Page 65 of Devil's Due

“Yeah. It is.” He glanced out the back windows of the van. “You armed?”

“Always.”

“Good. Not that I figure we’ll need it, but I don’t want to get caught with my tool belt down, if you know what I mean. Your source was right, by the way. These guys are ordering in big amounts of sodium cyanide, and their next-door neighbors are shipping in hydrochloric acid. I can see why you’re not fond of the combination. It’d make a hell of a nice hydrogen cyanide cloud. In an enclosed space, it could kill hundreds, maybe thousands. Arrowhead Stadium’s right down the street. The volume of gas we’re talking about, you set it off in a place like that, you could count on major results.”

“God,” she whispered reverently. “How easy would it be—?”

“The stadium? Not very. I mean, we’re talking about a lot of chemicals here, very high profile, and chemicals are bulky to move around. But you look at some of the highrise buildings in the city? Pump some of this into the air handlers, and you’re talking big numbers of bodies.” Cole considered it, his light brown eyes distant as he rubbed his chin. “Unless they’re making a hell of a lot of gold chains and pimping up the hubcaps of half of the country, I can’t see how they could be using everything they’ve ordered.”

“So we take a look.”

“Wrong,” he said. “I take a look. You watch my ride. Looking like you do, I don’t think anybody’s going to believe you’re apprenticing as a cable puller, so you’d better keep out of sight.”

He wasn’t being judgmental, just practical. She nodded and settled herself in the grimy seat. It occurred to her that she should call Jazz, but truthfully, she didn’t want to. She knew she was pushing her luck. Fresh from the hospital and already taking risks? Jazz wouldn’t approve. Loudly. At length.

As if she’d conjured up a connection telepathically, her cell phone rang. She exchanged a quick glance with Cole as he turned the van down Eldon Road, heading toward the railroad tracks. The entrance to SubTropolis was just ahead.

Lucia pulled her phone out and flipped it open, and winced as static blasted her eardrum.

Wind noise.

No,jetnoise. Someone was calling her from a plane.

“Hello?” She couldn’t hear a damn thing. The connection was terrible, and the van she was in was rattling as well. She blocked her other ear and concentrated. “Hello? Anyone there?”

The answer, if there was one, was lost in the dull thump of the van’s tires going over railroad tracks. There was a line of vehicles passing through the SubTropolis gates, most of them 18-wheelers. Cole slowed the van to a crawl. She listened for another few seconds, but the connection cut out.

“Anything important?” he asked.

“Couldn’t tell,” she said. She checked the caller ID, but as she’d expected, it was an air phone. “I hope not.”

They edged forward slowly. When they got to the guard station, Cole presented ID that Lucia didn’t doubt was absolutely authentic. The guard waved him on, and they passed into a tunnel.

She’d expected it to be dark, but SubTropolis was surprisingly bright. The tunnel was huge and well-lit, the limestone it was carved from reflecting the brilliance.

“These guys have got some balls, setting up something down here. This place has everything. Post offices, restaurants, hell, they keep film reels somewhere. A few billion in inventory stored down here, at least. Not exactly low-profile.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” she said. “Hiding in plain sight.” She leaned over to look past the front seat at the empty, seemingly endless stretch of tunnel. “How far do we have to go?” It was too late to realize that she didn’t like this kind of place, with the weight of so much rock over her head as they descended. Her palms were getting damp. The ceiling, high as it was, seemed oppressively heavy.

“Long ways,” Cole said, which was not reassuring. “We make a right up ahead at Huspuckney Road, then a left on 8800.”

She was starting to seriously regret suggesting this, not so much for the potential danger ahead but for the uncomfortable feeling of claustrophobia that she was battling. Stupid. She was in a van, which should have been much more claustrophobic than the spacious tunnel they were traversing.

But she could get out of the van. There were only two ways out of the tunnel: forward and back.

“You okay?” Cole was watching her. She nodded and forced a smile. “You’ll let me know if you plan to freak out, okay?”

“Remember who you’re talking to,” she said. “I don’t have a reputation for freaking out.”

“Yeah. Those are the ones you have to worry about.”

Mercifully, he left her alone. She found that closing her eyes didn’t help, so she finally resorted to clinging tight-lipped to the seat, fingernails digging in to the bending point.

They slowed. “All right. It’s up ahead. Here’s the drill. I’m going to get out and scout around, you stay in the van and monitor. I’ll keep my walkie channel open. I get into trouble, you wait until I give the code phrase, which is ‘electrical short.’ Okay?”

“Yes,” she muttered. “Fine. Absolutely.”

He gave her one last assessing look as he pulled into a parking spot off the road, next to a rough-textured limestone pillar, and jammed the van into Park. “We good?”

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