by Rachel Caine
Wind noise.
No, jet noise. Someone was calling her from a plane. "Hello?" She couldn't hear a damn thing. The connection was terrible, and the van she was in was rattling as well. She blocked her other ear and concentrated. "Hello? Anyone there?"
The answer, if there was one, was lost in the dull thump of the van's tires going over railroad tracks. There was a line of vehicles passing through the SubTropolis gates, most of them 18-wheelers. Cole slowed the van to a crawl.
She listened for another few seconds, but the connection cut out.
"Anything important?" he asked.
"Couldn't tell," she said. She checked the caller ID, but as she'd expected, it was an air phone. "I hope not."
They edged forward slowly. When they got to the guard station, Cole presented ID that Lucia didn't doubt was absolutely authentic. The guard waved him on, and they passed into a tunnel.
She'd expected it to be dark, but SubTropolis was surprisingly bright. The tunnel was huge and well-lit, the limestone it was carved from reflecting the brilliance.
"These guys have got some balls, setting up something down here. This place has everything. Post offices, restaurants, hell, they keep film reels somewhere. A few billion in inventory stored down here, at least. Not exactly low-profile."
"Maybe that's the point," she said. "Hiding in plain sight." She leaned over to look past the front seat at the empty, seemingly endless stretch of tunnel. "How far do we have to go?" It was too late to realize that she didn't like this kind of place, with the weight of so much rock over her head as they descended. Her palms were getting damp. The ceiling, high as it was, seemed oppressively heavy.
"Long ways," Cole said, which was not reassuring. "We make a right up ahead at Huspuckney Road, then a left on 8800."
She was starting to seriously regret suggesting this, not so much for the potential danger ahead but for the uncomfortable feeling of claustrophobia that she was battling. Stupid. She was in a van, which should have been much more claustrophobic than the spacious tunnel they were traversing. But she could get out of the van. There were only two ways out of the tunnel: forward and back.
"You okay?" Cole was watching her. She nodded and forced a smile. "You'll let me know if you plan to freak out, okay?"
"Remember who you're talking to," she said. "I don't have a reputation for freaking out."
"Yeah. Those are the ones you have to worry about." Mercifully, he left her alone. She found that closing her eyes didn't help, so she finally resorted to clinging tight-lipped to the seat, fingernails digging in to the bending point. They slowed. "All right. It's up ahead. Here's the drill. I'm going to get out and scout around, you stay in the van and monitor. I'll keep my walkie channel open. I get into trouble, you wait until I give the code phrase, which is 'electrical short. Okay?"
"Yes," she muttered. "Fine. Absolutely." He gave her one last assessing look as he pulled into a parking spot off the road, next to a rough-textured limestone pillar, and jammed the van into Park. "We good?"
"Fine," she repeated. "I'll be okay. You go." He shook his head, clearly not believing her—smart man—and climbed out of the passenger seat and into the murky dimness of the windowless back, where even someone staring in the window would have trouble spotting her. He nodded, locked up and sauntered toward a big industrial building that looked oddly lost in the cavernous open spaces. This was just so weird. She caught herself breathing too fast, and deliberately slowed down. Biofeedback. She'd survived traumas and tortures; she could survive a short visit underground.
Cole even walked like a working man—as if tired, in no particular hurry. He picked something overhead and traced it with a stare as he walked, clearly intent on his own business. She could hear the crunch of his work boots on rock as he walked to the back dock of the warehouse. It was labeled J&J Electroplating—Warehouse and Distribution Center. No trucks were lined up just now. Cole climbed the steps and opened an unmarked door. It closed behind him.
"Hey!" Not Cole's voice, someone else's. It came from the walkie-talkie she was holding. He'd already been challenged. "What are you doing in here?"
"You guys having trouble with the plugs?" Cole asked. "We have a fault report."
"No, we don't have trouble. Try someplace else."
