The brink, p.8
The Brink, page 8
Sarah and Cafferty nodded, and then sat with Munoz and Ellen, observing the door for the next half hour. Nobody entered or exited. The pedestrians and commuters thinned enough for them to go in undetected. Eventually, the moment came when nobody was in view.
“Go now,” Ellen said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Bowcut replied.
Cafferty smiled, gave Ellen a quick kiss on the lips, and he and Bowcut jumped out of the van and headed toward the side door of the station.
Bowcut slipped the key in the lock, and they entered a filthy stairwell that looked like it hadn’t been used in about a century. Certainly not a place well trodden by the staff of Network Rail. A stench of brake pads, dust, and oil hung in the air, not dissimilar to the New York subway system. They climbed down several stories, the roar of trains getting louder and louder. At the bottom of the staircase, they unlocked a door, then another door, and another.
“Bingo,” Cafferty said. They had reached the old abandoned London Underground tracks.
Cafferty activated his flashlight. His beam stabbed through the frigid blackness, illuminating the unused rails and years of dust and dirt.
“To your right,” Bowcut said as she moved ahead of him, gun in hand. “Kill your light and flip on night vision.”
He switched the flashlight off, and darkness enveloped them. The night-vision goggles kicked on and illuminated the tunnels with an eerie green glow.
They entered an area that looked as if it had been untouched since the 1960s. An old wooden customer service counter took up most of the left wall. To the right, four public telephones hung in a row, each with mold-speckled directories on a shelf beneath. Bowcut encouraged him toward a twin set of escalators.
Cafferty took the right, Bowcut the left. He gently placed his boots down on each step through fear of hitting a patch of grease and tumbling over a hundred feet to the bottom. Faded posters of plays and movies lined the walls. He could make out a few. The Pawnbroker. Mary Poppins. Goldfinger. The temperature in the Underground noticeably increased when he neared the platform.
“Listen,” Bowcut whispered.
Cafferty drew his pistol and crouched on the platform.
The outline of an old track led toward a tunnel. Old cables sagged along the wall at regular intervals. The filament lighting looked retro. Then a gentle breeze blew through the tunnel.
His heart rate spiked.
Bowcut’s posture stiffened, too.
Back in New York, this had been a portent for the arrival of creatures. This time, thankfully, the breeze continued and didn’t carry the same acrid stench. Cafferty strained to listen for any suspicious sounds. Rats squeaked and scuttled. The murmur of trains racing through distant tunnels rose and fell.
“Let’s head down the tunnel,” Bowcut said.
She eased herself down to the track and advanced toward the abandoned tunnel entrance, Cafferty following. Anticipation rose inside him. He had always considered himself a politician, a paper pusher and a bullshitter. But since surviving his initial encounter with the creatures, this felt like a fresh start, and he welcomed the exhilaration it brought. He felt alive. Focused. Worth something more than a speechmaker to a cynical press pack.
It was amazing how putting yourself in danger made you feel like your life had meaning.
“Diego, you hear me?” Bowcut whispered.
“Loud and clear,” he replied through the earpiece.
“We’re heading east.”
“Roger that.”
Cafferty and Bowcut continued along the path at the side of the track. Each step took them farther into the pitch black until he could only see a few inches in front of his face. Drips of water into a pool echoed through the tunnel. Eventually, after five minutes of creeping, they reached a split in the track.
Bowcut paused. “First option is left.”
They carried on for another five minutes and reached another disused platform. The route beyond had been bricked up.
“That way leads to the live system. We need to head back.”
After retracing their steps to the split, they took the right tunnel.
Two minutes later, the glow of artificial light appeared at the end of a sweeping section of track.
Bowcut stopped. “Get down,” she whispered.
“I take it that’s not supposed to be there?” Cafferty asked.
“The far end of this tunnel leads to where I’ve seen the Foundation heading in and out of the Underground. I just didn’t know how far they’d come down the line.” She raised her cuff mic. “Diego, we’ve found something in the right tunnel, close to below University College London.”
