NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  It was an easily manageable number.

  But one thing at a time.

  He looked down the long central aisle at his car’s other passengers. Besides the three men who’d just come aboard, he saw a middle-aged businessman working on his laptop, and a young man and woman in Dodgers jerseys who had been necking since they boarded at Via Princessa. The conductor was also on his level, occupying a single seat at the far end of the car. Finally, he’d seen a woman with an infant in a baby carrier board at Newhall and climb to the upper deck. Otherwise it was unoccupied.

  Tomas was certain that none of the riders on his level had taken notice of him.

  Reaching into his pack’s outer compartment, he slipped out his ghost gun and a balaclava and turned his back to the car’s long middle aisle. Then he pulled the mask down over his head, shrugged the pack over one shoulder, and hurried toward the stairwell to the operator’s cabin. With the gun close against his side, he swung directly past the CCTV dome, rushed up the short flight of stairs, and rapped on the cabin door twice.

  He waited. Once the train left the station, the driver would be automatically locked inside his cabin to prevent an intruder from accessing the controls with the train in motion.

  But the driver needed to be able to enter and exit during stops, so the cabin would be unlocked now.

  “One minute, please,” he said through the door. It opened slightly and he looked out at Tomas. “Hello, sir… is something wrong?”

  Tomas moved closer, placing his free hand on the outside of the door.

  “The woman upstairs,” he said, motioning back with his head. “It’s her baby—something’s wrong.”

  The operator’s face grew instantly concerned. He opened the door wider.

  Tomas pushed it inward with a hard shove, stepping through into the cabin. He saw the concern on the man’s face turn to fear as he brought up his rifle and squeezed the trigger.

  The conductor crumpled to the cabin floor, dead, a crimson flower of blood spreading open in the middle of his chest.

  Tomas dragged the body around so its foot was wedged in the opening. He didn’t intend to be trapped inside.

  “The cabin’s taken,” he said into the mike of his tiny earset. “Get ready to clear out the cars.”

  “Yes,” Yuri replied. “Right away.”

  Tomas scanned the main controls. The console was identical to the simulator on which he’d practiced in Mexico.

  He sat down behind it, checked that the directional selector was on “Forward,” and released the airbrake, watching the indicator panel, keeping the locomotive’s independent brakes applied. It would take several seconds for the airbrake signal to travel down the full length of the train.

  When the rear PSI began rising, he took a deep breath, grabbed the throttle with his left hand, and notched the lever up from Idle to Run 1, feathering the brake with his right hand to counterbalance the surge of the engine.

  “This is it, we’re rolling,” he said into his mike now, his voice tightly controlled.

  An instant later, the train heaved forward.

  * * *

  Yuri sat at the end of the fifth car with his back to the aisle, his haversack on the floor between his legs. As Tomas powered the train into motion, he slipped his ghost gun from the pack, shielding it from view with his body as he looked quickly around.

  There were six passengers in the car with him—two men in office clothes on the right side of the aisle, a third, disheveled-looking man further up on that side, fast asleep, and a pretty dark-haired Latin woman with two young boys on the left. She was speaking Spanish to the children as she passed them snacks from a large green tote bag. Meanwhile the conductor stood leaning against the door mid-car.

  Yuri had not seen anyone upstairs.

  He launched to his feet and turned toward the front of the car, holding the weapon ready in automatic mode. As he stepped into the aisle, the conductor instantly noticed the gun and pushed himself off the door, his eyes wide and stunned under the brim of his cap.

  “Hey! What are you—?”

  “Shut up.” Yuri aimed at him, remembering his English. “No more talk.”

  The conductor froze, staring at the gun in horror.

  Yuri’s eyes swept the car. The passengers gaped at him from their seats, the mother with her arms around her boys.

  “Everyone move to first car!” he shouted, gesticulating with the gun barrel. He leveled it at the office workers. “You two… now.”

  They rose from their seats, one man letting a briefcase slide off his lap to the floor.

  Yuri saw the woman hesitate, her arms enfolding the boys. The smaller one had started crying.

  He walked down the aisle toward her.

  “Move,” he barked. “Do as I tell you!”

  She got to her feet, still holding the boys close to her side.

  Yuri herded the passengers up the aisle. As he neared the door to the fourth car, he stopped by the sleeping man in rumpled clothes.

  “You!” he shouted. “Open your eyes.”

  The man blinked awake, giving Yuri a fuzzy, confused look.

  “What’s goin’ on?” he said. Then saw the weapon in his hands. “Hey… c’mon… take it easy…”

  Yuri jabbed the gun into his scruffily bearded cheek, pushing his head sideways with its barrel. “Shut your mouth,” he said.

  The man’s lips contorted with fear, a low, tremulous moan escaping them. Yuri noticed the crotch of his pants was suddenly wet, the stain spreading to his leg.

  “Dog,” he said. “Stand up and walk.”

  The man complied without another word of protest, falling in behind the others.

  Yuri followed them through the door and into the next car, his gun to the man’s back, resisting the urge to put the filth out of his misery then and there.

