I turned between warehouses. There it was again, a faint light at the far end of the building on my left. I killed my own lights and rolled forward, confident that the roar of the storm would drown our approach should anyone be listening.
A black Mercedes SUV was parked in the alley formed by the buildings, blocking any further progress. The headlights were off, and I could see no movement inside. I parked my vehicle at the mouth of the alley where it would be visible to the arriving cops and killed the engine. I went to try Cohen a final time but couldn’t get a signal. I dropped my phone into an inside pocket of my rain jacket.
I climbed over my truck’s console and planted my knees in the back seat, reaching into the rear of the car where I kept a locked metal box filled with extra equipment. I opened it and selected a pair of night-vision goggles, a headlamp, a knife, and a can of Silly String. The knife, headlamp, and goggles were standard-issue for a railway cop. The Silly String was not.
I hung the goggles and a headlamp around my neck and tucked them in my jacket, and put the knife and the Silly String in a cargo pocket of my uniform pants.
Back in the front seat, I clipped Clyde’s lead onto his harness. A flare of lightning revealed him staring out the front window. He was as tense and eager as I was.
“Let’s go find Lucy,” I said.
I turned off the Ford’s interior light and opened the door as a gust of wind rocked the truck.
“And forget embracing the suck, Clyde. We’re going to kick its ass.”
CHAPTER 31
—Listen up, recruits. Some of you are hardwired to be heroes. Dump that. In Iraq, trying to play hero will get you killed so fast you’ll pass your coffin going out almost before you’re in-country.
—Sir, this recruit would like to know what to do if he’s the only thing standing between his platoon and the bad guys.
—In that case, you put yourself forward. That’s not being a hero. That’s being a Marine.
—Classroom, USMC Leadership, Parris Island.
Hail mixed with the rain. It hammered the cars and stung my exposed skin like a thousand tiny whips. The heart of the storm seemed to be right above us. Lightning flashed and sizzled all around, each bolt followed almost instantly by the deafening crack of thunder.
I held tight to Clyde’s lead as he and I darted between the buildings and came to a stop by the Mercedes SUV. I recognized the plate number—the vehicle belonged to Hiram. A BOLO had gone out hours earlier when Hiram’s guard had been found shot dead. Clyde and I crouched next to the Mercedes and I turned a careful eye on my partner, worried about his reaction to the noise of the storm. He glanced at me, then leaned forward again—ears up, head erect, focused on the mission.
“What are we waiting on?” he seemed to ask.
Good boy.
A faint light shone through the windows set high on the building on our left. I strained to hear anything above the storm, but the roar of the hail drowned out everything else. I rose high enough to shine my headlamp into the vehicle. The front seat was empty save for a litter of fast-food wrappers on the floor. The rear driver’s side door was slightly ajar, and my light picked out the slackened features of another one of Hiram’s bodyguards. Jeff, I remembered. He sat as if napping, his shoulders relaxed, his head tilted back against the seat. A small round hole showed darkly between his blank eyes. I touched my hand briefly to my heart, as I did for all the dead, and was about to turn away when I spotted a man’s necktie on the seat next to him. Hoping it belonged to Hiram, and that Jeff’s presence meant Roman had brought Hiram here, I eased open the door and grabbed it, tucking it inside my jacket to keep it dry. Clyde would be able to catch Hiram’s scent from it.
Another blaze of lightning, then more darkness. The light was gone from the building, which meant either we’d been detected, or we weren’t far behind Roman and Hiram. I signaled Clyde with a touch to his shoulder and we maneuvered past the SUV and pressed against the ancient bricks of the warehouse, watching for movement. When nothing stirred, we moved along the wall, looking for an opening.
Fifteen feet on, we reached a doorway, and I halted Clyde. The door itself was long gone. I snugged the night-vision goggles into place and peered around the concrete jamb.
Beyond the doorway, a vast, empty room—made green by the goggles—stretched ahead of us and to the right. A stone-paved floor and high windows gave the place the feel of an ancient prison. I signaled Clyde and we eased through the doorway and hunkered down just inside. I took another look around, straining my ears for any sound. In here, the rain was a muffled thrumming, like distant drums. Nothing moved.
Hoping that somewhere nearby lay an entrance to a mining shaft, I pulled out the necktie and gave Clyde a hit.
“Seek!” I said softly.
Clyde took off, with me right behind. Forty feet into the room, he slowed and then stopped, his nose to the floor where a slight disturbance turned it uneven—a stone slab lay askew from the others. Beneath it, the goggles revealed a darker shade of green, as if the stone concealed an opening. Clyde’s nostrils flared as he breathed in the scent, then he raised his head and looked to me for guidance.
I squatted next to him, listened for a moment, then knelt and pressed one eye to the crack. The goggles showed a long shaft that dropped into the ground before making a ninety-degree turn. An aluminum ladder, affixed to wooden rails, led downward. I rose back to a squat and lifted the thin slab away from the opening, careful not to let the stone scrape against the floor.
With the stone gone, cool, moist air wafted upward. It smelled of dirt and rotting vegetation and old roots. And another smell—the sludge and stir of the dark depths of the Platte River.
I closed my eyes. Darkness and cramped spaces and rising water. I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat and opened my eyes. I gave Clyde another hit on the tie. He drew in a deep breath and circled the opening, wagging his tail.
“Okay, boy,” I whispered. “Hold on.”
I removed the can of Silly String and sprayed a large cluster of brightly colored strands near the entrance to mark our passage. Then I unclipped Clyde’s lead, rolled onto my stomach, and lowered myself until my feet hit the first rung of the ladder. I went down two more rungs, then signaled for Clyde to follow. This was a routine he knew well. He dropped onto his own belly and shimmied his rear over the edge.
When I was a kid, my neighbor had a German shepherd that could climb up and down ladders. Going up was easy. Coming down, the dog always put me in mind of an old man, gingerly feeling his way back to earth, his rear paws sliding on the aluminum rungs, his head swiveling from side to side as he picked his way down.