Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

Rhyme said, “Have the engineers get some equipment next to the exterior wall and dig down then tunnel under his wall. Would that work?”

Out of hearing of the owner, she posed the question to Yu, who said, “Yeah, we could do that. No risk of structural damage if you keep the hole narrow.”

Narrow, thought the claustrophobic policewoman. Just what I need…She hung up and then said to the engineer, “Okay, I want a…” Sachs frowned. “What are those things called with the big scoop on them?” Her knowledge of vehicles whose top speed was ten miles an hour was severely limited.

“Backhoe?”

“Sounds right. How soon can you get one here?”

“A half hour.”

She gave him a pained look. “Ten minutes?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Twenty minutes later, with a loud reverse warning beep, a city backhoe rolled up to the side of the building. There was no way to hide their strategy anymore. The owner stepped forward, waving his hands. “You’re going underneath from outside! You can’t do that either. I own this property from the heavens to the center of the earth. That’s what the law says.”

“Well, sir,” said slim, young civil servant Yu. “There’s a public utility easement under the building. Which we have a right to access. As I’m sure you know.”

“But the fucking easement’s on the other side of the property.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s on that screen right there.” He pointed to a computer – just as the screen went dark.

“Ooops,” said one of the S and S officers, who’d just shut it off. “Damn thing’s always breaking down.”

The owner scowled at him, then said to Yu, “There is no easement where you’re going to dig.”

Yu shrugged. “Well, you know, when somebody disputes the location of an easement, the burden’s on him to get a court order stopping us. You might want to give some of your magistrate friends a call. And you know what, sir? You better do it pretty fast, ’cause we’re going in now.”

“But -”

“Go ahead!” he shouted.

“Is that true?” Sachs whispered to him. “About the easements?”

“Don’t know. But he seemed to buy it.”

“Thanks.”

The backhoe went to work. It didn’t take long. Ten minutes later, guided by the S and S team, the backhoe had dug out a four-foot-wide, ten-foot-deep foxhole. The foundation of the building ended about six feet below the surface and beneath that was a wall of dark soil and gray clay. Sachs would have to climb to the bottom of the excavation and dig horizontally only about eighteen inches until she found the cistern or well. She donned the Tyvek suit and a hard hat with a light on the top. She called Rhyme back on her radio – not sure how cell phone reception would be in the pit. “I’m ready,” she told him.

K9 officer Gail Davis walked over with Vegas, straining on the leash, pawing at the edge of the hole. “Something’s down there,” the policewoman said.

As if I’m not spooked enough, Sachs thought, looking at the dog’s alert face.

“What’s that noise, Sachs?”

“Gail’s here. Her dog’s got a problem with the site.”

“Anything specific?” Sachs asked Davis.

“Nope. Could be sensing anything.”

Vegas then growled and pawed Sachs’s leg. Davis had told Sachs that another skill of briards was battlefield triage – they’d been used by corpsmen to determine which of the wounded could be saved and which could not. She wondered if Vegas was marking her for the latter ahead of time.

“Keep close,” Sachs said to Davis, with an uneasy laugh. “In case I need digging out.”

Yu volunteered to go down into the pit (he said he liked tunnels and caves, a fact that astonished Amelia Sachs). But she said no. This was, after all, a crime scene, even if it was 140 years old, and the sphere and strongbox, whatever they might be, were evidence to be collected and preserved, according to CS procedure.

The city workers lowered a ladder into the shaft, which Sachs looked down into, sighing.

“You okay?” Yu asked.

“Fine,” she said cheerfully and started into the hole. Thinking: The claustrophobia in the Sanford Foundation’s archives was nothing compared to this. At the bottom she took the shovel and pickax Yu had given her and began the excavation.

Sweating from the effort, shivering from the waves of panic, she dug and dug, picturing with every scoop the foxhole collapsing and trapping her.

Pulling out rocks, dislodging the dense earth.

Forever hidden beneath clay and soil …

“What’s in view, Sachs?” Rhyme asked through the radio.

“Dirt, sand, worms, a few tin cans, rocks.”

She progressed about one foot under the building, then two.

Her spade gave a tink and stopped cold. She scraped away soil and found herself facing a rounded brick wall, very old, the mortar clumsily smeared between the bricks.

“Got something here. The side of the cistern.”

Dirt from the edges of the foxhole skittered to the floor. It scared her more than if a rat had traipsed across her thigh. A fast image came to mind: being held immobile while dirt flooded around her, crushing her chest, then filling her nose and mouth. Drowning on dirt…

Okay, girl, relax. Sachs took several deep breaths. Scraped away more soil. Another gallon or so of it spilled out on her knees. “Should we shore this up, you think?” she called to Yu.

“What?” Rhyme asked.

“I’m taking to the engineer.”

Yu called, “I think it’ll probably hold. The soil’s damp enough to be cohesive.”

Probably .

The engineer continued, “If you want we can, but it’ll take a few hours to build the frame.”

“Never mind,” she called to him. Into the speaker she asked, “Lincoln?”

There was a pause.

She felt a jolt, realizing she’d used his first name. Neither of them was superstitious but there was one rule they stuck to: It was bad luck to use their first names on the job.

The hesitation told her that he too was aware she’d broken the rule. Finally he said, “Go ahead.”

Gravel and dry dirt again trickled down the side of the foxhole and sprayed her neck and shoulders. It hit the Tyvek suit, which amplified the sound. She jumped back, thinking the walls were coming down. A gasp.

“Sachs? You all right?”

She looked around. No, the walls were holding. “Fine.” She continued to scrape away dirt from the rounded brick cistern. With the pickax she chipped away mortar. She asked Rhyme, “Any more thoughts about what’s inside?” The question was meant mostly for the comfort of hearing his voice.

A sphere with a tail .

“No idea.”

A fierce bash with the ax. One brick came out. Then two. Earth poured out from inside the well and covered her knees.

Damn, I hate this.

More bricks, more sand and pebbles and dirt. She stopped, cleared the heavy pile off her kneeling legs and turned back to her task.

“How you doing?” Rhyme asked.

“Hanging in there,” she said softly and removed several more bricks. A dozen of them lay around her. She turned her head, shining the light on what was behind the bricks: a wall of black dirt, ash, bits of charcoal and scraps of wood.

She started to dig into the dense dry earth that was inside the cistern. Nothing cohesive about this goddamn dirt, she thought, watching the loose brown rivulets stream downward, glistening in the beam from her hard-hat light.

“Sachs!” Rhyme shouted. “Stop!”

She gasped. “What’s -”

“I just looked over the story of the arson again. It said there was an explosion in the basement of the tavern. Grenades back then were spheres with fuses. Charles must’ve taken two with him. That’s the sphere in the well! You’re right next to the one that didn’t go off. The bomb could be as unstable as nitroglycerine. That’s what the dog was sensing, the explosives! Get out of there fast.”