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a last look around, then sank beneath the surface.Smithback followed, pushing the protest-ing D Agosta
before him. Pendergast motionedMargo to go next. She sank into the darkness, trying to follow the faint
light of Snow s headlamp as it descended into a narrow, rust-coated pipe. She could see the ungainly
thrashing of D Agostasubside into more regular movements as he became used to breathing tank air.
The tunnel leveled out, then snaked around two bends.Margo took a quick look behind to reassure
herself that Pendergast was following. In the dim light of the swirling orange effluent, she could see the
FBI agent motion her forward.
Now, she could see the group pausing at a junction ahead of her. The ancient iron pipe ended and a
gleaming steel tube continued onward. Beneath her feet, at the point where the two tunnels met,Margo
could see a narrow tube leading downward. Snow gestured ahead, then pointed upward with his finger,
indicating that the vent riser to the West Side Lat-eral was directly ahead.
Suddenly, there was a roar from behind them: an ominous, deep rolling sound, horribly magnified in the
tight water-filled space. Then a sharp concussion sounded, and another, follow-ing one upon the other in
rapid succession. Beneath the wildly flickering beam of his headlamp,Margo could see Snow s eyes
widen. The final set of charges had gone off barely in time, crushing the spillways from the Devil s Attic,
sealing it forever.
As Snow frantically signaled them toward the riser,Margo felt a sudden tug at her legs, as if a tidal
undertow were pulling her back toward the rally point. The feeling stopped as quickly as it had begun,
and the water around her seemed to grow strangely dense. For a split second she had the strange
sen-sation of hanging motionless, suspended in the eye of a hur-ricane.
Then an enormous blast of overpressure boiled up from the iron pipe behind them, a roiling cyclone of
muddy water that caused the tunnel itself to jerk and dance spasmodically.Margo felt herself battered
against its iron flanks. Her mouth-piece came loose and she reached for it frantically, hands grab-bing
through the storm of bubbles and thrashing sediment that surrounded her. There was another burst of
pressure and she felt herself forced downward, sucked into the pipe beneath her feet. She righted herself
desperately and fought to swim back up to the junction, but a horrible suction only pulled her deeper into
unguessable depths. The roaring sound continued like the rushing of blood in her ears. She felt herself
being knocked from side to side against the walls of the pipe, a piece of flotsam in the flood. Far above
her head now she could see, through the dim illumination of Snow s headlamp, Pendergast staring at her,
his hand reaching down, tiny as a doll s, from what seemed countless miles away. Then there was
another blast, the narrow tunnel collapsed above her head with a shriek of protesting metal, and as the
endless rumbling continued, she felt herself falling ever farther into a watery darkness.
= 63 =
Hayward jogged up the Mall toward theBandshell and Cherry Hill, OfficerCarlin by her side. For all his
bulk, he ran easily, with the grace of a natural athlete. Didn t even break a sweat. The encounter with the
moles, the tear gas even the chaos they d found when they regained the street hadn t fazed him.
Here, in the darkness of the Park, the noise that had seemed so distant before was now much louder: a
strange, ululating cry, continuously rising and falling, possessing a life of its own. Odd flickers and gouts of
flame arose, blushing the un-derside of the ragged clouds overhead with patches of bright crimson.
 Jesus, Carlin said as he jogged.  It sounds like a million people, all trying to murder each other.
 Maybe that s what it is, Hayward replied as she watched a troop of National Guardsmen
double-timing northward ahead of them.
They trotted over Bow Bridge and skirted the Ramble, ap-proaching the rear line of the police defenses.
A long, unbro-ken string of news vehicles was parked along the Transverse, engines idling. Overhead, a
fat-bellied helicopter glided, its huge prop smacking the air as it moved at treetop level. A row of
policemen had formed a ring around the Castle terrace, and a lieutenant waved her through. WithCarlin in
tow, she crossed the terrace, then moved up the steps toward the Castle ramparts. There amidst a
milling throng of police brass, city officials, National Guardsmen, and nervous-looking men speaking into
portable telephones was Chief Horlocker, looking about ten years older than when Hayward had seen
him barely four hours before. He was speaking with a slight, well-dressed woman in her late fifties. Or,
rather, he was lis-tening as the woman spoke in clipped, decisive sentences. Hayward moved closer and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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