The Soul Collectors

53

Darby kept track of time in her head. Twenty seconds shy of ten minutes, she heard a garage door open. A moment later the car came to a stop and then the motor shut off. The garage door came down, and under the grinding sound she heard the latch for the trunk pop free.

She climbed out with the rucksack and followed the woman up a set of stairs and inside a house with tall, white-painted walls and furniture covered in plastic, the uncomfortably warm air smelling faintly of cigarette smoke and burned bacon.

The basement was cavernous and cool, the walls lined with the kind of dark wood panelling made popular in the early seventies. All that was missing was a shag rug and a lava lamp. Darby turned the corner and saw a rolled-up oriental rug and, just beyond it, in the middle of the floor, a big square trapdoor made of ancient wood. The ladder was made of wood too, and descended maybe ten or twelve feet to a dirt floor.

'They'd pull their booze barrels up by ropes,' Virginia Cavanaugh said with a shake of the head. 'Obviously there's no electricity down there. I'm assuming you have a flashlight stored in one of those big pockets of yours.'

Darby ripped open the middle pouch of the tactical vest and came back with a small but sturdy MagLite.

'Are you expecting trouble over there? You look like you're dressed to go to war, and that foreign gentleman Searchy — '

'Sergey,' Darby said.

'My Lord, you're a woman.'

Darby suddenly realized the woman couldn't see her face, just her eyes.

'Remember what he told you. Stay here inside the house in case he calls — and if someone else calls, remember not to say what's going on. We don't need any sightseers, okay?'

A nod, and then the woman said, 'The door on the other side is similar to this one, but there's no ladder, just a dirt ramp. They'd roll the barrels right down from the basement, from what I was told. As I told Mr Sergey, I have no idea if the new owners carpeted over the area or bolted it down or whatnot. The previous family, the Rizzos, I know they just had a rug over it like I do, but they didn't allow the children to play down there, obviously.' She smoothed the ends of her sweater. 'Poor thing what happened to that boy. Charlie. He was taken, you know.'

'I know.' Darby swung her legs over the edge.

'Disappeared into thin air, and they never found him. Gave me the shivers for a long time, thinking about that happening in such a nice neighbourhood as this.'

Darby made her way down the ladder, feeling the wooden slats straining underneath the weight of her boots.

'I'll be upstairs,' the woman said. 'In the living room watching my TV shows in case you should require my assistance. Just don't sneak up on me, please. I don't hear so well, and I scare easily.'

'Will do.' Darby reached the soft, dirt bottom. 'Thanks again for your help, Mrs Cavanaugh.'

She turned on her flashlight.

The tunnel was maybe five feet high and just as wide and very, very long. There wasn't enough room to stand down there, but then it hadn't been created for that purpose. She imagined the men — and possibly women and children — hunched forward as they rolled barrel after barrel of illegal moonshine and beer underneath the now-rotting sheets of plywood covering the ceiling, the barrels' edges bumping against the wooden support slats lining the dirt walls every eight to ten feet. They hadn't done it in the dark. Nailed into the wood slats she saw old, rusted hooks for kerosene lamps.

Darby adjusted the mike hovering near her mouth and said, 'Can you hear me?'

'So far, so good,' came Sergey's reply over her earpiece.

'You'll probably lose me once I start moving. I'll contact you once I'm inside the basement.'

Hunched forward, Darby moved across the bumpy dirt floor, breathing in the odours of rotting wood and must and dampness, her breath steaming slightly in the cold air. She had dressed in full assault gear: boots, a bulletproof vest underneath the tactical vest that was loaded down with equipment and a gas mask. With the rucksack gripped in her gloved hand weighing another twenty or so pounds, she was sweating heavily by the time she reached the end of the tunnel.

Virginia Cavanaugh had been right about the dirt ramp. It stretched up to the same trapdoor on the opposite end of the tunnel. Darby crawled her way up it, then dropped the rucksack and leaned on her side. She placed a gloved hand on the wood and slowly pushed. It lifted about two inches before she heard the soft rattle of metal — a combination padlock.

