Oscar, Jaime, Rudy, Russ, and Jack arrived in lower Manhattan a little over an hour later and were immediately swept into a conference in the Mayor's office.
Terse greetings were made and the group from the OSI was lead into what the Mayor referred to as "The War Room". There were people milling everywhere. Ten color coded telephones were ringing off the hook, six televisions set to local news were blaring in the background, and two computers on the back wall of the room whirred and clicked as they worked. Several people joined the group as they entered the mayor's office, and the last person closed the door behind them.
"So, Ms. Sommers," the Mayor began,"I'm told that you're to be our savior." Frank Lieberman scrutinized her with bright small eyes, his expression keen, friendly - and anxious. She could see that he wanted to believe in her. As the brand new Mayor, this tiny, charismatic man was charged with the enormous task of turning the great city around. Broke and riddled with crime, New York City was in a terrible plight. Now, only months into his tenure, he had been thrown in the deep end, facing a disaster the likes of which the city had never seen.
She sat down beside Oscar on a large leather couch. "I'm going to do my best, Mr. Mayor."
He smiled. "We'd best get right down to it." he said, casting an eye around the group. "Mr. Goldman, would you please tell us what you have in mind?"
Oscar cleared his throat, glanced at Jaime and stood. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I won't pretend this isn't a dire situation, nor will I pretend that our plan entails anymore than calling on the skills and resources of one very special individual. In a nutshell, we are going to send Jaime Sommers down into the tunnels to locate and diffuse the bomb."
"Just one person?" interrupted a tall, ropey man, who had clearly arrived from some very dirty work site. "What's she going to take down with her?"
"She'll have a headlamp and an atomic location transponder."
"And that's it?" the man sputtered, his eyes round with indignation.
"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to explain to you why she is singularly qualified to do this job, as it's classified information. You'll just have to trust us."
"But..."
"Chuck..." the mayor interrupted, "let him finish."
"In the meantime," Oscar continued, "your people will drop off the fifty million dollars at the requested location by four o' clock. Jack Hansen of the NSB..." he gestured to Hansen, perched on a window sill, "will follow the money. We will not mark or track it electronically in any way."
"Don't we risk losing it completely?" Lieberman asked nervously.
"Yes, but that's a chance we have to take. We can't raise the ire of these people any more than we already have. We have no idea how sophisticated an operation this is, and they must not think that we aren't acting in good faith. Jaime will need the all the time we can buy."
"Don't worry, Mr. Mayor. I'm not going to lose that cash." Jack said confidently.
The mayor nodded. "Thank you."
"Jack, do you want to describe your plan?"Oscar asked.
"Sure." Jack replied, standing. Jaime noted with irritation that he looked quite full of himself. "The blackmailer has demanded the money be placed in a specific boxcar in the Yonkers rail yard. We have NSB men, disguised as railway employees, stationed along the line for fifty miles. We believe the pick up will occur within 10 miles of the drop off, as they won't want to risk anyone else finding the cash. We have a couple of men riding with the engineer to ensure there will be no unscheduled stops, and that the train moves fast enough to foil anyone trying to jump aboard. When the pick up is made, we'll follow it, lying low till we have an all clear from your office."
The mayor nodded. "Thank you. Now perhaps we'd better get down to the particulars of the underground operation."
"With all due respect," interrupted the tall man again, "I would like to say again that I feel this is a job for the sandhogs." He made a wide, sweeping gesture as he spoke, as though the truth of his statement should be obvious to all. "We know the system inside and out, we're used to working down there, we know the dynamite and it's our territory. I just don't see what one lady could do that thirty sandhogs couldn't do better."
"I should introduce you."Lieberman said apologetically. "Chuck Souski is the foreman of the sandhog water crew, and an old friend of mine." They had grown up on the same street, and had remained friends despite the radically different paths their lives had taken. Lieberman knew his friend to be a deeply honest, decent man, but with a streak of resentment toward authority that had landed him in trouble many times over the years. He was now clearly irked by Goldman and the entire federal entourage, and would need some delicate handling. "We have discussed this issue, Chuck, several times over," he said firmly, "and I believe I've already told you that until we know who the culprit is, no sandhog is in the clear, making your proposition unworkable. I also mentioned, I believe, that risking one life is better than risking thirty. Sorry, Ms. Sommers." he added with a sympathetic look in Jaime's direction.
She nodded and smiled grimly, and turned her eyes to Oscar, who flinched at Lieberman's words.
"My boys wouldn't do this." Chuck shook his head. "They're all dying to find the guy."
"Well that's another thing. We don't need any vigilante justice. That said, we appreciate your desire and willingness to aid in this effort. You and your men are essential to our success. Now," Lieberman said to the group, "I'd like to quickly go over the city's part in this. First of all, we have pulled all sandhogs off the work site, partly for their own safety, and partly so we'll know that anyone coming up out of the ground after this point is suspect. We're stationing police at all water outlet pipes. They know to provide you, Ms Sommers, with whatever aid you require." Lieberman gestured to a young man standing by Chuck. "Lenny Souski, Chuck's nephew, will accompany you underground and send you on your way."
"Radio contact underground is impossible." Oscar added, his eyes still on Jaime. "The only way we'll know where you are is by transponder."
"Well gentlemen," Jaime said, rising to her feet, "Let's get to it."
Five minutes later she was standing at a back exit of city hall, police escort waiting. Most of the men who had attended the meeting milled around her, restless and anxious. Oscar, to her surprise, looked calm and stoic, discussing last minute details with the police chief. She had been waiting for him to switch into what she referred to as his 'Mother Hen Routine', where he would fuss about her safety until she mocked him with clucking noises to make him back off. But to her amazement there was no fussing, no unwanted advice, no admonishments to be careful. Now she found herself missing it.
