The Downside

by Mike Cooper

  “I like to be ready.” The foreman squinted up, letting snow fall into his eyes. “Hard to say what this is going to turn into. We get a blizzard—”

  “The forecast doesn’t have it closing any roads, and we’re less than two miles to the port. Once the excavator is through their gates, it’s the shipping company’s headache.”

  “Makes you wonder.”

  “What?” David zipped his hood. The temperature was dropping.

  “These protesters.” The foreman looked in the direction of the main entrance, a quarter mile down the tracks. The dispatch tower behind it was well lit, windows glowing in the murk.

  “I don’t think any have arrived,” David said.

  “Nothing to see yet. Maybe the weather will keep them away.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Me, too, but that’s the point—why us? Why not go pester the longshoremen? No one cares about trains, for Christ’s sake.”

  “The port has federal security.”

  “So? You’re saying they’re better than your guys?” He laughed. “Surely not.”

  “No.” David shrugged. “Better armed, though, and more of them. Also, we’re closer to PATH. Who wants to walk through five miles of industrial wasteland?”

  Wind blew snow into his face, and David decided he’d had enough. He’d be here through the night, maybe into the day, depending on how quickly the crew was able to shift the excavator from the train to the trucks. No need to stand out in the cold now, when nothing was happening.

  “Come on,” he said and started to walk back to his truck. “I’m going in. You should maybe get a nap, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You did a real nice job on that hauler.”

  “We’ll have that thing on its way, no problem,” the foreman said. “If you keep the hippies out.”

  “Don’t worry.” David felt fine. “It’s going to be a quiet night.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Dusk.

  Corman eased the Seaport Fruit & Vegetables box truck into its parking space.

  He snapped off the headlights, shut down the engine, and carefully double-checked the dashboard. It wouldn’t do to, say, leave the fog lights on and run down the battery. As he got out of the cab, wind cut through his jacket. The temperature was dropping.

  Around back, he opened the metal cargo door, just enough to confirm the slide rails were still properly placed, and let it bang back into place. The crash of the door closing echoed from the buildings around him. No one appeared. Everyone in the zone seemed to have gone home, eager to start the night’s revelry.

  He’d have to walk the half mile back, but Corman didn’t mind. He liked being alone in the winter weather, left to his own thoughts, undisturbed by the clamor of people around him.

  Finn said they were on schedule, good to go. When he got back, Corman would take the big hauler out to its own designated spot—a mile farther, alongside the utility substation. That was far enough that Jake would follow along, then drive them both back to the warehouse.

  They’d been rotating the different roles on the boring rig: in the pit, moving the pipe sections with the gantry, running the drill itself. That meant one of the four of them was always resting—or running errands such as this one. Nicola was off in her lair, hacking computers and phones and networks. Or whatever. Corman’s understanding of her abilities was hazy, but he appreciated the results, and she was fun to talk with.

  He clanged the door latch shut and started walking. No rush. The bore was on schedule, moving straight through the earth, the vault closer by the minute.

  So far, so good.

  Eleven p.m.

  They ate a kind of dinner—sandwiches Finn had bought that morning with fruit juice and coffee. He’d also replenished the stocks of barbecue chips and Snickers and energy bars. The drill kept grinding away, but it was so deep in the tunnel that they couldn’t hear it over the noise of the hydraulics, motors, and pumps.

  After taking a look at the positioning system, Finn decided they were close enough to start getting ready. He called Nicola and handed around the radios they’d use from now on.

  Some adjustments, and he put the phone away, pulling on the headset instead. Nicola’s voice came through the earpiece.

  “Okay, everyone, time for a comms check. You should hear me, but you should also hear everyone else answer. If that doesn’t happen, speak up. Going down the list … Finn?”

  “Loud and clear, Nicola.”

  “Jake?”

  “Five by five.”

  “Corman?”

  A rather bearlike grunt over the radio.

  “Corman, is that you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Asher?”

  No response.

  “Asher? Asher, are you there?”

  Finn put his hand over his mic but shouted loud enough that it carried through anyway: “What are you doing? Put the damn headset on.” Muffled noises. “Yeah, I know, none of us like wearing them, but we need the ear protection. Anyway, something happens, I can’t go waving signal flags at you … That’s better.”

  “Fine, fine, I’m on.”

  “Thank you, Asher.” Nicola was brisk. “Your batteries ought to last five hours. You’ve each got two spare sets, right? In your pocket, nice and handy?” Pause. “Right?”

  “Yes.”

  Grunt.

  “Yeah.”

  “Five hours? My ears are gonna fucking fall off.”

  “I’ll take that as affirmative. Finn, visual check, please.”

  Finn would be first into the vault, and he had a camera mounted on his helmet. He reached up and flicked its switch.

  “Excellent. You may turn it off now. The camera battery’s only good for about ninety minutes.”

  “I’m sure you’ll remind me.”

  “That’s my job.”