"You sure you don't want me to check it out? You got a faulty plug, you could get a fire." Cole knew just how to work it, she thought; he sounded conscientious but not concerned. The subtext was his body language—he'd be ready to move to the door, convincing the subject that he wasn't at all eager to be on their property. "Hey, your call. I can write up the report, but buddy, your insurance company could nail your ass to the wall, you don't check out a fault report."
"Where you gotta go?"
"In there." Cole might be choosing at random, or he might have seen something. "Line goes right in, see? Up there?" He'd be pointing at something nobody could possibly see or understand. She suppressed a grin. Beautiful. "Wait here."
Footsteps faded away. Cole didn't say anything, but she heard him moving around. It seemed like a long time, but as she watched the sweep of the second hand on her watch, she realized that he'd been inside only two minutes, going on three. Probably not enough time to— "Hey, I told you to wait!" The voice was startlingly loud.
“I’ve got to get through twelve buildings. You know how big this place is."
"We checked it out. Everything's fine."
"Okay then. I'll write it up. Anything goes wrong, though, you—"
"Yeah, insurance, whatever. We're closing up."
"Have a good one."
Cole was on the move, heading for the door.
"Hang on a second," said the other voice. "What's your name?"
Lucia slid her gun from its holster and put her hand on the door handle.
"Frank. Frank Scarabelli. Here—here's my ID, okay? I don't want no trouble or nothing. I'm just—"
"Doing your job, yeah, we heard. Listen, hang out a second, okay? I'm gonna make a phone call."
"Okay," Cole said. He sounded thoroughly disgusted. "You guys get an electrical short, it's no skin off my—"
She was out of the van, gun at her side, before he finished the sentence. Her knees felt weak, her whole body not quite in tune, but it served to get her across the exposed parking lot and behind one of the massive white limestone pillars. She sucked in two deep breaths, then finished the run to the warehouse dock. Up the six concrete steps to the flat staging area. The walk-in door was closed again. All but one of the garage doors were down. The one on the end was clanking shut.
I won't make it, some part of her thought, but she didn't allow that to stop her. It wasn't a matter for thinking. She kicked off her shoes and crossed the distance in long runner's strides, moving as silently as she could.
The door was clattering down. There were two feet of clearance left.
Lucia hit the concrete and rolled, tucking elbows and knees, and she felt hard steel and rubber grab her for a heart-stopping second. But then momentum won and she was inside. The door rattled irritably shut with a boom just an inch behind her.
She was panting and shaking, but there was no time for fear now. She was exposed. There were three men at the end of the hall, one smaller, two larger. Cole was the smaller. This end of the dock was in relative shadow, which was in her favor.
Should have called for backup, she thought, but she doubted that wireless signals would make it through the solid limestone roof. She'd need a land line, and by that time… by that time, she'd have gotten another friend killed.
She rolled up to her knee, gun trained steadily on the group at the far end of the hall, and then to her bare feet. The concrete felt ice-cold. She gained the concealment of a big industrial trash bin and risked another look to assess the situation. She was close enough to see faces now, and catch fragments of words.
Cole still looked bland and harassed. "Guys, this is stupid. Look, let me get the hell out, you call whoever you want to fix the damn elec
trical—"
The biggest one hit him. One quick pop, not telegraphed, and it took Cole full in the face. Blood spattered. He went down, and the man was already moving his right foot in a bone-breaking kick.
She couldn't afford caution. Caution would get Cole disabled or dead, and she couldn't take these men playing by FBI rules. This would have to be done Jazz-style.
Lucia stood, braced her shoulder against the wall and kicked the big rubber trash can at its wheeled base. It screeched indignantly and rolled at an angle across the exposed space to slam into one of the metal doors, then tipped and crashed onto its side.
Both of the suspects spun to look. Both drew guns.
Lucia braced her right hand with her left and sighted.
"Freeze!" she yelled. They moved fast, too fast, and a bullet exploded part of the concrete next to her arm.
She pulled the trigger twice without flinching, and the first shooter sank down on his knees, swaying. The gun slipped from his hand and spun across the concrete. Cole, his face a mask of blood, scrambled after it and kicked the man's side to dump him on his face. The other man dropped his gun and voluntarily went down, hands on the back of his head.