From the sack she took out an eyehole camera. She turned on the unit, saw a bright glow of green ambient light on the monitor before the camera lens adjusted to the darkness, and then snaked the tiny pinhole camera through the edge and examined part of the basement. Boiler and hot-water tank and boxes, lots of boxes and plastic storage containers. Mark Rizzo's wood shelving had been stripped off the walls. She found the door leading into the next part of the basement — the finished part the family had used — and was relieved to find it shut.

Now, the lock.

She grabbed the SWAT-grade bolt cutter, pinched the padlock between its sharp steel teeth and with a single squeeze snapped it. Rather than working on fishing it out with her hands, she snapped the other half and then collected the broken pieces and tossed them into the dirt.

Slowly she lifted the door, hoping the old hinges wouldn't squeak. She grabbed the rucksack and lifted it slowly too, not wanting to make any noise, and set it down on the concrete floor. She snaked the pinhole camera underneath the door and checked out the basement. Clear.

'I'm in,' Darby whispered into the mike.

'Don't take any chances,' Sergey said. 'Use the gas mask.'

She tucked the pinhole camera unit into one of the cargo pockets in her trousers. Secured the gas mask across her face and grabbed the final piece of equipment from her rucksack: a small, handheld device that could monitor the frequencies given off by listening devices and pinhole cameras. She strapped it underneath the forearm of her left hand.

Sergey had given her the same sidearm as the one used by the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, a fifteen-shot Glock 22 equipped with.40 S amp;W cartridges. She removed the sidearm from its holster, threaded the silencer, and held the sidearm out in front of her as she moved into the basement while stealing glances at the monitoring device. Right now the light meter was yellow. If it spiked anywhere into the green zone, that meant listening devices and/or cameras had been installed, and then she'd have to go back through the tunnel and meet with Sergey to discuss whether or not they should risk using jamming equipment.

Darby threaded her way through stacked boxes and plastic containers scattered haphazardly across the floor, past a couch and a TV hooked up to a video-game system, and then turned the corner and stepped over what seemed like hundreds of Lego pieces covering the Berber carpet.

The monitoring unit stayed yellow.

Upstairs, a steady hum of motor. It sounded like a dryer. She moved up the carpeted steps and stopped when she saw the opened door. Looked past it and into part of the kitchen with yellow-painted walls and hardwood oak floors. Moved up the final steps and checked the visible areas and didn't see anyone. She reached the doorway and over the hum of the dryer heard a steady tick tock, tick tock. Turned the corner and checked the blind spot behind the door — clear — then swivelled to her left and looked down a foyer, the hardwood glowing with slats of sunlight. The monitoring unit stayed yellow, didn't flicker once.

She passed through the kitchen, cleared the dining room and then, turning a corner, stared down the sight of her gun into the living room and found the source of the ticking: a big grandfather clock standing proudly on the wall between two windows. The living room was clear. Five steps and she stood near the end of a stairwell. Checked the front door across from it and didn't see any wires. She had wondered if the front door might have been wired to an IED.

The rooms felt hot — incredibly hot. She backed up into the dining room, and saw a thermostat, a digital model with the home's exact temperature displayed in black and white on the tiny LED screen: 95 degrees.

The dryer clicked off. Back inside the kitchen now, she checked the sliding glass door standing to the left of a gas fireplace. No wires there and the monitor strapped to her wrist remained yellow. And everything she had seen was neat and orderly. No sign of a struggle, nothing disrupted, it was as if the family living here had packed up their car and gone out for the day.

Tick tock. The sound inside her head now and itching her skull. One final place left to search: the hall past the basement door. She moved down it, saw that it led to a small bathroom and a garage door.

Tick tock. It was too goddamn hot in here. She decided to leave the garage alone for now and made her way quietly back to the dining room, to the thermostat. She pressed the up button. The temperature didn't go any higher. It had been set at maximum.

Tick tock. She was sweating and something wasn't right.

Why the hell…

Tick.

… had the temperature…

Tock.

… been set so high?

Tick.

Thump.

Bweeeeeeep.

The sounds were coming from upstairs.