Heat

Chapter 59

Jesse drove slowly down the long driveway, and, at the road, he stopped. He switched off the headlights, reached into the backpack behind the seat and extracted the night goggles. He slipped them on, then, instead of heading down toward town, he turned right and drove slowly up the mountain a few yards. He had no trouble seeing the road.

Coldwater’s house was nearly at the top of the mountain; only one thing lay in the fifty yards between the house and the gates. When he was nearly at the top, he turned right, down the dirt road, and a minute later stopped at the firing range. He got out and looked up. A hundred feet above the earthen bank that received the bullets, he saw what he wanted. The full moon came out from behind the clouds for a moment, and in the bright light the goggles were almost too much.

He changed his shoes and got into his warm jacket, then retrieved the backpack and the tool bag from the truck and checked his equipment. He stuck the pistol into his belt and the spare clips into his pocket, then slipped on the backpack, slung the tool bag over one shoulder and the machine gun, an Uzi, over the other and started climbing the mountain.

It was tough going with only one free hand and so much gear, but he made it in twenty minutes. He sat down beside the ventilator grate and rested for a few minutes. He checked his watch; just after midnight; he had plenty of time, he hoped.

He stood up and, through the night goggles, examined the grating. It was much like a storm sewer grating, just as thick, but round and about three feet across. There was a noise from above him, and Jesse flattened himself against the mountainside, swiveling his head up and around. On the cliff twenty feet above him stood a man holding an assault rifle. He struck a match, lit a cigarette and tossed the match down the steep incline. It landed at Jesse’s feet.

Jesse stood, frozen, until the man moved on. He waited another half minute, then looked at the grate again. It was secured by two large bolts, and the heads were not slotted. He considered using a chisel on them, but that would be noisy; same with the electric drill. Finally, he went into the backpack and came out with the plastic explosive. He got out his pocket knife and cut a large chunk from the main piece; he carefully divided it, then shaped and packed it around the four bolts. It took another few minutes to wire all four charges to one timer, then he took the explosives mat out of the backpack and spread it over the grating. He taped it in place with some duct tape, and then he was ready.

But there was the matter of the guard above. Jesse put down the Uzi and very carefully, foot by foot, scaled the steep incline. He got a toehold just below the top, then stuck his head up and looked around. There were two of them, it seemed, and they were standing next to a shed nearly a hundred yards away, leaning on their weapons and smoking. Jesse thanked heaven for the night goggles. He turned around and slid the twenty feet down to the ledge where he had been working; he took hold of the timer and set it for thirty seconds, then quickly worked his way along the ledge away from the grating. He stopped, turned his head away and held his breath.

There was a muffled whump, and the explosives mat flew off and down the mountain. Quickly, he made his way back to the grating; it was hanging by one bolt. He tossed all his equipment into the pipe, climbed in and pulled the grating back into place. He sat that way, holding the grating, for half a minute before he heard the voices.

“What the fuck was that?” one man said.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“You were farting, that’s why.”

“Maybe that’s what you heard.”

“Naw, I heard a kind of, I don’t know, a—”

“It was probably an eighteen-wheeler backfiring down on the road.”

“No, it was more like a—”

“Well, everything seems to be all right, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You can log the noise, if you want to, but I’m not going to say I heard it.”

“Well, fuck you, then.”

The voices faded away.

Jesse waited for them to go, then gently let the grating hang on the one bolt again. He turned and, pushing his equipment ahead of him, started down the tunnel on his hands and knees.

There was so little ambient light in the pipe that not even the goggles were of much use, so he pulled them down around his neck and switched on a small flashlight. Holding the light in his mouth, he moved on down the tunnel until he came to another obstacle.

This one was nothing more that a piece of chainlink fencing that had been cut to size and welded to the steel pipe; he wouldn’t need explosives for this. He got out the bolt cutters and snipped his way through.

He was well inside the mountain now, and his next obstacle was a fan that nearly filled the tunnel. Suddenly, it came on, and there was a roar as air began to rush down the pipe. He got out his wire cutters, found the power cord and cut it. The fan slowly came to a halt. It took him half an hour to get the blade off and dismantle enough of the frame to get through. There was one last ventilator grate, but this one was of thin aluminum, and he was able to kick it out. He peered out into a long hallway; he was a good eight feet above the floor; about every fourth ceiling light was on.

He lowered his equipment to the floor, then jumped down, squatted and listened. It seemed unlikely that anyone was inside this place late at night, but he wanted to be sure.

Hearing nothing, he thought about his position and decided he must be in the north hallway on the first, highest, level. Then he remembered what was up the hall toward the main entrance. Leaving his tools where they lay he trotted up the hallway, turned a corner and opened a door. A small room was stacked to the ceiling with crates marked “ammunition: recoilless rifle.” He tried a couple more doors, checking labels until he found a single crate, marked “C-4 Plastique.” Perfect. The box held at least twenty pounds of the stuff. He got it open and took out two brick-sized blocks, wired a detonator to it and looked at his watch; one-twenty. He set the timer for one hour and forty minutes; it would go off at exactly 3:00 A.M. He took the crate and went back to where his tools lay, then he sat down and remembered what he could of the layout from his previous visits and from the plans.

