Mercer came across more and more tunnels that were relatively dry and wondered how that could be, considering the amount of rain that Jean-Paul had said had been falling. As he staggered down one, a sudden gust of foul air pressed against his back. He turned. The Chinese had yet to turn this corner, but beyond the intersection he’d just passed, a wall of water raced down the sewer carrying debris of every imaginable shape and size. The sewermen working up the line must have temporarily dammed the flow to build enough pressure to clear obstructions. It was a practice used in the city for more than a century. Mercer had also heard they used special boats equipped with sluice gates for the same purpose.
He jumped out of the channel just as the tide swept past, its force making the entire tunnel vibrate. He lay on the slimy floor for a moment, almost at the end of his strength. His breathing was too labored to properly fill his lungs. Slowly he pushed himself to his feet and felt that his pursuer had gained a few yards on him.
Mercer came to a junction that contained a number of valves and gates, a central area where several of the larger sewers came together. Nearly tapped out, he took cover behind an iron valve casing the size of a locomotive boiler. This was the best place he’d found to make a stand. He checked to see how many rounds remained in the Beretta and discovered that he had only one. Considering its corrosion, there was a fifty-fifty chance of the bullet firing or exploding in the pistol. He hastily searched for an exit. Just as he spotted an open hole in the floor that was usually covered by a hatch, the assassin burst into the chamber. He didn’t appear winded at all. His motions were crisp, precise, quartering the room with his eyes as his gun arm followed. Mercer couldn’t wait for the gunman’s gaze to swing toward him.
As silently as his sodden shoes would allow, he crept forward on the man’s blind side. When they were ten feet apart, Mercer launched himself at his attacker. The gunman was quick, but not quick enough. The impact sent both men against the railing that protected three sides of the hole. The assassin’s breath exploded as his ribs were hammered by the metal railing. Mercer used this momentary advantage to smash the gun out of his grip.
The killer had one arm free and whipped his elbow into Mercer’s chest, twisting out of reach and settling into a martial-arts pose. Mercer had learned a few basic karate moves, but considered his superior size his only weapon in this fight. When the assassin came in with a lightning kick, Mercer pushed him aside, wrapped both arms around the man, and began to squeeze. The Chinese used the back of his head as a battering ram against Mercer’s face, but Mercer lowered his own head so the two came together with a stunning crack.
Dazed by the contact, Mercer lost his hold and the assassin moved inside his defenses, putting two punishing blows into Mercer’s chest before using the heel of his hand against Mercer’s chin.
Mercer dropped.
The gunman was on him like a terrier, kicking him so that he was pushed toward the open manhole in the floor. Mercer couldn’t defend himself. Instead of resisting, he clutched his briefcase with one hand, wrapped his arms around the gunman’s leg and allowed himself to fall through the hole.
Mercer and the gunman dropped six feet into the trickle of water running along the floor of a perfectly round tunnel. It was more like an enormous pipeline than the previous tunnels, but seemed to date from the same time. A steady wind blew across the men as they lay in the water, too stunned to move for a moment.
Gaining his feet just before the gunman, Mercer faced into the peculiar wind while the Chinese killer had his back to it. He never saw what was coming for them out of the darkness. Mercer could see it and it was like something out of a nightmare.
This tunnel was one of the main feeds of the entire system and had been designed so that cleaning it didn’t require men to go into the channel with boats and their special shovels, called rabots. Here, whenever silt and debris clogged the conduit, they introduced a huge wooden ball exactly nine-tenths the diameter of the tunnel. The pressure of water behind it forced it down the pipe like a rolling plug.
Mercer now understood what Jean-Paul had meant when he said the street department was dropping the ball all over the city. He wasn’t using the American expression for a screwup. They were literally dropping a one-thousand-pound wooden ball into the storm drains to clear them of the trash washed in by the constant rains.
The ball rolled at them with unimaginable force, pressed forward by tons of water on its upstream side. Water jetted from the gaps between it and the tunnel’s lining. Mercer turned and ran, snapping on the spare flashlight he’d taken at the entrance to the catacombs. He looked back once to see the assassin limping after him. The man had injured his leg during the fall into the drain. His pace nowhere near matched that of the huge sphere.
The gunman must have known it too because a moment before he was overwhelmed, he stopped to face the ball. He screamed once, a high keen that carried over the thunder of so much pressure, and then he fell under the revolving weight. Without pause, the ball’s remorseless motion crushed him flat as though he’d never existed. Mercer dredged up the last of his reserves, running harder than he’d ever moved, his light licking at the smooth tunnel walls searching for an escape.
Ahead, he saw a pile of sand that blocked half the tunnel and dove over its crest in a flying leap. He rolled down its far slope, regained his feet and continued on. He glanced over his shoulder to see the ball hit the sand, hoping it would give him a moment’s reprieve. The ball was stopped for just a second before hydraulic forces dissolved the shoal. It continued its inexorable journey, mindlessly chasing Mercer down the tunnel.
The drain swept through a couple of gentle turns, Mercer maximizing his angle at each so as not to lose one inch to the wooden globe. He could feel its presence no more than a dozen paces back. An occasional drop of water hit his head and neck. He knew if he looked at it, it would fill his vision. He pushed himself even harder.
And just as he began to lose strength once again, his light flashed across a niche in the wall, a portal of some sort that protected a metal door. The surge of adrenaline carried him out of the spray that geysered from around the ball. He reached the niche just yards ahead of the ball and pressed the door’s lever handle. The metal shrieked as it opened and Mercer stepped into a smaller tunnel that ran parallel to the main trunk line. The ball passed the open door before Mercer could reseal it. A solid wall of water hit him full in the chest, knocking him back against the far wall, pinning him until the pressure dropped. He fell back to the floor, gagging on the sewer water that had filled his mouth.
After several minutes of coughing and vomiting, Mercer staggered to his feet and returned to the main drain line. The tunnel had been scoured clean, and a smooth stream of water coursed down its center. Mercer continued to follow it, knowing that eventually he’d come to an outlet where sanitation workers would be waiting to recover the ball. Fifteen minutes later he heard voices echoing in the humid tunnel.
The tension of the past two hours washed out of him. He had to brace himself to keep from collapsing. He touched the side of his sample case, wondering again what exactly he’d been lured into. Later, he knew, his desire to find the truth would build, but for now all he wanted was out of this reeking labyrinth.
Mercer staggered into the light cast by the sanitation workers’ mining helmets as they maneuvered one of their special boats into the stream from a side tunnel. They all wore tall rubber waders and thick gloves. They were as startled to see a filthy man blunder out of the gloom as Mercer was relieved to see them.