The Bricklayer

TEN

VAIL STEPPED DOWN, BUT HIS FOOT COULDN’T FIND THE NEXT RUNG, so he reached twice as far, thinking maybe they had cut off a rung hoping to get him to slip and fall onto the punji boards, but he couldn’t find the next one either. Apparently, they had cut the rest of them off.
So he was unable to go up or down. Then he remembered the agent in the underground chamber at the naval prison, seemingly trapped, but a means, although not obvious, had been left for him: the length of webbing. The reason for the maintenance hatch had been to service the overhead cables that had once carried the electricity to power the trolley cars. He climbed as high as he could on the rungs and ran his hand out toward the center of the tunnel until it hit a braided steel cable. It was about an inch and a half thick, and he wrapped his free hand around it, pulling to test its ability to hold him and the extra seventy pounds of money. Satisfied it would, he let go of the ladder rung and swung out over the twenty-foot drop. Hand over hand he proceeded, testing each new forward grasp to make sure it would hold him before committing his weight.


KAULCRICK BARKED into the radio, “Can anyone see where he is?”
Again, the only response was silence. Suddenly, the tech agent said, “He must have gotten into a vehicle. The transmitter is moving at a car rate of speed now. He just got onto the 110 northbound.”
“Did you hear that, One-one?” Kaulcrick asked the surveillance supervisor.
“I’ve got cars heading that way.”


HANGING TWENTY FEET in the air, Vail had traveled about eighty feet horizontally along the electrical cable that paralleled the tunnel floor, which he had to assume was still covered with punji boards. His shoulders and arms were beginning to burn with fatigue. He blocked it out and went another thirty feet before the pain had all but paralyzed him. Suddenly it no longer mattered—he had run out of cable. Unable to go back or forward, he had no choice but to drop to the floor. Were the boards under him? Willing up what little strength remained, he screwed his grip around the cable with his right hand and pulled the bag across his head with the left, dropping it into the darkness with as much accuracy as possible directly below him. He hung for a moment longer trying to readjust his balance in the dark without the extra weight. In the event the floor was still booby-trapped, he was going to try to drop directly on top of the bag without falling off and onto any of the surrounding nailed boards.
From the way he had released the bag, he calculated it was a foot or so off to his left. Swinging slightly to his left, he let go and fell the remaining fifteen feet, hitting the bag with both feet at the same time. But the currency inside had shifted during his “walk,” so he fell off farther to the left. As he lost his balance, he prepared for the pain of the nails as he hit the floor, but the spiked boards weren’t there. Instead he hit the earthen floor.
He shuffled his feet around to explore the ground, but there were no more boards. He picked up the bag and found two boards stuck to it. Directly under the cable, the floor had been booby-trapped, but not to the sides. That meant he was supposed to pierce his feet only. While that would incapacitate him, he would still be able to deliver the money. He examined the bag and discovered that the Pentad’s overkill approach had paid an unexpected dividend: the GPS sewn into the bottom of the bag had been pierced and probably rendered inoperable.
Something scampered along the wall. Vail hoped it was only rats. But then he thought about how if he had landed on the nails, he would now be leaving a bloody trail for whatever it was to follow. Up ahead, he could see another of the Pentad’s luminescent arrows, leading to, he was relatively certain, some other unpleasantry.


“HE’S LEFT THE 110 and is taking the 101 west,” the tech agent called over the major-case room’s radio.
“One-one, do you have him?” Kaulcrick asked.
“I think so. It’s a dark green pickup truck. There appear to be two white males inside the cab.”
“Can you see Vail?”
“Not from this distance.”
“Crossing Santa Monica Boulevard,” the tech agent called out.
“That’s the right vehicle then,” the surveillance supervisor said. “We’re right there.”
“Then stay on him.” Kaulcrick leaned back uncomfortably in his chair.
“We’ve got to make sure that’s Vail,” Kate said.
“Who else could it be?”


