With Rick convinced, they moved stealthily through the basement. The vault they wanted was up two stories. That was four flights. Linc used his mini-mag flashlight sparingly, because the batteries were starting to fade. But they dared not try to negotiate in the complete and utter darkness of the sub-basement for fear of making some noise that might alert one of the guards. Rick tugged at Linc’s sleeve.
“You sure about there only being three?” he whispered.
Linc considered his answer.
“Yeah. I think they woulda mentioned it if they were worried about anybody else bein’ in the building,” he said. “The bitch was real worried old Herman would find ‘em.”
Rick heaved a sigh, but continued. At the stairwell they went up one at a time, the first man checking, then motioning if it was clear. Their ascent was silent, except for the squishing sound of Rick’s sodden boots on the rough cement stairs. But that was barely noticeable.
For the first time since he’d gotten inside, Linc missed his weapon. They’d been trained to search and sweep with their rifles on their forearms, exposing as little of their bodies as possible. Now, they were like de-fanged tigers, acting stealthy, but with no real bite. But what would he do if he did have a weapon and one of the security guards confronted them? Shoot him? He’d done that to a few towelheads, but this wasn’t the same, was it? That question he didn’t choose to answer or even think about anymore. He just wanted to get on with it. To get it over with so that they could get the hell out of there.
Linc paused ever-so-slightly at the landing for the first sub-basement. Then he shone his light on the stairs and started up. At the middle landing, where the stairway turned in the opposite direction, he sneaked a quick look and then signaled for Rick by flashing the light twice. After creeping up the last few steps, Linc twisted the knob on the door and pulled it open a crack. He surveyed the interior of the basement room where the vault for the safety deposit boxes was located. It was fully furnished, unlike the two stark areas from which they’d come. Numerous tan drywall partitions had been erected across from the vault to allow for privacy after the safety deposit boxes had been checked out. Each one had a door that could be locked from the inside. After they got the vault open, Rick was to go inside, and Linc would close the big steel door behind him and keep watch from one of the dry-wall partitions.
Once inside, Rick would have to accomplish the final bit of trickery needed for the heist. He had to smoke a blank key, insert it, and make the final filing variations. Because he knew what type of key it was, and from making a duplicate of Diane’s master, Rick didn’t think this would take him too long. It would have been an impossible task during regular business hours, of course, but here in seclusion, he estimated that it wouldn’t take him more than five to ten minutes. The blank was already partially filed. All he had to do was smoke it with the candle flame, insert it, and check where the impressions of the lever locations were.
Rick nodded and Linc pulled open the door and they crept swiftly down the long hallway, pausing at each juncture to check for the guards. Then, after crossing the final space that separated the offices and partitions from the waiting area and the vault, they were at the big steel door. Linc slipped off his knapsack as they both went to the floor. He unzipped the pocket at the back and withdrew the paper with the combination. After looking at Rick, he moved to the vault door and, with his partner on lookout, began spinning the dial.
Diane had painstakingly explained to him that he needed to turn the dial completely around once before stopping at the first number. There were no telltale clicks as he spun it either. It took him three tries before he finally got the hang of it. When he gripped the spoked wheel that operated the locking mechanism, and twisted it counter clockwise, he encountered no resistance. The immense steel door swung open on its well-lubricated metallic hinges. Rick swallowed hard as he moved to the door.
“Don’t turn the wheel back,” he whispered. “Just push it closed so I can get out when I’m done.”
“Hey, I just thought of something,” said Linc. “What if the power comes back on all at once and you’re still in there? It’ll re-set the time lock, won’t it? What’ll I do?”
Rick frowned, then said, “Then we’re fucked. But don’t worry. They ain’t gonna get it on again that fast, believe me. Besides, that’s the least of our worries.” He cut off the sentence abruptly, and Linc asked him what he meant.
“Never mind,” he said, moving inside the vault.
Rick gave himself a few seconds to adjust to closed-in space of the vault, breathing with steady deliberation.
I’ve been through worse, he told himself. A lot worse.
But in his heart, he knew that it wasn’t the tightness of the walls that was bothering him. If anything would trip them up it would be the damn freight tunnel. The vibration under his feet that he’d felt earlier meant that the water had been rushing along under the floor of the tunnel he’d used. The erosion would eventually wear through, and when that happened, the incoming water would seek its own level, that of the lake or the river, flooding the next tunnel above. And from the feel of it, there had been a hell of a current at work beneath him.
CHAPTER 7
Wednesday, April 15, 1992
3:20 A.M.
It took Rick much longer to make the key than they’d figured. The smoking of the blank, even a partially filed one like this one, was a tedious process that required constant reinsertion, extraction, and examination as to exactly where the lever locations had marked. Now he knew why they always drilled these things. Twice, Linc crept to the door and twisted the wheel to see if Rick was all right.
“I’d be a lot fucking better if you’d quit interrupting me,” Rick’s hoarse whisper rasped.