  * * *

  “I swear the shed’s even gnarlier than I remember from last time,” Drew said over his shoulder. He’d pulled a wide-angle LED flashlight from his messenger bag, switched it to its highest intensity, and aimed it in front of him. “But that must’ve been two years ago, and I barely leaned my head in for a look.”

  Alysha ducked away from a ragged, dust-clotted spider web, brushing her hand across her face.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’d think it strange if it were any different.”

  Drew paused a few steps through the door, his flashlight’s beam pouring into the shed.

  “You have a point,” he said. “I still should’ve warned you.”

  She stood there looking around. The shed was dark and dusty, its air thick with a sour ammonia smell she recognized as the odor of rodent droppings. Drew’s flash revealed stacks of wooden railroad ties against the wall, scattered rail segments, and jumbles of what she guessed was track laying and grading equipment.

  He glanced over his shoulder at her, set his bag on the floor between his legs, and held the flashlight out to her handle first.

  “Would you mind holding this a sec?” he said.

  She took it from him. “Of course not,” she said. “But why?”

  He shrugged out of his baseball jersey and offered it to her.

  “I know it’s big,” he said. “But I have sleeves and you don’t.”

  Alysha smiled and took it from him.

  “You’re a squire,” she said, slipping her bare arm into it.

  The flash in his hand again, Drew turned deeper into the shed, Alysha close behind him. He brushed aside more dirty, low-hanging webs, clearing a path through the disorganized heaps of tools, spikes, and fasteners.

  They had gone about ten feet when he stopped and angled his flash toward a high mountain of crates to their left. It appeared at a glance to be flush against the back of the shed, but after a moment Alysha noticed the large, dark shadow it cast on the wall. Clearly there was some room behind it.

  “C’mon,” Drew said, turning toward the crates. “Here’s where it gets to be fun.”

  Alysha for
ced herself to breathe normally. She could feel her pulse beating under the skin behind her ear.

  Drew led her over to the pile and then moved around it. She glanced over his shoulder and saw that it stood four or five feet from the wall… further away than she’d thought.

  But as she pressed into the space behind him, her eyes were on the dirty concrete floor. He had lowered the head of the flash, revealing what looked like a rectangular cast iron vent or heating grate.

  Drew squatted over it, shining the light on the grate. As she leaned down for a closer look, Alysha could see the caked dirt and grime on its mesh fluttering almost imperceptibly in the slight air current from below.

  “Okay if I ask you to hang onto this again?” he said, and wobbled the flash. “If you keep it on the vent cover, it’ll be a huge help.”

  She took it from him, aiming it at the vent.

  Dropping to his knees, Drew reached down with both hands, gripped the vent cover by the mesh, worked it until it moved a little, and then pulled on it with a low grunt of exertion.

  It came up off the floor without resistance.

  The flash poured light into a vertical concrete shaft with a fixed ladder descending into heavy gloom.

  Drew propped the grate against the wall and looked up at her.

  “I’ll go first, you can give back the flash once I’m on my way down,” he said. “The tunnel’s only about ten feet down, and the ladder’s always been stable, but watch your step.”

  “This is fantastic,” she said truthfully. “Just fantastic.” Her anticipation was nearly unbearable.

  Drew smiled. Then he shuffled around to where he could easily grip the ladder and swung his legs over the edge of the shaft.

  As he lowered himself into it, Alysha reached into her bag for her cellphone, sent a preset text message to Tomas, then carefully placed it on the floor outside the opening and followed him down.

  * * *

  Kensi screeched up to the train yard’s entry checkpoint at ten minutes to five, the SUV jolting hard as she slammed her foot on the brake.

  The guard eyed them from inside his booth.

  “Hi,” he said. “What can I do for—?”

  “Agent Blye, NCIS,” Kensi said, cutting him off. She held her ID out her window. “Can you tell us if you’ve seen anyone or anything unusual here today?”

  He glanced at the badge card, then lifted his eyes to her face. “There a reason I should’ve?”

  “We need to take a look around,” she said. “Do you know anything about the yard’s old general shops?”

  He gave her an odd look. “You sound just like my buddy,” he said. “If you’d come a half hour ago, he could’ve told you where they used to be.”

  Her brow creased. “Your friend was here today?”

  “Still is. Drew’s giving his new girl the grand tour…”

  “We have to find him,” she told the guard. “Now.”

  * * *

  “Stick close to me,” Drew said, helping Alysha off the ladder’s bottom rung. He thumbed his flashlight to its wide-beam setting. “We should be able to see just fine.”

  He turned and led the way through the darkness.

  She walked almost alongside him, the spread of the powerful flash fully illuminating the tunnel ahead. After walking a few feet, he paused to shine it on the low, curved ceiling.

  Alysha glanced up at a row of overhead cage lamps—the same sort of fixtures she’d seen in the smugglers’ tunnel that brought her and the others in from Mexico.

  “Those lamps still worked when I was a kid,” Drew said, his voice loud in the silence. “They fed off catenary lines—the overhead electrical wires you used to see on poles and towers.” He slid his beam down over the rough concrete wall on their right, where a vertical cable ran from the ceiling to an old, circular metal switchbox. “Here’s where I’d turn them on. But once the city upgraded to underground lines, the flow was cut.”

