Storm Surge - Part 2 (41 page)

"We really appreciate it."

The man grunted and walked off, shaking his head.

"What a nice guy," Scuzzy said. "A real New Yorker." She looked inside the room. "So what are we looking for?"

"Wow. What a place." Nan entered, shining a big flashlight around. "Good grief, Ms. Stuart. Don't tell me this is an actual telecom demarc."

"Kerry, please." Kerry poked her head in. "Unfortunately, yes, it is.Here's the problem. They have the cable for this thing down in the subway tunnel, and it's too short for us to bring up the steps and across the floor there. Dar wants us to find a pipe or conduit that might go down there so she can bring the connection up."

"Oh. Wow." Nan peered around. "Are we still trying to do this? I thought we were giving it up last night." She looked back at Kerry. "It's almost eight o'clock."

"Yeah." Scuzzy looked at her watch. "I gotta get going to the airport, yeah? Bring this guy right back here?"

"Right back here." Kerry agreed. "Okay, Nan, Robert, let's see what we can find." She entered the room cautiously with the office applications support specialist behind her. "We're looking for a pipe."

"Plenty of them in here." Nan said.

"Keep clear of that one, it's steam." Kerry pointed. "And don't touch that panel. It's live electrical."

Nan stopped, and turned around to look at her.

"Dar found out the hard way." Kerry took a careful breath, and edged along the wall, inspecting everything within reach of her flashlight. She'd passed on wearing her jumpsuit, since the idea of struggling into it was just too much for her at the moment.

Dar had insisted on her boots though, going so far as to put them on her, in a moment of exasperating over protectiveness, in front of the staff standing there waiting for them.

Goofball. She found a pipe and tapped on it, shaking the rust off the outside and exposing the old lettering. "Water. No, that won't do it."

"These are huge pipes--steam you said?" Nan was moving around the other side. "They're big."

"We have steam heat," Robert said. He was kneeling on the floor near the front of the room looking at the pipes protruding through the concrete. "What are we looking for, Ms. Stuart? Will they be labeled? I think these are electrical, they say Edison."

"What we're really looking for is an empty pipe that might go down." Kerry stepped carefully over their router and the fiber patch panel Kannan had just finished. "Something that might be going down into the subway from an office building."

"Well." Nan slid between two of the bigger pipes, her slim form almost obscured by them. "This one says fire alarm system--it's going down."

Kerry abandoned her search and made her way to the other side of the closet, easing her head between the pipes since she was pretty sure the rest of her wouldn't fit. "Okay--oh." She turned her head sideways."Telegraph conduit. Telegraph?"

"There used to be fire boxes on the street," Robert explained. "Connected to the fire department. It worked by Morse code or something."

Kerry unclipped her mic. "Dar? You there?"

A loud rushing sound answered her and she pulled the mic away from her ear. "Yow."

"Sorry." Dar clicked in a minute later. "Train going by. What's up? You find anything?"

"Are you in the tunnel?" Kerry asked. "Where the tracks are? Holy crap, Dar!"

"That's where the cable is," Dar reminded her.

"Be careful." Kerry felt her stress level rising. "We found a pipe that is supposed to be for the fire alarm system. It says 'telegraph' on the outside. Can you find one down there?"

"Bang on it," Dar said. "Get something and keep banging on it and we'll look."

Nan nodded. "Good idea." She looked around. "There's a piece of brick--maybe that'll work." She squeezed over near the wall and retrieved it, and then came back over and started banging on the pipe.

"Hear that?" Kerry asked over the radio.

"Hang on."

Kerry held the mic with one hand, keeping her other elbow pressed against her side that had started to ache again. "Good catch, Nan." She complimented the woman. "Last thing we needed was to be stuck inhere for a long time."

"Ker? I can hear it." Dar answered back. "Just keep banging. We'll try to find ya. Good job."

"Thank Nan." Kerry backed away from the pipe. "Robert, can you find a brick and spell Nan when she gets tired? I don't think my ribs are going to be up to me whacking something."

"Sure," Robert agreed instantly. "Boy that took a lot less time than I thought it would."

"How are we going to get the cable inside the pipe up here?" Nan asked over the pounding. She whacked the pipe at one-second intervals; making a low, gong like sound that wasn't quite pleasant. "There's no hole in the pipe."

