The burning wire lr-9

by Jeffery Deaver

  And what bigger outfit could he find than Algonquin Consolidated, one of the top companies in the country?

  A half hour earlier he and his partner had gotten a call from his troubleman that there'd been a curious fluctuation in power in the supply to a subway system near Wall Street. Some of the MTA lines had their own power plants, miniature versions of Algonquin's MOM. But this line, the one rumbling nearby right now, was powered purely by Algonquin juice. The company transmitted 27,500 volts from Queens to substations along the line, which stepped it down and converted it to 625 volts, DC, for the third rails.

  A gauge in a nearby MTA substation reported that for a fraction of a second there'd been a dropout. Not enough to cause any disruption of subway service but enough to be concerned-considering the incident at the bus station early yesterday.

  And, damn, an Algonquin employee was the one behind it. Ray Galt, a senior troubleman in Queens.

  Barzan had seen arc flashes-everyone in the business had at one time or another-and the spectacle of the burning lightning, the explosion, the eerie hum was enough to make him promise himself he'd never take a chance with juice. PPE gloves and boots, insulated hot sticks, no metal on the job. A lot of people thought they could outthink juice.

  Well, you can't. And you can't outrun it either.

  Now-his partner up top briefly-Barzan was looking for anything that might've caused the current to dip. It was cool here and deserted, but not quiet. Motors hummed and subways shook the ground like earthquakes. Yep, he liked it here, among the cables and the smell of hot insulation, rubber, oil. New York city is a ship, with as much structure under the surface as above. And he knew all the decks as well as he knew his neighborhood in the Bronx.

  He couldn't figure out what had caused the fluctuation. The Algonquin lines all seemed fine. Maybe-

  He paused, seeing something that made him curious.

  What is that? he wondered. Like all linemen, whether up top or in the dark grid, he knew his territory and at the dim end of the tunnel was something that wasn't right: A cable was spliced to one of the breaker panels feeding the subway system for no logical reason. And, instead of running down into the ground, to reach the subway, this went up and ran across the ceiling of the tunnel. It was well spliced-you judged a lineman's skill by how well he joined lines-so it'd been done by a pro. But who? And why?

  He stood and started to follow it.

  Then gasped in fright. Another Algonquin worker was standing in the tunnel. The man seemed even more surprised to run into somebody. In the dimness Barzan didn't recognize him.

  "Hi, there." Barzan nodded. Neither shook hands. They were wearing PPE gloves, bulky-thick enough for live-wire work provided the rest of the dielectric was adequate.

  The other guy blinked and wiped sweat. "Didn't expect anybody down here."

  "Me either. You hear about the fluctuation?"

  "Yeah." The man said something else but Barzan wasn't really listening. He was wondering what the guy was doing exactly, looking at his laptop-all linemen used these, of course, everything on the grid being computerized. But he wasn't checking voltage levels or switchgear integrity. On the screen was a video image. It looked like the construction site that was pretty much overhead. Like what you'd see from a security camera with good resolution.

  And then Barzan glanced at the guy's Algonquin ID badge.

  Oh, shit.

  Raymond Galt, Senior Technical Service Operator.

  Barzan felt his breath hiss from his lungs, recalling the supervisor that morning calling in all the linemen and explaining about Galt and what he'd done.

  He now realized that the spliced cable was rigged to create another arc flash!

  Be cool, he told himself. It was pretty dark down here and Galt couldn't see his face very well; he might've missed Barzan's surprised reaction. And the company and the police had made the announcement only a little while ago. Maybe Galt had been down here for the past couple of hours and didn't know the cops were looking for him.

  "Well, lunchtime. I'm starving." Barzan started to pat his stomach and then decided that was overacting. "Better get back upstairs. My partner'll be wondering what I'm doing down here."

  "Hey, take care," Galt said and turned back to the computer.

  Barzan too turned to head toward the closest exit, stifling the urge to flee.

  He should have given into it, he quickly realized.

