The Downside

by Mike Cooper

  “What?”

  “I just …” She fell silent for a moment, and Finn kept roving, now loosening her belt, sliding one hand under the waistline, glorying in the smooth muscle of her butt. “Stop that for a second,” she said.

  “You really want me to?”

  “No.” But she stayed tense. “Is this smart?”

  “Um.”

  “No, it’s not smart.” Answering her own question.

  “No, I mean—” Finn gave up. “I don’t care.”

  A long moment, and then Emily laughed.

  “All right, then,” she said and disengaged herself just enough to pull Finn up off the couch. “Me neither. But not here, for God’s sake.”

  It was better than he could possibly have imagined—and he’d had seven long, long years of imagining.

  In the fifteen feet across the floor and through her bedroom doorway, they managed to shed the rest of their clothing. Emily yanked up the duvet and slid under. Finn dove in after her. The sheets were cold to start but warmed up almost as fast as they did.

  Oh my God, Finn thought, and that was the last rational flicker for a while.

  They lay spent, breathing elevated, waiting for the world to return. Finn, still inside, encompassed her with both arms, face buried in her neck.

  “Wow,” Emily said finally.

  “Uh.” Finn worked on recovering his powers of speech.

  “Seven years?”

  He nodded, chin rubbing her shoulder. “Plus,” he said, “or minus.”

  Not much later, again.

  In the quiet stillness of the small hours, they dozed, holding each other. Each time Emily came awake, it was a revelation all over again.

  They talked, short sleepy conversations that were about nothing and thus, in fact, about everything. Soft laughter. The feel of each other’s skin, forever.

  Dawn was late, light finally creeping in around seven thirty.

  “Hey,” said Finn, coming more fully awake. “Don’t you have to get to work?”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “Oh. Shit, I totally lost track.”

  Eventually, they both realized they were hungry. Also thirsty, and maybe needing a long hot shower. Though they still didn’t want to get up, the real world was finally having its way.

  Before she pushed out from the covers, Emily thought of something from the night before.

  “Are you going to keep following them around?” she said. “Like, is that the plan?”

  “No.” Finn sighed. “Seems pointless, and it’s not like I don’t have plenty of other things to do.”

  “Whoever betrayed you before—aren’t you worried he’ll do it again?”

  “No,” he said again, but this time with certainty. “I don’t know who it was, but I’m sure of one thing: None of us wants to go back to prison.”

  “So …”

  “But it’s possible that someone has another agenda, all the same.”

  “The money?”

  “The metal.” Finn stroked her back, one more time. “Someone may be thinking about taking it all for himself.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?”

  “Fucking Wes over, yes. Not everyone else.”

  “In this sort of situation,” Emily said, “it seems like that might be a frequent problem.”

  “It shouldn’t be. We’ve worked together for a long time.” Finn’s hand fell still on her shoulder. “But yes, that’s where I think we’ve ended up.”

  “Of course, now that you’ve figured this out, you’ll make sure it’s impossible.”

  “Oh, no.” She felt, more than saw, him shake his head. “Not at all.”

  “What?”

  “There will be an obvious opportunity,” Finn said. “One chance to grab it and run. And if someone does so?—then I’ll know. We’ll all know.”

  “But that may not do you any good.” Emily could see any number of things going wrong, no one getting what they wanted. What they deserved—good or bad. “You could just lose everything.”

  “You’re right.” He sat up in the bed. “In fact, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.”

  “What?”

  “Making sure we actually come out ahead on this operation.”

  Emily looked at him, the alertness now lighting his eyes, and realized he’d thought all this out already, probably long before. “You have a plan, don’t you?” She laughed. “I mean, another plan. On top of all those other plans.”

  “I might,” Finn said. “And you might be able to help out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  December 30, eight p.m. Sixteen hours until they started to drill.

  The warehouse was cold—no heat—but well lit by the work lights. The jacking shaft was fully dug and they’d installed the shoring timbers on Christmas Eve: heavy planks pounded vertically into the base of the hole, cross-braced and holding up its walls. Jake had cleaned and oiled the gantry machinery, and a heavy hook dangled from a two-inch chain run through its pulleys above the hole.

  The jacking frame itself was built into the pit, the auger head in place, hydraulic and slurry lines connected. Additional shoring backstopped the heavy pistons, which would shove the pipes after the auger, one by one, as it drilled the bore forward.

  Finn looked around, crossing off items in a checklist in his head.

  The concrete pipe sections were neatly stacked alongside the shaft. Behind them lay two stacks of slide-belt sections, which would go into the pipe when it was all the way through. The Kei truck was put back together, alongside the excavator, which had its bucket scoop swapped out for a forklift fitting. At the far bay door, a two-ton box truck was parked—the sort of anonymous, graffiti-marked delivery truck seen all over the city. Its white metal walls were grimy and dented with faded Chinese characters hand painted on the door. “Seaport Fruit & Vegetables,” according to the guy who’d sold Finn the vehicle, and maybe it really did translate that way.

