Darkside (2002), page 32
He had never resolved the problem of the painted-over scratches. The PWC people had not done that. Only someone trying to conceal the fact that the door had been unlocked would do that. Ergo, someone had been using that old tunnel for something. Had to be.
He stood in front of the door and considered his options. For getting into Bancroft Hall, the right branch wasn’t possible. It had to be the left-hand tunnel. He felt for the keys, tried one, then the other, and the big door on the left side swung inward slightly with a creaking noise. Half-expecting a vampire to leap out at him, he pushed the huge door all the way open. Light from the main tunnel spilled down the steps, but no farther. Beyond was the familiar darkened arched ceiling. He pulled his Maglite and shone it down the dusty passageway. No snowfall of mortar dust—yet. He checked his watch. He had about twenty-five minutes before he was supposed to call in. Time enough to walk down the magazine tunnel to the powder room and take another look. He wondered if he should pull some of that air hose with him, but the Red Devils weren’t set up. Besides, it would take too much time.
He stepped down into the alcove below the floor level of the main tunnel. Then he went back to the door to see if it could be unlocked from the inside. It could. He tried it, then adjusted the bolt, leaving it protruding to prevent the door from closing if some back draft occurred out in the tunnels. Then he set out for the magazine room. He walked quickly this time, although as softly as he could, not wanting to set up any significant vibrations. The skin on the back of his neck crawled with the anticipation of falling dust, but actually the mortar seemed to be undisturbed this time. He looked behind him as the arched frame of dim light back at the entrance diminished into a smaller and smaller block. Then the tunnel bent slightly to the left and the light bled away. The only light now came from his flashlight, and it seemed to magnify all the cracks in the mortar joints between the old bricks. Once again, he thought he could feel the massive granite weight of the buildings above bearing down on him.
When he reached the magazine anteroom, he saw the glint of railroad rails embedded in the stone floor. He hadn’t noticed them before. He rubbed the dust off the rails with his foot and saw that they led under the heavy metal doors. Probably for ammunition wagons. The rails went on up the sloping passageway to the intersection with the gun pit tunnel. He shone the light around the entire anteroom but noticed nothing else of significance. He still couldn’t see any clearly defined footprints in all the mortar dust, not even his own from earlier that day. He stood there, thinking. This area was certainly near the foundations of Bancroft Hall, if not under the eighth wing. But he had to be at least twenty, thirty feet down underground, so how the hell…
He went back to the doors and felt the cold steel with his bare hand. Cold steel. He glanced at the manometer again, then ran his hand up the door to about where the air-water interface should be inside. No discernible temperature difference. Wouldn’t the water be colder than the air? Or, after all these years, would they simply be in equilibrium? He looked at the hinges, which were huge round pin-type fixtures, four per door. The doors must weigh a thousand pounds each, he thought. He thought he felt the air shift around him, and he listened carefully. He heard nothing, not even the subtle vibrations from street level that could be heard out in the main tunnels. He studied the hinges again in the harsh white light of the Maglite. The rivets holding them to the door were rusted. They probably had used dissimilar metals, not understanding the corrosive effects of galvanic cells.
He stared at the doors. He was missing something. He was sure of it, but for the life of him, he—Wait, he thought. There was a crack visible between the door frame and the door itself, especially next to the four hinges. Not much of one, but definitely a crack. He put the Maglite right up to the crack and tried to look through it. He couldn’t see anything. He fished for his pocketknife, unfolded a flat blade, and poked it into the crack. It slid right in.
So where was the water?
He walked back over to the manometer and then figured it out. There were two isolation valves, one at the top and one at the bottom. He tried to turn first the top and then the bottom valve to the right. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, he said to himself. The valves didn’t budge. That’s because they’re not open, he told himself. They’re shut tight, Einstein.
The clever bastard. He’d closed the bottom isolation valve, filled the manometer with water, and then closed the top valve. Any passing inspector would see the full manometer, assume the space behind the door was flooded, and never open the doors. But of course it wasn’t flooded. On the other hand, he’d better check.
