“No argument,” I agreed, getting my own second slice from the box. “Everything since the attack at the factory has been a complete bust. The fact that we can’t find Her Honor has got me to thinking … what if the attack was a diversion?”
“Her way of keeping us busy, while she finalizes her plans,” Kennedy mused.
“Any luck getting Fairwinds to help?” I asked Zian.
“None whatsoever,” he admitted. “Fairwinds Inc. has ceased to exist.”
“They folded the corporation?”
“Weren’t you listening to me, Bell?” he snapped. “I said they ceased to exist. I tried accessing their databases only to find the server disconnected. All traces of their corporate website have been scrubbed. Every record of their business dealings just went down a black hole so deep even I couldn’t find them. On top of that, every bit of paperwork I found on their official incorporation is gone like it’d never been there.”
I growled my frustration. The damn Conclave had apparently just decided to go from Plan A to Plan V. That is, they’d just bailed and left me alone to deal with their mess.
“So much for back-up,” I spat.
“You were expecting something else?”
“Yeah, at least somebody to point us in the right direction to solve our mutual problem,” I admitted, letting my frustration show.
“We know where they are going to be,” Kennedy pointed out. “We even have a rough idea of when. The only real fly in the ointment I’m seeing is that the spot’s going to be under constant surveillance from now until—”
Her phone rang before she could finish the thought. She looked as annoyed as I felt as she picked it up.
“Kennedy,” she answered.
Her face went from annoyed to concerned as she listened to what her caller had to say.
“Yeah, I’m near a TV,” she said, snapping her fingers at me. “Hang on.”
I got the remote and turned my TV on. It was already tuned to Headliner News. What greeted me was something I hadn’t seen since that horrible day in September so many years ago. A thick cloud of dust was billowing out of the area surrounding the Cinema Leone. What little I could discern through the cloud showed nothing but ruins and rubble as far as the camera could see. The caption at the bottom read “Series of Explosions In Downtown Area.”
“My God,” I breathed.
Zian said a prayer under his breath in Ancient Greek.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here,” Kennedy said to whoever was on the other end. “Give me a bit and I’ll come in. Yeah, you be careful too.”
She hung up. “That bitch just made her move.”
I shook my head. “Why’d you agree to go in?”
“Whatever’s going on, we’re going to need a set of eyes on the ground to figure out what’s changed,” Kennedy explained.
“I can do that with my drones once I get them prepped from the Indigo,” Zian protested.
“Yeah, well, can your damn drones figure out how many cops, feds, Homeland Security guys, and who knows what else is going to be watching that site?”
Kennedy winced as she finished. It had probably come out a little harsher than she intended.
“No reason we can’t do it both ways,” I said, smoothing over the waters. “Zian, before you get those drones in the air, pull every schematic of the area that’s on file. Streets, buildings, sewers, gas mains … if it was part of the permanent structure, I want to know about it.”
Zian tapped the laptop he’d just finished setting up in my living room. “Give me a few minutes and you can have it all.”
“Can you send me a mapping program with that?” I asked, reaching for my own laptop and powering it on.
“Easy peasy,” Zian confirmed while his fingers did their usual dance.
Kennedy was picking up her purse when Zian stopped her. “Before you go, Candice, I want you to have something.” He handed her an earbud. “It’s tuned into a comm program on our laptops. Whatever you can’t say on camera that’s important, just say when no one’s looking.”
Kennedy pulled back her hair to stick the bud in her right ear. “Soon as I’m sure I’ve learned everything I can, I’ll make a break for here ASAP.”
None of us had anything to say after that. Kennedy gave my shoulder a quick squeeze before going out the door. Zian stayed glued to his laptop.
***
I kept the TV going while we worked. Just like every other great disaster ever broadcast, early reports were contradictory at best. Fifty people were dead. A hundred people were hurt. The buildings were empty. The damage to property was massive but how much was still standing was obscured by thick clouds of dust. The clouds themselves were full of every harmful substance humankind had used to build cities in the last two centuries: lead, asbestos, other things best forgotten. The worst part was that these clouds were so large that they were spreading over huge chunks of the city.
With the mayor absent, the vice-mayor was left to declare a state of emergency. Martial law was in effect, with a curfew imposed on citizens after ten in the evening. The cops themselves were unable to go in due to the heavy, harmful debris cloud. The best they could do was set up a perimeter and keep fellow citizens out of harm’s way. The FBI, CDC, and Homeland Security had been notified and every possible measure had been taken to prevent another potential terrorist attack. On camera, their estimated ETA was within the next twenty-four hours. Off camera, Kennedy told a different story.
“The feds won’t be out here until the day after tomorrow at the soonest,” Kennedy whispered through her earbud. “Until then, City Hall is on its own.”
“Along with the rest of us,” I said as I ruled out yet another initially promising approach into the zone on my laptop. “More than enough time for Her Honor to finish what she started today.”
“Don’t the cops have any drones of their own to look things over?” Zian wanted to know.
“They were supposed to have been provided by Homeland Security about six months ago,” Kennedy told him. “Through what they labeled ‘a bureaucratic error,’ the requisition request managed to get lost in the city machinery.”
