Never Fade - Bracken Alexandra (читаем бесплатно книги полностью TXT) 📗
Not to mention success depended on three very big ifs. If we got that far. If we found the entrance. If we didn’t get caught sneaking in.
“And that’s only if they are running the usual schedule,” I added. “Did Nico say anything about it? Hey—” I gripped the already torn collar of Clancy’s shirt. “I’m asking you a question.”
Clancy grit his teeth. “He hasn’t responded to my last few messages. I’m assuming they took the Chatters away to keep rumors from spreading.”
“They’d be running the usual schedule,” Vida said with certainty from the driver’s seat. “They wouldn’t want any of the kids to know that Alban was out. That’d cause a massive amount of panic, right? They wouldn’t tell any of them the actual objective.”
“How are they going to rig the explosions without the kids figuring it out?” Liam asked. “It seems like a vest of the stuff would be a pretty big clue.”
“That’s the easy part,” Clancy said. “You break them up into small groups of two or three, sew the explosives into the lining of a coat, and set it up with a remote detonator. All you have to do is wait to give the kids the jackets until the very end.”
He said it casually, without a hint of disgust—like some part of him actually admired the plan.
“That means prep time at HQ will be minimal. If they’re moving the kids out at six or so, wakeup will be at five.…” I shifted to look at Vida in the driver’s seat. “Does it make more sense to go in at three or four?”
“Four,” she said.
“Four?” Clancy repeated, like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “Sure, if you want to give yourself a better chance of being caught.”
“Mandatory rolling blackouts,” I explained to the others, ignoring him. “California has been trying to conserve energy that way. They happen every night in our area between three and five. The security system and cameras are the only things hooked up to the backup generator, but it’ll at least be dark in the hallways as we’re moving through them.”
“Once we’re in, I can go take care of the agents in the monitor room,” Vida said. “We won’t even have to shut the system off. How long do you think it’ll take to get in and out through this entrance of yours?”
“I don’t know; I’ve never walked it. I’ve only seen them bring people in and out.”
“Where does it lead?” Jude asked. “And how come I don’t know about it?”
I looked down at my hands, trying to keep my voice light. “It’s where they brought traitors and key assets for questioning. And then…took them out.”
“Holy shit, they did have you torture people,” Vida said, looking both intrigued and impressed. So did Clancy. “Where is it?”
“I didn’t torture them,” I protested weakly, “just…questioned them. Aggressively.”
Liam kept his gaze focused on something outside of his window, but I felt him tense to the point of snapping beside me.
“It’s the locked door on the third level, isn’t it?” Jude asked. “The one just past the computer room?”
“Alban told me once it leads out to an entrance near the Seventh Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River,” I said. “If they’re holding any of the agents or hiding the evidence of what they’ve done, it’ll be in that room.”
“Okay, well, bypassing the fact that the League has a secret torture dungeon,” Liam said, “are we sure they won’t have blocked the path in and out?”
“Why do you all keep saying ‘we’?” Clancy asked. “I hope you don’t think I’m coming down in that shithole with you.”
“Too bad for you, you’re the only one who doesn’t get a choice about it,” I said. “You want to see what’s happening at the League? You want to chat with your friend Nico again? You got it. Front-row seat.”
He must have suspected it would come to this all along, but he didn’t look afraid. Maybe after everything, he still wasn’t convinced that I was willing to serve him up on a platter to the League to let them do with him what they would. Maybe he already knew that I would trade him to Jarvin and the others if it meant getting the other kids away. If there was so much as a crack in this plan, he’d find a way to slip through it.
Which meant I would have to watch him that much closer, staying three steps ahead of him instead of just one.
“What does happen if we can’t get them out undetected?” Chubs asked.
“Then they’re going to have to do what they were trained to,” I said, “and fight back.”
The Los Angeles River was a forty-eight-mile stretch of concrete that had always served as more of a punch line than an actual river. At one point in its long life, it probably had been a real waterway—but humanity had swept in and constrained its flow to a single concrete channel that wound its way around the outskirts of the city, lined on either side by railroad tracks.
Cate had pointed it out once when we’d left on an Op, telling me that they used to film car chases down there for movies that I’d never heard of. Now, though, if you were to walk its length, which was usually as parched as the ground had been in Pueblo, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything other than the electric colors of graffiti tags and wandering homeless folks trying to find a place to settle for the night. If it did happen to rain, which was rare in Southern California, all sorts of things washed out of the storm drains and into the open river: shopping carts, trash bags, deflated basketballs, stuffed animals, the occasional dead body.…
“I’m not seeing anything,” Chubs muttered, holding the flashlight higher so I could scan the bridge’s support pillars again. “Are you sure—”
“Here!” Vida called over to us from across the channel. Liam waved his flashlight once, so we’d see them. The streetlights were off, and without the light pollution that usually came from the city, we were both struggling to see anything beyond a few feet in front of us and to not be spotted by anyone else.
I took Liam’s arm and guided him down the slope of the embankment, then up again to the other side, to the place where the arch of the bridge’s underbelly met the ground. I kept my flashlight aimed at Clancy’s back, making sure he walked the entire way in front of me.
Jude, I thought, counting them off with my eyes, Liam, Vida, Chubs.
“I think this is it.” Vida stepped back, keeping her own flashlight aimed at the huge, swirling patterns of graffiti. There was a blue star at the center of it, but it was the way the paint looked that gave the hidden door away—it was thicker here, to the point that it looked sticky to the touch. I felt for a disguised handle before throwing my shoulder against it. The panel of cement swung inward, scraping the loose rubble on the other side. Vida, Liam, and I leaned in, shining our flashlights down the metal staircase.
I reached over and hauled Clancy to the front. “You first.”
If it were possible, this tunnel was somehow even cruder than the tunnel we usually took in and out of HQ. It was also about ten times longer and filthier.
Clancy stumbled in front of me, barely catching himself with a quiet curse. The walls, which had started out wide enough for us to walk three across, narrowed until we were forced into a single-file line. Liam was at my back, the damp, rancid air wheezing in and out of his lungs in a way that was starting to worry me.
I slowed a step, letting him catch up and nudge me forward again. “I’m okay,” he promised. “Keep going.”
In the distant dark, I could hear the rush of some kind of water, though the sludge we were shuffling through had clearly been there long enough to start to rot and solidify.
How many prisoners had they brought in this way, I wondered, and how many bodies had they hauled out? I tried not to shudder or turn my light down to see if the water was as red as my mind had made it out to be. I tried to stop myself from picturing the way Jarvin and the others would have dragged Alban out—Cate out, Cole out, their lifeless eyes open, gazing at the string of small flickering lights hanging overhead.
