-the latch. It was outside the door. So how did the runner unlatch the door from the inside? He opened the door back up and checked behind it. Sure enough, there was a block magnet, probably lifted from a large stereo speaker, stuck to the door halfway up. Okay, that’s how. He closed the magazine back up, then went over to the manometer. He closed all the valves and then used his penknife to tap the glass in the lower half of the tube until a small crack appeared. If the runner checked, this would explain the loss of the water. Then he took off his shirt and swept it over the floor of the anteroom, trying to obliterate his footprints in the mortar dust. A low cloud of dust coiled up from the floor like a fat white snake. He made a final check of the latches and then headed back up the tunnel to the intersection with the entrance to the collapsed gun pit tunnel.

Once at the intersection, he turned off his flashlight to see how far the anteroom light penetrated. It didn’t. The darkness was absolute. The curve-you’re forgetting that the tunnel curves, he told himself. He snapped the light on again; then, holding the tight white beam down at his feet, he walked toward the oak doors. His feet made no sound in the flourlike dust. When he figured he had rounded most of the curve, he turned the flashlight off again. To his surprise, the dim arch of light he’d been expecting to see as he neared the doors wasn’t there anymore. Jim stopped dead. No light meant one of two things: Either the door he’d bolted open was now closed. Or the main tunnel lights had all gone out.

He flattened himself against the left-hand side of the tunnel and tried to think. He felt a tickle of mortar dust against the back of his neck. The bricks pressing against his right hip seemed to move a tiny bit. They felt like ceramic snake scales. He forced the image out of his mind.

He hadn’t shone the flashlight down the tunnel. It had been pointed at his feet. It was still almost a hundred feet, maybe even more, to the anteroom below the oak doors. His footfalls were not audible. So if someone was waiting for him up there in the darkened anteroom, he shouldn’t know that Jim was approaching. He tapped the Indiglo light on his watch. Three minutes until his call-in time. Hell, he could just wait right here and let the PWC crew come looking. Except they wouldn’t know he’d come into the Fort Severn tunnels, would they? Shit.

He realized he’d had his eyes shut in the darkness. He opened them. No change. The total darkness of a cave. Or tomb. He listened but could hear nothing, either from the tunnel or the surface above. After a minute, he imagined that he could hear the fine sound of mortar dust falling on the floor. Like the sand in an hourglass. He bent down and lifted the Glock from his ankle holster. It wasn’t chambered, and if he did chamber it, that noise would definitely carry down here. As he stood back up, his belt caught on the exposed corner of a brick and it moved. Definitely moved. And then it slid out of the wall with a small sound and thudded down into the deep dust by his ankle. Then another one came out, and suddenly he felt the whole wall press out against his back. He froze in place, straining his back muscles to hold the tottering masonry in place. He felt his heart beating wildly as he thought about the arch over his head. If the wall gave way, would the arch come down? Hell yes.

He flattened his shoulders and pressed against the wall as another brick slid between his legs and landed with a click against one of the first bricks. Then a third popped out of the wall and landed on his right shoulder, perching there for an instant before dropping into the dust. Then things stopped moving. He felt a sneeze coming on as the air filled with dust.

Gotta move, he thought frantically. Which way? Left, of course, up the tunnel, toward the oak door.

Sure about that? Or was the door to my right? I didn’t turn around, did I? Another brick slid down the back of his pants leg and clicked against one already on the floor.

Hell with this shit, he thought. First, he racked the slide and chambered a round. The sound seemed enormous in the darkness. Unmistakable, too. Then he pumped himself off the wall, going to his left, and switched on the Maglite. Behind him, a whole section of the wall slumped to the floor in a muffled rattle of bricks. Amazingly, the ceiling didn’t come raining down behind it. He switched the gun to his left hand and walked fast up toward the anteroom, holding the flashlight out in his right hand while keeping his body pressed to the left side of the tunnel, just in case someone started shooting. But when he reached the anteroom, it was empty. He made sure, even sweeping the light up over the ceiling to look for suspended vampires.

He shone the light back down the tunnel from which he had just come. It remained empty except for an ominous cloud of white dust that seemed to be approaching like some kind of billowing ghost. His heart in his throat, he pulled on the huge door. It swung gently back, spilling white light from the main tunnel back into the anteroom. He poked his head and the Glock out into the main tunnel, but everything was as he’d left it. A little more noise from all the utility lines, but the place was definitely empty. He looked behind him as the white cloud expanded silently into the anteroom. Glancing at his watch, he realized his time was up. He stepped up into the main tunnel, pulled the big oak door closed and locked it, then hurried up the tunnel to the first available grate where he could get topside and use a cell phone to call the PWC people. Assuming he could get his voice to work-his throat was dry as all that mortar dust. He shivered as he thought of that tunnel collapsing all along its length. And nobody would have known he’d been down in there.

He drove back to the marina after checking in with PWC. As he was getting out of his truck at the marina parking lot, a thought hit him like a small hammer. He had left the bolt protruding on that damned door to keep it open. But it had been completely shut when he got to it. So who the hell had moved the bolt? It would have taken a key to do that. If it had been their runner, then there would be no trapping him in the Fort Severn tunnel. Not now that Jim had been detected down there. He swore out loud, startling a couple getting into the car next to his. He gave them a weak smile and headed for the boat and a badly needed drink. He wondered if Branner was back from D.C. yet.

Branner called Jim on his cell phone an hour after he got back to the boat. She was back from Washington and just entering Annapolis. He invited her to come over to the boat for a nightcap, and she arrived fifteen minutes later. He poured two snifters of single malt and told her about what he’d found down in the abandoned tunnels. He showed her the probable exit point on one of the maps.

“I took a look, although it was dark. I’m guessing it’s a light standard,” he said. “One of these towers along here that light the tennis courts behind Bancroft Hall. Or a manhole. They probably hit the magazine vent pipe by accident when they put the lights in and just left it. Those standards are hollow.”

“So he doesn’t have to use one of the Yard grates?”

“Right. Nobody, not even PWC, goes into the old Fort Severn tunnels. They’re lethal. They weren’t very happy about my going down there.”

“Where the hell did he get keys?”

“Those locks are old, very old. The doors are solid oak. I think those locks could be picked with a thin screwdriver. The point is, no one’s been looking. The guys who maintain the utility tunnels couldn’t imagine anyone being dumb enough to go into those death traps.”