He opened the bottom valve on the manometer, then the tube’s drain valve. Then he cracked the top valve. The water quickly poured out into the dust, forming tiny glittering beads in the white lime carpet before disappearing. Then he fully opened the top isolation valve. If the space behind the doors had been flooded, there should have been an arterial stream shooting out of the bottom of the manometer. But there was nothing. Not a drop. The clever bastard.
He went to the center of the two doors. There were iron ring plates bolted to the doors, and he pulled on one. It didn’t move. He pulled on the other. He thought he felt it move a fraction of an inch. He stooped down to check the bottom and found a vertical latch disappearing into the thick dust. He grabbed it with both hands, expecting it to be rusted shut. To his surprise, it lifted easily, almost too smoothly, and the huge door actually edged out toward him. He backed away from it, not wanting to catch a foot or hand underneath, but even the big rollers operated smoothly. The door was perfectly balanced, and it came open with hardly any effort at all. On greased hinges, no doubt, he thought. He pulled it all the way open and shone the light inside.
The powder room itself was about fifty feet square, with a smooth, twenty-foot-high domed ceiling that appeared to be made of concrete. No, he thought, it only looks like concrete. White cement had been parged over the brickwork of the roof, although imperfectly, as patches of brickwork shone through when he put the light on it. Heavy wooden racks lined the four walls, but they were all empty. In the two back corners of the ceiling, there were dark holes, about three feet square, which he figured had either been ventilation holes or pressure-release pipes in the event of a fire in the powder magazine. The hole on the left had a steel grating. The one on the right was open, and the steel grating was down in the dust on the floor, leaning up against one of the racks. What looked like the bottom of a wooden ladder protruded down out of the right-hand hole and rested on the top shelf of the closest rack.
Bingo, he thought. That hole leads up the surface. Or probably into the basement of Bancroft Hall. He couldn’t be sure of where he was in relation to the surface. He felt another subtle change in the air pressure and stopped to listen again. He heard nothing, only the sound of his own pulse thumping in his ears. He walked over to the hole and shone the light up the ladder, but he could see only blackness above the top of the ladder.
He looked at his watch. Only ten minutes left. No time to climb the ladder, and he didn’t particularly want to climb into yet another, smaller hole. He’d taken the maps of the Fort Severn tunnels home but then forgotten to bring them with him tonight—he’d had no intention of ever coming back down here. But the maps should tell him where this pressure-release pipe came out up on the surface. Now he had a decision to make: He could climb up there and pull the ladder down. Then somehow lock those steel doors from the outside. Or touch nothing and close the place up. Leave everything as it was. That way, if they secured the other possible routes into the tunnels from the Yard and then watched the oak doors, they’d have a better chance of catching their quarry. As long as he didn’t see Jim’s footprints in the dust, or notice that the manometer was now empty.
He decided to leave it as he’d found it. Turn the old Fort Severn tunnel into a trap. He backed out of the magazine and got the door shut and latched. Wait—the latch. It was outside the door. So how did the runner unlatch the door from the inside? He opened the door back up and checked behind it. Sure enough, there was a block magnet, probably lifted from a large stereo speaker, stuck to the door halfway up. Okay, that’s how. He closed the magazine back up, then went over to the manometer. He closed all the valves and then used his penknife to tap the glass in the lower half of the tube until a small crack appeared. If the runner checked, this would explain the loss of the water. Then he took off his shirt and swept it over the floor of the anteroom, trying to obliterate his footprints in the mortar dust. A low cloud of dust coiled up from the floor like a fat white snake. He made a final check of the latches and then headed back up the tunnel to the intersection with the entrance to the collapsed gun pit tunnel.
