Jack walked down the slope towards the river. If he was going to get wet, he wanted to move around. He couldn’t just stand and wait. When he reached River Road, he turned around and looked back up the hill at the Federal Reserve. What the hell was going on? The Governor had been robbing banks and killing people. There was an explosion in the tunnels under the Federal Reserve and he was standing here in the rain hoping he wouldn’t be hit by lightning. He looked across the river, barely able to see the other side through the sheets of rain. Nobody could be watching him in this weather from over there. They had to be closer. He looked back up at Alex. Somebody on the inside?
Alex stepped out of the tunnel and waved. “They’re coming. They’ll be here any minute.”
Jack waved back and started up the hill.
The team put the stretcher down inside the tunnel out of the rain. “Call it in, Alex,” the team lead commanded. “We’re all back. We found two dead and one survivor who needs attention.”
“Can he talk?” Jack yelled in from the entrance. “Do we know what happened?”
The lead looked at Jack and then at Ross. “You’re with the FBI?”
Ross nodded.
“These three had some sophisticated digging equipment. They knew what they were doing.”
“They hit a gas main or something?” Ross asked.
“No, somebody else detonated the explosion. It looks like they wanted to collapse the tunnel and kill or trap these guys underground.”
“A diversion,” Jack said.
“Maybe.” The team lead looked down at the man lying on the stretcher. “This guy’s going to make it. Hasn’t said a word once he found out the other guys were dead.”
The man looked up at them from the stretcher, his unfocused eyes darting back and forth between them as they spoke. The whites of his eyes floated across his face black with dirt.
“They knew how to dig, but I don’t know how smart they were. They were digging a long ways from the vault.”
“We were so close,” the man said, struggling to sit up. “Thirty more minutes and we would’ve been at the door into the vault.”
Jack took another step into the tunnel. “Did you say a door into the vault?” He glanced at the team lead who shook his head.
“Sure. I’ll tell you who’s not smart.” The man patted the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. “Where’s my drawing?”
The lead held out a folded piece of paper. “You mean this?”
The man grabbed it from his hand. “Who’s the dummy?” He unfolded the paper and held it out so he and the others could see it. “Shine a light down here.” He moved the paper around until the beam from a flashlight illuminated the paper. “Who’d put a door in a vault you can get to from the outside?” Then he laid his head back down, exhausted.
Jack took another half of a step into the tunnel. “Can I see that?”
The team lead handed Jack the piece of paper. Alex handed him a flashlight. After looking it over, Jack looked at Ross and then the team lead. “Let’s go. Bring him along. I need to compare this to something else. He might not be so smart, but somebody is.”
Jack led Ross and the team carrying the stretcher back into the Federal Reserve building, where their wet shoes and boots squeaked on the tile floor. They paraded into the cafeteria where Jack and Ross had left the drawings they had recovered from the Governor’s condo. “Put him down there next to the table,” Jack directed the two guards carrying the stretcher.
“Junior, come here.” Jack leaned over the drawings on the table and spread flat the sheet that the man had shown them. “Look at this.” He pointed to the sheet and then the blue line drawings of the Federal Reserve that Ross had carried through the rain. “What do you see?”
“His drawing is the same as ours. Links them to the Governor.”
“Come on, Junior. What else?”
Ross looked back and forth between the drawings and sat back. “There’s some kind of door or hatch in the corner, underground. It’s not in the originals.” He looked at Granowski who had joined them. “There’s no hatch in the vault, is there?”
“No,” Granowski laughed and shook his head.
Ross walked over to the prisoner still lying on the stretcher and squatted down next to him.
“Did you hear that, buddy? There’s no hatch underground through the vault. Who’s the dummy?”
The man just stared at Ross and then closed his eyes.
“Come on, man. Talk to us. Somebody took you guys for fools and then tried to kill you. He had you go to all that work for what?”
The man opened his eyes. “No hatch?”
Ross looked into the man’s eyes and shook his head.
“Can I sit up? Maybe have a Coke and a smoke?”
They got the man situated at the table with a plastic bottle of Coke, an empty coffee cup for ashes, and a pack of cigarettes. He guzzled half of the bottle of soda, burped, tapped a cigarette out of the pack, put it to his lips, and asked for a light. After inhaling heavily and blowing a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, he leaned forward on the table and spoke. “That bastard. There’s no hatch?” He looked at Ross.