  The instant Barzan turned, he was aware of Galt reaching down fast and lifting something from beside him.

  Barzan started to run but Galt was even faster and, glancing back, Barzan had only a brief image of a lineman's heavy fiberglass hot stick, swinging in an arc into his hard hat. The blow stunned him and sent him tumbling to the filthy floor.

  He was focused on a line carrying 138,000v, six inches from his face, when the stick slammed into him once more.

  Chapter 35

  AMELIA SACHS WAS doing what she did best.

  Perhaps not best.

  But doing what she loved most. What made her feel the most alive.

  Driving.

  Pushing metal and flesh to its limits, speeding fast along city streets, seemingly impossible routes, considering the dense traffic, human and vehicular. Weaving, skidding. When you drove fast, you didn't ease the vehicle along the course, you didn't dance; you pounded the car through its moves, you slammed and jerked and slugged.

  These were called muscle cars for a reason.

  The 1970 model year 428 Ford Torino Cobra, heir to the Fairlane, pushed out 405 horsepower with a nifty 447 foot pounds of torque. Sachs had the optional four-speed transmission, of course, which she needed for her heavy foot. The shifter was tough and sticky and if you didn't get it right you'd have adjustments aplenty, which might include flushing gear teeth out of the reservoir. It wasn't like today's forgiving six-speed syncromeshes made for midlife-crisis businessmen with Bluetooths stuck into their ear and dinner reservations on their mind.

  The Cobra wheezed, growled, whined; it had many voices.

  Sachs tensed. She gave a touch of horn but before the sound waves made it to the lazy driver about to change lanes without looking, she was past him.

  Sachs admitted that she missed her most recent car, a Chevy Camaro SS, the one she and her father had worked on together. It had been a victim of the perp in a recent case. But her father had reminded her it wasn't wise to put too much person into your car. It was part of you, but it wasn't you. And it wasn't your child or your best friend. The rods, wheels, the cylinders, the drums, the tricky electronics could turn indifferent or lazy and strand you. They could also betray and kill you, and if you thought the conglomeration of steel and plastic and copper and aluminum cared, you were wrong.

  Amie, a car has only the soul you put into it. No more and no less. And never forget that.

  So, yes, she regretted the loss of her Camaro and always would. But she now drove a fine vehicle that suited her. And that, incongruously, sported as a steering wheel ornament the Camaro's insignia, a present from Pammy, who'd removed it reverently from the Chevy's corpse for Sachs to mount on the Ford.

  Pound on the brake for the intersection, heel-toe downshift to rev match, check left, check right, clutch out and rip up through the gears. The speedometer hit fifty. Then kissed sixty, seventy. The blue light on the dashboard, which she hardly even saw, flashed as fast as a pounding heart.

  Sachs was presently on the West Side Highway, venerable Route 9A, having made the transition from the Henry Hudson several miles behind her. Heading south, she streaked past familiar sights, the helipad, Hudson River Park, the yacht docks and the tangled entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Then with the financial center buildings on her right, she hurried on past the massive construction site where the towers had been, aware even at this frantic time that if ever a void could cast a shadow it was here.

  A controlled skid angled the Cobra onto Battery Place, and Sachs flew east into the warren of lower Manhattan.

  She had
the tip of the ear bud inserted and a crackling sound interrupted her concentration as she deftly skidded around two cabs, noting the shocked expression below the Sikh's turban.

  "Sachs!"

  "What, Rhyme?"

  "Where are you?"

  "Almost there."

  She lost rubber on all four tires as she made a ninety-degree turn and inserted the Ford between curb and car, one needle never below 45, the other never below 5,000.

  She was making for Whitehall Street. Near Stone. Rhyme had had a conversation with Charlie Sommers, and it had yielded unexpected results. The Special Projects man had speculated that Galt might try something other than an arc flash; Sommers was betting the man would simply try to electrify a public area with enough voltage to kill passersby. He'd turn them into part of the circuit and run juice through them somehow. It was easier and more efficient, the man had explained, and you didn't need nearly as much voltage.