“Copy, be careful.”
Cafferty dropped to a crawl position and eased himself forward using his knees and elbows. Bowcut moved by his side, pistol extended. Sweat trickled down his back as they advanced. When they rounded the shallow bend, they both stopped, raised their goggles, and squinted toward the bright light.
“What are they doing?” Cafferty whispered.
Up ahead, two men dressed in all black hovered over assorted metal crates and a ten-foot hole dug right through the old subway tracks. Power tools and boxes of supplies were stacked against the right wall. Above the hole was a metal frame and pulley, and above all that was a brilliant white globe hung from the ceiling, blazing down onto the circular breach. It bathed the entire area with light so bright it was near impossible to look at, as if the sun itself had somehow risen underground in London.
“That ball of light tells me one thing,” Bowcut said.
“Creatures.” Cafferty thought for a moment and took in the entire scene: the pulley, the equipment. “My God, they’ve dug down to a nest.”
“Exactly. We need to call this in—”
Gunshots split the air, ricocheting off the walls all around them. Instinctively, Cafferty and Bowcut flattened themselves on the ground. Before they knew it, the two men were nearly upon them, pistols in hand. They raised their guns to fire again.
Bowcut kicked Cafferty out of the way a split second before a spray of bullets dug into the ground where he had just been lying. She rolled left, planted her elbows on the old railroad ties to steady her aim, and unloaded six bullets in rapid succession at the men. All six hit. Two bullets in each of their chests, and a fatal bullet for each right between the eyes. Their bodies crashed to the ground, only a few feet away.
Silence returned to the subway tunnel. Bowcut kept her gun aimed firmly at the construction site, expecting that at any moment more of Van Ness’ men would come rushing at them, or a creature would burst out of the hole and rip them to shreds. If there were more bad guys here, there’s no way they didn’t hear the gunfire.
Silence.
She nodded at Cafferty, and he helped her to her feet.
“Nice shot. And . . . thanks.”
“Any time,” she replied.
They carefully and quietly approached the construction site. A mound of dirt was piled against the wall.
“There must be a creatures’ nest right under our feet. Why would they want to breach it, though?” Cafferty asked.
“Maybe Van Ness wants revenge and plans to unleash these monsters in the London Underground, like he did in New York,” Bowcut replied.
Anything was possible with Van Ness, but something about what he was seeing didn’t seem right to Cafferty.
“Van Ness exposed the nest in New York as punishment against the United States, true—but his ultimate intention was always to destroy the creatures . . . and kill the president in the process. Kind of a two-for-one deal. But this—I feel like there’s more going on here.”
The beaming light from the globe above their heads became almost unbearable the closer they got to the breach. Certainly bright enough to keep any creatures at bay, for which they were grateful. But it made it hard to see and was making the already warm underground chamber hotter. They shielded their eyes as best they could. When they reached the breach, they both glanced downward.
A long shaft descended from the subway tracks maybe a hundred feet and opened up into a huge cavern below. The light didn’t quite penetrate the deep, but the familiar screeches of angry creatures below their feet filled Cafferty’s ears, and he was certain it was a nest.
“Jesus Christ,” Cafferty said. “They’re right below us.”
But Bowcut wasn’t looking down; she was more interested in the crane and pulleys built over the hole the Foundation dug, studying them carefully. “Tom, what do you think they used this for?” she asked.
“I imagine to dig out the hole or to pull something up?” Cafferty replied.
“I don’t think so. Look at the way the crane is designed, the way they have it bolted down, and the way the pulleys are set up. They were lowering something downward, something very heavy.”
It baffled Cafferty while he studied it. “What would they be lowering down into a nest?”
Bowcut studied the surrounding equipment and boxes. “Um . . . Tom.”
Cafferty followed her gaze to an enormous empty crate in the corner. On the side of the crate was the radioactive symbol and assorted warnings. An unused Geiger counter lay in front of it.
