Michael Connelly - The Black Ice

Aguila and Bosch took off for Ramos at the same time. They huddled over him but did not move him. He was on his back and his eyes were still open and caked with dirt. His head lolled at an unnatural angle. His neck appeared to have been cleanly broken in the fall. In the distance they could hear the sound of one of the Hueys flying their way. Bosch stood up and could see its spotlight sweeping over the scrubland, looking for them.

“I’m going to the tunnel,” Bosch said. “When they land, come in with backup.”

“No,” Aguila said. “I’m going with you.”

He said it in a way that invited no debate. He leaned down and took the radio off Ramos’s belt and picked up the flashlight. He gave the radio to Bosch.

“Tell them we are both going.”

Bosch radioed Corvo.

“Where’s Ramos?”

“We just lost Ramos. Me and Aguila are going to the tunnel. Alert the militia at EnviroBreed that we are coming through. We don’t want to get shot.”

He turned the radio off before Corvo could reply and dropped it on the ground next to the dead DEA agent. The other helicopter was almost on them now. They ran to the barn, their weapons held up and ready, and moved slowly around the outside until they were at the front and could see the bay door had been slid open. Wide enough for a man to pass through.

They went through and crouched in the darkness. Aguila began to sweep the flashlight’s beam around. It was a cavernous barn with stalls running along both sides to the back. There were crates used for trucking bulls to arenas stacked in the back along with towers made of bales of hay. Bosch saw a line of overhead lights running down the center of the building. He looked around and found the switch near the bay door.

Once the interior was lighted they moved down the aisle between the rows of stalls, Bosch taking the right and Aguila the left. The stalls were all empty, the bulls set free to roam the ranch. It was when they reached the back that they saw the opening to the tunnel.

A forklift was parked in the corner, holding a pallet of hay bales four feet off the ground. There was a four-foot-wide hole in the concrete floor where the pallet had sat. Zorrillo, or whoever the runner had been, had used the forklift to lift the pallet but there had been no one to drop it back down to hide his escape.

Bosch crouched down and moved to the edge of the hole and looked down. He saw a ladder leading about twelve feet down to a lighted passageway. He looked up at Aguila.

“Ready?”

The Mexican nodded.

Bosch went first. He climbed a few steps down the ladder and then dropped the rest of the way, bringing up his gun and ready to shoot. But there was no one in the tunnel as far as he could see. It wasn’t even like a tunnel. It was more of a hallway. It was tall enough to stand in and an electrical conduit ran along the ceiling feeding lights in steel cages every twenty feet. There was a slight curve to the left and so he could not see where it ended. He moved into the passageway and Aguila dropped down behind him.

“Okay,” Bosch whispered. “Let’s stay to the right. If there is shooting, I’ll go low and you go high.”

Aguila nodded and they began to move quickly through the tunnel. Bosch, trying to figure his bearings, believed they were heading east and slightly north. They covered the ground to the curve quickly and then pressed themselves hard against the wall as they moved into the second leg of the passage.

Bosch realized that the bend in the passage was too wide for them to still be on line with EnviroBreed. He stared down the last segment of the tunnel and saw that it was clear. He could see the exit ladder maybe fifty yards ahead. And he knew they were going somewhere other than EnviroBreed. He wished he hadn’t left the radio with Ramos’s body.

“Shit,” Harry whispered.

“What?” Aguila whispered back.

“Nothing. C’mon.”

They began to move again, covering the first twenty-five yards quickly and then slowing to a cautious and quieter approach to the exit ladder. Aguila switched to the right wall and they came upon the opening at the same time, both with guns extended upward, sweat getting in their eyes.

There was no light from the opening above them. Bosch took the flashlight from Aguila and put its beam through the hole. He could see exposed wooden rafters of a low ceiling in the room above. No one looked down at them. No one shot at them. No one did a thing. Harry listened for any sound but heard nothing. He nodded to Aguila to cover and holstered his gun. He started climbing the ladder, one hand holding the flashlight.

He was scared. In Vietnam, leaving one of Charlie’s tunnels always meant the end of fear. It was like being born again; you were leaving the darkness for safety and the hands of comrades. Out of the black and into the blue. But not this time; this time was the opposite.

When he reached the top, before rising through the opening, he flashed the beam around again but saw nothing. Then, like a turtle, he slowly moved his head out of the opening. The first thing he noticed in the beam was the sawdust everywhere on the floor. He climbed farther out, taking in the rest of the surroundings. It was some kind of storage room. There were steel shelves stocked with saw blades, boxes of sanding belts for industrial machinery. There were some hand tools and carpentry saws. One group of shelves were stacked with wooden dowel pegs, with different sizes on different shelves. Bosch immediately thought of the pegs attached to the baling wire that had been used to kill Kapps and Porter.

He moved fully into the room now and signaled to Aguila that it was safe to come up. Then Harry approached the storage room’s door.

It was unlocked and it opened into a huge warehouse with lines of machinery and work benches on one side and the completed product-unfinished furniture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers-stacked on the other. Light came from a single bulb that hung from a cross support beam. It was the night-light. Aguila came up behind him then. They were in Mexitec, Bosch knew.

At the far end of the warehouse were sets of double doors. One of these was open and they moved to it quickly. It led to a loading-dock area that was off the back alley Bosch had walked through the night before. There was a puddle at the bottom of the parking bay and he saw wet tire tracks leading into the alley. There was no one in sight. Zorrillo was long gone.

“Two tunnels,” Bosch said, unable to hide the dejection in his voice.

“Two tunnels,” Corvo said. “Ramos’s informant fucked us.”

Bosch and Aguila were sitting on chairs of unfinished pine watching Corvo pacing and looking like shit, like a man in charge of an operation that had lost two men, a helicopter and its main target. It had been nearly two hours since they had come up through the tunnel.

“How d’you mean?” Bosch asked.

“I mean the CI had to have known about the second tunnel. How’s he know about one and not the other? He set us up. He left Zorrillo the escape route. If I knew who he was I’d charge him with accessory in the death of a federal agent.”

“You don’t know?”

“Ramos didn’t register this one with me. Hadn’t gotten around to it.”

Bosch breathed a little easier.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” Corvo was saying. “I might as well never go back. I’m done, man. Done… Least you got your cop killer, Bosch. I got a shit sandwich.”

“Have you put out a Telex?” Bosch said to change the subject.

“Already out. To all stations, all law enforcement agencies. But it doesn’t matter. He’s long gone. He’ll probably go to the interior, lie low for a year and then start over. Right where he left off. Probably Michoacan, maybe farther down.”