Linc slipped back to his hiding place in the adjacent viewing room. He’d picked one where he could watch both the vault and the stairway entrance from upstairs. As time drew on, he began to formulate a plan, should one of the guards come down to inspect the vault area. He’d just let him get nice and close, and then swing the door out and cold-cock the motherfucker. But he suddenly started playing the “what if” game. What if the guy doesn’t come in range of the door? What if he goes to the vault and twists the wheel, finding it open? What if there was more than one of them? He closed off his mind to any more speculation. Christ, they were almost home free. The Corps had taught him to be cool, sit tight, even if it seems like the world’s caving in on you, and your training and conditioning will pull you through.
That’s all we have to do, he told himself. Just maintain our cool, and we’ll be out of here in no time. That old fart Herman’s probably still snoring up a storm, he thought. And that other guy’s probably still getting his knob polished. He glanced at his watch. Three thirty-five. Christ, had they been in there that long? It didn’t seem like it. The panic that he’d tried so hard to suppress came rushing back. Maybe it was better to just abort the fucking mission and get the hell out of there.
Then he heard the three metallic taps, each separated by two seconds. Rick’s signal to come open the vault door. Was he done, or had he decided to abort, too? Linc surveyed the rest of the room through the slit in the door. It looked dark and quiet. He pushed open the flimsy door and moved silently to the vault. Grasping the spokes of the metallic wheel, he turned it slightly to the left and the huge steel door swung out toward him. Rick was standing there, his knapsack on his back.
“You got everything?” Linc whispered.
Rick nodded and moved quickly past him. Linc’s eyes swept over the interior of the vault. Nothing to even indicate they’d been there. With a grin, he swung the massive door shut and twisted the wheel back to the right. Then he spun the dial on the combination lock. Exhaling slowly he backed up two steps, then felt Rick tugging at his sleeve.
“Let’s hurry,” Rick said.
Linc just grinned and nodded. Then he leaned forward and whispered in his friend’s ear, “Did you count it? Do it look like a lot?”
“Yeah, it did, but I just emptied everything in the box into my backpack,” Rick whispered back. Then, more forcefully, “Now let’s get the fuck outta here.”
They moved with sly assurance down the hallway toward the basement stairwell, both knowing they had to be even more cautious going back because of the tendency to relax on the way out. Linc used his weakening flashlight to scan the stairwell, then held up his hand and motioned that he was going down. Again, their training had taught them to go one at a time, but Rick shouldered onto the stairway beside him.
“What you doing, man?” Linc said. “I’m going first.”
“Ain’t gonna matter at this point,” Rick said. “We ain’t got no weapons and if one of us gets caught the other’s going down too.”
Linc gave him a stern look.
“That kind of thinking get you killed, marine,” he said.
Rick compressed his lips and drew back, letting Linc descend the flight first. He knew his friend was right about the tactics, but his mind was racing back over that eerie feeling he’d had in the tunnel.
Linc flashed his light. The signal that it was clear. Rick went down to the curve on the first landing. Linc nodded and Rick took the next flight down, pausing at the bottom for his partner. Two more flights and they were at the second sub-basement. Beneath them they heard the slapping of water against the metal fire door.
“That basement just below us must be flooded,” Linc said.
“Why the fuck do you think I was in a hurry?” Rick said. “Let’s move it.”
Using their flashlights they moved between the cardboard caverns. Linc jumped back with a grunt as several big rats scurried in front of him and vanished.
“What?” Rick asked.
“Motherfucking rats,” Linc said. He swallowed hard.
“They’re probably getting in through the tunnel. We gotta hurry.”
He moved past Linc and headed for the door. They’d left the bulkhead door closed, the security padlock in place through the steel hasps, but unlocked. Now they would have to leave the door ajar, because there was no way either one of them could secure the lock without remaining behind in the room. They’d justified this part of their plan by figuring that the only person who’d come down here and discover the door unsecured would be the maintenance man, and it would be his ass if he reported it. So he probably would just lock it and figure one of the crew must have left it open. If things got straightened out with the flooding, and Diane went back to work, she could always sneak down and close it, saying that she had to look up some old records in the basement or something. Maybe even ask the maintenance guy to go down there with her to carry something up. That was the least of their worries, thought Rick. He shone his flashlight over the walls of the tunnel. They were wet with condensation. The floor still had the same few inches of standing water on the bottom. Beyond them groups of rats peered into the light, squealing with some sort of desperate-sounding anxiety.
Rick stooped to get through the low iron frame of the bulkhead door and stepped into the tunnel. No sense telling Linc about his fear of the water erosion, he thought. No need to panic him since he never did learn to swim. Not that either of them would want to swim in the filth of this flood. He heard Linc’s sloshing steps behind him. Rick picked up the rappelling line and passed it to Linc as they walked.
“Here, help me wind this up, will ya?” he said.
“What for?” Linc answered, smiling. “We playing Little Red Riding Hood, or something?”
“It’s Hansel and Gretel,” said Rick. “And who was quoting chapter and verse to me a little while ago about not following procedures?”
