Better off Dead

Chapter 37

The temperature in the tunnel was cool. It was surprisingly comfortable. But the air quality was a different story. It was foul. Stale. It felt thick and dusty as I breathed it in. I fought the urge to turn back. Or if I had to keep going, to cover the ground as fast as possible. I forced myself to move slowly. To make as little noise as possible. I finally got into a rhythm, stepping on every third tie and pausing in the relative shadow between each pool of light thrown by the bulbs on the ceiling. I kept going for a hundred yards. To the point where the gradient increased. Then the presence of the rail track suddenly made sense.

From the base of the incline I could see how far the tunnel continued. Another four hundred yards. At least. It climbed all the way. But it was dead straight. I pictured the position of the border in relation to the house. Calculated the distance to the buildings on the far side. The ones I’d seen when I first entered the town with Fenton. It all added up. I thought about the WPA guys arriving all those years ago. How they must have seen things. They faced two challenges. Too much water. And gravity. They couldn’t make the water disappear. They couldn’t make it run uphill. And they didn’t want it to keep flowing down and flooding the northern part of the town. So they must have gone lateral. Recruited gravity as an ally. Turned it to their advantage. And joined up the drainage systems.

To guys in the 1930s it must have seemed like a practical solution to a natural problem. They were engineers, not politicians. Not border guards. The world was different in those days. Before they had to worry about drugs. Cartels. Border walls. Back then they would have seen two halves of a town separated by an arbitrary line on a map. They would have thought their work was making life better for the people who lived there. Now it looked more like they were setting up a smuggler’s dream. No wonder Dendoncker chose that town. And that house. He was no fool. That was becoming clearer all the time.

I kept going up the slope. At the same speed. With the same rhythm. The farther I went the more obvious it became that this underground supply route hadn’t just fallen into Dendoncker’s lap. As I gained height I passed a bunch of newer sections of brick. The patches were circular. And dished. They followed the contours of the wall. There must have once been lots of smaller channels that were now blocked off. Dendoncker must have done his homework. He must have come across the records of the work. Including a diagram. The system would have looked like a tree. A broad, straight trunk with thinner branches sprouting off right and left. The branches would run beneath the southern part of the town. Collecting the excess water. And carrying it to the trunk. That was the key. None of it originated in that central section. So, when Dendoncker chopped off the branches, he was left with a dry tunnel. I don’t know what other impact it would have had. Maybe the population had shrunk to the point there was no longer enough water to be a problem. Maybe it rained less these days. Maybe the floods had started happening again. But whatever the outcome, I doubted Dendoncker cared. Not as long as he could roam back and forth beneath the border, carrying anything he wanted in his little railroad between two parts of a sleepy town that no one paid any attention to.

The original tunnel ended after four hundred and twenty yards. Or maybe it began there, as that was its maximum height and water ran downhill. I came to a wall made of the same pale yellow bricks. It had the same flaky surface. But the tracks veered to the left. They turned ninety degrees and disappeared through another hole. There was another steel girder at the top. And more jagged edges down both sides where the bricks had been chipped away.

I moved in close to the wall and used the mirror to look around the corner. The track only continued for ten extra feet. A rail truck was parked at the end in front of a concrete wall. It was long enough for four people to sit, single file. Or for a decent amount of cargo to be carried. There was room for a variety of sizes of boxes and containers. Like the kind Dendoncker transferred to private planes under cover of his business. A cable snaked away from the side of the truck. It was thick. Heavy-duty. Plenty of amps could flow down it. Plenty of power. It stretched all the way to a gray box on the far wall. I figured the truck was battery-powered. That was smart. It was much easier to press a button than push something that size up the grade. Empty, let alone fully loaded.

I caught movement in the mirror. It was a man. He was familiar. But he wasn’t Mansour. He was the second guy from last night. Under the streetlight, by the border fence. Whose ankle I had broken. He was sitting behind a desk. It reminded me of the kind teachers in grade school used to have. I could see his foot. It was in plaster, sticking out of the gap between the twin pedestals. A clipboard was lying flat on the surface in front of him. There was a chessboard next to it. The pieces were laid out for the start of a game. The guy was paying it no attention. His arms were crossed. His head was back. The tendons were tight in his neck. He was fidgeting. He looked tense. Nervous. I put the mirror down before he spotted it. Took my keys out of my pocket. Picked one at random. Used it to scratch the wall. I started with a short, quick movement. Then I scratched again. A longer motion. Then another short scratch. I couldn’t hear any response from the guy. So I kept going. I scratched out the letters to four words in Morse code. Run for your life. Maybe that was unfair under the circumstances. Maybe it was impractical. Maybe hobble for your life would have been more appropriate.