“One way in. And it’s from inside the building. Look here.” Ross took his turn pointing out the differences between the drawings. “Here’s your drawing, given to you by your boss? And these drawings are the original engineering drawings we got from his condo today. Yours were modified to show the hatch you thought you were digging to. And when you got close, he tried to kill you. All the Federal Reserve guards would have found were the dead bodies of some idiots trying to dig their way into the vault.”
The man stared at the drawings and shook his head. “Am I the only one that survived?”
“How many were down there? The team found you and two bodies.”
The man closed his eyes. Tears slowly formed at the edges and dribbled down his cheeks. He was trembling. Ross started to reach out for the man. Jack grabbed his arm and shook his head. “Wait,” he mouthed.
The man inhaled deeply and blew out a long breath through pursed lips. Then he opened his eyes. He looked at Ross. “They’re both dead?”
Ross nodded.
“Shit. One was my brother.” The man leaned forward and looked down at the table, his shoulders slumped. “What do you want to know?”
Twenty minutes later, they knew his name, the names of the deceased, and most of the plan as far as he was aware. It had been an elaborate scheme that was surprisingly successful at penetrating the ground beneath the city, working its way towards the Federal Reserve vault. Up until the explosion.
“Your boss was down there shortly before the explosion?” Ross asked. Jack and Granowski leaned forward to listen.
“He came down to check our progress. Congratulated us and said we had until one o’clock to make it to the vault. Then he left.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He left.”
“How did you get in and out of the tunnels?”
“We had three different routes. Each was a hike. An hour or so.”
Jack stood up. “He might still be down there.” He ripped a page out of the set of drawings, flipped it over, and sketched a crude overhead view of the area showing the Mississippi River, the bridge, and the Federal Reserve building. He held out his pen. “Show us where the entrances are that you used.”
The man sketched them in outside of the boundaries Jack had drawn and described where each one was.
“Can you get some of your team to check these out?” Jack asked Granowski.
“We’ll get them covered, plus some of the others we know about.”
“What others?”
“These are more out of the way, but there are lots of ways down into the sewers. Some that are farther away. There are some that are closer. Especially the sewer manholes in the streets.”
“Junior, get somebody from the Minneapolis sewer department that knows what’s down here and tell them we might need some equipment for going down there.”
Ross started dialing the phone. “How about some maps?”
“Good thinking, Junior. I knew I brought you along for something.” Jack flashed Ross a quick smile and then returned to his conversation with Granowski.
Jack tried to focus the group while they waited for the sewer crew and tried to decide what to do next. “Come on, guys.” He looked at Granowski. “The Governor created this whole thing to distract you from something else. The Fed is still the target. He staged the attempt on the vault, created an explosion, expected everyone to be killed.” Jack looked over the drawings on the table. “If it’s not the vault, what is it?”
Granowski had a worried look on his face. “Could he be hitting something somewhere else after bringing the focus here?
“Good question, but I doubt it. We can work that angle while we continue looking here.” Jack looked at Ross. “Why don’t you have a couple of guys in the office work that one?” Ross started to leave. “Wait a second, Junior.”
Jack looked back at Granowski. “If it’s not the vault, any plans to move money?”
“No trucks are scheduled for another day.”
“Anything other than money?”
“Check clearing, funds transfer, it’s all money,” Granowski said. “It’s what we do.”
“And you’ve never been robbed?”
“Never.”
“What happens if you are?”
“The shit hits the fan.” Granowski looked worried. “It would have a world-wide impact. Confidence in our money system could plummet. Banks wouldn’t know what to do. We’d stop moving money for a while until things got sorted out. That would cause a shortage in areas.”
“No trucks scheduled to move anything, but you’ll wire transfer?” Jack asked.
“That’s how most of the money is moved today. Lots of security, passwords, tokens, special secured computer network.”
“Is the network up now?”
“It was down for the holiday.” Granowski looked at the clock on the wall. “Like I said, it will be back up and running at one o’clock.”
“That’s what he’s after,” Jack said.
“Impossible. I told you about all of the security. It’s the safest, most monitored network in the world.”
“Can you delay restarting it?”
“Yes, if we really need to, but they aren’t breaking in there.”
“Maybe they don’t need to.” Jack stood up. “Junior, now go make the call. Have a couple of people at the office work the angle that something away from here is the target. Get Sure Thing, Squeaky, and anybody else he needs down here to help with the computer network stuff.”