No, of course there wasn't. "Hey Dar?" Kerry keyed the mic. "I'm going to need someone up here with a hacksaw."

"Send them up when they're done here," Dar answered, her breathing sounding a bit strained. "Get back to you in a minute."

Kerry released the mic, trying hard not to turn tail at once and go chasing down the stairs to see what her partner was up to. "Boy, that was a lot shorter than I thought, too," she commented. "We may make this if Dar can find that pipe."

"They're making a big deal out of the Exchange this morning."Robert straightened, with a small section of pipe in his hands. "The vice president's going to be there, and a bunch of other people. I hear they're going to have one of the firemen ring the opening bell."

The underlying hypocrisy made Kerry's eyeballs twitch. She turned and looked around searching out a path for the cable to come up once it came out of the pipe. The floor was crowded with mechanics but she traced out a route with her eyes, taking the cable along the floor and past the dangerously humming electrical panel.

Yes, that would work. She eyed the bend the cable would have to make to get to the router, and while it was steeper than Dar probably would have liked, beggars in this case certainly could not be choosers and they'd just have to try and make it work.

She was just relieved they'd found a solution. She checked her watch. Quarter past eight. They had really an hour to get everything hooked up and tested before the exchange opened at nine thirty. If the modules got here in time, it was do-able.

Just.

"Ker?" Dar's voice crackled through, sounding tired and irritated.

Uh oh. "Here," Kerry answered. "What's up?"

"We can't get at that damn pipe." Dar answered. "It's inside an equipment room behind some locked doors."

"Well--"

"Which Mark already picked. Someone decided to dump a load of unwanted concrete in the closet and it's covering the pipes. They're inside the concrete."

Shit. Kerry clicked the mic, looking over at the others, who were looking back at her in dismay. "All the pipes in that area?" She looked around."They're all on that wall, Dar."

"All of them," Dar confirmed. "Every last goddamned one of them buried inside a pile of rock with construction worker's graffiti marked all over it.

Nan stopped pounding, and let the brick fall to her leg. "So, now what?"

"Good question." Kerry exhaled. Slowly she let her eyes wander over the inside of the room. "Damned good question."

"QUARTER TO NINE." Kerry wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. She was kneeling on the dirty concrete, as Nan squirmed under the consoles looking for something, anything they could use to solve their current problem.

"I don't see anything," Nan said. "Just a lot of dirt."

"Son of a bitch." Kerry exhaled. "This stupid piece of shit room. If I had a stick of dynamite I'd just blow a damn hole in the floor."

Nan eyed her, a trifle nervously.

"Is there anything I can do other than hold this flashlight?" Robert asked. "I feel a little useless standing here letting you ladies do all the dirty work."

Kerry lowered herself carefully down until she was lying flat on her belly on the ground. She slowly moved her flashlight around every inch of the floor, ignoring the throbbing pain in her chest.

"Ker, I think we're about out of time." Dar's voice crackled softly over the radio. "I can't find a damn thing down here."

Kerry cursed under her breath. "Hang on." She keyed the mic. "I'm going to have one last look here."

"Okay." Dar responded. "Good luck. We're not having any."

"Thanks hon." She released the radio and continued her inch-by-inch search, running her flashlight over the back wall past the electrical panel, over the painted over wooden half door, over the brick--

Wait.

Kerry moved her flashlight back. She focused on the long sealed half portal, her eyes flicking over it with startling intensity. "Robert?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Get me a sledgehammer. Immediately."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Nan squirmed over to see what she was looking at. "What are you going to do?"

Kerry pointed. "That was a door once. It went somewhere." She rested her flashlight on the ground and her chin on the flashlight, trying not to breathe too deeply. "It's lower than the level of the floor."

"You think it goes somewhere?"

"Haven't a fucking clue." Kerry keyed the mic. "Dar, I found something. Give me two minutes, and then see if you hear me knocking."

"Will do," Dar responded. "Got my damned fingers crossed."

Nan studied Kerry. "You people from Miami curse a lot. No offense. It just sounds weird."

