by Melissa Good
"The hell." The ex seal exhaled. "Ah do not want any of us to be here when them fellers come back, Kerry."
"I know, Dad." Kerry bumped him very gently with her shoulder."Dar knows. She'll get back here."
There were already some people on the sidewalk. Not many, several policemen in their distinctive black uniforms, and cars were beginning to park along the street, shadowy figures busy behind the wheels.
They were running out of time. Kerry felt a prickle go down her back. Not only because of the government agents. "C'mon Dar."
"Them people are trouble," Andrew said, unexpectedly. "Them are the kind of people who don't have to account to no one for nothing, you understand me, Kerry?"
Kerry studied his face. "You mean they're above the law?"
"Yeap."
"My father thought he was too." Kerry spotted motion in the distance. "Uh oh."
Andrew turned and saw the trucks coming back. "Shit." He looked up at the entrance. "Let me go get them people."
"Dad." Kerry caught his arm. "Get the bus started. I'll stall these guys if they get here." She nudged him toward the bus. "Dar said she'd be here. Two more minutes."
"Kerry, you do not understand." Andrew protested.
"I do," she insisted gently. "It's okay. They're part of the government, Dad. I've lived with part of the government most of my life. I know where their buttons are. Please. Just leave it to me, and let's get ready to go."
Andrew studied her for a brief moment, and then he nodded and disappeared back up the steps to the bus, leaving Kerry standing alone on the sidewalk.
Kerry took a careful breath and released it, hoping she hadn't pissed her father in law off too much. She then turned and watched the approach of the black SUV's that appeared to be heading directly for them.
She checked her watch and leaned against the bus, feeling the rumble as its engine started up and nearly scared the wits out of her as the air brakes hissed suddenly.
The lead SUV pulled into the next block, and the one behind it continued on toward her. She could see the man behind the wheel, and the one in the passenger seat, both in black jackets, neither of whom were smiling.
The passenger pointed at her, and looked at something.
Oh boy. Her heart started to race. She kept her calm posture through, her ear cocked for the sound of her partner and their team approaching. "Maybe I should call my mother sooner rather that later."
A weak card and she knew it. "You may think you're outside the law, but I bet your boss really hates to be embarrassed."
The SUV pulled into the curb just behind the bus, and the men prepared to get out. One was talking rapidly into a radio, glancing at her all the while.
"Here we go." Kerry prepared herself for the confrontation, deciding a gentle approach to start would be a good idea. "I don't understand officers. What's going on?" She muttered under her breath. "We're just here taking care of a problem, I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding."
The men got out and headed her way. One took a baton out and was holding it.
"On the other hand, screw you asshole works too." Kerry readied a retreat route, and pushed away from the bus, getting her center of balance over her boots. "And so does calling for help."
Loud voices suddenly erupted. Kerry half turned and then turned all the way around as the door burst open and Dar rapidly took the stairs two at a time, the techs right behind her with their eyes wide.
"Get in." Dar ordered Kerry. "Dad, get ready to move."
Kerry didn't waste any time. She climbed onboard just a whisker ahead of Dar's rapidly moving form and moved inside to make room for the rest of them. Just as she got to the far wall, the bus surged into motion, the air breaks releasing and the door hissing shut almost in the agent's face.
Dar grabbed hold of her as they lurched to one side, cradling Kerry against her as they swung around a corner and lots of things went flying, including the techs and a fair assortment of hand tools. Dar had a good grip on the doorway into the back office and didn't get thrown.
"They are laughing at us." Kannan was looking out the back window. "Those men."
"Nice." Kerry had no intention of protesting the hold. Her chest hurt, and the thought of holding herself in place made her grimace."Did you guys finish?"
"Not quite." Dar braced herself against the door frame as the bus swerved again. "The building infrastructure people finally showed up."
"Oh, that somebody's uncle company?"
"I think it's Uncle Guido's company," Dar said. "They jumped all over us. They were pissed we were touching their stuff, not that we were in the building though. I wasn't going to stick around to argue about it."