  Rhyme had concluded that the fire in the uptown substation was really a distraction to keep them focused away from Galt's attack on the real location: probably downtown. He'd looked over the list of lava and volcano exhibits, and found the one that was the farthest away from Harlem, where everybody was looking: Amsterdam College. It was a community college specializing in office skills and associate degrees in the business professions. But their liberal arts division was having a show on geologic formations, including an exhibit about volcanoes.

  "I'm here, Rhyme." Sachs skidded the Torino to a stop in front of the school, leaving twin tails of black on the gray asphalt. She was out of the car before the tire smoke from the wheel wells had dissipated. The smell ominously reminded her of Algonquin substation MH-10… and though she tried to avoid it, a repeat image of the black-and-red dots in the body of Luis Martin. As she jogged toward the school's entrance, she was, for once, thankful that a jolt of arthritic pain shot through her knees, partially taking her attention off the harsh memories.

  "I'm looking the place over, Rhyme. It's big. Bigger than I expected." Sachs wasn't searching a scene so she'd foregone the video uplink.

  "You've got eighteen minutes until the deadline."

  She scanned the six-story community college, from which students, professors and staff were leaving, quickly, uneasiness on their faces. Tucker McDaniel and Lon Sellitto had decided to evacuate the place. They hurried outside, clutching purses and computers and books, and moved away from the building. Almost everyone looked up at one point in their exodus.

  Always, in a post 9/11 world, looking up.

  Another car arrived, and a woman in a dark suit climbed out. It was a fellow detective, Nancy Simpson. She jogged up to Sachs.

  "What do we have, Amelia?"

  "Galt's rigged something in the school, we think. We don't know what yet. I'm going inside and looking around. Could you interview them"-a nod at the evacuees-"and see if anybody spotted Galt? You have his picture?"

  "On my PDA."

  Sachs nodded and turned to the front of the school once more, uncertain how to proceed, recalling what Sommers had said. She knew where a bomb might be set, where a sniper would position himself. But the threat from electricity could come from anywhere.

  She asked Rhyme, "What exactly did Charlie say Galt might rig?"

  "The most efficient way would be to use the victim like a switch. He'd wire door handles or stair railings with the hot source and then the floor with the return. Or the floor might just be a natural ground if it was wet. The circuit's open until the vic touches the handle or railing. Then the current flows through them. It wouldn't take much voltage at all to kill somebody. The other way is to just have somebody touch a live source with two hands. That could send enough voltage through your chest to kill you. But it's not as efficient."

  Efficient… sick word to use under the circumstances.

  Sirens chirped and barked behind her. Fire, NYPD Emergency Service Unit and medical personnel had begun to arrive.

  She waved a greeting to Bo Haumann, the head of ESU, a lean, grizzled former drill sergeant. He nodded back and began deploying his officers to help get the evacuees to safety and to form into tactical response teams, searching for Raymond Galt and any accomplices.

  Hesitating, then pushing on the glass portion of the door rather than the metal handle, she walked into the lobby of the school, against the crowd. She wanted to call out to everyone not to touch any metal but was afraid if she did that, she'd start a panic and people would be injured or killed in a crush. Besides, they still had fifteen minutes until the deadline.

  Inside there were plenty of metal railings, knobs, stairs and panels on the floor. But no visual clues about whether or not they were connected to a wire somewhere.

  "I don't know, Rhyme," she said uncertainly. "There's metal, sure. But most of the floor's carpeted or covered with linoleum. That's gotta be a bad conductor."

  Was he just going to start a fire and burn the place down?

  Thirteen minutes.

  "Keep looking, Sachs."

  She tried Charlie Sommers's noncontact current detector and it gave occasional indications of voltage but nothing higher than house current. And the source wasn't in the places that would be the most likely to kill or injure anyone.