  Asher: “None of this is any good inside the vault. Maybe you can punch radio through a little dirt, but that thing is wrapped in a meter of concrete and structural steel.”

  “Finn has a repeater.”

  They ran through a few more details. Nicola had assured them the radios were fully encrypted, and they didn’t have to worry about eavesdropping scanners. But it still made Finn uneasy to openly discuss their plans. He kept it short.

  “What do you see at the yard?” Jake asked.

  “Hang on.” They waited while she apparently moved to the spotting scope.

  “Light snow for now. I can still see the tower and the entrance. Looks like protesters have begun arriving—some cars on the road, a crowd standing around.”

  “Police?” Finn asked.

  “Some cruisers and a tac van. Hard to tell from here, but there might be a dozen cops at the gate.”

  “Official or yard security?”

  “It’s dark, and snowing, and I’m a half mile away.”

  “Okay.” Finn considered for a moment. “I think it’s time for a diversion.”

  “Yo.”

  “Kayo?”

  “Who the fuck else be on this phone?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Down the road, where you said. Cold as shit out here.”

  “See any protesters near you? Police?”

  “They all at the gate. We took the long way around.”

  “If it’s safe, you might as well go ahead now.”

  “All right, then.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  David stood with Sean alongside his cruiser, outside the ops building, watching a crowd gather at the gate.

  “Not even midnight,” Sean said. “They’re in for a wait.”

  “The train’s due in three hours.”

  “That’s a long time to be standing around out here.” He wore a uniform parka, ins
ignia on the sleeves and a reflective transit police on the back. Snow had begun to accumulate on their shoulders.

  “They’re probably nice and warmed up.”

  Sean laughed. “Wish I could be drinking bubbly right now. Ring in the new year.”

  The few dozen protesters were mostly young, men and women, in a motley of colorful winter coats. Several diehards had arrived by bicycle. Another had a drum, but the beat was muted by the softly falling snow, and he soon stopped. They milled around, no leadership evident.

  Headlights appeared down Caleb Street, slowly resolving through the snow-filled darkness.

  “What the hell?” Sean frowned. “A field trip?”

  The vehicle was a large yellow school bus. It slowed and stopped a hundred yards away. The red blinking stop sign swung out. People began to emerge, straggling out—more demonstrators, some carrying signs.

  “They must have chartered it,” David said.

  Ranged in front of the gate were the Newark crowd-control officers—a dozen men with vests and helmets. Boggs must have called in serious favors, because a larger number of New York police were also at the yard. At least, David assumed they were NYPD. All wore black armor and helmets, but some had masks as well—and no unit markings. The incident commander, a city ESU lieutenant, had been vague about their exact origins.

  “This is shaping up great,” Sean muttered.

  “Nothing’s going to happen until the train gets here.”

  David thought he noticed a smell of weed drifting from the civilian side. The riot officers stood relaxed but held a loose row, shifting and talking quietly among themselves.

  “I might go inside,” he said. “No reason to be out here freezing.”

  “Yeah, I guess—”

  BOOM!

  An explosion, muffled by the snow, but instantly recognizable. They swung around.

  “What the—?”

  A few hundred yards down the perimeter fence, a fireball bloomed. Shouts from the crowd and a wave of movement. A sharp clacking of batons and shields as the police straightened up.

  “Fuck.” Sean yanked open the door of his car.

  “Okay,” said David as he got in the other side. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  Finn stood next to Jake, looking over Asher’s shoulder at the locator’s screen inside the TBM cab. Corman was in the pit, having just fitted the next pipe.

  “We’re there,” Asher said. “Look. Coordinates are lined right up. The nose of the auger is sitting about one inch away from the vault wall.”

  “Excellent.” Finn clicked on his headset. “Nicola?”

  “Yes.” Her response was immediate and calm.

  “Asher says we’re right outside.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “I’ve been watching the telemetry.”

  “Oh.” Finn was still surprised by their new networked world. “Are you set to take over the monitor circuits?”

  “I cut them over twenty minutes ago. Totally clean.” With access to Stormwall’s internal systems, it had been trivial to map out the feeds from the vault, record an uneventful half hour or so, and loop it in.

  Or so she claimed. It still seemed like magic.

  “You’re sure?”

  “No one has noticed a thing. I’ve got my own surveillance on every workstation that might get a picture of the vault, and it’s plain business as usual.”

  “And you’re watching the rail movements?”

  “Of course.” There might have been a little exasperation there, even over the buzzy frequencies of the wireless.

  “Then … I guess we’re set.” Finn looked at Asher and Jake. “Time to change into the uniforms.”

  He pulled the Stormwall jumpsuits from the plastic dry-cleaning bags they’d been bundled in, waiting for him at the company’s headquarters. Asher took his with a look of distaste.

  “Not exactly styling here, boss.”

  “Good thing you don’t work for them, then.”

