Again, Smithback noted the time and began to take notes.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he cried out, his voice barely penetrating the vast murky interior.
A hush fell.
“We’re experiencing some power problems, some technical problems. Nothing to be alarmed about, but we’re going to have to clear the hall. The guards will escort you out the way you came in and up to the rotunda. Please follow their instructions.”
A murmur of disappointment rose up. Someone shouted out, “What about the people in the tomb?”
“The people in the tomb will be escorted out as soon as we open the doors. There’s nothing to be concerned about.”
“Are the doors stuck?” Smithback yelled.
“Momentarily, yes.”
More restlessness. It was clear people did not want to go, leaving their friends or loved ones behind in the tomb.
“Please move toward the exit!” Manetti shouted. “The guards will escort everyone out. There is nothing to be alarmed about.” There were some murmurs of protest from guests clearly unused to being told what to do.
Bullshit, thought Smithback. If there was nothing to be alarmed about, why was there a quaver in Manetti’s voice? There was no way in hell he was going to allow himself to be “escorted” out of the building just as the story was breaking-and especially with Nora still stuck in the tomb.
He looked around, then ducked outside the hall. The velvet ropes ran down the basement corridor, lit only by the battery-operated exit signs. Another corridor sat at right angles to the main hallway, roped off, running into darkness. Guards with flashlights were already herding groups of protesting people toward the exit.
Smithback sprinted on ahead to where the corridor branched off, vaulted the velvet rope, ran through the darkness, and ducked into an entryway marked Alcoholic Storage, Genus Rattus.
He flattened himself against the shallow door frame and waited.
Chapter 62
Vincent D’Agosta and Laura Hayward sprinted between the velvet ropes, down the front steps of the museum, and along Museum Drive. The entrance to the subway stood at the corner of 81st Street, a dingy metal kiosk with a copper roof, perched on the corner. Parked near it, just beyond the seething crowd of rubberneckers, D’Agosta spotted the PBS television van, cables snaking from it across the lawn and through a window into the museum. A white satellite dish was set atop the van.
“Over here!” D’Agosta began to push his way through the crowd toward the van, gripping the axe. Hayward was at his side, hand up displaying her shield.
“NYPD!” she cried. “Make way, please!”
When the crowd seemed reluctant to part, D’Agosta raised the axe over his head with both hands and began to pump it up and down. The crowd parted before them, exposing a thin path to the van.
They ran around to the rear of the vehicle. Hayward held back the crowd while D’Agosta stepped up onto the bumper. Grasping the rack on top of the van, he pulled himself onto the roof.
A man leaped out of the van. “What the hell are you doing?” he cried. “We’ve got a live broadcast in session!”
“NYPD Homicide,” said Hayward, positioning herself between him and the bumper.
D’Agosta steadied himself on top of the van, legs apart. Then he raised the axe above his head again.
“Hey! You can’t do that!”
“Watch me.” With one tremendous swing, D’Agosta struck through the metal posts supporting the satellite dish, popping the bolts and sending them flying. Then he swung the flat end of the axe against the dish: once, twice. With a creaking groan of metal, it toppled over the edge of the roof and crashed to the street below.
“Are you crazy-?” the technician began.
Ignoring him, D’Agosta leaped off, tossed the axe aside, and he and Hayward shoved their way through the fringes of the crowd, heading for the subway entrance.
Dimly, D’Agosta was aware it was Laura Hayward at his side: his own Laura, who’d had him escorted out of her office just days before. He thought he had lost her irretrievably-and yet, she had sought him out.
She had sought him out. It was a delicious thought. He reminded himself to return to it if he survived the rest of the night.
Reaching the entrance to the subway, they ran down the stairs and sprinted over to the ticket booth. Hayward flashed her shield at the woman inside.
“Captain Hayward, NYPD Homicide. There’s a situation in the museum and we need to clear this station. Call Transit Authority HQ and have them flag the station as a skip until further notice. I don’t want any trains stopping. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They jumped the turnstiles, ran down the corridor, and entered the station proper. It was still early-not yet nine-and there were several dozen people waiting for the train. Hayward trotted along the platform, and D’Agosta followed. At the far end, a corridor branched off, with a large tiled sign above:
New York Museum of Natural History
Walkway to Entrance
Open During Museum Hours Only
An accordion grille of dingy, rusted metal sealed off the corridor, secured with a massive padlock.
“Better talk to those people,” murmured Hayward, pulling out her gun and pointing it at the lock.
D’Agosta nodded. He walked back along the platform, waving his shield. “NYPD! Clear the station! Everybody out!”
People looked over at him disinterestedly.
“Out! Police action, clear the station!”
The sound of two gunshots thundered down the platform, waking everyone up. They began to move back toward the exits, suddenly alarmed, and amidst the confused hubbub of the increasingly rapid retreat D’Agosta heard the words terrorist and bomb drifting toward him.
“I want everyone to leave in a calm and orderly fashion!” he called after them.
A third ripping gunshot cleared the station completely. D’Agosta ran back to find Hayward wrestling with the grille. He helped push it back and together they ducked through.
Ahead of them, the corridor stretched for a hundred yards before taking a sharp turn toward the museum’s subway entrance. Tilework along the walls showed images of mammal and dinosaur skeletons, and there were framed posters announcing upcoming museum exhibitions, including several for the Grand Tomb of Senef. Hayward pulled a small set of plans from her pocket and unrolled them on the cement floor. The plans were covered with scribbled notations-it looked to D’Agosta as if she had gone over them many times.
“That’s the tomb,” said Hayward, pointing at the map. “And there’s the subway tunnel. And look-right over here, there’s only about two feet of concrete between the corner of the tomb and this tunnel.”
D’Agosta squatted, examined the plat. “I don’t see any exact measurements on the subway side.”
“There aren’t any. They only surveyed the tomb, estimating the rest.”
D’Agosta frowned. “The scale is ten feet to the inch. That doesn’t give us much precision.”
“No.”
She consulted the map a moment longer, then, gathering it up, she paced off about a hundred feet down the corridor before stopping again. “My best guess is that this is the thin spot, right here.”
The rumble of a subway car began to fill the air, followed by a roar as it passed the station without stopping, the noise quickly fading.
“You’ve been in the tomb?” said D’Agosta.
“Vinnie, I’ve practically been living in the tomb.”
“And you can hear the subway in there?”
“All the time. They couldn’t get rid of it.”
D’Agosta pressed his ear to the tiled wall. “If they can hear out, we should be able to hear in.”
“They’d have to be making a lot of noise in there.”
He straightened up, looked at Hayward. “They are.”