"We have a lot to curse." Kerry edged forward, now regretting that she'd declined the jumpsuit. She could feel the chill of the concrete against her belly as she angled herself under a large metal shelf toward the door. "It's either hot and steamy, or it's a tropical storm, or it's bad drivers, corrupt politicians, and roads under perpetual construction."

"Oh." Nan watched her. "You want me to do that? You must be hurting like crazy crawling around like that."

Kerry turned her head and looked at her. "Can you swing a ten pound sledge hammer underhand?"

Nan blinked. "Um--you know, I never tried, but I'm more into marathons than weightlifting."

"Well." Kerry squirmed a last few inches. "I can, and I'm short enough to get in here." She arrived in front of the door. There was an alteration in the floor there, a pour of concrete that had settled into a depression three feet wide. It made the floor in front of the half door a good twelve inches lower than what she was laying on. She ran her fingers over it. "Stairs?"

"Hard to say." Nan looked up over her shoulder at the door. "Found one?"

"I did." Robert came forward. "The custodian was there. I just paid him twenty bucks and he handed it right over." He edged toward where Kerry was. "You want it there, Ms Stuart?"

"We must be in New York," Nan said, in a wry tone.

"Like Washington doesn't know anything about bribes?" Robert jibed back.

"Can you get the head of it here, next to--yeah." Kerry curled her fingers around the shaft of the sledgehammer and steeled herself, tucking her right arm up against her side to support her ribs. Then she lifted the hammer and smacked the head against the door, making a loud cracking boom.

"Whoa." Nan squirmed back out of the way. "Let me get outta here before splinters start flying."

Kerry smacked the door again, then again, and again. It didn't seem to be moving, but she could see the paint cracking along the sealed edges. "Hope Dar can hear that."

"Ker. " As though in answer, Dar's voice sputtered near her ear. "What the hell are you do--where is that? Mark! Mark! Where in the hell is that coming from?"

Kerry felt a jolt in her side, and she took a quick breath against it. She kept up her attack, feeling some of her rage at the situation coming out as she swung against the door harder and harder. "Stupid." Bang."Piece." Bang. "Of crap." Bang.

"I think the edge is breaking there." Nan had slid over under the back section of piping to get a better look. "Yeah, it is."

"Should be." Kerry grunted, slamming the hammer against the wood as she felt the burn in her triceps. "Glad for all those hours in the gym now."

"You guys actually have time for the gym?"

"We make time for it." Kerry paused and studied her target, and then she selected a different spot and slammed the hammer against the edge of the door near the frame, seeing flecks of brown wood under the black paint.

"Nine o'clock," Robert said. "Ms. Stuart, they're back with that part--upstairs just paged me."

"Go down into the subway and get Kannan and Shaun back up here." Kerry felt her breath coming fast, and her heartbeat hammering against her chest. "Tell them to get ready."

"Yes, ma'am." Robert disappeared again.

"C'mon. C'mon." Kerry closed her eyes and just concentrated on the hammer, blocking out the pain and the burn in her arms. She banged the tool against the wood again, and again, and again, and again.

Faster.

Slam.

Slam.

Slam.

"KERRISON! STOP!"

Kerry almost jumped and smacked her head against the pipes, the voice so loud in her ears it hurt. She dropped the hammer and let out a gasp as the surface she'd been pounding disappeared into a black hole and gust of cold, oil scented air blew hard against her face.

She stared at the opening until Dar's upper body appeared, her arms resting on the depressed floor. "H--hi."

"Sorry I yelled," Dar said. "But one more smack and you'd have gone through the damn door and knocked me off this stack of crates and old railroad ties I'm standing on." She disappeared. "Hang on."

Kerry was very glad to stay completely still, blowing her hair out of her eyes with a puff of relieved breath.

"Wow," Nan said. "Just, wow."

"Here." Dar reappeared with something in her hand. "Feed this in." She got a good look at Kerry's face, and then shifted her focus."Nan, grab this please. Pull it forward to the rack." She had a cable end in her hand and now she fed it through under the rusted iron pipe work.

"Got it." Nan took hold of the cable and squirmed backwards. "Got it, got it--whoa!"

"Hey!" Shaun skidded to a halt, breathing hard. "There's the cable!Kanny! Move it, buddy!!"