“Somehow I doubt that was an accident,” I muttered. “How’s the search for survivors going?”
Kennedy sighed. “Better than it would have been without Zian’s drones doing recon … but it’s a long way from great.”
I felt sick inside. Between the infrared scanners on Zian’s drones and some discreet info dump of our findings into the PD’s systems, we’d managed to save some people. But not all of them. That madwoman of a mayor had just snuffed out, at the last count, somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred lives. I wanted to pay back the favor, with interest.
“I think I’ve done all I can to help search and rescue,” Zian reported. “How soon can you get back?”
“Should be going off shift in about an hour,” Kennedy replied. “Hope you’ve got a plan by then, Bell.”
“When we do, you’ll be the second to know,” I promised. “Talk soon.”
I shut off the comm and went back to the map. I was looking for something, anything that could get us into the zone in its current state. The streets that led to the Orion Project area—Bloch, Hammett and Cooke—had all been turned into gaping chasms that not even Michael Jordan could have jumped across. Several key buildings around the zone had been leveled by the blasts to form makeshift but effective barriers nobody was climbing over or pushing through. Even the sewers had been affected, according to Zian’s drones. Every access tunnel that was on record had been collapsed by the explosions.
“Bingo,” I said at last. “119 Wolfman Lane, just off of Cooke, a private house that just got demolished about a week ago after the last resident in it died.”
“And a vacant lot helps us how again?” Zian asked.
“By what’s under it,” I
told him. “There’s a 1950s bomb shelter in the ground. The main entrance is on Wolfman but it’s also got an auxiliary exit tunnel that’ll take us right next to the Leone.”
“Assuming the exit itself didn’t collapse in the blast,” Zian pointed out.
“The tunnel runs right under the sewer line,” I said, warming up to the idea. “Might have a little leakage, but everything built down there was meant to withstand A-bombs. I’d guess it’s managed to hold up under this.”
Zian frowned. “What are the coordinates for the exit on that tunnel?”
I gave them to him. He sent one of his drones through the cloud to find it. One infrared scan later, he’d found a manhole cover that was clear of heavy rubble. More importantly, it looked like nobody was around watching it.
Zian peered closer at the readouts. “Looks like every building inside the Orion Project zone has been leveled … with three exceptions.”
There was no prize for guessing which three … the pyramid locations. I reopened the comm channel to Kennedy. Once I confirmed she was alone in her Nissan, I told her about my discovery.
“Are you kidding me?” Kennedy asked. “We’re supposed to trust a seventy-year-old fallout shelter to be clear enough for us to make a grand entrance?” She sighed. “It’s up to us, ain’t it? And just us.”
“No back-up, no reinforcements, no second chances if we get it wrong,” I confirmed. “That’s why we’re going to get it right the first time.”
“I’ll swing by my place to grab some clips for my Smith and Wesson,” Kennedy said.
A drone landed on the balcony. Its upper compartment opened to reveal a brown-paper package. I looked at Zian.
“Some party favors to help us take care of those pyramids,” Zian explained as he got up to retrieve the package.
***
We drove to the disaster area in Zian’s Prius. Thanks to its modified engine, it could run silent when on battery power, which is handy when you’re trying to evade authorities on patrol. We had to run without headlights, but Zian compensated by using night-vision goggles. The cloud of debris muted the usual glare of the street lights. Before we left, another of his drones brought over some World War I-era gas masks to keep the shit in the air out of our lungs. We’d use showers to get the soup off our skins when this was over.
The fallout shelter entrance had a little dirt and grass covering it up but it was easy enough to find. The dusty, broken-down interior of the bunker was little better than an abandoned cave, all exposed metal rebar and decaying stone. We moved, tapped, and banged just about everything in sight to find the hatch to the tunnel.
It turned out to be in the floor in the far right corner of the pantry. It was an old-fashioned submarine-style hatch with a few traces of rust, hidden under an upside-down, half-rotted wicker basket. It took all three of us pulling at that thing for it to spring open. The body heat we kicked up in the process slightly fogged up the lenses on my mask. It reminded me of my time in the Navy and the summer I served on a submarine.
We stared down into the black mouth of the now open tunnel and heard a dull roaring sound that was loud even through the masks.
“Sounds like a river,” Kennedy said, her voice coming in clearly through my earbud. “A pretty good-sized one.”
“Acoustics play all kinds of tricks in tunnels like this,” I told her, taking the lead down the hatch. “Probably nothing but a stream singing into the mic.”
I can be such a freaking optimist. At the bottom of the ladder, a veritable cascade of water was shooting across the tunnel. I guessed the blasts had cracked open the sewer line above us more than I thought.
“That what you call ‘some leakage’, Bell?” Zian asked me.
“Oh, shut up, Zian,” I retorted. “At least the current’s flowing in the right direction or we really would be in trouble.”
“Seeing as the only way we’re getting where we need to go is by shooting these rapids without a boat,” Kennedy pointed out, “I’d say that we’re still in deep trouble.”
