The passageway opened at last into a large pentagonal chamber, yellow stalactites dripping water from the vaulted ceiling. Snow stared with amazement at a massive iron chain hanging from a metal eye cleat set in the vault’s apex. A trickle of water ran down the chain, off a great rusted hook at its end, and dribbled into the pool. There was a cement landing streaked with rust. Three large, dry tunnels branched off from the walls of the chamber.
“Three Points,” Rachlin said. “We’ll use this as our rally base. The op should be a cakewalk, but we’ll do it by the book. Follow strict challenge-and-reply procedures: proper response will be three even numbers. The rules of engagement are simple. Identify yourself, but shoot to kill any threat or hindrance to your work. Extraction point will be the One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street Canal.” The Commander looked around. “All right, gentlemen, let’s earn our MREs.”
= 57 =
FOR A DREADFUL moment Margo thought they were under attack, and she turned instinctively, raising her weapon to the ready position, strangely reluctant to look at the thing Pendergast was struggling with. There was a whispered curse from D’Agosta. Squinting through the still-unfamiliar goggles, Margo realized Pendergast was grappling with a person, perhaps a homeless man who had evaded the police roust. He certainly looked the part: wet, caked in mud, apparently bleeding from some unseen wound.
“Shut off the light,” Pendergast hissed. D’Agosta’s flashlight beam struck her goggles, then winked out. The glowing vista seesawed violently as her goggles tried to compensate, corning back into focus as they stabilized. She drew her breath in sharply. There was something about the lanky features, the tousled hair, that was irresistibly familiar.
“Bill?” she asked in disbelief.
Pendergast had the man on the ground, hugging him almost protectively, murmuring words into one ear. After a moment, the man stopped struggling and went limp. Pendergast released him gently and stood up. Margo leaned in for a closer look. It was Smithback, all right. .
“Give him a minute,” Pendergast said.
“I don’t believe it,” D’Agosta growled. “What, you think he followed us down here?”
Pendergast shook his head. “No. Nobody followed us.” He looked around at the confluence of tunnels above and below. “This is the Bottleneck, where all descending tunnels of the Central Park quadrant meet. He was being chased, apparently, and his path intersected ours. The question is, chased by whom? Or what?” He unshipped his flamethrower and glanced at D’Agosta. “You’d better be ready with the flash, Vincent.”
Suddenly, Smithback lunged upwards, then fell back onto the mass of pipes and twenty-four-inch mains that made up the floor of the Bottleneck.
“They killed Duffy!” he cried. “Who are you? Help me, I can’t see!”
Pocketing her weapon, Margo came forward and knelt at his side. The trip down from the subway tunnel—through noisome corridors and dark, echoing galleries that seemed incredibly out of place dozens of stories beneath Manhattan—had been like an endless dark dream. Seeing her friend race out of the darkness, petrified with fear and shock, only increased her sense of unreality.
“Bill,” she said soothingly. “It’s okay. It’s Margo. Please keep quiet. We don’t dare use lights, and there isn’t a spare set of goggles. But we’ll help you along.”
Smithback blinked in her direction, pupils wide. “I want to get out of here!” he cried suddenly, struggling to his feet.
“What?” D’Agosta said sarcastically. “And miss your story?”
“You can’t go back alone,” Pendergast said, putting a restraining arm on his shoulder.
The struggle seemed to have exhausted Smithback, and he sagged forward. “What are you doing here?” he asked at last.
“I might ask you the same question,” Pendergast replied. “Mephisto is leading us to the Astor Tunnels—the Devil’s Attic. There was a plan to drain the Reservoir and flood the creatures out.”
“Captain Waxie’s plan,” D’Agosta added.
“But the Reservoir is full of the Mbwun lily. That’s where the creatures were growing it. And we can’t allow the plants to reach the open ocean. It’s too late to stop the water dump, so a SEAL team was sent in from the river to seal the lowest spillway tunnels below. We’re going to seal off the spaces abovethe Astor Tunnels to prevent any spillages. We’ll bottle up the flow, keep it from escaping down into the river. If we succeed, it will back up to the Bottleneck here, but nowhere else.”
Smithback remained unspeaking, his head bowed.
“We’re well armed, and fully prepared for whatever’s down there. We have maps. You’ll be safer with us. Do you understand, William?”
Margo watched as Pendergast’s mellifluous delivery worked its calming effect. Smithback’s breathing seemed to slow, and finally he nodded almost imperceptibly.
“So what were youup to, anyway?” D’Agosta asked.
Pendergast made a restraining motion with one hand, but Smithback looked in the direction of the Lieutenant. “I followed Captain Waxie and a group of policemen underneath the Reservoir,” he said quietly. “They were trying to shut off some valves. But they’d been sabotaged, or something. Then—” He stopped abruptly. “Then theycame.”
“Bill, don’t,” Margo interjected.
“I ran away,” Smithback said, swallowing hard. “Duffy and I ran away. But they caught him in the gauging station. They—”
“That’s enough,” said Pendergast quietly. There was a silence. “Sabotage, did you say?”
Smithback nodded. “I heard Duffy say that somebody had been messing with the valves.”
“That is troublesome. Troublesome indeed.” There was a look on Pendergast’s face that Margo had not seen before. “We’d better continue,” he said, shouldering the flamethrower again. “This Bottleneck is a perfect place for an ambush.” He glanced around the dark tunnel. “Mephisto?”he whispered.
There was a stirring in the darkness, then Mephisto came forward, arms folded across his chest, a wide smirk on his whiskered lips.
“I was just enjoying this touching reunion,” he said, in his silky hiss. “Now the merry band of adventurers is complete. Ho, scriblerian! I see you’ve descended farther than you dared venture on our first meeting. Grows on you, doesn’t it?”
“Not especially,” Smithback replied in a low voice.
“How nice, at least, to have one’s own Boswell at hand.” In the artificial light of the goggles, it seemed to Margo that Mephisto’s eyes glittered gold and crimson as they surveyed the group. “Will you compose an epic poem on the event? The Mephistiad. In heroic couplets, please. That’s assuming you live to tell the tale. I wonder which of us will survive, and which will leave their whitened bones to lie here, forever, in the tunnels beneath Manhattan?”
“Let’s move on,” Pendergast said.
“I see. Whiteyhere feels there has been enough talk. Perhaps he fears it will be hisbones left to the rats.”
“We need to set several series of charges directly below the Bottleneck,” Pendergast said smoothly. “If we stand here listening to your empty posturing, we won’t have time to exit before the Reservoir dumps. Then it will be your bones, as well as mine, that are left for the rats.”
“Very well, very well!” Mephisto said. “Don’t chafe.” He turned and began clambering down a large, dark tube.
“No,” Smithback said.
D’Agosta took a step toward the journalist. “Come on. I’ll take your hand.”
The vertical tube ended in a high-ceilinged tunnel, and they waited in the darkness while Pendergast set several sets of charges, then motioned them on. A few hundred yards down the tunnel, they arrived at a walkway that crossed a few feet above the level of the water. Margo felt grateful; the ankle-deep stream had been cold and foul.