“Holy shit, Tom. This could be very, very bad.”
Her understatement made this almost laughable. But there was nothing funny about the situation or whatever was contained in these boxes. What had Van Ness done? “We have to go down there and see what it is.”
“I knew you were gonna say that,” she muttered. Louder, she said, “Okay, but we’re gonna need Diego down here. He’s best suited to examine whatever it is they put down there.”
“Agreed.” Cafferty activated his comm. “Diego, we’re gonna need you down here, stat.”
“Roger that,” Diego replied through the earpiece. “Find anything yet?”
“I have a feeling we’re about to,” Cafferty replied. “Bring down some extra rope and come fully armed. Ellen, hold down the van and tell us if you spot anything unusual or anyone suspicious entering or exiting the station. We already took out two of Van Ness’ men. Anything happens down here, it’s up to you to alert the president and deputy prime minister.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Ellen replied. “Please be careful.”
“I don’t like it, either. But this was always the plan. And so was being as careful as we can.”
Which probably didn’t mean all that much when you were standing above a nest with millions of creatures in it.
Bowcut headed back through the tunnel to guide Diego to the breach, leaving Tom alone with his thoughts and the screeches below. He kept thinking about how his obsession had almost destroyed him. Was he equally obsessed now with taking down Albert Van Ness? Blind to the damage it was causing others? Cafferty couldn’t deny he was singularly focused on the Foundation. But he also couldn’t deny that Van Ness had to pay for what he did. Also, if Van Ness had developed the technology to control the creatures and use them as a weapon aboveground, then he definitely was a bigger threat than Tom ever imagined.
The sound of movement in the tunnel snapped him out of his thoughts. He raised his gun.
“Don’t shoot,” Diego’s familiar voice said as he and Bowcut came around the bend. “I’m just a lowly MTA worker from Brooklyn who took the Tube and got lost down here somehow.”
Cafferty smiled and lowered the weapon.
He knew Munoz liked being part of a capable team, despite having the odds stacked against them. It had been the case ever since their first official meeting in the Beekman Pub. He liked having the pragmatic engineer on his side, too.
“All right, whadda we got?” Diego asked, scanning the construction site and the hole dug down to the nest. He peered into the breach. “Damn.”
Assorted handheld electronic devices were stacked next to the crane, and charts lay on the ground around the hole. Diego picked one up curiously.
“Mmm, this says the cavern below us is three thousand feet deep. Holy hell.”
Diego continued to scan the site and quickly eyed the empty crate.
“Uh-oh.”
“That didn’t take long for you to spot,” Cafferty said. “What do you think it could be?”
“High-tech X-ray equipment? Maybe they are creating a detailed map of the nest.”
“Care to take a look down there with us?” Cafferty asked.
“Do we have a choice?” Diego replied rhetorically.
“All right then. Let’s climb down to hell.”
Chapter Eleven
“So, how’re we doing this?” Diego asked.
Bowcut moved by his side. She unfastened his backpack and grabbed a rope. “We throw strobes into the breach to push back any nearby creatures, and we all keep one lit on our belts at all times. This should keep the creatures at bay. I’ll rappel down first, you both follow behind.”
“That nest has gotta be full of methane like New York, don’t you think?” Cafferty asked.
“I’m sure,” she agreed. “We’ve got twenty minutes down there max, before we lose consciousness. So let’s move fast.”
“You don’t gotta tell me twice,” Diego said. He took deep breaths to keep calm. He had no problem getting involved in the action, even as the thrill battled internally against the fear of death. He reminded himself he was capable. He was the man who single-handedly saved President Reynolds, the man who took out the Foundation’s top agent, who had infiltrated the Secret Service.
The gangster turned good . . . turned gangster. Sort of.
The disaster in New York had changed him. It was as if invisible chains had snapped off his previous vow to follow the straight and narrow. Back to being street Diego with a legit cause.