But it was time to go. Lenny got into the back of the police car first and slid over to the far side.
"Better give me all the baubles." Oscar said, holding his hand out.
"Oh - right!" said Jaime, quickly removing her earrings and the pretty gold belt she had just bought. Oscar dropped them into his jacket pocket.
"Ring?" he asked.
"Doesn't come off." she replied. "Now, how about a kiss for luck from my boss?" He smiled reassuringly and took her in his arms, kissed her, held her tight for a moment, and released her.
"Go get 'em Babe." he said, his voice full of false courage.
She slipped into the back seat of the police car and settled, and then remembering something she quickly rolled her window down.
"What about Schlomo?"
He smiled. "I called Callahan. Schlomo will not starve."
And then she was gone. The police car gunned away, sirens blaring, and deftly slipped through the heavy traffic.
Chuck Souski stared at him. "She's your girlfriend?"
"No," Oscar replied, still watching the flashing lights recede in the distance. "she's my wife."
"You let your wife go down there?"
Oscar turned, looked at him with a kind of weary loathing, and walked back into city hall.
---
Lenny held the cage door open and Jaime stepped in. He flicked a switch and the elevator shuddered and rattled as it began the long, slow descent through the earth's crust. As it grew darker the air became stale and close. Jaime looked up and watched the spot of blue sky above becoming smaller and smaller.
A large, baby faced young man, Lenny studied his boots rather than attempt conversation. Not surprisingly he was rather pale, but his lips were bright red, like a porcelain doll. He wore a plaid shirt, khaki pants and enormous steel-toed boots - all caked in rich brown earth.
"It's warm!" she said.
"Yup." he replied. "Real toasty right down at the bottom. But we're only taking you to bathwater temperature - five hundred feet."
"Wow. Where are you working?"
"I'm on the new tunnel. Tunnel number three. Eight hundred feet." His eyes met Jaime's and she could see how proud he was. "We're finally doing something about this mess we've got down here. City waterworks are in terrible shape."
"I've heard."
"You''ll see for yourself." Lenny said ominously. "Tunnel number three is going to save this city. After you save it first, that is." he smiled.
"Yeah." replied Jaime, raising her eyebrows.
"I'm sorry about my uncle." he added, warming up a little. "He's kind of old fashioned."
"Oh, that's okay. This work obviously means a great deal to him."
"Yeah. It means a lot to all of us. We're proud of what we do. People have died down here making sure people up there have water to drink. I knew from when I was a little kid that I wanted to be a sandhog like Uncle Chuck. Not everybody can do it." He frowned at her. "I just hope you're going to be okay."
"Don't worry about me." Jaime said, sounding more confident than she felt.
He hit a switch and the cage jolted to a halt. "This is your floor Ma'am." he said as he opened the cage door and stepped out. They were at the mouth of a large tunnel, dimly lit to a length of about three hundred feet. Tangled above and all around was a massive network of pipes and cables snaking down into the darkness. It was undeniably spooky. She was sweating already.
"This way." Lenny gestured down the tunnel. Jaime took in the strange subterranean world - the close silence of the deep solid earth around them, the dirt smell, the sludge underfoot, the dripping noises, the grumbling pipes, the rust stains pouring down the rough stone walls.
"These are all feeders coming basically from tunnel number one, which was built in '17." he said a minute into their walk. "We've got a lot of leaks." he added as they passed under a fine mist spewing from a pipe above. They turned into a darker secondary tunnel and continued for another fifty feet before turning once more and coming to a halt in front of two large rusty pipes, numbers stenciled on the sides, one at floor level and the other near the ceiling.
"Apparently your guy said it has to be one of these two." Lenny said. "DX 111 or DX 112 - both of them out of commission. Take your pick."
Jaime nodded and pressed her ear to the lower of the two pipes.
"I don't think you're going to be able to hear anything... "
Jaime put her finger to her lips and listened intently for thirty seconds, but she could hear nothing but the sound of air in a contained space. Ascending the ladder to DX 112 she placed her ear against it. Immediately she heard something - unidentifiable, but a sound, nonetheless. Far down the line she was picking up some sense of habitation. She closed her eyes and stopped breathing. Yes - voices - almost out of range, but definitely there.
"This one." she informed Lenny.
"Okay." he replied, looking incredulous. "Climb up top there and move down about ten feet - just past the hatch." Jaime followed his instructions, and straddling the pipe she shifted herself along it down the tunnel, noting that it was unusually clean. Someone else had definitely been up here recently. Lenny followed, stopping just before the hatch.
"This is it." he said. "This is your access point here. Have you got everything you need?"
Banded to her arm was the transponder. She had swimming goggles and most importantly, she had her headlamp.
"I think so."
He worked the hatch open and lifted the lid. "This pipe runs eight hundred horizontal feet. There are two vertical mains coming off it at two and six hundred feet. If you can't get out here, you'll want to get out through one of those. Problem is the valves to those mains are pretty rusty, which is why we don't use this pipe anymore." He gazed at her regretfully. "So... try to get back here."
She nodded, feeling nervous.
"All the valves have internal taps, on the left hand side of the pipes. It's a wheel. You'll see it when you're in there."
Jaime stepped into the pipe, which came up to her mid thigh, and noted the layer of rusty shale beneath her feet. At least it was dry. "I guess I'm going to have to crawl, huh?"
"Oh! Hang on a sec." He climbed down from the pipe and returned a moment later with a small wooden cart that resembled a crude skateboard. "You can roll on your belly. You'll have to lift it over the pipe seams, but it's way faster than crawling. Quieter too."
"Thanks." Jaime said, resisting the urge to stall, "Well... here I go."
"Good luck." Lenny said, offering her an encouraging smile.