After climbing up on top of his car, he fed the pick end of the Halligan up through the fire escape’s grated floor and pulled himself up. Once he swung himself up onto the landing, he lifted the tool and money up after him.
As quietly as possible, he started making his way up to the roof. The windows he passed were a common factory type, the kind that after turning a handle inside the bottom of the frame rotated outward. On the third floor he noticed that the pane directly above one of them was broken. A few small pieces of broken glass were on the outside sill, indicating that it was not the result of kids throwing stones, but broken from the inside. A little too convenient. He regripped the pry bar and bags and headed up the final ladder.
Once he stepped onto the roof, the only thing visible was an eight-foot-high structure along the back edge that housed an access door for the building’s stairwell. He looked over the side and let his eyes trace the railroad tracks he had walked. Radek must have watched him the entire time from there, making sure that no one else was anywhere near.
Sitting on the tarred surface next to the access structure, he could see something emitting a small green light. Halfway across the roof, Vail could hear a woman’s muffled voice coming from it. When Vail reached the source of the light and sound, he discovered it was a baby monitor. Because of the limited range of the device, it meant Tye had to be inside the building. Underneath it was a note, which simply stated, “Leave the bags here.”
He set down the bags and tried the doorknob. It was locked. He pushed the adze end of the Halligan between the door and the frame just above the lock. It sank in just far enough so he would be able to get some leverage on it. He took a half step back and pulled evenly on the tool’s shaft. The door shifted inside the frame but the pry bar started tearing through the edge of the wooden door. Vail pushed the tool’s head deeper into the widened gap. Again he pulled back, and this time the door sprung open with little sound.
He had no idea what lay ahead. Other than his knife, he had no weapon, so the Halligan would have to do. He started to take out the flashlight but then remembered the photocell trigger in the tunnel. Instead he closed the door behind him, which enclosed him in darkness. He stood perfectly still while his eyes adjusted. After a moment, he could see some light at the bottom of the stairs on the fourth floor, possibly coming through the windows from the streetlights.
The stairs were wooden and creaked with almost every step. He took his time, listening after each one, and at the same time feeling ahead for any wires or rigged construction. It took twenty minutes to descend the three floors, and his legs were starting to feel the exhaustion of the last couple of hours.
At the bottom of the stairs was a door. It was locked. To his left was a hallway that skirted the outside of the first floor. The main part of the floor was most likely a factory workspace. Halfway down the corridor was another door. Vail tried it, but it was also locked. At the end, the corridor turned right toward the building’s main entrance. There was light from the street coming through the double door windows. To his right was a large open door that led to the floor’s workspace.
Then he noticed, sitting six feet from the entrance door, an object that was four feet tall and three feet wide. He stepped slowly toward it. It looked like an industrial-size cable spool for heavy-gauge wire. After another step, he could see that it was coiled with hundreds of feet of barbwire. It didn’t make any sense until he looked at the core. It was packed with something light in color. Thin electrical wires ran out of it toward the door. Carefully he stuck his finger into the center of the spool. The material had the consistency of C-4. He was afraid to move any closer, but instead took out the monocular and traced the wires visually. They ran to two electrical contacts, one on each of the front doors, like a burglar alarm. As soon as either door was opened, the electrical signal was interrupted and the blasting caps at the core of the spool would be detonated. Any person or persons entering through that door had no chance of survival.
Ever so slowly, he pulled the blasting caps out of the C-4. Stepping around the spool, he laid them on the floor. Not wanting to get any closer to the doors, he took the sharp, claw end of the Halligan and drove it accurately into the wooden floor, severing both wires, one with each side of the claw. He picked up the caps and tossed them down the hallway as far as possible. Blasting caps were relatively inert. Even if they went off at that distance, they couldn’t detonate the stable C-4. Vail knew the bomb was not for him, but rather for any FBI cavalry should they somehow be tracking Vail’s movements. If there was an “obstacle” for him, it lay somewhere else.
He pulled the Halligan out of the floor and looked through the inner door into the workspace. The windows had been drywalled over. Only a thin slit of a window at the back end of the room allowed any light at all. Using the monocular, Vail could see a dozen or so dark shapes of uniform size placed irregularly along the floor. The pattern seemed to be random, but Vail could see that it was arranged so that eventually, in the dark, anyone walking through the room would bump into one of them, and possibly with the same consequences as entering through the front door. After memorizing their positions, he gripped the Halligan at its balance and stepped into the room.
Immediately he heard a woman’s desperate moans. She was somewhere inside the large room. Straining his eyes to confirm the location of the objects along the floor, he slid each foot forward, testing for trip wires while continuing to move toward the voice.
Halfway across the room, he stopped and took out the monocular. He could see the outline of a coffin-shaped box along the far wall where the muffled syllables seemed to be coming from. This was where he was supposed to become emotional and charge toward it. He stopped, took a deep breath, and blocked out the muted pleas.
The objects placed between him and the box containing her turned out to be eighteen-inch-high wooden cubes. He could now see a small green dot of light up on the wall, and he suddenly became aware of an almost inaudible hum, an electrical hum. The transmitter for the baby monitor? He took one more step forward and felt the floor give way slightly, causing a distinct mechanical click underfoot.
A small spotlight snapped on, illuminating what housed the green point of light. It was a motion detector, the kind used in home security systems, and its green light had changed to red, indicating it was now armed. He froze. Illuminating it meant that Radek now had him trapped and wanted him to know.
He was standing on a two-foot square of plywood, which had been painted flat black to make it unnoticeable. He suspected that the click heard under it might have done more than turn on the light. Vail turned his attention back to the sensor. Ordering himself not to move his head, he used eye movement only. A snarl of wiring surrounded the monitor. It was hooked into a larger cable, which ran up the wall and then overhead toward him, finally disappearing behind a large black void above his head.
Imperceptibly, Vail moved his head upward slightly to determine exactly what was above him. It was not a void at all, but a huge steel plate hanging ten feet over his head. His mason’s eye estimated it to be approximately sixteen feet square, and he was at its dead center. Printed in large chalked letters on its underside was a note:
VAIL—EM wired to pressure release and motion sensor.Good-bye.Vic
That’s what the hum was, an electromagnetic crane used to move stock around. And it was double primed. Two systems to make sure he couldn’t move. Either the sensor or the pressure-release switch he was standing on would shut it off and drop the steel on him. He couldn’t see how thick the plate was, but the thinnest he was aware of was three-sixteenths of an inch. A sixteen-square-foot piece of that thickness had to be close to two thousand pounds.