AFTER ANOTHER HUNDRED yards Vail found the next arrow and continued to follow it farther into the tunnel. He could now see the next glowstick in the distance, but it didn’t appear to be an arrow. It was an X placed on another cinder-block wall. Vail calculated that he had not come more than half a mile, so the tunnel must have been previously sealed off in sections. When he got closer, he could see that the X was attached to a thick nylon rope, the kind used by mountain climbers. It had a snap-link tied to the end. A note simply said to place the extortionists’ radio inside the moneybag and attach the bag to the rope.
The rope disappeared into a square hole cut in the base of the wall just large enough for a person to squeeze through. Vail got down on the floor and tried to look into the hole, but it was pitch-black. Out of the side pockets, he took the flashlight, folding knife, and monocular before placing the radio inside the bag and looping the rope through both of its straps, locking the snap-link back onto the rope.
Feeling the movement on the rope, someone started pulling it almost immediately. Vail let it go, knowing it would not go through the hole without his help. The bag turned slightly sideways and couldn’t get through. The rope strained and then went slack as whoever was pulling on it tried to free the bag. Finally Vail turned and pushed the canvas container, guiding it through the two-foot-square hole.
Once it was through, he could see a small amount of light coming in from the upper part of the other side of the opening that the money was pulled through. Whoever was up there was using a concentrated-beam flashlight, he supposed, to ensure the bag was not getting hung up anywhere else. As he watched the money disappear, Vail noticed a newspaper on the floor, half opened and standing tented about four feet directly in front of the hole. It seemed odd that it would have remained upright during the years that the tunnel had been sealed. He looked a little more closely at it. It was not yellow or faded. He couldn’t quite make out the date at the top or the headline.
Then he thought he saw a smaller cord being pulled up after the bag. The last thing Vail noticed before it went dark was a two-foot square of plywood on the other side of the opening lying flat on the floor butted up against the hole cut in the wall. Then he heard the same sounds he had when he descended into the tunnel: the hatch being shut and padlocked, followed by the scraping of dirt and rock to cover it over.


“WHERE ARE THEY NOW?” Kaulcrick asked.
“Just passing the Encino off-ramp.”
Kate pulled the microphone away from Kaulcrick. “Can you get someone up there to make sure it is Vail?”
Kaulcrick grabbed the mike back. “Hold off on that, One-one.” He turned to Kate. “You’ve got to calm down. If they get burned, this could all be for nothing.”
“You don’t know if it’s Vail, which means you don’t know where the bag is.”
Her words set off panic in Kaulcrick’s eyes. “Okay,” he said, and keyed the mike: “One-one, maybe you had better get someone up there and make sure it’s Vail.” He shot a bitter sideways look at Kate. “Very discreetly.”


VAIL RESTED with his back against the wall, trying to figure how he was going to get out of there. That’s why they had insisted that he could not bring a gun; he might have been able to shoot through the hatch and destroy the lock that sealed it.
He heard something again along the tunnel’s walls, getting closer, apparently attracted by his scent and lack of movement. He decided that the rats weren’t necessarily meant to attack him, but to provide a constant distraction with the possibility, keeping him from thinking about any other traps that might have been set.
Maybe he should just wait for the cavalry. But they wouldn’t know about the photocell-triggered explosives—if there were any. The irony of them opening the hatch and detonating it with their flashlights would certainly appeal to whoever was doing this, plus it would destroy any evidence. Then he thought of something even more alarming: they had him leave the wallet GPS so they could use it to draw the surveillance away from the tunnel. With both entrances covered over, he was virtually buried alive, and no one had any idea where.
The only choice left to him was to crawl through the opening and see if he couldn’t somehow get that hatch open. He eased his shoulders into the hole, being careful not to break any planes on the other side. Pushing out on his shoulders and bringing his arms up to the sides to fill the opening as much as possible so no light would leak back into the section he was in, he snapped on the flashlight. The chamber was no more than five feet to the opposite wall, which was also constructed with cinder blocks. Against it sat the newspaper that was open along its center fold and sat, inexplicably, in a foot-high tent on the dirt floor. Its newness reminded him that it had to be hiding something. Then Vail noticed that the dirt around it wasn’t hardpacked like everywhere else in the tunnel. It had been dug up and then hastily tamped down again. A small spine of dirt led from the newspaper back to the plywood board, which was now less than an inch from the tip of his flashlight.
And the plywood wasn’t completely level. Something was underneath it. Because of the telltale rise in the dirt that ran from the newspaper to the board, he had an idea what might be under the paper—a Claymore mine. Claymores contained hundreds of steel balls and C-4 explosive, and were completely directional. Someone struggling through that small hole headfirst and leaning on the board that covered the plunger would have their head vaporized. It seemed like something that the Pentad would consider a perfect ending.