In the end, whether he understood or not, he came to investigate. I heard him crossing the space between us. He was using crutches. I could tell from the sound he made. He came closer. His head appeared around the corner. His chest. His face registered surprise. But only for a moment. Because as he stepped forward I took a handful of his shirt, just below his neck. I twisted for a better grip and slammed him back against the wall. The wind was knocked out of him. He slumped forward, gasping for breath. Dropped one crutch and cradled the back of his head with his hand.

“Let go.” He could barely manage a whisper.

I twisted the shirt harder, increasing the pressure on his throat.

“I’ll yell.” He summoned a little more volume. “Get help. Others’ll be here in two seconds.”

I said, “Really? How many? There were four of you last night. How did that work out?”

The guy tried to suck in some breath.

“Go ahead. I hope your buddies do come. I hope Dendoncker comes. I wonder if he’ll be impressed? Only, the way I understand it, when you’re on sentry duty you’re supposed to stop intruders. Not let them in and then start crying.”

The guy breathed out, slowly. He made a mean hissing sound, but he didn’t shout.

“Smart move,” I said. “Let’s do this instead. I’ll ask you a couple of questions. You answer. And Dendoncker never finds out how useless you are.”

“No way. I won’t tell you anything.”

“OK.” I hooked my foot behind the guy’s standing leg and swept it out from under him. He crashed down next to the track, in the gap between the rail and the wall. I grabbed his right pants leg, just above the ankle, and hauled it up to waist height. Pulled out my knife. Found a blade with a serrated edge, like a little saw. And slid it between the plaster of paris and his skin. “Time for a new plan. Get rid of the bandage. Remember how it felt yesterday? When the bones broke? You screamed pretty good. I bet it was louder than you can shout. That should bring Dendoncker and his boys running. Save me the trouble of hunting them down later.”

“You wouldn’t.”

I went to work with the blade. It cut through the powdery material with no effort at all. The guy was mesmerized for a moment. He was staring at the cloud of white dust puffing out and floating down to the ground.

“Stop.” His voice had risen an octave or two. “OK. What kind of questions?”

“The woman Dendoncker took. Michaela Fenton. Is she here?”

“I think so.”

“You think?”

“I haven’t seen her. But I heard some other guys talking. It sounded like she was here.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Dendoncker’s half of the building. I think.”

“What kind of building is this?”

“I guess it’s a school, from the way it looks. Was a school. There are no kids here now. I don’t know much else. This is my first time here. I was never allowed through the tunnel before.”

“What does Dendoncker use it for?”

“Like, a warehouse, I think. For his merchandise. The stuff he takes on the planes. I saw the containers. I think there’s a workshop here, too. Maybe an office.”

“What gets made in the workshop?”

The guy looked away. He didn’t answer. I started sawing the plaster again.

“Dendoncker had someone working there. That’s all I know.”

I paused with the knife. “Making bombs?”

“Maybe. Probably. Look, I made sure not to find out. Some things, it’s better not to know.”

“OK. How many people are here?”

“There’s Dendoncker. There are three guys with him. At least. A bunch of locals. Maybe half a dozen. I don’t know them. Haven’t seen them before. I don’t think Dendoncker trusts them all the way. They just do the cooking and the fetching and carrying. Plus the three guys who went to the town. We’re still waiting for them to get back.”

“No need to wait.” I folded the knife and put it back in my pocket. “They won’t be coming.”

I let go of the guy’s leg. He managed to stop his ankle crashing into the ground, but only just. Then he rolled onto all fours and struggled up onto his good foot.

“What happened to them?” The guy hopped around for a minute while he retrieved his crutches.

I shrugged. “Your friends are an accident-prone bunch.”

The guy made a move around the corner. He acted like he was heading back to the desk. Then he spun around. He raised the crutch in his right hand and lunged. He was trying to spear me in the gut. I moved six inches to the side. Grabbed hold midway between the rubber tip and the handle. Stepped forward. And punched him. An uppercut. It lifted the guy right off his feet. His remaining crutch clattered to the ground. His body followed, completely inert. He landed on his back, neatly between the rails. I flipped him over. Secured his wrists with a zip tie. Took his pistol from his waistband. A 1911. It was old, but well maintained. I bent his good leg at the knee. Used another zip tie to fasten it to the belt loop at the back of his pants. Picked him up. Tossed him in the rail truck. And threw his crutches in after him.