"Yeah." Mark had gotten himself and his gear into one of the armchairs. "Lucky for us big D was there to kick their asses."
Kerry glanced up at her partner. "Did you?" She muttered under her breath, watching Dar's face take on an almost adolescent expression that held its own answer. "Oh boy."
"Yeah, especially since we're going go need to get back in there when the module shows up." Dar said. "Or else this is just a pointless waste of a morning."
"I've never seen anyone kick someone like that." Shaun looked up from gathering his scattered supplies on the bus floor. "That was pretty cool."
Kerry looked back up at Dar, her eyebrows lifting in question.
"They were blocking the door and not letting us out," Dar explained."Not sure that was intentional, but you said ten minutes and I didn't have time to explain to the stupid bastard-- Whoa!"
The bus was turning completely around now, leaning over to a scarry degree as the horn blared. Both Dar and Kerry were thrown against the door sill, and Kannan kept his feet only by the slimmest margin.
"Holy crap!" Mark yelped.
"Hang on back there." Andrew yelled. "Got to get this thing heading back straight."
"Jesus." Kerry tucked her elbow against her sore ribs and tucked her other hand around Dar's waist. "Maybe we should go sit down."
Then the bus straightened up and started going forward, settling down into a more regular movement. "We back on the main road,Dad?" Dar called out.
"Yeap."
"Okay." Dar cautiously released Kerry. "Everyone get your gear together. We've got a lot of work to do when we get to the office. Kerry, can you arrange for Skuzzy to pick our guys up at the airport?"
"Already did." Kerry stayed where she was, tucked along Dar's side"I sent her and Nan the flight details. She's tracking them too, she'll let us know if they're late."
They rolled along in silence for a moment. Then Dar sighed. "Theism insanity."
Mark looked up from zipping his tool bag. "Yeah, but in a good way, right?"
Dar leaned back and put her arms around Kerry again, as the sun started to rise and flash through the curtained windows of the bus, splashing them all intermittently. "We'll find out soon enough, I guess."
"WHERE DID THEY leave it?" Dar had her hands on her hips.
"It's below in the tunnels," the building manager said. "The guy with it said it wouldn't reach any further."
"Oh crap." Mark echoed the words sounding in Dar's skull. "You gotta be kidding me."
The building manager shrugged. "I wish I was. He left the message with me, said he didn't have time to wait for you guys to wake up."
Dar snorted. "Yeah. Thanks." She let her hands drop. "Okay, let's go see where they left it. Maybe they were lying." She motioned Mark and the others to follow her, unclipping her radio from her shoulder as she walked. "Ker?"
The radio hissed, and then crackled. "Right here, go ahead. Scuzzy reports the flights on time, Dar."
"Everything else isn't," Dar said." Cable's still down in the subway."
"Jesus."
"And they think it's too short."
"Oh, man." Kerry's voice reflected the frustration she was feeling. "Dar, I don't--" She stopped. "What's your plan?"
"I don't think we're going to make it either." Dar turned and headed down th
e steps. "Just-- could you grab someone, maybe two people, and see if you can find a pipe, something, anything, in that damn hole our dmarc's in that I can shove a cable through?"
"You got it. On the way." Kerry clicked off.
"This is gonna suck." Mark tugged at the collar of his jumpsuit. "I knew we shouldn't trust those guys. They gave off bad juju."
Dar rolled up the sleeves on her own jumpsuit as she trotted down the steps. She dodged past the hurrying figures of people coming up out of the subway, and paused only when she got to the ticket turnstile. "Damn it."
"Machines over here." Mark had started toward it. "What do we need, four? I'll get em."
"Thanks." Dar put her hands on the bar and peered through them. "Kerry has my wallet." She ignored the stream of people coming out of the turnstiles, studying the wall and stairwells on the other side of the gates until Mark came over with four squares of cardboard.
She took hers and they passed through, walking past the fare booth and going down the steps to the level where the trains were. There was a train on one side of the platform, so Dar went to the other side, and looked up and down it. "Which one would it be in?"
