Storm Surge - Part 2 (24 page)

Kerry joined her, phone pressed to her ear. "I don't want to go any closer to where we were," she stated. "We don't have any protection, Dar."

"Right there with you, Ker. They should have been a lot further up by now. This may all be one big damn moot point."

The train behind them was still idling in the station. Scuzzy came back over to where Dar and Kerry were standing, extending her arms out in visible bewilderment. "I don't get it."

"Us either." Dar acknowledged. "I find it very hard to believe these people haven't gotten up this far yet. What the hell are they doing, laying the damn cable an inch an hour?" She went to the edge of the platform and looked down the tunnel, seeing not much other than a few lights off in the distance.

It smelled. A gust of surprisingly cold air blew back down into her face and she stepped back quickly, glancing behind her at the train.

"No, you aren't." Kerry was speaking into her phone. "I'm standing right here, looking at the wall and we're in the city hall station."

Across the platform, against the far wall, Dar could see another,smaller concrete slab that was darkened and obviously not used. She turned around and saw the twin of it against the other wall, then she went again to the edge of the tunnel and peered inside.

The driver had come out of his cubicle and he approached her. "What are you people doin'?" he asked, in a gruff tone.

Dar turned. She held up her ID and credentials, which he peered at."We're working with the government," she said. "Trying to lay some cable down these tunnels."

The driver looked down the tunnel, then at her. "You're crazy,right? You think you're putting cables down the subway? We got manholes for that." He pointed across at the other, darkened platform. "They're over there, not in the tunnels lady."

"Are they?" Dar looked where he was pointing seeing a roll down door in the gloom. "Can I get over there to look at it?"

The driver studied her , then he shrugged. "G'wan inside the car.I'll open the other doors. You might need to jump a little."

"Look, I'm telling you I'm right here. No one--what? What do you mean, another city hall?" Kerry motioned Scuzzy over. "Can you talk to this guy? He's not making any sense to me."

"Sure." Scuzzy willingly came over. "He's probably from Brooklyn or somethin'."

Dar entered the car through the open doors and crossed over waiting until the driver entered his cubicle and opened the far set exposing the dark, shortened platform. It wasn't much of a jump, actually. Dar merely stepped across onto it, and pulled her flashlight out to explore.

The platform was filthy. She had the brief sensation of what it might be like inside a coal mine as she walked carefully along the concrete slab glancing up at an old mosaic embedded into the wall. "Brooklyn Bridge," she muttered under her breath.

It was obscured with plaster and a half wall of whitewashed wood forming a crude storage area. Next to that was a door painted black to match the inside walls and battered with years. Dar walked over and turned the knob, fully expecting it to be locked but not entirely surprised when it wasn't.

She pushed the door open and peered inside, and sure enough, she was faced with more cable trunks than she knew what to do with. She entered and looked around, tipping her head back to look up and see tiny chinks of light above her head.

They flickered, then flickered again, and she realized she was looking at daylight. Manhole? She turned and looked at the door, then shook her head and continued exploring.

"Hey, Dar!" Kerry's voice echoed through the station. "Where are you?"

"Over here." Dar examined the huge bundles of cables and thick, riveted pipes that ran along the wall. A rustle of movement made her jump, and she flashed her light into the corner, which now had a pair of glowing eyes. "What's up?"

"C'mere!"

Dar backed out of the room with guilty relief, shutting the door quickly behind her before she turned and found Kerry looking out of the open doors at her. "What's up?"

"What's there?" Kerry countered. "Did you find something?"

"Cable trunk." Dar joined her in the car. "Not sure it helps us. Not sure where it ends up."

"Hey, if you people wanna keep talkin', I got to pull the train around to the other track," the driver said. "You want to ride around? I got no problem with that, since you're with the government and all."

"We're n--" Kerry started to answer, then she stopped. "Sure, that's fine. Thanks." She waited for the door to the driver's compartment to close. "Dar, they told Scuzzy they were in some other City Hall station. She thinks they're in the wrong tunnels."

Dar looked over at Scuzzy, who lifted her hands again. "There ain't no other City Hall station on this line, yeah? They got one over on the BMT though. I think they came down into the wrong stations or something."

