Douglas Preston - Reliquary

Margo swam as quickly as she could through the tunnel, following the flickering light of Snow’s headlamp, expecting at any moment to feel the massive concussion of the SEAL charges bring the ancient stone ceiling down behind them. Ahead, Pendergast and Snow had stopped, and she pulled up beside them.

“We go down here,” Snow said, popping the regulator from his mouth and pointing downward. “Be careful not to scratch yourself, and for God’s sake don’t swallow anything. There’s an old iron pipe at the base of the tunnel here that leads—”

At that moment they felt, rather than heard, a vibration begin over their heads: a low, rhythmic rumbling that grew to a terrible intensity.

“What’s that?” Smithback gasped, coming up with D’Agosta. “The charges?”

“No,” Pendergast whispered. “Listen: it’s one continuous stream of sound. It must be the dumping of the Reservoir. Prematurely.”

They hung there in the foul liquid, mesmerized despite the danger by the long rolling sound of millions of gallons of water roaring down the ancient network of pipes that crossed and recrossed above their heads, heading directly for them.

“Thirty seconds until the rest of the charges go,” Pendergast said quietly, checking his watch.

Margo waited, trying to steady her breathing. She knew that if the charges failed, they’d be dead within minutes.

The tunnel began to vibrate violently, the surface of the water jiggling and dancing. Small pieces of masonry and cement began to rain down into the water around them. Snow tightened his mask and took a last look around, then sank beneath the surface. Smithback followed, pushing the protesting D’Agosta before him. Pendergast motioned Margo to go next. She sank into the darkness, trying to follow the faint light of Snow’s headlamp as it descended into a narrow, rust-coated pipe. She could see the ungainly thrashing of D’Agosta subside into more regular movements as he became used to breathing tank air.

The tunnel leveled out, then snaked around two bends. Margo took a quick look behind to reassure herself that Pendergast was following. In the dim light of the swirling orange effluent, she could see the FBI agent motion her forward.

Now, she could see the group pausing at a junction ahead of her. The ancient iron pipe ended and a gleaming steel tube continued onward. Beneath her feet, at the point where the two tunnels met, Margo could see a narrow tube leading downward. Snow gestured ahead, then pointed upward with his finger, indicating that the vent riser to the West Side Lateral was directly ahead.

Suddenly, there was a roar from behind them: an ominous, deep rolling sound, horribly magnified in the tight water-filled space. Then a sharp concussion sounded, and another, following one upon the other in rapid succession. Beneath the wildly flickering beam of his headlamp, Margo could see Snow’s eyes widen. The final set of charges had gone off barely in time, crushing the spillways from the Devil’s Attic, sealing it forever.

As Snow frantically signaled them toward the riser, Margo felt a sudden tug at her legs, as if a tidal undertow were pulling her back toward the rally point. The feeling stopped as quickly as it had begun, and the water around her seemed to grow strangely dense. For a split second she had the strange sensation of hanging motionless, suspended in the eye of a hurricane.

Then an enormous blast of overpressure boiled up from the iron pipe behind them, a roiling cyclone of muddy water that caused the tunnel itself to jerk and dance spasmodically. Margo felt herself battered against its iron flanks. Her mouthpiece came loose and she reached for it frantically, hands grabbing through the storm of bubbles and thrashing sediment that surrounded her. There was another burst of pressure and she felt herself forced downward, sucked into the pipe beneath her feet. She righted herself desperately and fought to swim back up to the junction, but a horrible suction only pulled her deeper into unguessable depths. The roaring sound continued like the rushing of blood in her ears. She felt herself being knocked from side to side against the walls of the pipe, a piece of flotsam in the flood. Far above her head now she could see, through the dim illumination of Snow’s headlamp, Pendergast staring at her, his hand reaching down, tiny as a doll’s, from what seemed countless miles away. Then there was another blast, the narrow tunnel collapsed above her head with a shriek of protesting metal, and as the endless rumbling continued, she felt herself falling ever farther into a watery darkness.

= 63 =

HAYWARD JOGGED UP the Mall toward the Bandshell and Cherry Hill, Officer Carlin by her side. For all his bulk, he ran easily, with the grace of a natural athlete. Didn’t even break a sweat. The encounter with the moles, the tear gas—even the chaos they’d found when they regained the street—hadn’t fazed him.

Here, in the darkness of the Park, the noise that had seemed so distant before was now much louder: a strange, ululating cry, continuously rising and falling, possessing a life of its own. Odd flickers and gouts of flame arose, blushing the underside of the ragged clouds overhead with patches of bright crimson.

“Jesus,” Carlin said as he jogged. “It sounds like a million people, all trying to murder each other.”

“Maybe that’s what it is,” Hayward replied as she watched a troop of National Guardsmen double-timing northward ahead of them.

They trotted over Bow Bridge and skirted the Ramble, approaching the rear line of the police defenses. A long, unbroken string of news vehicles was parked along the Transverse, engines idling. Overhead, a fat-bellied helicopter glided, its huge prop smacking the air as it moved at treetop level. A row of policemen had formed a ring around the Castle terrace, and a lieutenant waved her through. With Carlin in tow, she crossed the terrace, then moved up the steps toward the Castle ramparts. There—amidst a milling throng of police brass, city officials, National Guardsmen, and nervous-looking men speaking into portable telephones—was Chief Horlocker, looking about ten years older than when Hayward had seen him barely four hours before. He was speaking with a slight, well-dressed woman in her late fifties. Or, rather, he was listening as the woman spoke in clipped, decisive sentences. Hayward moved closer and recognized the woman as the leader of Take Back Our City, the mother of Pamela Wisher.

“…atrocity unlike anything ever seen in this city before!” Mrs. Wisher was saying. “A dozen of my personal friends are lying in hospital beds as we speak. And who knows how many hundreds more from among our ranks have been wounded? I promise you, and I promise the mayor, that lawsuits are going to fall like rain on this city. Like rain, Chief Horlocker!”

Horlocker made a valiant attempt. “Mrs. Wisher, our reports indicate that it was the younger element among your own marchers that incited this rioting—”

But Mrs. Wisher was not listening. “And when this is all over,” she continued, “and the Park and the streets are scrubbed free of the filth and ruin that litter them now, our organization will be stronger than ever. If the mayor feared us before tonight, he will fear us ten times more tomorrow! The death of my daughter was the spark that set our cause on fire, but this outrageous assault on our liberties and our persons has set it ablaze! And don’t think that…”

Hayward backed off, deciding this was perhaps not the best time to approach the Chief. She felt a tugging at her sleeve, and turned to find Carlin looking at her. Wordlessly, he pointed over the Esplanade toward the Great Lawn. Hayward glanced over, then froze, stupefied.

In the close summer darkness, the Great Lawn had become a plain of fire. Several dozen groups of people were clashing, withdrawing, attacking, retreating, in a scene of pandemonium. The flickering light of numerous small fires in the trash cans that dotted the outskirts showed that the lawn, once a beautiful carpet of grass, had become a sea of dirt. The combination of darkness and dirt made it impossible to determine which of the rioters were homeless and which were not. To the west and east, double lines of police vehicles had positioned themselves, headlights pointed in toward the scene. In one corner, a large group of well-dressed marchers—Take Back Our City’s last remaining elite remnants—were retreating behind the police barricades, apparently realizing that the midnight vigil could not possibly take place. Squads of police and National Guardsmen were moving forward slowly from the periphery, breaking up fistfights, wielding batons, making arrests.