Once at the intersection, he turned off his flashlight to see how far the anteroom light penetrated. It didn’t. The darkness was absolute. The curve—you’re forgetting that the tunnel curves, he told himself. He snapped the light on again; then, holding the tight white beam down at his feet, he walked toward the oak doors. His feet made no sound in the flourlike dust. When he figured he had rounded most of the curve, he turned the flashlight off again. To his surprise, the dim arch of light he’d been expecting to see as he neared the doors wasn’t there anymore. Jim stopped dead. No light meant one of two things: Either the door he’d bolted open was now closed. Or the main tunnel lights had all gone out.
He flattened himself against the left-hand side of the tunnel and tried to think. He felt a tickle of mortar dust against the back of his neck. The bricks pressing against his right hip seemed to move a tiny bit. They felt like ceramic snake scales. He forced the image out of his mind.
He hadn’t shone the flashlight down the tunnel. It had been pointed at his feet. It was still almost a hundred feet, maybe even more, to the anteroom below the oak doors. His footfalls were not audible. So if someone was waiting for him up there in the darkened anteroom, he shouldn’t know that Jim was approaching. He tapped the Indiglo light on his watch. Three minutes until his call-in time. Hell, he could just wait right here and let the PWC crew come looking. Except they wouldn’t know he’d come into the Fort Severn tunnels, would they? Shit.
He realized he’d had his eyes shut in the darkness. He opened them. No change. The total darkness of a cave. Or tomb. He listened but could hear nothing, either from the tunnel or the surface above. After a minute, he imagined that he could hear the fine sound of mortar dust falling on the floor. Like the sand in an hourglass. He bent down and lifted the Glock from his ankle holster. It wasn’t chambered, and if he did chamber it, that noise would definitely carry down here. As he stood back up, his belt caught on the exposed corner of a brick and it moved. Definitely moved. And then it slid out of the wall with a small sound and thudded down into the deep dust by his ankle. Then another one came out, and suddenly he felt the whole wall press out against his back. He froze in place, straining his back muscles to hold the tottering masonry in place. He felt his heart beating wildly as he thought about the arch over his head. If the wall gave way, would the arch come down? Hell yes.
He flattened his shoulders and pressed against the wall as another brick slid between his legs and landed with a click against one of the first bricks. Then a third popped out of the wall and landed on his right shoulder, perching there for an instant before dropping into the dust. Then things stopped moving. He felt a sneeze coming on as the air filled with dust.
Gotta move, he thought frantically. Which way? Left, of course, up the tunnel, toward the oak door.
Sure about that? Or was the door to my right? I didn’t turn around, did I? Another brick slid down the back of his pants leg and clicked against one already on the floor.
Hell with this shit, he thought. First, he racked the slide and chambered a round. The sound seemed enormous in the darkness. Unmistakable, too. Then he pumped himself off the wall, going to his left, and switched on the Maglite. Behind him, a whole section of the wall slumped to the floor in a muffled rattle of bricks. Amazingly, the ceiling didn’t come raining down behind it. He switched the gun to his left hand and walked fast up toward the anteroom, holding the flashlight out in his right hand while keeping his body pressed to the left side of the tunnel, just in case someone started shooting. But when he reached the anteroom, it was empty. He made sure, even sweeping the light up over the ceiling to look for suspended vampires.
He shone the light back down the tunnel from which he had just come. It remained empty except for an ominous cloud of white dust that seemed to be approaching like some kind of billowing ghost. His heart in his throat, he pulled on the huge door. It swung gently back, spilling white light from the main tunnel back into the anteroom. He poked his head and the Glock out into the main tunnel, but everything was as he’d left it. A little more noise from all the utility lines, but the place was definitely empty. He looked behind him as the white cloud expanded silently into the anteroom. Glancing at his watch, he realized his time was up. He stepped up into the main tunnel, pulled the big oak door closed and locked it, then hurried up the tunnel to the first available grate where he could get topside and use a cell phone to call the PWC people. Assuming he could get his voice to work—his throat was dry as all that mortar dust. He shivered as he thought of that tunnel collapsing all along its length. And nobody would have known he’d been down in there.
