Chapter 4: The Rat Race
It took about a hundred pushups and a good book to finally wear down, but Myles managed to get a decent night's sleep. The anger, and most of the tension, were gone when he woke up.
As he walked into the bullpen, though, a goodly portion of that tension came back. He expected Tara to jump down his throat, since he was sure she'd talked to Elizabeth—he planned to do a little jumping of his own if she said anything. He was ready for that. But he wasn't entirely certain that Bobby had forgiven him for the previous day's drenching.
That particular concern was allayed, however, when Myles reached his desk. The double espresso and the Krispy Kreme donut (crème-filled) said more than any awkward words could. He picked up the coffee, then turned to look at Bobby, who was seated at his own desk. The Aussie raised a coffee in salute, and Myles returned it with a nod.
Tara was also already at her desk, poring over something on her computer. She looked up for a moment, smiled briefly, but there was nothing in her expression to indicate she knew about his fight with Elizabeth. Good. The rest of his tension ebbed away.
The rest of the team walked in together, already brainstorming. Jack called them together.
"All right," he began. "we didn't shut them down, but we stung them pretty good, to the tune of a cool seven hundred million in diamonds." He paused to let the low whistles circle the room.
"We got stung ourselves in the process — it happens. Now we need to figure out how to not let it happen again. Tara, pull up everything from yesterday's surveillance. I want to know where and how those guys disappeared. Bobby, what did SOG find?"
"A whole lot of nothin's what they found," Bobby replied. "Except, of course, for the truck, the diamonds, the chocolates, and a nearly-empty warehouse with a couple of stray rats…"
Myles' head snapped up as a thought occurred to him.
"…a few fingerprints, nobody on file, the errant gum wrapper— nothing to give us any clue as to where they went, or how."
Jack had noticed Myles' movement. "Myles? Something?"
"Rats."
"Excuse me?" Jack blinked. He wasn't the only one.
Myles answered with a different question. "Bobby, did SOG check out that big pallet of crates in the middle of the warehouse?"
The Aussie shrugged. "They didn't dismantle it, if that's what you're asking."
"Myles, where are you going with this?" Jack prodded.
The taller man held out his hand, as if to present the thought. "My father served two tours in Vietnam. Not in some office at the rear," he clarified in response to Bobby's snort, "out in the bush. He used to tell stories about the tactics the enemy used — tactics nobody in the West had really thought about until then. Anyway, Dad helped form a special unit to combat one tactic in particular. The men in that unit were known as 'tunnel rats.'"
"'Tunnel rats?" Sue repeated, just to make sure she'd read correctly.
Myles nodded.
Jack was about to tell him again to get on with it, when Sue snapped her fingers and said, "You think there's a tunnel under that pallet. And that's how the Rockettes were able to vanish."
"Yes. It's either that or magic, and I'm not much of a believer in magic. I'd be willing to bet that, if we hadn't interrupted them, all those diamonds would have gone down there, too, and all we'd have found was a truckload of chocolate. And it gives us our explanation for the terrorist liaison—he came in that same way."
Jack's voice took on a note of excitement. "Tara, punch up the first part of the video, before the truck got there. Also the thermal imaging we took."
"Here you go." The two images came up on the big screen. "The thermal imaging is longer, since the scanner was father away from the sprinkler that got the camera."
"Set them in slow motion. Synchronized, if you can."
"They don't call me TaraTech for nothing." She tapped a few keys on her computer, and the two segments started. There was nothing to indicate anything unusual around the pallet.
Jack was about to signal her to shut it off when Myles held up a hand.
"Wait. There are a couple of ways to fool a thermal scan with something like this. Keep it going."
Jack nodded, and they kept watching as the truck pulled in, and yesterday's scene repeated itself on the screen. Everything was identical—until the point where the sprinklers went off.
"There." Myles pointed. "Tara, freeze the thermal image, back it up about 5 seconds, then run it frame-by-frame. Just the thermal."
"That's all we have at this point, anyway." More keyboard clicks. Then, "Here you go."
As the frames ticked by in sequence, Myles elaborated on his previous statement. "The same tactics that made the NVA and the VC so hard to catch were also used during the Cold War. There were tunnels under the Berlin Wall, used as bases by Allied coverts—and to keep them from being picked up as a heat source, the tunnels were kept well air-conditioned. There, Tara, freeze it."
He pointed at the screen. "With the warehouse's AC on, there wouldn't really be enough of a difference to pick up the air-conditioned tunnel. But right there, what do you see?"
Lucy responded. "A warm spot. Pretty good-sized knot right by the truck. Oh—that would be our Rockettes."
"Right," Myles continued. "Ok, Tara. Put it back on frame-by-frame. Watch that warm spot."
The red blotch on the screen began to condense, getting smaller until it was gone.
Jack voiced what they'd just seen. "Twenty warm bodies going down into a cold tunnel."
Bobby folded his arms across his chest. "But there'd be no way for them , in the time they had, to shove that pallet out of the way, to say nothing of putting it back exactly where…" He trailed off as the answer to his own question appeared in his mind.
Dimitrius beat him to saying it, though. "Unless it's a single piece on a swivel of some sort. Wouldn't be that hard to rig up."
"Exactly." Myles sipped his coffee, trying hard not to be too smug about it.
Jack's grin just got bigger and bigger. "I knew there was a reason I brought all you geniuses together on this team. Wait'll I tell Garrett."