  She nodded, then looked down the length of the tunnel. Wide enough to allow for two or three people walking abreast, it ran straight for a number of yards, then crossed another passage, and another beyond, before dead-ending about a hundred yards up.

  “Where do the other passageways lead?” she asked.

  “Not too far, but they’re interesting for lots of reasons,” Drew said. He motioned her forward. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

  They strode toward the first cross-passage, swatting away cobwebs, their shoes gritting on the broken cement floor. As they went deeper into the tunnel, Alysha felt the stale air rustle around her and glanced up to see grated vents like the one they’d used to access it.

  Reaching the junction, Drew shone his flash around the corner to their left.

  Her eyes narrowed as she stared down the passage. There were openings on both sides, one every few feet, some with empty metal doorframes. A few still had doors hanging ajar from rusty, partly detached hinges.

  Steel doors.

  “Here’s where it gets good,” Drew said, turning the corner. “This way.”

  He strode toward the first doorless entry. A corroded sheet metal sign was mounted on the wall alongside it, the word stenciled across it readable through a layer of soot:

  INTERROGATIONS

  Alysha studied the sign a moment, then peered through the doorway into a small, square room with a lamp cage on its ceiling, identical to the ones in the main passage.

  “Here’s where the German prisoners were questioned,” Drew said. He shone the light into the space, then turned to point it at the opposite side of the passage. “There’s where they were held.”

  She crossed over to it with him, saw another sign riveted to the wall:

  P.W.T.D.

  ROOM A

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  “The acronym stands for ‘Prisoner of War Temporary Detention.’” Drew cast light through the door. “Take a peek at this room—it’s much bigger than the first one.”

  She nodded, estimating it was three or four times the other’s size.

  “There are two large detention rooms—A and B—and no wonder,” Drew said. “Poppo saw dozens of POWs marched in from the rail spur.”

  Alysha said nothing. She needed to hurry him along. Tomas soon would be diverting the hijacked train toward the yard.

  “You mentioned storage areas,” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking, Drew… where are they?”

  He cocked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Back that way,” he said. “They’re bricked up, don’t forget. But I can show them to you now, if you want.”

  “Yes, please,” she said. “I guess I’m a sap for mysteries.”

  Drew smiled. “Then let’s go,” he said, and turned back toward the T-juncture.

  They crossed the main tunnel into the branching passage, where his flash revealed a tall, wide archway on its right-hand side. Alysha saw at a glance that it was blocked by a masonry wall.

  She moved closer, reading the sign next to the entry:

  STORAGE

  “This is it,” Drew said. “The storeroom. Or one of them. There are three more bricked up entryways in the passage.”

  “And you’ve never gone into any of them? Seen what’s inside?”

  Drew shook his head. “I would’ve if they weren’t all closed off,” he said. “Poppo heard talk the Seabees kept fuel drums down here, but he never saw them himself.”

  Alysha felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

  “Say there are drums… they would be heavy,” she said. “I don’t see how anyone could have carried them down the shaft we took.”

  Drew smiled a little. “Guys were big and strong in those days, but not that strong.” He motioned down the passage. “I’ll show you the loading ramp at the far end. It has a roll-up door that just looks like a service entrance in the river wall.”

  “Can it still be opened?”

  “I gave up trying when I was a kid,” Drew said, shaking his head again. “Somebody
put a high security lock on it decades ago, and there’s all kinds of junk piled outside.”

  Alysha stepped closer to the wall, noticing it had been discolored by splotches of dark-green mold and some whitish, chalky substance. As Drew came up alongside her, shining his flash directly on its surface, she watched a large black beetle flatten itself into a gap where the decaying mortar had completely fallen out. Clusters of small, pale insect larvae boiled in other open spaces between the bricks.

  “You really aren’t squeamish, are you?” he said.

  “My family was very poor,” she said, her tone suddenly detached. “I couldn’t allow myself to be delicate.”

  He seemed uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong…”

  She restored her game face. “My life has changed,” she said. “It’s fine, Drew.”

  He looked relieved. Then he returned his eyes to the wall, touching a hand to the powdery white deposit.

  “This is salt from the decomposing mortar,” he said. “It wasn’t here before.”

  “You sound concerned.”

  He shrugged a little.

  “It tells me moisture’s seeping in here from someplace—probably the river.” He pushed several bricks under his fingertips and they wobbled loosely. “See how it’s weakened the wall? Sooner or later it could undermine the rest of the tunnel the same way.”

  Alysha was thinking it would first prove a benefit to Karik’s team. She estimated they would arrive in four or five minutes, and wanted to neutralize the conductor before he became a problem.

  “That ramp,” she said. “I’d love to see it now, Drew.”

  He smiled.

  “Let the grand tour continue,” he said, turning up the passage.

  She smiled back and followed a step behind him, reaching under her blouse to open her waistpack.

  * * *

  “Kensi, we’ve got maps of Piggyback,” Eric said over her SUV’s Bluetooth. “In fact, we have so many our maps have maps. I pulled them from the archives of the L.A. County Bureau of Land Development, the Bureau of Engineering, Department of Public Works—”