“Ready?” Cafferty asked.
“Let’s do it.”
Munoz squeezed the sides of a strobe and threw it into the hole. Intense flashes blasted from the sphere as it plummeted. He had nicknamed them “disco balls” but it had never caught on with the team—their loss, he thought. When the strobe hit solid ground somewhere below, hundreds of shrieks exploded out of the breach, though they quickly grew fainter as the creatures fled from the blinding light.
Munoz started humming “I Will Survive” as he watched the dangerous dance playing out below them until a sharp look from Sarah cut him off.
“Would you prefer I sing ‘I Need A Hero’?” he asked. Bowcut finally smiled.
Meanwhile, Cafferty threw in another strobe for good measure. Bowcut had already secured the rope. She slung her lasers over her shoulder, then rappelled down, leaning back, boots planted against the wall. She lowered herself through the man-made tunnel for maybe a hundred feet.
Toward the bottom, the tunnel opened up into a massive, cathedral-sized cavern thousands of feet deep, with small caves peppering the walls—very much like the one below the Hudson River. It was like hanging over the Grand Canyon—if the Grand Canyon was filled with lightning-fast monsters bent on wiping every human off the face of the earth.
She could hear the screeches of the creatures in the shadows, shielding themselves from the powerful strobe lights. It was a cacophony louder than the Giants games her father and brother used to take her to. Bowcut could also feel the air was different. Without gas masks, as they hadn’t expected to enter a breach, they had only minutes to uncover Van Ness’ plans with this nest.
Below her was a rocky overhang with some kind of large man-made device on it—probably whatever Van Ness’ men had lowered down. She tossed a strobe grenade onto the ledge, and unseen creatures bolted to safety. Bowcut’s boots hit the ledge and she quickly whipped out her laser for any creature bold enough to strike.
“I found something,” she called up to Cafferty and Munoz, who were in the process of descending.
“On our way,” Diego shouted back, halfway down the breach with Cafferty. As they neared the cavern below, the sound of the creatures grew louder.
Munoz attempted to copy Bowcut’s rappelling technique. After sixty feet of descending, though, his feet slipped, and he dangled over the abyss, clutching the rope in a white-knuckled grip. He told himself to stay calm and drew in a deep breath. He hadn’t done anything like this since a disorganized team-building exercise a few years ago, and even back then he didn’t pay much attention because the instructors had done all the hard work for them. He gradually lowered himself, inch by inch, gaining confidence as he neared the ledge, and eventually his boots hit the ground. Cafferty landed next to him moments later. They stood on the rocky ledge and looked out on the expanse, in awe of what the creatures had carved out of the earth.
“It’s oddly beautiful,” Diego said.
“Too bad everything in here wants to rip us to shreds,” Cafferty replied. He scanned the walls of the cavern for any signs of an impending attack, but the strobe lights were doing their job.
“All right, let’s see what we’ve got,” Diego said, approaching a large glass case perched on the overhang. Inside the thick glass sat a three-foot-long dense metallic cylinder. A black wireless antenna protruded from the small hole on the left side. It led to a module inside with a tiny blinking green light. Wires from the device connected to a timer. The timer counted down methodically.
25:07:23
25:07:22
25:07:21
With each blinking flash, the clarity of the situation increased. All he could do was stare in disbelief.
“Holy shit . . . is it a bomb?” Cafferty asked, but Diego ignored him, still studying the device and the markings on the case itself. “Diego?”
Cafferty stared at Munoz, a sickly green cast to his face.
“Diego,” he asked again. “Is it a bomb?”
“This . . . this isn’t just a . . . bomb,” Diego said, his voice trembling. “It’s a thermonuclear bomb. Big enough to wipe out these creatures . . . and all of London. And probably much of southern England.”
Cafferty’s eyes widened and he shot a look at Bowcut.
“And it goes off tomorrow at . . .”
Diego glanced at his watch.
“. . . midnight.”