  Finally, behind that truck, the same battered tractor they’d hauled the boring rig away with. It was hooked to a trailer, a tall gray semi with Arizona plates and California inspection stickers.

  Jake, Asher, and Corman were out—sleeping, Finn hoped, resting up for the long day and night ahead. Nicola was in her usual chair at the folding table, laptop open.

  “You’re ready, right?” he said to her.

  “Final checks. You know.” She offered a small smile. “Same thing you’re doing.”

  “I always worry that I’ve forgotten something.”

  “And have you, ever?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “Of course, it’s the things I haven’t thought of that always cause the problems.”

  Nicola rubbed her eyes. “Charge your phone.”

  “What?”

  “In my experience? That’s the most common oh-shit. Someone’s phone runs out, suddenly they can’t talk to anyone, everything goes to hell.”

  “Huh.”

  “Get some sleep, Finn.” She closed the laptop and looked for her shoulder bag. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Before they left, he unplugged the excavator and shut off the lights. The dark space smelled of dirt and oil, wood resin and bare metal.

  “You know,” he said, closing and locking the door behind them, “this is the biggest job I’ve ever put together. Biggest target, the most complicated plan.”

  “Good thing your team is up to it, then.”

  “Yeah …”

  “Oh, I’ve got my shit together.” She laughed. “I sure hope you all do, too.”

  Nicola was right, an early night would have been best. But Finn knew he’d just toss and turn and think about the endless list of things undoubtedly going wrong that very minute. He
wouldn’t sleep for hours.

  So here he was sitting with Jake, whom he’d picked up, in the truck, windows cracked but the heater running, passing a bottle back and forth. At the edge of Bayonne, down a potholed service road between a tank farm and an industrial yard, chain link and barbed wire on both sides. But at the end, the turnaround faced out across the water. Nothing blocked their view of the New York skyline. Lights glittered across the low rolling waters of the harbor.

  “Used to be we’d be out in bar somewhere the night before a job,” Jake said. “Making noise, buying rounds. Now …” He grimaced at the plastic bottle. “Gatorade. Jesus.”

  “Used to be we were dumb, maybe.”

  “In case we got caught—I just figured it’d be a shame to waste the last night before jail.”

  “Me, too.” Finn shook his head. “Easy to think that way before, you know, actually going to prison.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a real drink.”

  “Plenty of time later.”

  A container ship moved steadily up the harbor, superstructure and bow lit up, the vast stacked waist of the vessel lost in shadow. An oil barge beat steadily the other way, the tug’s engine loud even at a distance. As the noise faded, Finn could hear waves lapping at the shore below them.

  “You and Emily, huh?” Jake handed over the Gatorade.

  “I guess so. You okay with that?”

  Jake laughed. “Only if you admit you’re the moron.”

  Finn smiled in the dark. “Warned you off kind of sharpish, didn’t I?”

  “She’s good. Smart.”

  “Yeah. Surprised me, too.”

  A vehicle appeared from among the oil tanks, driving slowly inside the fence. A white SUV with a lightbar and a blotchy logo on the door—private security. Its headlights swung over the truck but didn’t stop. Finn watched it continue along the perimeter, moving away from them.

  “What are you doing after?” he asked.

  Jake kind of grunted. “Back to the shop, I guess. I’m settled in pretty good.”

  “Got the business to keep going, you think?”

  “Enough. What about you?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Maybe down to the islands, if I was you. With Emily. White sand beaches and rum all day.”

  “That’s another one.”

  “What?”

  “In the old days, when we were raising hell the night before? That’s the kind of plan we’d talk about. Sunshine and loose women.”

  “Still sounds good to me,” Jake said. “What are you gonna do now, stick it all in an IRA or something?”

  “That wouldn’t be the worst choice.”

  They watched the river traffic for a while. An overpowered boat sped upriver, its engines a loud, irritating roar even from half a mile. Lights twinkled in the distance.

  “Thanks for coming for me,” Jake said quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “Bringing me in. I really appreciate it.”

  Finn felt awkward, surprising himself. “No one else I’d rather work with,” he said. “Twenty years, damn near.”

  “Minus seven.”

  “There’s that.”

  “Anyway …” Jake shrugged, the motion just visible in the darkened cab. “You know.”

  “It’s nothing.” Finn drained the Gatorade, capped the bottle, and tossed it behind the seat. “Come on, we got to go back. It’s late.”

  “Yeah.” Jake sighed. “It sure is.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Morning, the last day of the year.

  In the warehouse, the air was cold enough to frost their breath, the light thin and gray through the clerestory.

  Jake looked into the jacking pit. “You can stop fussing already,” he said. “We’ve checked everything about ten times.”

  Asher was at the bottom, fifteen feet down. The jacking frame was lowered into place and the hydraulic rams were aligned, ready to shove the huge drill head into the opposite side of the pit. Overhead, the first pipe dangled from the gantry chains.

  “Just making sure,” Asher muttered. He tightened a hose fitting one more eighth-turn, then coiled a few turns of cable. “Someone—I ain’t saying who, but someone—bumped the laser. Had to get it back into alignment.”

