“That son of a bitch!” the half-bald woman snarled. “And I trusted him. Bill!”
“May?”
“You and a few of your crew come on with me to the Basement. If this turns out to be straight, Swoboda’s gonna get it where the chicken got the axe.” May glanced at Lacey. “You come too,” she ordered. “And somebody bring extra chains.”
* * * ä ä ä
Half a dozen of Allen’s cut-throats accompanied their leader in the vanguard. May’s personal guards jostled after them. Lacey was thrust into the midst of May’s entourage, shuffling quickly to avoid the possibility of a knife jabbed with more enthusiasm than care. They moved down an aisle between gray canisters. Lacey’s chains clinked discordantly, like the background to a Vietnamese opera. The Southerner pressed his palms together, as close to a prayer as he had made in twenty-nine years.
At the end of the aisle was a steel door, massive and obviously of recent installation. It reminded Lacey of a vault door or of a pressure lock, rather than any lesser type of portal. Allen swung it open; the four locking dogs had not been turned. There was a hint of suction as the door opened out from a meter-by-two-meter slot cut deep in the living rock beyond. Allen and the others began to enter, stepping carefully over the steel sill. It was pitch dark within.
“Keep your hand on one wall,” Black May suggested. “There’s bends.”
“Bends” was not the word for the right angles that broke the narrow tunnel every few meters. Lacey bumped and cursed. “What the hell is this?” he demanded.
May chuckled behind him. “Anybody who came Underground looking for me was gonna have the devil’s own time at this end, especially with all the tunnels full a’ K2, hey?” she explained cheerfully. Then her mood changed and she snarled. “Unless some bastard thought he’d cut me off on the outside of this!”
There was another heavy door at the far end. It also pivoted outward from the tunnel. In the pause before Bill Allen shoved it open, Lacey felt an edge of claustrophobia. Then there was light in the tunnel, more light than Lacey had seen since he came Underground. Blinking, Lacey stumbled with the pack of killers out into muggy brightness.
There was a squad of the same ilk guarding the inner door. They nodded respectfully to Allen and his men, then shuffled to their feet when they saw Black May was present as well. “Swoboda and the rest a’ the needleheads here?” May asked the squad leader, a stocky redhead. She wore a necklace of what appeared to be dried fingers against her bared breasts.
“Unless they left before our shift started, May,” the guard said. She grinned. “Hey, want us along?” she asked, touching the long sheath knife at her belt.
“Just don’t let anybody out without I tell you, Minkie,” Black May replied grimly. “Maybe nothing’s wrong, maybe it is. . . .”
The huge cavern through which they began to stride was incredible to Lacey. Rank after rank of algae tanks marched in all directions. Though stone pillars studded the greenery, there were no walls as far as Lacey could see down any of the aisles they crossed. The roof, three meters above the floor, was bright with daylight-balanced glow strips. “Where the hell did you find this place?” Lacey asked in open amazement.
“Find?” May sneered. “Built, sonny, excavated it and sold the rock topside to the outfit filling ocean to build Treasure Isle. Honest business!” she added with a guffaw. “Bought the strips, too; there wasn’t any place in the City where we could liberate as much as we needed. No problem, money we got. Only thing we needed then was the power to run them, and I guess we twisted that tail all right too.” But the Queen of Underground scowled, and Lacey knew that her mind was on the man who had built her that powerplant.
There were men and women tending the algae tanks. They were as different from the crew surrounding Lacey as rabbits are from weasels, and they eyed the scarred cut-throats with rodent-like concern. May’s henchmen, for their part, appeared as ill at ease in the lush surroundings as they were out of place. This orderly Eden had been created for technicians, not blood-letters, and both sides knew it.