I took a minute to think about it. “The tunnel’s a straight shot to where we need to go. The trick will be all of us grabbing the exit ladder at the right time.”
“Might want to form a human chain to make sure none of us get swept away,” Kennedy suggested.
Zian was the last of us to come down. He got low enough to grab Kennedy’s hand on the ladder. I grabbed Kennedy’s lower hand and readied myself to let go. “On three … one, two, three!”
The water hit me as hard as I imagine Zian’s Prius had hit the Berserker the other night. I tightened my grip on Kennedy’s wrist as the water carried us along. It was a bitch keeping my head above water—those antique gas masks made for poor aqualungs. I began to realize that I had just made a big mistake. The water was going too fast. I’d have an easier time catching a bullet with my hand than I would the bottom rungs of the ladder at this pace.
Then, thankfully, the current slowed down as the tunnel angled upwards. It still had enough force to push us along but nowhere near the initial hard jolt that had gotten us started. A quick look behind me confirmed that Kennedy had as firm a grip on Zian as I did on her. I was able to catch the exit ladder with no trouble at all.
Soon we had climbed up to the exit and I was pushing open the manhole cover. A quick three hundred and sixty-degree peek showed the coast to be clear of humans, if not the nastiest smog cloud this city had ever seen. We all clambered out and spent a few minutes checking over our gear. Zian had had the foresight to put everything in waterproof packs and all our stuff, from mine and Kennedy’s guns to the low-yield explosive “party favors,” was as dry as they’d been at my place.
I couldn’t say the same for our clothes, though. Everything from my army jacket to my combat boots was soaked.
Zian checked out his smartphone. “We’ve got a new problem.”
I groaned. “The old ones weren’t bad enough? What’s this one?”
“I don’t know how,” Zian said, “but we just managed to lose a little over an entire day in about twenty-six seconds.”
It took a moment or two to take it in. Kennedy was the first to get it on board.
“That’s why the water was so fast when we got started,” she suggested. “Time was speeding up.”
“Probably due to the ley lines being tapped for Galatas’ grand opening,” I deduced. “Nothing we can do about it. How much time we got left?”
While I couldn’t see Zian’s face through the gas mask, his body posture spoke volumes. “Fifteen minutes and eleven seconds.”
I felt my nerves go into a coma at his words. They did that every time a real crisis was on, giving me space to think my way out of the jam.
“We got three pyramids to take out and there’s three of us,” I said.
“Fair division of labor,” Kennedy responded. “How ’bout one of those explosives?”
Zian handed her one. “It’s rigged to a timer. Make sure you set it to give you enough time to get clear.”
“I’ll take the one in the Cinema Leone,” I volunteered. “You two grab the outer pyramids. Keep in touch through the earbuds.”
Zian handed me another explosive package and we went our separate ways.
Chapter twenty-eight
Desperate measures
I had to rely on my smartphone’s Google maps app to steer me towards the cinema. The fog from the debris was at its thickest there and it seemed like my way was blocked by some ruin or pile of rubble every few seconds. The way the particles clung in the air, I almost wondered if whatever had sped up time in the tunnel was now keeping the dust from settling.
“How close is everybody?” I asked through the mic.
“If my app’s working right, should be just about there,” said Kennedy.
“I think I’m close too,” Zian chimed in.
I took a qui
ck check of the timer. Eleven minutes and counting.
“Any opposition that you can make out?” I asked, thinking I saw a structure that was standing ahead of me.
“Nothing here but me and the ruins, far as I can tell,” Kennedy reported.
“Pretty clear at my end,” Zian said. “Well, clear isn’t the proper word for it maybe, but nobody else around so far.”
“Sounds like I might be the one who ends up entertaining guests,” I said. “Stay safe.”
I hadn’t been hallucinating. The distinctive red carpet that Mr. Nicholls had never gotten around to replacing told me I had arrived at the cinema. I approached the intact front door with caution but there was nobody there. Why would there have been? The street outside the entrance had been bombed out and anybody dropping in by air was going to be just as lost as I would have been without my smartphone.
Just the same, I stepped to the side of the door before giving it a slow, careful push. Nobody inside. I went in.
By that point, it was getting too hard to see my way around with the mask on. The interior was clear of the dust so I took a chance and pulled it off before depositing it under the cash register at the ancient concession stand.
Then I heard chanting coming from inside the auditorium. According to the layout of the movie house that Zian had made for my phone, that was also where my pyramid should be. I crept up to the side of the double-doors to the theater, listening for any sign of trouble.
“Just got to my pyramid,” Zian said in my earbud. “Coast is … well, that is—”
“Get your drift, Zian,” I whispered. “What about you, Kennedy?”
“See mine just around the corner,” Kennedy replied. “Got a similar lack of human life around me. That whispering because you’ve found our hostess?”
“Maybe,” I acknowledged. “Whoever it is, sounds like they’re getting the party prepped. Initiating radio silence.”
The double door on the far side had been mangled a bit, but by sliding across its intact twin I got a look into the auditorium—and saw Her Honor as I doubt any of her constituents had ever seen her before.
Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1) Page 24