  Through the window, a flashing yellow light caught her eye. It was an Algonquin Consolidated truck with a sign on the side, reading Emergency Maintenance. She recognized two of the four occupants, Bernie Wahl, the security chief, and Bob Cavanaugh, the Operations VP. They ran up to a cluster of officers, including Nancy Simpson.

  It was as she was looking through the plate glass at the three of them that Sachs noticed for the first time what was next door to the school. A construction site for a large high-rise. The crews were doing the ironwork, bolting and welding the girders into place.

  She looked back to the lobby but felt a slam in her gut. She spun back to gaze at the job site.

  Metal. The entire structure was pure metal.

  "Rhyme," she said softly, "I don't think it's the school at all."

  "What do you mean?"

  She explained.

  "Steel… Sure, Sachs, it makes sense. Try to get the workers down. I'll call Lon and have him coordinate with ESU."

  She pushed out the door and ran toward the trailer that was the general contractor's office for the high-rise construction. She glanced up at the twenty, twenty-five stories of metal that were about to become a live wire, on which easily two hundred workers were perched. And counted only two small elevators to carry them down to safety.

  The time was ten minutes until one p.m.

  Chapter 36

  "WHAT'S GOING ON?" Sam Vetter asked the waiter in the hotel dining room. He and his fellow lunchers were staring out the window at what seemed to be an evacuation of both the school and the construction site between the college and the hotel. Police cars and fire trucks were pulling up.

  "It's safe, isn't it?" a patron asked. "Here, I mean?"

  "Oh, yessir, very safe," the waiter assured.

  Vetter knew the man didn't have a clue what was safe and what wasn't. And being in the construction business, Vetter immediately checked out the ratio of emergency exits to occupancy.

  One of the businessmen at his table, the man from Santa Fe, asked, "You hear about that thing yesterday? The explosion at the power station? Maybe it's related to that. They were talking terrorists."

  Vetter had heard a news story or two, but only in passing. "What happened?"

  "Some guy doing something to the grid. You know, the electric company." The man nodded out the window. "Maybe he did the same thing at the school. Or the construction site."

  "But not us," another patron worried. "Not at the hotel."

  "No, no, not us." The waiter smiled and vanished. Vetter wondered which exit route he was presently sprinting down.

  People were rising and walking to the windows. From here the restaurant offered a good view of the excitement.

  Vetter heard: "Naw, it's not terrorists. It's som
e disgruntled worker. Like a lineman for the company. They showed his picture on TV."

  Then Sam Vetter had a thought. He asked one of his fellow businessmen, "You know what he looks like?"

  "Just he's in his forties. And is maybe wearing company overalls and a yellow hard hat. The overalls're blue."

  "Oh, my God. I think I saw him. Just a little while ago."

  "What?"

  "I saw a worker in blue overalls and a yellow hard hat. He had a roll of electrical cable over his shoulder."

  "You better tell the cops."

  Vetter rose. He started away, then paused, reaching into his pocket. He was worried that his new friends might think he was trying to stiff them for the bill. He'd heard that New Yorkers were very suspicious of people and he didn't want his first step into the world of big-city business to be marred by something like that. He peeled off a ten for his sandwich and beer, then remembered where he was and left twenty.

  "Sam, don't worry about it! Hurry."

  He tried to remember exactly where the man had climbed from the manhole and where he'd stood to make his phone call before walking into the school. If he could recall the time of the call, more or less, maybe the police could trace it. The cell company could tell them who he'd been talking to.

  Vetter hurried down the escalator, two steps at a time, and then ran into the lobby. He spotted a police officer, who was standing near the front desk.

  "Officer, excuse me. But I just heard… you're looking for somebody who works for the electric company? That man who was behind that explosion yesterday?"

  "That's right, sir. Do you know anything about it?"

  "I think I might've seen him. I don't know for sure. Maybe it's not him. But I thought I should say something."

  "Hold on." The man lifted his bulky radio and spoke into it. "This is Portable Seven Eight Seven Three to Command Post. I think I've got a witness. Might've seen the suspect, K."