  “How far off was it?”

  “Half a degree.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much.”

  “Yeah?” Asher twisted to look up at him. “Not much? Over a hundred thirty yards, let’s see, that’s only a diversion of four fucking feet, right? Who cares if we miss the entire fucking building anyway?”

  They had the wireless triangulation units, too, of course, which set the target electronically. But Asher was correct: The laser had to be perfectly aimed for the system to work.

  “Hey, you look good,” Jake said.

  “What the fuck?”

  “I never liked that beard.”

  Finn had made Asher shave it off, figuring that real Stormwall employees probably wouldn’t be allowed facial hair.

  “Yeah, well, fuck you.” Asher went back to his machinery.

  Jake gave up. He looked at his watch. Three hours to go.

  Corman was asleep, sacked out on some cardboard he’d scavenged. Jake considered, then headed for the big truck. He could nap in the cab, across the wide bench seat.

  They were tired and short-tempered. Waiting was the hardest part.

  They started drilling at eleven thirty, following an early lunch.

  After two months of effort, long days, hard labor, and the constant tension from knowing they were breaking some serious laws, the start was anticlimactic. Asher settled himself in the TBM’s operator chair, fired up the motors, and looked out. The auger’s bore plate spun up to max rotation, the row of bits along its surface immediately becoming a silvered blur. Engines whined. Finn took one last, careful look, then gave a thumbs-up.

  Asher eased back on a lever, and the hydraulic ram pushed the bore into the wall of the pit.

  It was loud, but not too loud. Starting out, not all the spoil was captured by the slurry lines, dirt spattering out behind the auger. But as it slowly entered the shaft, the stream ended. During the remainder of the bore, all the displaced muck would be mixed with water and sent back through hoses to the sedimentation tank. There, the water would be filtered out for reuse, and the excavated dirt would simply accumulate.

  “Looks good!” Jake, shouting a bit to be heard over the roar.

  “So far.”

  It didn’t take long for the ram to fully extend. Asher pulled it back, the pistons sliding into themselves, and the auger cooled to an idling rumble.

  “Okay,” said Finn, and he released the gantry’s chain lever. The first section of jacking pipe, three feet across and ten feet long, descended into the pit. Corman, below, guided it into place on the frame.

  “Go,” he called, and Asher shifted the ram back to forward. It pushed the pipe against the base of the auger, and the bit roared again as it was shoved back into action. Slowly, the pistons extended, and the pipe disappeared into the hole.

  And that was it. The sections were eight feet each, and they had to install fifty-one to reach the vault.

  The hydraulics could shove the drill forward at a steady speed. It took another several minutes to reverse the jack, lower another pipe section into the frame, fit to the previous pipe, and start the rams again. Still, all in all, the attainment rate averaged to almost half a foot per minute. To Finn, who remembered the old days of open-cut trenching, it was nothing short of miraculous.

  “I’m going to walk the perimeter,” he said.

  Asher waved one hand. “Gotta keep this moving.”

  “I know.” Only constant forward motion kept the tunnel wall washed in slurry fluid, lubricating it for the growing pipe chain to be pushe
d forward. Halt for longer than a few minutes, and they might never get the drill moving again.

  If that happened on a normal project, the foreman would have a bad day—they might have to drill an access bore from above to reach and free the auger. But it was a solvable problem.

  If it happened here, they’d just have to walk away, completely empty-handed.

  “Looks good,” said Finn. Asher only nodded, focused on the job.

  Outside, Finn could barely hear the machine. A faint, whining rumble. The buildings around them appeared deserted, closed up for the holidays, and no engineer on a train would hear anything but his diesels.

  No problem.

  He walked back to the door. They’d be at this, nonstop, for the next twelve hours.

  Midafternoon, David looked at the sky. Snow had begun to fall, clouds low and ominous, and the day’s light was already fading.

  Standing next to the custom flatbed the operations crew had built, he felt small and insignificant.

  The trailer was more than a hundred feet long, with three axles front and four back and a monster-size Tor tractor hooked to the kingpin. It glowed in the yard’s security lights, which had clicked on automatically in the gloom. The foreman had brought it out and parked it next to the sidetrack they’d offload the excavator from.

  “Looks real nice,” David said. “Did your crew wax it or something?”

  “Just a good washing. What can I say? They take pride in their work.”

  “Tractor all gassed up?”

  “Of course.” He looked offended. “Be kind of embarrassing to run out of fuel halfway to the docks.”

  “More snow in the mountains. Dispatch says they’re still on schedule, but the storm seems to be getting stronger as it approaches us.”

  “I hope they highballed it.”

  “No, but it’s getting bypass priority. The corridor’s too crowded to shut everything else down.”

  A minimally muffled diesel engine clattered, and David turned to see a pair of cranes moving toward them, coming from behind the vast locomotive barn. They walked a dozen yards back, letting the operators begin to position the lifters alongside the special truck.

  “Train’s not due for ten hours,” David said. “No need to rush.”