"Um." Mark went to the map in the center of the platform and studied it. "They'd have to be in the tunnel from--here?" He traced a line with his finger uncertainly. "Man, where's that native woman?"
"Fetching our world savers." Dar went over to the map and looked at it. "Yeah, this is the cross over from that other line so it has to be this way." She pointed up the tunnel the train was in. "Let's wait for this thing to leave and go look."
Mark eyed her. "Go into the tunnel? Boss, that's sorta dangerous. We touch that live rail and we're all toast."
"They had to be in there." Dar reminded him. "There's a ledge along the wall here. We can walk on that."
"Oh, my goodness," Kannan murmured.
"Dar?" Kerry's voice crackled faintly on the radio. "You there"
"Yeah." Dar keyed the mic. "What's up?"
"The secret service was just here." Kerry's voice sounded tense."They asked Alastair to go with them down to the Exchange."
Dar glanced around. "Just giving him a ride?"
"Well." Kerry exhaled audibly. "They made it sound like a polite request"
"That sounds kinda crappy." Mark muttered softly.
"Yeah." Dar clicked the radio a few times. "All right, Ker. Thanks for telling me. See what you can do to find me that pipe."
"Will do." Kerry clicked off.
The train hooted, and the doors shut, then it pulled out of the station, disappearing down the tunnel with a whoosh of dank air behind it.
Dar walked immediately to the edge of the platform and climbed over the rail, getting her boots on the small ledge and walking along it with confidence. She didn't look behind her to see if anyone was following, leaving it to their individual conscience.
It was dark in the tunnel, but this close to the station there were lights against the wall just barely glowing from the layers of soot and grease covering them. She climbed up a few steps onto a platform that faced a set of closed doors, the faint hum from behind them audible to her.
The platform had steps back down to the ledge, she paused, as the wall dipped into a darkened angle as though a wedge had been cut into it.
Dar pulled out her flashlight and turned it on, flashing it down to the tracks to see a set of them diverging from the main ones and heading directly into the wall. The gap they made was far too wide for her to jump, and she wasn't really sure which one of them was live in the dim light.
Jumping down seemed like a bad idea. Dar turned her flashlight to the wedge instead, playing it against the walls. There were old pylons there, branching off to go with the tracks but it all ended up in bricked off wall.
"Over there, boss." Mark spoke up. "See the cable? It's coming down--where the hell does it go?"
Dar flashed her light over to the edge of the tracks and spotted the thick cable. "Yeah." She examined the ground beneath the platform she was on, seeing piles of litter and eyeballs reflected back at her. With a sigh, she gathered her courage and stepped off the concrete, falling through the air for a few seconds before she landed in the trash, sending cracklings and squeals in every direction.
"Yow." Mark stayed where he was.
"You know something? I went into information technology so I'd avoid crap like this. I should have stuck with the damn Navy." She edged carefully along the platform into the shadows, spotting a much bigger bulk in the darkness in the very corner of the wedge.
"Careful, boss."
Dar lifted her light and moved forward into the gloom, pausing when she heard a frantic rustling just near her right foot. "Oh boy," she muttered. "Glad I have boots on." She scuffed her feet forward, and felt her toe impacting something soft and moving.
Expecting a squeak, she was shocked at a hiss instead, and froze in place, her senses on momentary overload.. "Holy shit! I think there's a damn snake down here!" She trained the light down at her feet and searched the litter.
Then she felt something strike at her boots and instinctively she kicked out with one of them, impacting a body and sending it flying.
"Boss! Dar!" Mark scrambled off the platform. "Hey!"
A loud yowl made them both freeze.
"That's not a snake," Mark said, after a nervous silence.
"No." Dar felt her heart about to come out of her chest. "I think it's a cat."
"Kitty cat or wildcat?"
Dar heard motion again and prepared herself to be attacked, but a furry form dashed past her, eyes glinting in the flashlight, and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. "Okay." She moved a little further, and then stopped as her thighs bumped into something big. "Oh."