"Great." Dar exhaled, pressing her nose against the window as the train started moving. "We're screwed."

"I think it's the stock market that's screwed, hon," Kerry said, pragmatically. "It's not our fault they took the wrong stairs."

"We'll still get screwed over it. No one's going to care if they did the wrong thing. We're the ones who promised we'd fix it." Dar stared grimly out the window, as the train eased into a turn, and the walls shifted from a drab sooty black to a lighter brick.

She got the impression of light, and she cupped her hands against the glass to see better. "Wh--" Her eyes took in arches and brickwork, a flash of mosaic, flickers of light, and outlined in it a group of workers with a familiar spool. "Hey! Hey! There they are!"

"What?" Kerry crowded against her and looked out the window."Where who--oh--huh?"

"Scuzzy, get this guy to stop, will ya?" Dar called out. "There are the bastards. In there!"

Scuzzy was already hammering on the door to the driver's compartment. "Hey buddy! Hey! Hold it up!"

The train shuddered to a halt, jerking and rattling and throwing Kerry against Dar and both of them against the window. Dar grabbed Kerry and the pole she was standing near and got them both upright as the door to the driver's pod yanked open and the driver emerged.

"What in the hell are you people yelling about?" the man asked. "Jesus Christ you scared the shit out of me! You know what it's been like the last couple days? I'm having a heart attack!" He fumed. "What's wrong with you?"

"Hey, take it easy." Scuzzy held her hands out. "We just found the guys we were looking for, yeah? We didn't want to miss them."

"What are you ta--" The driver ducked back inside and looked out his window. "There's no one--oh hell. There are people there. What the hell are they doing there?" He opened the slat and stuck his head out."What you people doin' out there, huh?"

Dar leaned closer to the doorway. "Can you open the doors?" she asked. "We need to talk to those guys."

"What?" The driver was still yelling out the window. He reached back inside and triggered a switch. "How in the hell did you get in here? They told us this was strickly off limits!"

"We're the phone company, shaddup!" The man on the platform yelled back.

Dar went to the door and stepped carefully over the shoulder width gap onto the platform, turning to hold out a hand to Kerry without really even thinking about it.

Kerry paused in the act of hopping out and eyed her, a faint smile twitching at her lips. She shifted her flashlight to her left hand and reached over to clasp Dar's fingers, squeezing them as she stepped over to the other side and gave her a little bump. "Thank you, sweetie."

Her partner paused, and a tiny wrinkle appeared on the bridge of her nose. "Was I being pretentious?"

"Just charming." Kerry moved past her. "Wow. What is this place?"

Dar glanced around, then headed for the cluster of men around the spool. "Let's see what those bastards are doing here."

Kerry let her go ahead, taking a moment to tip her head back and look around. Scuzzy came up next to her and they both slowed to a halt, and simply stared around them. "Wow."

"No kidding," Scuzzy agreed. "I ain't never seen nothing like this in the subway. That's for sure."

It seemed like it was part of the tunnel itself, which curved around in a big loop, the far end disappearing into the darkness again on the far side of space. But in the center, the ceiling lofted up in a series of gothic arches that culminated in a thin ironwork tracery of windows that allowed the light in from outside to spill across the intricately bricked walls.

It was surprising and beautiful, completely unexpected and Kerry took her camera from her belt pouch and adjusted the flash taking a few pictures of the work. "I guess there were two City Halls." She pointed at a mosaic tile sign on the wall, which held the words. "How weird."

Scuzzy was looking right up at the ceiling. "Whoa," she said. "You know? I think this is like, right outside the freaking entrance to the Hall. I seen those glass things from the top, you know? I asked my brother what they were once and he had like no idea."

"Ker." Dar's voice interrupted their sightseeing.

Kerry put her camera away, turning and heading over to where her partner was standing. "Sorry, what's up?"

"Wrong fucking cable." Dar enunciated the three words in the most clipped tone imaginable.

"Oh Jesus." Kerry pinched the bridge of her nose, as a headache she'd been keeping at bay started up again. "Not what I needed to hear."

