Constant Fear

CHAPTER 35

The tunnel ran straight as a razor’s edge, and Jake had choices about which way to go. East would take him the rest of the way underneath the Academy Building. West would bring him back the way he came. He headed east.

Surges of adrenaline kept his mind sharp and body tense. His heart thudded like the steady beat of a war drum. There was enough headroom to stand upright, and plenty of space for Jake’s Glock. He kept the pistol out in front of him as he walked. Five years ago, this section of tunnel had received a much-needed face-lift, and a lot of the wiring was fairly new. But it wasn’t pristine, by any stretch. It still smelled dank, and the walls were slippery to the touch. Jake could hear dripping water anytime he stopped walking.

As he made it another twenty yards or so, Jake picked up a different sound. Not dripping water. Not rats. Nothing mechanical.

It was the sound of laughter.

The laughter resolved itself into something else-shouting that became indiscriminant chatter. The noises were muffled but distinct. Jake paused to listen. He thought he heard somebody shout, “Give it,” but the long corridor and thick walls distorted the sound.

Those noises became yelling. The tumult roused Jake and drove him to a quicker pace. He let his mind go blank. His pistol aimed at nothing. He ignored all the precautions he should have been taking. The voices were coming from aboveground, and he knew only one place where that could be-the stage in the Feldman Auditorium.

The tunnel ran right underneath it. There were two locked doors on either side of the pit below the stage. The pit was nothing but a crawl space about six feet high, taking up roughly the same area as the stage. Theater productions used the pit for all sorts of things, mostly set changes, but a movable staircase down there allowed actors to make quick entrances or exits if required. Running along the back of the pit wall were utility pipes that came through holes bored into the concrete, as well as a sizable fuse box, tapped into the main power supply, which controlled electrical currents for the auditorium. The pit was otherwise empty, with no way out unless somebody had the keys to the tunnel entrances.

Closer to the pit doors, Jake forced himself to slow down. The voices bellowed even louder. Jake could not make any sense of what was being said, or how many people might be involved. Was it a mix of hostages and hostage takers, and was Andy among those present?

Jake shut off his headlamp and let the darkness take over. He got onto his stomach and peered through the sill of the green metal door, which secured access to the pit, looking for any trace of light. If the trapdoor happened to be open when Jake went inside, he’d be spotted for sure. He couldn’t see anything, but his nose picked up a definite smell. It was the musty, metallic odor of the blood-splattered bathroom, only on steroids.

He put his nose against the doorsill, took a big whiff. Something horrible was behind the door, the smell of death. Jake took off his headlamp, turned it on, and shone the light through the crack, trying to see what lay beyond.

He saw shapes, shadows on top of shadows, but couldn’t make out what they were. Then Jake’s light caught a flash of something bright, something gold-a watch, maybe. He brought the beam back and soon had it fixed on a discolored hand. The fingers were knotted into a claw.

He realized it was a man’s hand. A teacher, perhaps? Jake couldn’t say for sure, and the way the body was positioned kept him from seeing the head. Jake could make out only one disfigured hand, but other shapes, probably other people, were in that crawl space. The pit made an ideal place to dispose a dead body.

Jake pictured the scene unfolding on the stage, and assumed hostages were in the auditorium somewhere, maybe on the stage, maybe in the seats. Jake powered the headlamp back on and fished out the master key from the pocket on his chest rig. It was tucked inside the pouch, next to the one where he kept Andy’s emergency glucagon kit. Jake slipped the key into the lock and gave it a turn.

He powered off the headlamp and darkness came once more. Jake would be almost impossible to see in the darkness, in his camouflage. He opened the door with his left hand, while the right hand was ready to shoot anything that came at him.

The smell of blood hit Jake like a tidal wave. He looked all around. No light filtered down, which meant no light could filter up. The chatter coming from the stage was louder and clearer. Jake heard thumps and bumps and heavy feet stomping about the stage. He could make out some words, but most of what he heard was in Spanish, or at least he thought it was Spanish. He heard grunts and a loud thud, as if somebody had fallen to the stage floor. This seemed to please some of those above him, because a series of delighted cheers broke out. A few choice words came to him.