"Dammit!" Cole screamed. "Are you hurt? Lucia?"
"No," she said calmly, and walked forward. "If you call an ambulance, you can probably save this one. I think I missed his heart."
Cole—normally so cool and insouciant—looked shocked. She raised her eyes to his, and saw him flinch a little. Seasoned FBI, and he flinched. But then, he didn't know her, did he?
Nobody did.
"Better call it in," she said. "I'll check the rest of the building. These can't be the only bad guys in the place."
"I'm going to hell for this."
"Yeah," she said grimly. "I'll save you a seat."
Chapter Thirteen
There were, in fact, seventeen other people in the building. She didn't have to shoot any of the others; intimidation worked well enough. She herded them into an unused freezer room and locked them up tight.
She was sitting against the door, listening to them batter at it, when Cole came to find her. He'd wiped some of the blood off his face, but that was a broken nose, no question, and it was beginning to swell. He'd have black eyes, too. That had been a hell of a first punch.
"What are you going to say when they get here?" she asked, when he was seated on the concrete with her, back against the door.
"Planning on throwing myself on the mercy of my superiors," he said. "Fuck, Lucia. I ought to know by now that if you're involved, it ain't exactly a fact-finding mission. I mean, I've heard enough stories."
"Stories," she repeated. She felt tired, liquid, as if her body might just drip away.
"You know."
"I don't."
"Is it true what they say about what happened in Prague?
"What do they say happened?" The door behind them rattled with a particularly violent kick. It felt good, rather like a massage.
"Two dozen terrorists, a cache of nerve gas, and you were the only survivor."
"It's not true." It wasn't. There was Gregory Ivanovich, after all. Turncoat and torturer and savior and traitor. God alone knew what he was now, but she had no doubt he knew where she'd gone during the past week, and what had happened to her.
Cole made a doubtful sound. "You should have declared first, by the way."
"Declared what? I'm not FBI. The government doesn't pay me. And in the kind of work I used to do, declaring yourself was stupid." Which was as close as she intended to get to reliving the past, even with Cole. "If I'd taken the time to chat, they'd have killed me. You also."
He sighed and dabbed at his bleeding nose. "Man. I'll be lucky if I get a posting in Antarctica after this."
"Cheer up," she said. "I think you just averted a major terrorist act. Also, there seems to be a clean room behind that door. Biohazard suits hanging from hooks in the airlock. You might have even found the source of the anthrax."
As the sirens came closer, they sat in silence, surveying the big white room with its drums of chemicals and—most ominously—pressurized tanks marked with Poison labels.
"So," Cole said. "If I get my ass fired over this—"
"Always a place for you at Callender & Garza, my friend. Provided we're still open, since we've shot more people in the past couple of days than the KCPD has shot in a couple of years. It might pose a problem."
He shook his head. "You'll be okay. You're a survivor."
They both froze at a sound outside, from the direction of the door, and without any discussion got to their feet and moved to stand on either side of the single doorway to the room.
A hand holding a gun crossed the threshold.
"Freeze!" Lucia yelled, and spun away from the wall. Cole did the same, bracketing the newcomer from an obtuse angle, taking a low line.
"Police!" the other man screamed at the same instant, and Lucia held off on the trigger just by a split second as she recognized the ragged, unshaved, red-eyed face of… Detective Ken Stewart. "Drop the guns, dammit. Drop them!" he ordered.
"FBI," Cole said calmly, and showed his badge and credentials without wavering his aim. "Detective Stewart, right? KCPD?"
"Yes." Stewart stopped trying to cover both of them, and focused solely on Lucia. "Drop it!"
"Jesus! Drop yours!" she retorted hotly. "You know who I am!"
He cocked the hammer on his gun, an unnecessary and theatrical gesture. "First shot cripples you for life. Drop it now!"
"That isn't necessary," Cole said.
"If she's not FBI, she drops the goddamn gun!"