"This is what those guys gave us,"the man from Verizon spoke up immediately"This ain't my fault," he immediately added. "This is the stuff those guys from Jersey brought over, right Mike?"

"Right." Another tech agreed immediately. "So that's what I told that guy, you sure it's this code? I had the code. I told him the code, and he said yeah, it was the right code, but I knew it wasn't no right code because I been laying this cable since I was eighteen years old, and I know what code it should be, and it ain't this code."

"Right. So we told those guys somebody needed to come down here and look at this before we went no further, because this is a lot of carp to go through for no reason," the first tech said. "And my guys gave me a lotta crap about it and just said to go on with it, but ain't no way was I gonna have these here guys run this here cable if it's the wrong stuff."

There was a brief silence. Then Dar folded her arms over her chest. "Right choice."

The tech nodded. "You got that right. So they sending someone down to here now? I ain't got all day to be sitting in this tunnel."

"They sent someone," Dar answered, before Kerry's bristling hackles could make her pale hair fluff out like a Chia pet. "I'll look at the cable."

"You?" The man gave Dar a doubtful look.

"Yes."

"Okay." The man motioned the other techs over. "Unreel some of dat, will ya? This here lady wants to see it." He looked back at Dar. "You sure you know what you're looking at?"

"Yes."

"Whatever." The man motioned her forward. "C'mon, c'mon. We ain't got all day."

"Shit." Dar pulled out her flashlight and walked over to the spool where the telco techs were unhitching the end of the cable in the spool and twisting it back for her to inspect. "This was one complication I wasn't expecting."

"Can I punch him while you're figuring out what to do?"Kerry asked from between gritted teeth. "Stupid piece of ignorant pork rind."

"Easy slugger."

DAR LEANED AGAINST the intricately bricked wall, her arms crossed over her chest, her mind racing. In front of her the track was now clear as the train had moved along into its appointed time slot. She had been left to ponder the cable, the techs, and the pit she'd dug herself into.

Shit. She felt like kicking herself. After all the bullshit she'd been spilling about everyone else's lame ass actions she had to face the fact she had screwed up to an intolerable degree by not simply checking what type of cable this half ass vendor was giving them.

Inexcusable.

Kerry came over and leaned against the wall next to her, their shoulders brushing. "Hey." She braced one booted foot against the brick."Thanks for the advice on the Lansing issue. It worked."

Dar looked sideways at her.

Kerry peered mildly back.

"You're welcome," Dar finally said. "You trying to make me stop kicking myself?"

"Well," her partner plucked at the knee of her pants, "actually I was trying to find something to say to you that wouldn't make you blow up at me."

"At you?"

"You know what I mean. Hon, I know you're freaking out. I don't want to make it worse for either of us."

Dar sighed.

Kerry felt the gentle pressure as Dar leaned against her, a non verbal acknowledgment and surrender she felt a great deal of sympathy for. There really wasn't much she could say, to be honest. Dar was right. She should have checked.

Of course, she could try to take responsibility for that on herself, but if she tried, she knew Dar would go ballistic and, frankly, she wasn't looking for any kind of tension between them since the situation was already more than wretched enough.

Honesty seemed the better route. With Dar it always was, even if her own inclination was to try and make excuses or find some way to entice her lover into feeling better about whatever it was she was kicking herself over. "So it's the wrong kind of fiber."

"Wrong kind of fiber," Dar agreed. "Multimode. The long distance optics are single mode."

"No options?"

"Longest reach multimode will do is 550 meters." Dar let her head rest on the wall. "Eighteen hundred feet."

Kerry did the math, and sighed. "Do they have any other spools?"

"Sure. All the wrong kind," Dar supplied. "Know what that bastard said? Oops."

"Oops." Kerry mouthed the word. "Nice."

"Yeah." Dar acknowledged. "Mongolian clusterfuck, courtesy of yours truly." She gazed up at the skylights, then pushed off from the wall. "Well, screw it." She started back toward the techs, who had been taking a break leaning against the cable spool. "No point in standing around."

Kerry gathered herself up and followed, catching up as Dar neared the work crew. "Hon--"