He drove back to the marina after checking in with PWC. As he was getting out of his truck at the marina parking lot, a thought hit him like a small hammer. He had left the bolt protruding on that damned door to keep it open. But it had been completely shut when he got to it. So who the hell had moved the bolt? It would have taken a key to do that. If it had been their runner, then there would be no trapping him in the Fort Severn tunnel. Not now that Jim had been detected down there. He swore out loud, startling a couple getting into the car next to his. He gave them a weak smile and headed for the boat and a badly needed drink. He wondered if Branner was back from D.C. yet.
Branner called Jim on his cell phone an hour after he got back to the boat. She was back from Washington and just entering Annapolis. He invited her to come over to the boat for a nightcap, and she arrived fifteen minutes later. He poured two snifters of single malt and told her about what he’d found down in the abandoned tunnels. He showed her the probable exit point on one of the maps.
“I took a look, although it was dark. I’m guessing it’s a light standard,” he said. “One of these towers along here that light the tennis courts behind Bancroft Hall. Or a manhole. They probably hit the magazine vent pipe by accident when they put the lights in and just left it. Those standards are hollow.”
“So he doesn’t have to use one of the Yard grates?”
“Right. Nobody, not even PWC, goes into the old Fort Severn tunnels. They’re lethal. They weren’t very happy about my going down there.”
“Where the hell did he get keys?”
“Those locks are old, very old. The doors are solid oak. I think those locks could be picked with a thin screwdriver. The point is, no one’s been looking. The guys who maintain the utility tunnels couldn’t imagine anyone being dumb enough to go into those death traps.”
“You included?” she said, eyebrows rising.
“Trust me, having been down twice, I don’t want to go back. But there’s more.” He told her about the bolt being moved after he had left it protruding.
“Shit. So you think he was down there? And knew you were down there?”
“Not the first time, either,” Jim said. “The tennis ball came down the tunnel right when I was there to see it. He knows when someone else is in the tunnels after hours.”
She sighed, sat back in her chair, and sipped some scotch. She looked really tired. “So, how’d your trip go?” he asked.
“Frustrating. There are two camps at headquarters. One wants to flood the mugger case with agents—ours, Feebs, marshals, whatever. NCIS doesn’t lose agents.”
“Except that he was on his own time, wasn’t he? I’ll bet there are people saying this wasn’t an operational loss.”
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. And of course he has family, and, officially, the agency doesn’t want to say that Bagger hit a bar, got drunk, followed some girls, and got whacked.”
“So what was he doing—a follow-up to an ongoing investigation? Conducting a joint investigation with the Academy security officer, who was looking into unauthorized intruders into the Academy’s underground utility areas?”
“Something like that,” she said. “They were wondering if you’d go along with that.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “The bosses know the real score. No sense in dissing Bagger’s good name. Anything on the Dell case?”
“Harry Chang’s running some kind of game with that one, I think. Strong sense that SecNav’s office wants the Dell case put to bed. As in, Lose the homicide angle.”
“That would sell well here. But what about my theory—that the two cases are related?”
She finished her scotch and put the snifter down on a table. “I’m not sure. Harry’s intrigued, but there’s no real evidence. He told me after the main meeting that the only way he could hold off the ‘send a mob’ crowd is by saying that it might spook the runner.”
“Who could, if he wanted to, just decide to stay in Bancroft Hall, run no more, and then graduate right on time and take his sick-ass, criminal mind out into the world of commissioned officers.”
“The thing is,” she said, “if this is the guy who did Bagger, we want him clean and prosecutable. Not mired in some complex web with the Dell case.”
“Well hell,” Jim said. “Then we need to move out. Stop talking about it.”
She rubbed her face with her hand.
“You look beat to shit,” he said, getting up. “Why don’t you go home, get some rest, and then I’ll come over to your office in the late morning? Then let’s go see the deputy dant and stir up the Honor Committee bees. Or did you already do that?”