“¡Lucha! ¡Lucha!”

No idea what that meant.

“Mátalo!”

Not that one, either.

Jake shifted his attention from the noises above to what was inside the pit below. He turned his headlamp back on and skulked into the pit area. He shone his light on the lumpy object closest to him and saw it was a body. The man’s face was covered in purple welts; below a shock of red hair, Jake saw cracks in the skull. The mysterious shapes Jake had seen under the door turned out to be two other bodies, tossed down into the pit, along with “Big Red.”

Those two had clearly been shot in the head. Big Red might have been as well, but he was badly beaten and it was harder to tell. Of the three, Big Red was the lightest colored, but the other two had the same skin tone as the guy Jake had ventilated with lead inside the bathroom. All four could certainly be a part of the same crew. They were a team, and none of them taught at this school.

Jake assumed these guys were involved in Laura’s murder, and were probably hostage takers. So, why were they dead? Who had killed them?

Jake’s first thought was Andy. His son had the skills to kill, and access to weapons. Maybe he was down in these very tunnels waging a one-man war. But the notion didn’t sit well with him.

Jake felt around the pockets of the dead men, searching for IDs or weapons, but found nothing. The commotion onstage continued until four sharply spoken words cut through the din.

“Get off me, David!”

That voice he recognized. It was Rafa, Andy’s friend. David was probably David Townsend. Was Andy with them? The pit had a microphone to let whoever was under the stage hear the cues clearly, but it was currently turned off. No worries-Jake’s earmuffs had those built-in sound amplifiers. Binoculars for the ears.

His flashlight danced around in the dark until he found the portable staircase tucked away in a far corner. They were a miniature version of the movable steps sometimes used to help passengers and crew board or disembark from an airplane. It would be easy for Jake to roll the stairs under the trapdoor, but he would have to move the bodies.

Jake went to work. He grabbed one of the dead guys by the back of the shirt and dragged him five feet or so. He was stiff, no bend to the legs or arms. His hair was matted down with dried blood. The gunshot wound had basically turned the side of his head into hamburger. Jake didn’t know if this guy had been dead one hour or five, and it didn’t much matter.

Sounds of fighting continued above him. Jake could hear the loudest shouts, and those were in English.

“Liar! Liar!”

“I don’t have it!”

He could tell Rafa’s voice from David’s. “I don’t have it!” What did that mean?

Grabbing the railings of the staircase, Jake gave a hard tug. The wheels rolled noiselessly over the concrete floor. No squeak. He maneuvered the stairs into position, climbed almost to the top step, and pressed one of the hearing protectors to the underside of the trapdoor. He adjusted the sound controls until the chatter focused into clear conversation.

The words were meaningless without context.

“Give it.”

“Hit him.”

“Está perdiendo.”

He heard every footstep, stomp, thump, thud, and body slam. This was a fight going on, for sure. It sounded to Jake like men screaming out wagers. He thought of a dogfight or a cockfight in some smoke-filled back room.

Somebody screamed-one of the kids. It was a howl of frustration, a call to battle of sorts. The kids were fighting each other, and whoever had taken them hostage was betting on the outcome, or so Jake believed.

His mind clicked over to a new problem. How would he reach Andy? He assumed he was outmanned, outgunned. Jake contemplated his options when he heard a new voice, a voice he didn’t recognize.

“¡La chica se ha ido!” The voice was angry. “¡Vayan a buscarla, pendejos!”

“Chica” was the Spanish word for “girl.” Could that be Hilary? Jake had tried to call Hilary, but he couldn’t reach her. Could all of Andy’s friends be a part of this? If so, why?

A new voice spoke up. This kid had been at Jake and Andy’s house plenty of times. He was a quiet kid, small for his size, but his voice spoke with authority. People called him Pixie. Jake had known guys like him in the minors and in The Bigs-small guys with guts and tons of heart-lions inside the body of cubs. Pixie roared, and what he said filled Jake with terror.

“Wake up, Andy! Andy, wake up!”