Wide concrete aisles were on either side of an M. C. Escher design of pipework, furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, and more. Pipes of metal, PVC, and copper snaked everywhere — upward to provide heat, air conditioning, water, downward for drainage.
Murton stayed in the lead, taking them on a guided tour of an underground world civilians never got to see.
“The Capitol Power Plant provides electricity and natural gas for us,” Murton said, working his voice up over the din, “in addition to almost twenty other federal buildings in the Capitol Hill area.”
Reeder, nearly shouting, asked, “Is replacing a furnace routine or rare?”
“We’ve been installing new furnaces in the basement for most of the last ten years, part of the Capitol working to shrink its carbon footprint.”
“How many furnaces replaced recently?”
“Two in the last year — this one, and one under the Senate.” He paused. “No, three, now that I think of it. The one Lester put in? That was a replacement for one that failed its test run.”
They kept walking.
Reeder asked, “How long has the plan to change out the furnaces been on the schedule?”
Murton laughed but it got lost in the din. “For fifteen years, anyway! Each year, the budget either allows us to continue, or not. The last couple years, under Harrison, things have improved. This replacement furnace? Lester just finished that job a week ago. Here it is.”
Murton was gesturing to a sleek new furnace: big, black, geometric, boxes on boxes. Had one of them been in Bryson’s SIM card picture?
Reeder and Rogers stood staring at the thing, like Ahab spotting Moby Dick lounging in the sun, shooting spray from its blowhole — What are you gonna do about it, you one-legged asshole?
“It’s running,” Rogers said, sounding surprised.
The thrum of the black furnace was like an aircraft about to take off.
“Of course it’s running,” Murton said, with an are-you-crazy smirk. “It’s winter!”
While Rogers tried to explain to Murton that the furnace might have been sabotaged — without getting into the Senkstone aspect — Reeder moved off a little ways to call Miggie. He tucked into a recess that cut the machinery noise somewhat, but still kept his mouth close to the phone — he wanted to be heard, but only by Miggie.
Reeder asked, “Could you 3-D print a working Senkstone furnace?”
“Hell no,” Miggie said. “But... well, you could print each part separately, and then assemble it.”
“Thanks,” Reeder said, not sure he knew much more than before he called.
“What’s up, Joe?”
“Fill you in later, Mig.”
He clicked off, and stepped out from the recess just as somebody bumped into something to his right. Rogers and Murton were down to his left, and he turned toward the sound.
Just another Capitol worker in no hurry, in that same jumpsuit uniform, in the opposite aisle, barely visible through the crowded pipes and furnace. Headed back the way he, Rogers, and Murton had come.
No big deal, Reeder thought, and then the guy glanced his way.
The SIM card blond.
Give the guy credit — he didn’t react at all. Maybe that was what removed any small doubt from Reeder’s mind, since most people, even meeting the eyes of a stranger, would nod or even smile. Not this guy, though again to his credit, he did not pick up his pace. Just looked ahead as if nothing special had occurred, as if he hadn’t recognized Reeder.
But Reeder knew the blond had made him, and moved along with the man, mirroring his pace, separated by the mechanical hum-and-clank snarl of the bowels of the Capitol.
Reeder considered trying to work his way through the clustered pipes and PVC and coils and boxy metal units, but better to wait for a cross aisle — one would have to be coming up. The blond picked up speed, still walking but briskly now.
Rogers had apparently not noticed any of this, talking with Murton, and Reeder cursed himself for not yelling to her before he took up this bizarre chase. She could have cut across and come up behind the blond.
But it had gone down too quickly, and to yell now would spark his prey into a full-on run. He fished for his cell — he could at least send a text to Rogers — and maybe the blond saw that, because he broke into a run and Reeder had no choice but to give damn-the-torpedoes chase.
Reeder and the blond were both running now, footfalls eaten up by the mechanical noise, like they were figures in a silent movie. Someone behind him was running, likely Rogers finally figuring something was up; but he didn’t look back, keeping his head down as he charged forward, well aware he was in a race with a younger man.
The blond guy cut from the aisle into the nightmare jungle gym of pipes and Reeder automatically slowed, peering through the PVC and metal maze, searching for any small glimpse of the intruder. Had he passed the guy? Had Reeder kept moving forward and now the guy was behind him? Then the son of a bitch jumped out of a cross aisle fifty feet in front of him.
They were in the Capitol and yet the guy somehow had a gun in his hand, a .45. Made of Senkstone, perhaps, one moving damn part at a time.
“Gun!” Reeder shouted, for the third time in two days, and threw himself against the pipes as the guy planted himself and aimed, Reeder bracing for the shot.
“Ow! Shit!”
Rogers!
He turned toward her, twenty feet behind him in his aisle. She was dropping to her knees, pistol clattering to the cement. He glanced back to make sure he wasn’t in the line of fire, and the blond guy was gone.
A door slammed.
He went quickly to his partner’s side and knelt beside her. She was on her back, moaning.
“How bad?” he asked.
“He... he got me in the... vest. The vest! Then why, why... why does it hurt... like a mother?”
Murton, not far away, had crammed himself behind a furnace, walkie-talkie out as he barked into it, though he too was in a silent movie, drowned out by machines.
Reeder went down to quickly check something about the black furnace. When he returned in a minute or so, Rogers was in a sitting position and her gun was back in her hip holster.
“Shit!” she said again, the word handball-careening off the hard walls.
“We’ll get the bastard,” Reeder said.
“Yes we will,” she said, massively pissed, “and when we do, I’m going to kick his ass around this grand old building for shooting a hole in my best silk blouse. That’s two blouses ruined in twenty-four hours. Does this prick think I’m made of money?”
Reeder smiled, an arm around her shoulder. “You FBI agents aren’t usually so colorful. But could I have a slice of that ass kicking? Son of a bitch owes me for a suit, too.”
“Why the hell are you smiling?”
“Two things. First, you’re alive, and second, we saw our blond here — at the Capitol. That confirms it — this is the target.”
“Domestic terrorism?”
“If it needs a name.”
“Is that... that furnace made of Senk?”
“Probably not. I scraped paint off a side and got sheet metal. Anyway, it’s been running for a week. Miggie says every moving part would have to be printed separately, and there could still be stability issues.”
“Should we call the bomb squad?”