She pushed forward. "What?" When she saw what he had found, she froze, then took several deep breaths to get herself under control. What remained of the two workers was little more than two severed heads and a pile of intestines and bones. Their slashed uniforms were stuffed behind the two heads, which stared with unseeing eyes, the faces fixed forever in an expression of terror.
"What did those things do to them?" Giannini demanded.
"The Synbats killed them and then butchered them for the meat." Riley moved the flashlight to the left. The familiar tracks of the Synbats showed clearly in the mud, along with four straight lines that disappeared down the tunnel.
"Those are the Synbats' tracks." Riley squatted down. "The straight lines must be the shopping cart. Two men — two sets of marks. They killed the two men, cut them up, then loaded up the shopping cart. They had to make two trips to get it all."
"Goddamn," Giannini muttered, her eyes riveted on the remains. "Goddamn."
"Let's get back up top," Riley said, grabbing her arm. "We need more firepower before we go down that tunnel."
Giannini had the street cordoned off, and Riley's men were crowded in the back of the large truck parked next to the manhole. Merrit stood alongside Riley as he briefed the team.
"We've got a definite set of tracks. Trovinsky, I want you up front with me. We'll all wear night vision goggles. Strict noise and light discipline: I want to kill them, not scare them off. Remember — they're armed."
Riley pulled a small foil-wrapped object from his pocket. "We're going to mark our route and each other using IR chem lights." He cracked the package and pulled out the light stick, which in the dim light of the truck showed nothing. Using the night vision goggles, though, the chem light would show up brightly. Riley looped a piece of cord through the hole at the end of the chem light and slung it over his back. The rest of his team did the same. "That will mark you from behind. Make sure you turn on the IR light on your NVGs. That will mark you from the front. I want everyone to stay tight. You see the Synbats, shoot to kill. We've got to get all three adults. Any questions?"
There were none. Riley pointed at Merrit. "You stay right behind me." He looked out the back of the van and saw Giannini leaning against her car, out of earshot. She had been shunted aside by the colonel upon his arrival, and had not taken it very well. "Let's do it." Riley hopped off the back of the truck and headed for the manhole.
At the bottom of the ladder, Riley waited while the other seven members of his team and Merrit climbed down. Earlier Lewis's men had removed the remains of the two cable company men in body bags.
As the team gathered round, Doc Seay tugged on Riley's sleeve. "What do you think?"
"About what?" Riley asked.
"Are we going to get them all?"
Riley peered down the tunnel. "We'd damn well better."
Riley looked around — everyone was in place. Trovinsky quickly led the way down the tunnel, following the twin set of wheel tracks. Riley followed right behind, feeling hemmed in and vulnerable. Their numerical advantage — just a little more than two to one — wasn't going to help much in these tight quarters. Technology wasn't going to be much of an advantage either. They had the goggles, but if Merrit's information was correct about the Synbats' ability to see in the dark, then the goggles were more of an equalizer than an advantage.
The tunnel curved to the right and Riley splashed through the thin layer of mud, eyes on Trovinsky's back. The point man's head was down, watching the tracks. Despite their best attempts to keep quiet, the noise of the team moving through the tunnel was easily audible. They came to the first junction — a tunnel cutting at right angles across their front. The tracks turned left. Riley cracked an IR chem light and left it at the intersection, marking the way back.
Something glinted in his goggles directly ahead. Riley tapped Trovinsky on the back, halting him. "Cover me," he whispered.
Trovinsky moved over to the far right side and knelt on the scum-covered floor, ignoring the goo that soaked through his pants. The rest of the team spread out and waited. Rifle at the ready, Riley advanced. The object slowly took form in his goggles — the missing shopping cart. He halted briefly and carefully checked out the area. The tunnel continued on as far as he could see. Near the cart was what appeared to be a crack in the wall, about two feet wide and starting two feet up, extending to the ceiling.
Riley stepped next to the cart; the metal on the bottom gave off a sheen of dried blood. He stopped and listened carefully for about thirty seconds. The only sound was the nervous movements of the members of his team behind him. He leaned forward and, weapon first, peered into the crack. It widened to about a yard and went straight down twenty feet. There were no rungs on the sheer concrete wall. The bottom was another concrete floor, in a small alcove that appeared to open off to the left. No sign of the Synbats.
Riley turned and gestured with one hand. Doc Seay shrugged off the small daypack he was wearing, pulled out two lengths of rope, and came forward, handing them over. Taking the shorter, twelve-foot length, Riley quickly fashioned a field-expedient Swiss seat, wrapping it around his legs and waist. He unclipped a snap link from his combat vest and looped it through the rope at the front of his waist.
Riley then tied off the longer rope to the bottom rail of the shopping cart and wedged the cart lengthwise against the opening. Stepping over the cart, he clipped the long rope into the snap link on his Swiss seat, looping it once around the metal. He leaned back, one hand holding the long rope tight against his chest, the other holding his M16. With a nod to Seay, he pushed his hand away from his chest and descended in short bounds, reaching the bottom in a few seconds.
Riley quickly knelt at the bottom and scanned. He was in a small chamber, about five feet around, with an opening directly in front of him. There was no sign of the Synbats other than some dark spots on the dirty concrete floor, which Riley surmised were blood. Pulling the end of the long rope free of his snap link, he edged forward and looked through the opening. Another tunnel stretched off to either side. It was in a horseshoe shape about seven and a half feet high by six feet wide. On the far side, large conduits and cables, held in place by metal stanchions, ran the length of the tunnel. The walls were made of crumbling concrete and the floor was concrete, occasionally covered with damp dirt. A smell of decay was faintly noticeable in the air.
Riley edged out into the tunnel and checked the ground. He couldn't see any Synbat tracks. One thing he could tell for sure: This tunnel was not part of a sewer system. There were two small rails on the floor about two feet apart, as if some sort of small train system once ran down here.
After a few moments, Riley turned back into the opening and slung the M16 over his shoulder. He took hold of the rope with both hands and, clinching with his feet, pulled himself back up to an anxious Doc Seay.
"What do you have?" Seay whispered.
"Another tunnel," Riley answered in a normal voice. "I don't know how far it extends, but it seems to go quite a ways. I couldn't spot any tracks. Before we go any farther, though, I think we need a map of this tunnel system. We're wandering around in the dark, and that's to the Synbats' advantage." Riley pulled up the rope and untied and recoiled it.
"Let's get back to the surface."
The back of the large van was now Lewis's field headquarters. Radios covered most of one of the walls and a small table occupied the center. Around the table stood the colonel, Riley, Merrit, and Giannini, peering at a set of old blueprints.
"Your suspects," Giannini said, giving Riley a small look, "are in an old set of tunnels that were once used as a freight system." She tapped the blueprints. "I got these from the Board of Underground in the City Transportation Department, but all they show is the sewer system and the subways. The system you went into is below those."