“THEY’RE STILL WEST on the 101. Going through Thousand Oaks,” the tech agent said, now sitting at the monitor tracking the GPS’s movement.
Finally one of the surveillance units said, “I went by and got a good look at the two occupants. Neither of them is our guy.”
Kate looked at Kaulcrick, who appeared to be frozen by indecision. She leaned over him and keyed the mike. “One-one, have your people stop that pickup and search it.”


FIVE MINUTES LATER, the surveillance supervisor came up on the air. “Command, someone tossed the wallet GPS in the back of the truck, probably when it was stopped at a light on Second Street in West Hollywood. There’s no bag and both of the occupants look like working humps.”
Kaulcrick slammed both of his fists down on the radio console. “Okay, One-one, have someone bring them both to the office to be interviewed,” Kate said. “The rest of your people I want back to that railway yard. Use that wallet GPS, and we’ll guide you to the spot where we lost contact with the bag.”


STILL WEDGED IN THE HOLE, Vail carefully picked up the end of the board. Under it was a Claymore plunger.
The mechanism was designed to fit in the hand and took only a couple of pounds of pressure to generate enough electrical current to detonate the blasting cap at the other end. Within the plunger was a simple safety device, a square wire loop, that when in place blocked the plunger’s path, making it impossible to squeeze. To arm it, the wire was simply rotated down out of the way. That’s what the cord Vail had seen being pulled up after the bag was for, to ready the mine for firing. The weight of the bag being pushed through the hole would have been enough to depress the plunger and set off the mine, blowing up the money, so the safety had to be on. The extortionists had run a doubled cord through the safety and after extracting the money pulled the loop flat, arming the device. It was then ready for an exhausted and possibly injured agent to crawl through the opening and put his entire weight on the plywood.
Vail slowly extended his hand to the plunger and reengaged the safety by rotating the loop back up under the handle. Once he did, he turned off his light and crawled into the smaller chamber. Inside, he took the piece of plywood, tipped it up on end, and pushed it flush against the hole in the wall as a light seal. He opened both blades of the Special Ops knife and jammed the knife blade into the dirt and the saw blade into the board to hold it in place.
After turning on the flashlight, he stood as far to the side of the newspaper as he could and carefully lifted it. The Claymore was sitting on its metal scissor legs, elevated to get as many of its projectiles delivered as accurately as possible at the opening. Behind it, on a plastic spool, was about a hundred feet of wire. Taking his time, Vail extracted the blasting cap from the mine’s body.
At the same time Vail was climbing the rungs that led up to the hatch through which the money had disappeared, six of the surveillance agents, led by GPS directions from the major-case room, were only twenty yards from the hatch where Vail had originally entered the tunnel. Had he known this, he would probably have worked a little quicker in case the entire underground structure had been wired with explosives. When he reached the hatch, he found it tightly locked. Climbing back down, he retrieved the mine, then took it back up to the hatch and forced the scissor legs into the joint formed by the small door and the metal frame it fit into. That way the blast would be concentrated at the lock. Slowly he screwed the blasting cap back into the mine’s body and let the wire spool unravel. Turning off the flashlight, he took the plywood board from the hole and crawled back through. Then tipping the board kitty-corner, he was able to shimmy it through the opening. He pulled the spool in after him and then felt around until he found the plunger. Before reconnecting it, he pushed the plywood up, covering the hole, and leaned his back against it. Even though most of the blast would be directed at the hatch, it would give off light in all directions. With the board in place the detonation flash would be contained. He hoped.


“I’VE FOUND SOMETHING over here,” one of the surveillance agents yelled to the others. “This dirt is fresh.” He dropped down on his knees and started moving it with his hands. “There’s a door here.” The rest of the agents came running over to help.
The surveillance supervisor came up and looked at the hatch. “Anyone got bolt cutters?” he said to them, as well as into his handheld radio.
“This is One-four. I’ve got a set in my trunk. I’m just pulling up outside the fence. I’ll be there in two.”


VAIL TOOK A MOMENT to run through everything in his mind again. Taking the plunger in one hand, he flipped the safety wire out of the way and squeezed.


“COMMAND, WE’VE GOT an explosion a couple hundred yards to our north.” The surveillance agents started running toward it.