CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Finn was jammed into the tunnel, breathing his own carbon dioxide and thinking he really ought to have a respirator.

The pipe’s inner diameter was only thirty-four inches. Corman couldn’t even have entered. Finn wasn’t huge, but the space was tight and claustrophobic. After crawling more than a hundred yards from the warehouse, his knees and elbows were sore, scraped right through his clothing.

“Can you hear me? Anyone?”

Nothing but static, as Asher had predicted. Finn had the repeater with him, but it required line current, and they weren’t ready to unspool a power cable all the way up the tunnel.

And the reason for that was the gallon jug of hydrochloric acid he’d brought along. Leftovers from the galvanizing tank. No matter what, things were going to get messy. He didn’t want to accidentally burn through a power cord, cause a short, and blow himself up.

He stretched the goggle strap over his hat, readjusting the headlamp, then squirmed a little farther and twisted himself back around. The slope was modest but unmistakable, and he wanted to be uphill when he started pouring acid.

Another minute to place and set the breaker. It was a cheap scissor jack, perpendicular in the tunnel, one end against each side of the pipe. The jack handle scraped the base of the pipe, but did turn all the way around. Barely. Finn tightened it, then pressed as hard as his posture’s poor leverage would permit. With luck, the concrete would break and he wouldn’t have to …

No luck.

Finn sighed. He recovered the jug from the other side of the jack, where he’d placed it out of the way, and studied the pipe wall.

Nothing complicated here. He hesitated a few moments, then took and held a deep breath, opened the cap, and started pouring.

Nicola peered through her spotter’s scope. She had the hotel’s room lights turned off, and her computer screens faced the other direction. There was no reflection, and her view through the window glass was clear.

She’d been wearing latex gloves for ten hours now. Changing them now and then, sure, but still. She didn’t know how heart surgeons kept them on for similarly long shifts, day after day.

Snow filled the air outside, dancing in the wind, glowing in the soft globes of light around the streetlamps fading into the murk down the avenue. The control tower was a faraway luminescent blob.

She adjusted the reticle, trying to focus on the parking lot in front of the blob. Half the time, snow gusted across her field of vision, obscuring everything. But the other half, she could see the ranks of dark officers, the bright security lights glinting off their shields and helmets. The protesters were a vague mass of color and movement, shifting restlessly just inside the fence. Vehicles occasionally came and went.

Halfway between her hotel and the dispatch center, the vault building sat dark and unnoticed at the edge of the property. From her distant vantage, it seemed even closer to the yard’s boundary, barely enough room for the single line of track separating it from the fence.

She moved the scope slightly, sliding her focus across the street to the warehouse. It was dark, too, just another anonymous industrial building, one among many.

Finn had gone into the tunnel fifteen minutes earlier. They’d heard nothing since.

“Jesus Christ!”

His voice startled them all. Nicola had turned the gain all the way up on her headset, and he came through at about ninety decibels, distorted and painfully loud.

“Finn!” She hastily spun the dial back down. Obviously, he’d gotten the repeater running at some point.

“Yeah—” but Asher and Jake were talking, too, everyone overriding one another.

“What happened?”

“Are you in?”

He was coughing, almost retching. Nicola returned to her computers, found the mouse, and panned the internal camera toward the corner. Finn was crouched on the floor, hunched, pieces of rubble around him, a dark jagged hole in the wall above his head.

“He’s all right,” she said to the other two. “I can see him. He’s inside the vault.”

“I hate that fucking stuff,” Finn rasped.

“Hydrochloric acid,” Jake said. “I told you: It’ll strip chrome.”

“I think it might have stripped my lungs.”

But after a minute, he was back on his feet, looking around. His coughing diminished. He found the camera and stared up at its lens.

“Nicola, can you see me?”

“Yes.”

“And is, ah, anyone else watching?”

She checked the other screen, scanning through the surveillance she had running on Stormwall’s servers, operators, and remote monitoring staff. “All clear, so far as I can tell. There’s some extra attention on the Penn Southern account, but it’s focused on the demonstrators in the parking lot.”

“Good.” He paused. “I can’t believe we’re here.”

“Awesome.” Jake’s voice. “We ready to continue?”

“Yeah.” On Nicola’s screen, Finn looked up at the hole he’d made. “I’ll expand the opening and clean it up. Jake, head up here with the winch. Asher, start getting the conveyor sections ready to go.”

“Right.”

“On it.” Even Asher sounded energized.

They got to work. Nicola kept track, glancing occasionally at the interior feed to see what Finn was up to. He soon had a four-foot pair of hydraulic cutters in action, snipping through the cage barrier to the next unit. Jake appeared at the opening after five minutes and began setting up the winch. Asher, after feeding Jake the power cord while he was crawling up the tunnel, began stacking conveyor sections in the pit.

Nicola thought of something and frowned. She checked the time on her phone.

“Hey,” she said into the wireless. “Where’s Corman?”