It was still falling, slight but relentless, the dry crap was still coming down, shifting this way and that. As Marcantoni reached the far end of the second table, a sudden cascade of dirt and dust streamed down in a curtain line from the narrow space between the tables, falling on his head and neck, blinding him. He jerked away, his shoulder hitting a table leg and jostling the table an inch to the left, as Mackey started to crawl after Williams, carrying the second flashlight.
More dirt fell. Marcantoni, unable to see anything, dropped the flashlight while trying to hold his hands over his face, keep the dirt out of his eyes. But the dirt was tumbling faster now down through the hole he’d widened, and more was sliding in from the sides. He kicked out, the plastic bag on his left side struck against something, and he hit the middle table. Now all three tables were awry, and the dirt thudded down into all that newly available space.
Parker was about to crawl after Mackey when Mackey abruptly backed out, one forearm over his eyes. A dust cloud followed him. Mackey veered right-ward out of its way, held the light aimed into the darkness under the table, and said, “Something’s wrong. Something’s gone wrong.”
Parker crouched, looking where Mackey aimed the light down the line beneath the tables, and they both saw nothing but the dust in there, and a spreading fall of dirt, and Williams’ legs writhing, as he struggled for purchase, as he tried to pull back from the dirt that was burying him.
“Hold the light on me,” Parker said, and slid in under the first table, crawling forward till he could reach Williams’ thrashing ankles. He grabbed the ankles, pulled, pulled harder, and finally Williams’ body began to slide along the brick floor.
Parker kept pulling, until Williams was back far enough that he could help with his own arms. Parker backed out of the narrow space, holding his breath against the dust cloud Williams caused by his movements, and Williams backed out after him, covered with dirt. “My God,” he said, and coughed. “I was a dead man.”
Mackey said, “The others?”
“It was Tom got in trouble first,” Williams said, “and then everybody else. I don’t think anybody got out, man.”
Bricks fell near them. They backed away, Mackey shining the light at the rupture in the ceiling, which was larger now, more dirt falling down. “We’re not gonna get to those guys,” he said.
Williams said, “I don’t know how you even got to me, but I’m grateful. I owe you my life.”
Parker shook his head. “I didn’t do it for you,” he said. “Forget all that. I’ll give you the truth here. What I need is a crew, the more the better. I wish I could have those three back.” Looking around at the useless tunnel, he said, “Because we’re going to have to cut that armory back there a new asshole. We have to find a new way out of there.”
Three
1
Parker, disgusted, removed his belt so he could let the full plastic bags fall to the brick floor of the useless tunnel. Mackey watched him, frowning, then said, “You’re leaving the swag?”
Sliding the belt back through the loops, Parker said, “What do we do with it? The people who knew who to call in New Orleans are down in there, under the dirt.”
“God damn it,” Williams said, “we don’t have the customer.”
“We don’t have anything,” Parker told him.
He hadn’t liked this thing from the beginning. Mostly, it had been the simple matter that he hadn’t wanted to stay in this part of the world after getting out of their prison, but he also didn’t like to be pressured into doing something he felt wrong about.
And it had felt wrong to him, all the way. He hadn’t known why, or what to look out for, but from the minute Marcantoni introduced the idea, back in Stoneveldt, when it was clear to Parker that he had to agree to be part of this thing or lose Marcantoni — and he’d needed Marcantoni even more then than he needed him now — Parker believed it was all going to turn sour, one way or another, before he could get clear of this place. He’d never thought Marcantoni or the others would try to keep it all for themselves, when the time came to split up the proceeds; they were more professional — and sensible — than that. But he could feel it, out there, hovering. Something.
And here it was. A building that was famous for having only one way out, and now they had to find another way.
Williams was looking up at that long ragged split in the ceiling. “The street’s up there,” he said. “Suppose we could get up and out that way?”
Mackey said, “Dig a hole upwards, over my head? Into a street full of traffic? I’ll stand over here and watch.”
Parker said to Williams, “That doesn’t work. Even if it doesn’t cave in, and it probably wouldn’t, you’ve got a hundred fifty years of paving up there, layer over layer of blacktop.”
Mackey said, “That’s why, when they want to get through it, they use a jackhammer.”
Williams stopped looking up. With a shrug, he said, “That’s the only idea I had.”
Parker said, “We’ll go back the way we came, see what we find.”
The other two got rid of their plastic bags of jewelry and they left the tunnel, went back through the mostly abandoned storage room, and into the green-tinged parking area, where Mackey said, “Maybe it would be easier to get out down here. There’s more garage space past this, for people who live in this place.”
They walked over to the exit, which was covered by a heavy metal mesh gate that lowered from a drum overhead. Through the mesh, they could see the ramp extend upward toward the street, and a bit of the dark night up there.
But there was no way through or under or around the mesh. The barrier was seriously alarmed, firmly seated into deep metal tracks on both sides, and flanked by concrete block walls two layers thick. Above, the walls met a massive ceiling that was part of the original parade field inside the Armory, capable of bearing the weight of a company of horses, or tanks.
“We don’t get out down here,” Parker decided, and they went back upstairs, through the door Marcantoni had opened and Kolaski had unalarmed. Just inside that door, they stopped to look around. Halls extended away ahead of them, toward the display area where they’d been, and to both left and right.
Mackey said, “I think we gotta explore all these doors along here.”
Williams said, “They won’t lead out.”
“Maybe we’ll find something we can use,” Mackey told him, and gestured to the hall on the right. “I’ll take a look down there.”
Williams said, “Parker?” Pointing at the two halls, he said, “You want this one, or that one?”
“I’ll do the one straight ahead.”
They separated, and Parker went forward to the first door on the right, which was closed. Opening it, he felt a wave of warm air come out, and when he found the light switch beside the door he saw that this was where the company’s on-line operation was kept. The room was mostly empty, with free-standing metal shelves along both side walls like the ones fronting the tunnel door back in the library. On the shelves were bulky dark metal boxes that ran the wholesaler’s Web site, displaying the wares and making the deals with customers anywhere in the world.
The machines also gave off heat, which was drawn away by a fan inside a metal grid high on the opposite wall. Mackey still had the flashlight, so Parker went down the hall until he found an open door with an ordinary office inside, took a gooseneck lamp from there, and carried it back to the Web site room. The outlet he found in there gave him just enough cord so he could aim the lamp through the grid to see what was inside.