The Burning Wire

hotter down here than outside and the temperature was rising with every step of the descent.
    Another level of hell.
    The tunnel was bigger than she expected, about six feet across and seven high, but much dimmer. Many of the emergency lighting bulbs were missing. To the right, she could just make out the end of the tunnel, about fifty feet away. There were no doors Galt could have escaped through, no places to hide. To the left, though, where Joey Barzan was supposed to be, thecorridor disappeared in what seemed to be a series of bends.
    Sachs motioned the other two to stay behind her as they moved to the first jog in the tunnel. There they stopped. She didn’t believe Galt was still here—he would get as far away as he could—but she was worried about traps.
    Still, it was a belief , not a certainty, that he’d fled. So when she looked around the bend she was crouching and had her Glock ready, though not preceding her, where Galt might knock it aside or grab it.
    Nothing.
    She looked down at the water covering the concrete floor. Water. Naturally. Plenty of conductive water.
    She glanced at the wall of the tunnel, on which were mounted thick black cables.
    DANGER !!! HIGH VOLTAGE
CALL ALGONQUIN CONSOLIDATED POWER
BEFORE WORKING
    She remembered the Algonquin worker’s comment a moment ago about the voltage.
    “Clear,” she whispered.
    And motioned the officers along behind her, hurrying. She certainly was concerned about the Algonquin worker, Joey Barzan, but more important she hoped to find some clues as to where Galt might’ve gone.
    But could they? These tunnels would go on for miles, she guessed. They would have been a perfect route by which to escape. The floors were dirt and concrete, but no footprints were obvious. The walls were sooty. She could collect trace evidence for daysand not come up with a single thing that might yield a clue as to where he’d gone. Maybe—
    A scraping sound.
    She froze. Where had it come from? Were there side passages where he might be hiding?
    One of the officers held up a hand. He pointed at his own eyes and then forward. She nodded, though she thought the military signal wasn’t really necessary here.
    But whatever makes you comfortable in situations like this. . . .
    Though not much was making Sachs comfortable at the moment. Again, the bullets of molten metal zinged, hissing, through her mind’s eye.
    Still, she couldn’t pull back.
    Another deep breath.
    Another look . . . Again, the stretch of tunnel ahead of them was empty. It was also dimmer than the other. And she saw why: most of the lightbulbs were missing here too, but these had been broken out.
    A trap, she sensed.
    They had to be directly beneath the hotel, she figured, when they came to a ninety-degree turn to the right.
    Again she took a fast look, but this time it was hard to see anything at all because of the greater darkness here.
    Then she heard noises again.
    One patrolman eased close. “A voice?”
    She nodded.
    “Keep low,” she whispered.
    They eased around the corner and made their way up the tunnel, crouching.
    Then she shivered. It wasn’t a voice. It was a moan. A desperate moan. Human.
    “Flashlight!” she whispered. As a detective, she wore no utility belt, just weapons and cuffs, and she felt the painful blow as the officer behind her shoved the light into her side.
    “Sorry,” he muttered.
    “Get down,” she told the patrolmen softly. “Prone. Be prepared to fire. But only on my command . . . unless he takes me out first.”
    They eased to the filthy floor, guns pointed down the tunnel.
    She aimed in that direction too. Holding the flashlight out to her side at arm’s length so she wouldn’t present a vital-zone target, she clicked it on, the blinding beam filling the grim corridor.
    No gunshots, no arc flashes.
    But Galt had claimed another victim.
    About thirty feet away an Algonquin worker lay on his side, duct tape over his mouth, hands tied behind him. He was bleeding from the temple and behind his ear.
    “Let’s go!”
    The other officers rose and the three of them hurried down the tunnel to the man she supposed was Joey Barzan. In the beam she could see it wasn’t Galt. The worker was badly injured and bleeding heavily. As one of the patrolmen hurried toward him to stop the hemorrhaging, Barzan began to shake his head frantically and wail beneath the tape.
    At first Sachs assumed he was dying and that death tremors were shaking his body. But as she got