Linc pursed his lips and began winding the rope into loose loops. They sloshed along. Rick using his light to follow the guiding line through the hundred yards or so of tunnel. Suddenly he heard Linc grunt.
“You feel something?” he asked. “Like something moving under our feet?”
Rick nodded. “Yeah. Let’s keep moving. We should be all right.” He was beginning to sweat again, and the weak feeling was starting to creep up his legs and into his belly. But they couldn’t stop now. Not when they were so close. The beam of the flashlight swept over the curve of the tunnel wall, and, beyond it, about a hundred and fifty feet, were the landings.
“It’s just up ahead,” Rick said.
Linc nodded. He was breathing hard now. Real hard, Rick noticed.
Probably not from fatigue, either, he thought. It’s gotta be because the confined area with so much water surrounding him. It’s starting to get to him.
They rounded the curve, and he could see where the rope was attached to the ladder. There was a large flat cement platform, and Rick knew that was the way up and out as traces of ambient moonlight filtered its way down toward them.
He got there first and immediately grabbed the ladder and stuck it upright, bracing it for the climb. In a tangled heap were the Commonwealth Edison coveralls that he’d left there. Rick took them and tossed them up on to the next landing.
“Nice toss,” Linc said. “For a white boy.”
Rick was going to grin, but suddenly they both felt a shift underneath them. Then a roar a split second later, followed by a thundering rush, like a giant-sized toilet being flushed. Rick began to scramble up the rungs and Linc started after him. Halfway up Rick saw the torrent sweeping toward them and managed to span the rest of the distance. He immediately pushed himself flat on the platform and reached out his hand for Linc, who grabbed for it, but missed. Rick felt their fingers touch, then saw Linc swept away in a cascade of foam and wetness. The ladder jerked from his grasp too. Rick slipped off his knapsack and threw it onto the platform above him, then got down on his belly again and, thrusting his face over the edge, surveyed the raging flow rushing beneath him. It had evened out slightly, leaving a gap of about three feet between water level and the ceiling of the tunnel. The ladder was braced diagonally against the walls of the tunnel. Rick swung his body down into the cold water and let the current sweep him against the rungs. Keeping his head above water, he groped for the line. It was taut. That meant that Linc still might have a hold of it.
“Hold on. I’m coming!” Rick shouted and went down under the horizontal ladder, surfacing on the other side, grabbing the rope and swimming, keeping his head in the air pocket next to the ceiling. He kept pulling on the line as he let the current sweep him along, hoping that by following the rope he’d find Linc.
The initial force of the water had knocked the wind out of him, and Linc felt his grip being torn from the aluminum rungs. He’d tried to remain calm as the rush snatched him, propelling him along through the opening to the next tunnel, slamming him against the concrete walls, scraping his face and chest, then turning him over so that his back smacked the next abutment. Spinning, he felt the knapsack being twisted off his shoulders, then rush away from him. Not knowing why, Linc grabbed for it but only felt it brush against his hands for a moment. He thudded against another wall, and he felt a sudden void of blackness. But through it all he somehow managed to stay semi-conscious, the water trying to force itself into his mouth and down his throat.
It handled him roughly at first, then seemed almost gentle as it rotated him, in twirling fashion, along in the cold darkness. Linc’s hands groped in the wet blackness, searching for something tangible, something solid to anchor himself. Something. Anything. Something brushed over his fingertips, and then dashed away. Startled, he swallowed a mouthful of water at the contact. More water flooded his mouth as he tried to cough, and Linc felt his consciousness slipping away as black dots coalesced, closing off the world.
The water lifted his head above the surface for a brief few seconds, shocking him back to life. He was exhaling when he was swept back under moments later, but as he went down his fingers made contact with something again. This time it flirted with him longer, whipping around over his wrist, before uncoiling again. Linc’s arms worked downward instinctively, as his legs pumped, trying to run. The
rope fluttered in front of him again, and this time he managed to snare it out of sheer chance. As he struggled for a grip, the current continued to tug at him, slicing into his hands, but he didn’t dare to let go. He closed his fists tighter, and then felt his motion cease. Struggling to raise his head above the water, Linc opened his mouth, only to feel himself sinking farther down. Panicking, he released the rope with one hand and pawed at the water, but he was still sinking like a stone. The blackness was coming back again, washing over him like a warm breeze. He felt his fingers relax around the rope. It no longer seemed important. The only important thing was the warmth of the impending void.
The air hit his face like the smack on a fist. Sputtering, Linc tried to breathe, but only expelled another mouthful of water. Rick’s breath was bouncing off his cheek, and his friend was shaking him. He came to and suddenly realized it was dark, but not with the same kind of warm darkness that had been engulfing him. “Are you okay? Are you okay?” Rick was shouting at him. More water came out of Linc’s mouth as he coughed and managed to snare snatches of a painful breath. He nodded.
“We gotta pull ourselves back along the line,” Rick said. “Can you do it?”
Linc blinked and continued his struggle to gain his breath.
“Linc, can you do it?”
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