Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

storage rooms and old offices that aren’t used any longer.”
    “How many rooms are down there?”
    Cannon huffed. “Around a hundred on each floor. Some are locked, some aren’t. Many of the keys to the locked ones have been missing for years.” Cannon eyed his watch again. “No time to search every one, not even with dogs.”
    Danny didn’t fully trust Cannon, let alone a full search team. And Cannon was right. Even with all those resources, there was no way to search that much area in under an hour, and counting.
    Danny focused on the control panel again as he asked the next question.
    “Who has access to those floors?”
    “Some people from the Architect of the Capitol’s office. Some Capitol Police staff.”
    “Do you?”
    Cannon shook his head. “Not high enough on the food chain. But trust me, Cavanaugh, security for the sub-basement is top notch. Besides fingerprint recognition here, there are numerous keycard access points that use password and voice verification. If someone smuggled a bomb in through the escape tunnels, it’s not in the sub-basement.”
    Danny wanted to ask the obvious question: if the sub-basement was merely old storage rooms, then why all the “top notch” security? But he didn’t have the time for a pissing match. He had to trust Cannon. “How do you want to play it?” he asked Cannon instead.
    “Just follow my lead.” Cannon yanked his police-issue Beretta from his belt holster. Then he bent over and pulled up his pant leg, revealing an ankle holster. In it was a Kahr PM9 millimeter. He retrieved it and handed it to Danny. “You ever fired a pocket rocket before?”
    “A few times.” Danny chambered a bullet and sighted the gun before pulling it in tight to his chest.
    Cannon finally took his thumb off the “Close Door” button. The doors rolled back and he eased out of the elevator. Danny was on his heels. A set of pea-green double doors stood in front of them. Cannon turned the doorknob, and they spilled out into a long, deserted passageway that contained two rail beds cut into the glazed concrete floor. Both the passageway and the rail beds snaked down a hill and then out of sight. Danny and Cannon shuffled over the width of the passageway, their guns and eyes pointed in all directions.
    “We’re directly underneath the House chambers,” Cannon declared as he stood tall and relaxed, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. “The Capitol is actually three buildings in one. The House, the Rotunda, and the Senate are all separate.” Danny eyed four massive support columns, two on each side of the rail beds as Cannon continued. “These columns hold up the entire House building. I’m guessing you were thinking the terrorists would pull another 9/11 and make the building implode on itself? If so, then they’d have to take out these columns. And I don’t see any bombs strapped to them, do you?”
    Danny didn’t answer. He galloped past the columns, looking for the slightest shred of evidence to confirm his theory. The tension coiled in his body evaporated as he came up empty handed.
    Directly under the House chambers .
    Cannon was right. Danny did think a bomb or bombs would make the building implode, killing all the occupants within it. He pictured the horrifying sight of 9/11, the Twin Towers each collapsing into rubble.
    Unless.
    The thought slammed into him. Unless an implosion wasn’t what they were after.
    “Did bomb-sniffing dogs go over this area?” he asked Cannon as he walked back toward him.
    Cannon nodded. “Every inch of the entire building.”
    “Can they sniff out nukes?”
    Cannon gave him a funny look. “For obvious reasons, they don’t train with radioactive material. So no.”
    “What about testing for a nuclear device?”
    “We have radiation monitors everywhere,” Cannon replied. Then he unfurled his long, right arm to uncover the strange-looking watch on his right wrist. “Plus, we’re required to wear radiation monitors during our shifts.” He looked at it and then turned his wrist so Danny could see the ‘0.0’ on its face. “Nothing’s been reported by anyone else, either.”
    Danny noticed a wide stairway to their right. “Where does that lead?” he asked.
    “That takes you back up to the ground floor and the first-floor offices. Come on,” Cannon said as he started walking down the hallway. “I’ll take you to the entrance to the tunnels.”
    They reached an alcove to their left, and Cannon swung into it.