There wasn't much choice. Getting into a pissing contest with Stewart wouldn't do her any good, even if she won. Lucia made the gun safe and put it down on the ground. She took a step back from it, hands still raised, as Stewart gestured.
"You got here fast," Cole said. "Ambulance on the way?"
"I had a tip. Yeah, paramedics and squad cars should be a couple of minutes." Stewart looked around the place, and focused on the banging of the steel door. "Suspects in custody?"
"Custody would be a stretch, but they're contained," Cole said. "One wounded in the back room, one not wounded and hog-tied like a son of a bitch because I don't like him very much. Other than that, we've swept the place and the rest are in there."
"Okay, good." Stewart, after a long moment, holstered his gun.
"Can I pick up my weapon now?" Lucia asked.
"No," Stewart said. "Over there. Sit down and wait." He picked up her gun and shoved it in his coat pocket. "Move it, Garza." Behind him, Cole made an apologetic shrug.
She kept her hands up, walked to the corner and slid down to a sitting position, resting her hands in her lap. Stewart stared at her for a second or two, as if considering handcuffs. She could hear the eerie wail of sirens outside, and wondered wearily how long it would take to untangle this particular mess.
If she looked tired, Stewart looked…sick. Pale, red-eyed, twitching like an addict. Was that possible? Was he, in fact, an addict? No, surely drug tests would show it. She was being uncharitable, purely because of his prejudices against Jazz. He was probably just sick.
Should have shot him, she thought. It came from a part of her that she often denied existed—cold, calculating, the voice of a survivor.
"You received a tip?" she asked Stewart neutrally. "You've never been here before?"
He gave her a glare. "No. Why?"
Anthrax sent to her office.
Ken Stewart, following her from McCarthy's hearing.
"No reason," she said, still neutral, and watched him sweat.
There were, by the last count she heard, enough chemicals in the warehouse to kill tens of thousands, and maybe more if delivered accurately. And she'd been right about the clean room. There was a neat little bottle of white powder. Anthrax. Enough for a dozen lethal mailings, at least. From the envelopes they'd found in the process of being addressed, they'd been intended for the local FBI office
s, as well as other government buildings.
If Ken Stewart had contemplated killing her and Cole— and she had no doubt that he had—he lost his chance as the worker bees from KCPD took over. She and Cole were quickly whisked off to a local FBI establishment. It was an improvement over the police headquarters isolation room. The FBI facility came with fresh coffee and more comfortable chairs. She caught a glimpse of Susannah Davis being brought in, at one point, escorted by Ben McCarthy.
Lucia heard Jazz's voice even through the soundproofing.
"— son of a bitch!" Jazz finished bellowing, just as the door opened again, and Agent Rawlins came in. His ears had turned red, though he was keeping a carefully blank expression. Jazz was right on his heels, as dynamic as he was controlled. She'd been messing with her hair, and it stuck out in unruly spikes. Her face was flushed and vividly animated. When she saw Lucia, she charged forward and dropped into the empty chair next to her.
"Hey," she said, without looking.
"Hey," Lucia replied. She felt a smile tugging at her lips and sternly exiled it back to its waiting room. "So. How's it going?"
"So-so. You were supposed to take it easy, as I recall. Have a talk with Susannah. Lay low."
"Change of plans."
Jazz sat back and folded her arms. "You put another guy in the hospital, and that's the best you can come up with? Change of plans?"
Lucia shrugged. "I shot in defense of the life of an agent of the FBI. Which I’m pretty certain is covered under self-defense. Isn't it, Agent Rawlins?"
He pulled up a chair, too, on the opposite side of the table. "Do you want legal counsel, Ms. Garza?"
"You're kidding."
"I don't kid about things like that."
"Am I being charged with something? Bringing a clue to the attention of the FBI, perhaps? Is that criminal these days?"
Rawlins was furious. "From anybody else, I could accept ignorance as an excuse, but you know better. You know better than to come to some agent off the books and put him in a dangerous situation."