  While they changed clothes, Finn ran through his mental checklists one last time. Latex gloves, bolt cutters, repeater, power …

  If they were discovered, the likeliest occasion would be now, as they drilled through the wall into the vault. Normally, for a tunnel bore like this, a receiving shaft would be dug at the far end, a cradle waiting to gently catch the cutterhead as it appeared. Here, naturally, that was impossible. They had no alternative but to punch through and shove the drill all the way in until it simply crashed to the floor.

  Moreover, there was the slope of the tunnel to consider. They needed the tunnel to be higher at the far end, so that gravity could pull their loot all the way back down the pipe. The ground had a natural descent that helped. But still, they’d started fifteen feet down and would end no more than a foot or two below grade. Because the vault was underground, they expected to arrive seven feet above the floor, almost at the ceiling.

  When the auger smashed through and fell to the floor, it was going to be really, really loud.

  “All right,” Finn said as he finished retying his boot laces. “Nicola?”

  Over the radio: “Yes?”

  “Wait for a big, loud, heavy train. As soon as the locomotives are alongside the building, give us a signal, and Asher will put the mole on full power.”

  “You want to go outside and watch? Just to make sure?”

  “Good idea.”

  Finn checked Asher and Jake. They both had their own radios back in place.

  “You hear all that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure.”

  As he was walking out of the warehouse, pulling on his coat and raising the hood over the headset, Finn checked in with Nicola once more.

  “How’s the diversion going?”

  “Like kicking a wasp’s nest. Lots of movement.”

  “Excellent.” Finn stepped away from the TBM’s panel, leaving Asher to get ready. “Time for us to get moving, too.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  A minivan was on fire, cracked up against the perimeter fence and abandoned.

  Sean’s car arrived first by seconds, skidding to a stop on new snow. They got out, but the heat of the inferno kept them back.

  “They don’t usually burn like that,” Sean said. “Not from a simple crash.”

  “I don’t know where the tank is in that thing.” David waved back the first onlookers, who’d arrived in a panting jog from the yard’s entrance. “But probably not right in the middle of the passenger compartment.”

  Where the fire was concentrated. The flames might have been more visible because it was dark, but Sean was right: Running off the road shouldn’t have caused it to explode.

  “If you were emptying a can of accelerant, though, that might be where most of it ended up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Firefighters pulled up in an engine, stopping a good seventy-five feet away. They’d been unusually quick to respond because, like Sean himself, they were already stationed at the yard’s entrance lot, only a quarter mile away. The first men off began unreeling hose from the redline.

  More demonstrators drifted in. It was no stretch to assume that some of them had arranged the minivan’s immolation—as a statement? A distraction? Simple amusement?

  David didn’t care.

  “Think Newark can get an arson investigator here?” he said.

  “Tomorrow morning maybe.” Sean snorted. “Or the next day—the detectives don’t like missing their time off, and New Year’s Day is a big one.”

  “Unlike the uniforms, huh?” A Newark cruiser had pulled in next to the them, four of the riot officers getting out.

  “They don’t want to be here, either.” Sean gestured them back. “Of course, now that they are, everyone’s hoping for a big confrontation—make it wo
rthwhile, you know?”

  “Great,” David said. “They might get their money’s worth.”

  Finn stared at Asher. “What do you mean, it didn’t go through the wall?”

  “I’m telling you, I’ve pushed in an entire pipe section—five feet. But it’s still boring through concrete and rebar. The wall must be a lot thicker than the plan said.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Cutterhead torque and face pressure.” Asher gestured at the displays in front of him. “It’s obvious.”

  “Nicola, did you hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got Stormwall’s interior camera feeds, right? I mean the real ones, not the fakes you’re feeding them. Can you look around and see if you can spot anything?”

  “Like, oh, a two-ton auger sitting on the floor in a pile of debris?” She didn’t sound fazed. “Hang on.”

  Jake had just brought over the next pipe section with the excavator. He hauled on the gantry chains, rattling them up through the block and tackle.

  “Should I put this one in place?” he said. “We can keep going.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nicola came back on the line. “Nothing. I don’t have three sixty, but one camera sweeps that side. The corner looks normal—just some bins and a table inside one of the units.”

  A long moment. Finn ran possibilities through his head. “Asher, how sure are you about the positioning?”

  He seemed offended. “We’ve got wireless triangulation guiding the laser, and it’s only a hundred thirty yards away. We should be good to a quarter inch.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And, anyway, I’m telling you it’s in the wall. I can feel it.”

  Jake came over and looked at the control panel. “Maybe the plans are wrong. Maybe they put in six feet. Or eight, or ten. Who knows?”

  “Okay.” Finn made up his mind. “Drop in another pipe. No reason to stop now.”

  “Good.” Asher began reversing the ram, readying it for the next section. “We’ve got, what, ten sections left? The fucker could be fifty feet thick, we’ll still get through it.”

  “Fifty more feet, and we’ll be all the way out the other side.” Finn pushed a hand through his hair. “Just get us in, damn it.”