Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

aisle.
    “Excellent speech. The best I’ve ever heard,” Simon Shilling said, stopping at the foot of the dais.
    Jack folded the speech into his pocket as he stepped down. He shook the hand of his closest friend as they met on the Senate floor.
    “Thanks,” Jack replied and then brought his voice down to a whisper. “Too bad no one will hear it.”
    “Maybe not tonight,” Simon replied in his own soft voice. “You’re doing the right thing, Mr. President. We’re doing the right thing.”
    Jack nodded. Simon glanced at his watch. “We’ve got time to hear it once more, from the top.”
    Jack returned to his perch on the dais. Simon slid over to the second desk on Jack’s right. He knew that the first one was already occupied.
    Jack’s heart fell as he stared at the empty desk next to his chief of staff. He pictured his young son like he always had after his death, without the tubes and machines tied to him. Jack put his hand in his jacket pocket to retrieve his speech but then stopped. He gripped the podium atop the dais with both hands and began his speech from memory for his audience of two.
    “Mr. Speaker, Vice President Mulroney, members of Congress, fellow citizens …”

Chapter 101
    A forgotten room.
    Danny’s cell phone had already lost service twice since he crawled into the space beneath the congressional subway train. Except for the tiny beam of Sergeant Cannon’s mini-flashlight and the weak glow that fell from the open hatch at the end of the service bay, Danny was submerged in complete darkness. He stepped back over to the hatch, stood tall, and poked his head up into the service bay. He called Luther again and waited. Luther picked up after two rings.
    “I keep losing you down there,” Danny said.
    “Where are you now?” Luther replied.
    “I’m at the opening in the service bay floor.”
    “Then I’m going to have to walk you through it from there.”
    Danny listened to Luther’s explanation. As he heard the words, he tried to visualize the spatial arrangement of the room.
    “That’s it,” Luther surmised.
    “Wish me luck.”
    “Good luck, Sergeant. We’ll grab a beer later, and you can tell me all about it.”
    “Thanks, Luther.”
    “I’ll be glued to the TV to see how you do.”
    Danny ended the call and looked at the empty service bay. He had instructed Sergeant Cannon to get a bomb expert down here as fast as he could. Normally Cannon would have used the radio, but he had agreed with Danny’s sentiment. Nothing was as it seemed anymore. They didn’t know who could be trusted, so broadcasting a plea for help over an open line was out of the question.
    As if he was about to go underwater, Danny swallowed a deep breath and plunged back down through the hatch. He used the flashlight to light up his feet. He shuffled to the edge of the platform he was standing on and used the ladder bolted to its side to climb down. When he reached the floor, he felt openness around him. Instead of wasting time swinging the flashlight around in all directions, he followed Luther’s instructions.
    “Look for a light switch on the wall close to your point of entry.”
    Danny widened the beam as much as possible and plastered a ring of weak light on the wall. He found a panel of switches and flipped each switch up as fast as he could. Row after row of florescent tubes sputtered to life, their electrical whine aching above his head.
    Danny nearly dropped the flashlight as soon as he saw what was around him. The room was the size of a hockey rink. His eyes immediately focused on the strange looking machinery at the far end of the room. Luther had explained that the hulking linear induction motor, complete with its massive transmission gears and a steel support structure that was attached to both floor and ceiling, had been installed back in the 1950s to power a monorail system that highlighted U.S. technological advances at that time. The single, knee-high track that extended from the motor and suddenly stopped in the center of the room supported Luther’s claim. But the monorail was stopped in mid-construction due to cost overruns. It would have been more expensive to remove the track and machinery and repair the damage they had caused to the floor then to just build a new basement level on top of everything and start over.
    Danny pulled back and saw the four massive support columns that continued through the basement floor into this level. He saw nothing but smooth concrete on the