“I’m down,” he said. “Nobody here.”
He got back in the car and drove across the quarry, his car bouncing on the rough ground. As he got closer to the north wall, he saw nothing but a sheer cliff rising forty stories above him. He turned and traced along the edge of it until he found a pass-through leading under the highway.
He found himself in another canyon, just as vast as the first, just as deep, but now there were ponds of standing water all across the floor, and in the far corner, he could make out a dim circle of light.
“Pass-through under the highway,” he said, picturing Eddie in his Jeep somewhere behind him. “I’m on the other side.”
“You’re too far ahead of me. Wait up.”
Mason didn’t bother answering. As he moved the car forward, his headlights played against the construction vehicles, all standing idle for the night. He weaved his way past a giant backhoe, the tires ten feet high, then a dump truck just as large. He was a tiny figure in a tiny car, a speck moving across this vast chasm. But he kept going. There was no turning back.
? ? ?
Mason still couldn’t see why they were doing this here. A quiet place, with nobody else around—that much he got. But they could have done that almost anywhere. Even in the middle of Chicago you find an abandoned house, with known drug traffic. Just like the house in Fuller Park. Bring Mason there. Kill him. Throw him down the stairs with the rest of the dealers. Even Diana. Just two more people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caught up in something they should have had no part in. Let the uniforms sort it out.
But no, it was all going to happen here. In a fucking limestone quarry.
Mason made a tight turn between two more construction vehicles and saw a circle of light in the distance. It could have been a mile away or it could have been suspended in outer space.
He kept driving toward it, splashing through the standing water, then passing by one construction trailer, then another. The circle kept growing, kept getting brighter. Until Mason came close enough. Stopping his car, Mason stepped out onto the ground.
He stood at the mouth of a tunnel.
The circle was forty feet high. A perfect round hole cut into the side of the cliff. A strand of braided rebar, as thick as a tree, reinforced its perimeter. A half-dozen halogen lamps were mounted around its rim, giving the entrance an eerie glow.
Mason just stood there, looking up in wonder at the size of this tunnel.
“Where are you?” Eddie said.
“Find the tunnel,” Mason said. “Can’t miss it.”
This was the Deep Tunnel he’d been hearing about since he was a kid in Canaryville. Because Chicago was built on a swamp, the sewers and the storm drains would overflow every time it rained hard enough. They’d been working on this tunnel for forty years, so they could bring all the rainwater and piss and shit and fuck knows what else in a giant pipe away from the city and apparently right into this quarry. The whole thing would be flooded soon. Any dead bodies left in this quarry would be swallowed up under four hundred feet of water and never seen again.
Now I get it, Mason thought. This is why they chose this place. He took the gun from his belt.
Then he walked into the tunnel.
The ground had been cut flat here. Flat enough to walk on. Flat enough for a vehicle to drive on. The walls rising on either side and coming together in an arc high above his head, the coiled rebar like the ribs of a great whale. Thick cables ran along the ground on the right. Electricity, water, maybe even air. There were more lights spaced every few feet, but only a few of those were lit. Every hundred feet, there were two bulbs mounted high on the arc, one left, one right, together creating a single ring of light. These rings ran one after another, the lights getting dimmer and dimmer as they stretched off into infinity. Just enough light to see your way through in a nighttime emergency. During the day there’d be workers coming through here, vehicles going back and forth, fans blowing, every light turned on. A busy underground street. Now the place had been given back almost completely to darkness.
He had no idea how far he’d have to walk to find someone. He had no idea how long he’d live.
He walked through great puddles of standing water. It was cold and as his shoes got more and more soaked, his feet started to get numb. He could hear more water dripping all around him. He could smell it in the dense, humid air.
Go back, he said to himself. Get the car, drive it right down this tunnel’s throat. Get as much speed as you can. But then he saw a shadow appearing ahead, and as he got closer, he saw it was a great orange-painted crane that had been parked there for the night. There was no way he’d ever get around it.