"Wh--oh." Mark peeked past her at the big spool blocking the way."Hey, good job, boss. You found it."
Dar leaned over and examined the remaining cable, and then straightened. "They're right. Not enough. Barely get to the damn stairs in the station."
"Shit." Mark peered at the cable. "Now what?"
Dar started searching the walls with her light. "I don't know. I honestly don't goddamned know."
KERRY STOOD BACK as they opened the door to the old storage closet that they'd used as a demarc. "Thanks," she told the custodian.
"We really appreciate it."
The man grunted and walked off, shaking his head.
"What a nice guy," Scuzzy said. "A real New Yorker." She looked inside the room. "So what are we looking for?"
"Wow. What a place." Nan entered, shining a big flashlight around. "Good grief, Ms. Stuart. Don't tell me this is an actual telecom demarc."
"Kerry, please." Kerry poked her head in. "Unfortunately, yes, it is.Here's the problem. They have the cable for this thing down in the subway tunnel, and it's too short for us to bring up the steps and across the floor there. Dar wants us to find a pipe or conduit that might go down there so she can bring the connection up."
"Oh. Wow." Nan peered around. "Are we still trying to do this? I thought we were giving it up last night." She looked back at Kerry. "It's almost eight o'clock."
"Yeah." Scuzzy looked at her watch. "I gotta get going to the airport, yeah? Bring this guy right back here?"
"Right back here." Kerry agreed. "Okay, Nan, Robert, let's see what we can find." She entered the room cautiously with the office applications support specialist behind her. "We're looking for a pipe."
"Plenty of them in here." Nan said.
"Keep clear of that one, it's steam." Kerry pointed. "And don't touch that panel. It's live electrical."
Nan stopped, and turned around to look at her.
"Dar found out the hard way." Kerry took a careful breath, and edged along the wall, inspecting everything within reach of her flashlight. She'd passed on wearing her jumpsuit, since the idea of struggling into it was just too much for her at the moment.
Dar had insisted on her boots though, going so far as to put them on her, in a moment of exasperating o
ver protectiveness, in front of the staff standing there waiting for them.
Goofball. She found a pipe and tapped on it, shaking the rust off the outside and exposing the old lettering. "Water. No, that won't do it."
"These are huge pipes--steam you said?" Nan was moving around the other side. "They're big."
"We have steam heat," Robert said. He was kneeling on the floor near the front of the room looking at the pipes protruding through the concrete. "What are we looking for, Ms. Stuart? Will they be labeled? I think these are electrical, they say Edison."
"What we're really looking for is an empty pipe that might go down." Kerry stepped carefully over their router and the fiber patch panel Kannan had just finished. "Something that might be going down into the subway from an office building."
"Well." Nan slid between two of the bigger pipes, her slim form almost obscured by them. "This one says fire alarm system--it's going down."
Kerry abandoned her search and made her way to the other side of the closet, easing her head between the pipes since she was pretty sure the rest of her wouldn't fit. "Okay--oh." She turned her head sideways."Telegraph conduit. Telegraph?"
"There used to be fire boxes on the street," Robert explained. "Connected to the fire department. It worked by Morse code or something."
Kerry unclipped her mic. "Dar? You there?"
A loud rushing sound answered her and she pulled the mic away from her ear. "Yow."
"Sorry." Dar clicked in a minute later. "Train going by. What's up? You find anything?"
"Are you in the tunnel?" Kerry asked. "Where the tracks are? Holy crap, Dar!"
"That's where the cable is," Dar reminded her.
"Be careful." Kerry felt her stress level rising. "We found a pipe that is supposed to be for the fire alarm system. It says 'telegraph' on the outside. Can you find one down there?"
"Bang on it," Dar said. "Get something and keep banging on it and we'll look."
Nan nodded. "Good idea." She looked around. "There's a piece of brick--maybe that'll work." She squeezed over near the wall and retrieved it, and then came back over and started banging on the pipe.
"Hear that?" Kerry asked over the radio.