By two-thirty, he had set more Plastique in half a dozen ammunition caches all over the complex. That would have been enough to keep anyone from using the facility any time soon, but it didn’t satisfy him. There was one more job to do. He picked up his gear and ran down to the generator room on the second level.

The door was locked, and he had no time to pick the lock. He got out the drill and went straight through the cylinder. Inside the room were two enormous generators; his guess was that one of them was enough to light the facility; the other was a backup. Above them, built into the mountain were two hardened twenty-five-thousand-gallon gasoline storage tanks. Thank God they were on the north side of the mountain, away from the town, he thought. His Plastique might not punch through the tanks, but there was another, simpler and more effective way to deal with it. He set his equipment on a workbench, got out the bolt cutters and stepped behind the machinery; using his flashlight, he located the two armored fuel lines; the bolt cutters made quick work of both of them. He turned two taps, and gasoline began to pour onto the floor, he guessed at the rate of about twenty gallons a minute from each line.

He picked up his gear and got out of there. He was soaked up to the knees with gasoline.

Early on, he had decided not to go out the way he came in. The tunnel was too close to the gasoline tanks, and if he made some miscalculation, and the place went up while he was still in the tunnel, he would be fired from it like the human cannonball at the circus — that, or the mountain would simply collapse on top of him. There was a better way out, he was sure of it.

He charged down the steps to the lower level and ran toward the rear of the structure, toward Jack Gene Coldwater’s offices. He realized that the hallways were all slightly inclined, and he could hear gasoline pouring down the steps behind him. He checked his watch; two forty-seven; thirteen minutes left. He didn’t like the number.

He ran through the suite of offices outside Coldwater’s and came to a stout set of doors, locked. He hadn’t counted on this, and he didn’t want to take the time to drill. He put on the night goggles for protection, aimed the Uzi at the lock and emptied a clip into it. The wood was splintered, but nothing had budged. He inserted another clip and tried again. Still holding. The final clip did it; the lock fell from its casing, and the doors swung open.

Jesse went straight to the false bookcase and moved it back; he found a steel door identical to the one in Coldwater’s study. He heard a trickling noise and looked down; gasoline was streaming into the room. Too late to use the Plastique; not the Uzi, either, even if he had had the ammunition. The lock was brass, though; it shouldn’t make sparks.

He got out the drill and started on the cylinder. It was tougher, though, than the lock to the generator room, and the drill began to falter. He looked at his watch. Six minutes to go. He dug in the tool bag for the spare battery for the drill, found it, ejected the old one and snapped in the new one. The drill came to life again. Half a minute later, the cylinder gave. He put down the drill and rammed the door with his shoulder. Apart from bruising his shoulder, nothing happened.

Jesse picked up the sledge and went to work on the door. Finally, it gave. Two minutes to go. He placed the remainder of his Plastique on the floor, put the two incendiary grenades next to it and set the timer, then he grabbed his flashlight, the drill and the sledge and ran through the doorway, pulling the steel door shut behind him. The tunnel sloped downward steadily, and there were no steps, so he could run quickly. He stopped thinking about the time, he just went as fast as he could. He had covered what seemed like about a hundred yards when the tunnel suddenly turned ninety degrees to the left and came to an end. The steel door was in front of him.

Forgetting about the noise, forgetting about everything, he dropped the sledge and, holding the flashlight in his mouth, put the drill to the lock and leaned on it. The bit skidded off the lock and hit the steel door with a clang. He started over. This time the bit seated, and he was boring away the brass. He put all his weight and strength against the drill, desperate to get through, and, a moment later, the drill and the cylinder came out the other side.

He picked up the sledge and began wildly banging at the lock. He hit it six times, then eight; on the tenth blow the door gave, pushing the false bookcase before it. He stepped through and found himself in Jack Gene Coldwater’s study.

“I made it!!!” he screamed at the ceiling.

“You made what?” Coldwater’s voice answered.

Jesse opened his eyes and found Coldwater and Pat Casey staring at him; both were holding guns.

“Well, Jesse, I wondered what all the racket was,” Coldwater said. He motioned Jesse to move away from the tunnel door. “That escape route was meant for me; I never expected anyone else to use it. Tell me, what are you escaping from?”

Jesse stared at the man, mute. The pistol was still in his belt, but he could never fire it in time.

“I think it’s time you told me who you really are,” Coldwater said. He sounded very disappointed.

Jesse found his voice. “I’m the heat, Jack Gene, and you’re burnt.”

Coldwater raised his pistol and pointed it at Jesse’s head. “Then you’ll have to join your colleague, Mr. Bottoms,” he said. He thumbed the hammer back.

Then, from somewhere deep inside the mountain, came a deep rumble, and the floor underneath them shook.

Casey was the first to speak. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

Coldwater looked at Jesse questioningly, and, as he opened his mouth to speak, there was a loud roar, and the room shook like a baby’s rattle. Beams crashed to the floor, and dust filled the air.

All three men were thrown to the floor, but Jesse was the first to his feet. He did the only thing he could do — never mind that they were fifty feet above the ground — he ran hard toward the windows at the end of the room and dove headlong through the glass.