chapter 53
08:10
The noise of an approaching engine drew a flurry of glances and nervous gestures from Raul and Lukas. Laurel turned to Tyler, who sat on a stool by the kitchen peninsula, seemingly unconcerned. She leaned over Russo and ran a hand over his brow. “Don’t worry; they’re friends.” She hoped.
Russo nodded once.
Lukas stepped over to the window overlooking the front porch, slid his fingers to widen a gap between the blinds’ horizontal slats, and peered outside. “Shit,” Laurel heard him mumble.
“Indeed.” Tyler smiled and strode past them toward the front door, Antonio at his heel.
Laurel squeezed Russo’s shoulder for reassurance. The previous days had been emotionally draining. Gradually she’d stopped seeing Russo as the father who abandoned her and let her mother die and started to see just a frightened human being in need of help. She trooped from the living room with Raul and Lukas. Once outside, she gasped. Parked parallel to the house’s front porch, a huge tanker truck—of the type rigged to empty cesspits—revved its engine. The driver looked vaguely familiar.
A door clunked shut, and the towering anatomy of a vastly different Henry Mayer materialized around the front of the truck, a wide-brimmed Stetson on his head—probably shaved by the looks of the smooth skin down the sides. The gravel crunched noisily under the soles of gleaming lizard-skin boots. Laurel peered at the naked skin of his face, awed at the change. But for his bulk and voice, she would have never recognized the sewer chieftain. He had an interesting face, almost handsome.
“Hey! Fancy seeing you again.” He ran an eye over the congregation and raised a hand to the brim of his hat. Then he slapped the truck’s fender. “Isn’t she a beauty?”
Tyler stepped forward and indicated the rear of the truck. “Let’s see her guts.”
At a nod from Henry, the driver killed the engine and climbed down from the cabin. Laurel exchanged a quick glance with Floyd. The man driving the truck smiled. She eyed the jeans and a drab coat that had seen better days that were hanging loosely from his meager frame. Can’t be. She stepped forward to peer at the tall, cadaverous-looking man with sunken eyes and thin lips. His freshly shaved head gleamed under the still-weak sun.
“Jame—Barandus?”
He smiled. “The one and only.”
They shuffled toward the rear of the truck to face a vast circular door with a hinge on one side, secured around its perimeter with a score of sturdy bolts fitted with handles.
“Cleaning trucks,” Tyler explained, “cannot be pumped empty. The contents of a septic pit decants to a thick slurry. When the trucks reach the treatment plants, operators free the bolts at the rear and tilt the tank to slide the contents out.”
Laurel backed up a step when Henry and Barandus worked the bolts to open the tank—a sudden premonition too horrible to contemplate forming at the edge of her mind.
When the ponderous door rotated on its hinges, a waft of dank moisture billowed out, bringing with it barely forgotten memories. Laurel cringed. Light spilled into the bowels of the tank to reveal a cavernous cylindrical space and three two-hundred-gallon drums lying on their sides in line, bolted to the bottom of the tank and spaced three feet apart. To the side, wedged between the drums and the inner curved wall of the tank, rested several panels of quarter-inch plate peppered with two-inch holes. Laurel dug her fingers into Floyd’s arm.
“You must be out of your mind.” Laurel intended to sound outraged, but her voice came out as a croak.
“Wonderful stuff.” Henry climbed up to the gaping tank, bent over the first drum, and yanked its quick-release rim fastener. The interior of the drum was padded with two-inch foam. On its floor, like fat wasps, were two seventy-two-cubic-foot scuba cylinders. “We tested it last night after fixing the drums. After a two-hour runaround with the tank filled to the brim with water, not a drop seeped into the drums.”
“Then why the scuba tanks?”
“The air inside the drums wouldn’t last five minutes.”
“You’re going to drive around with us inside the drums?”
“That’s about it.”
“In a tank full of water?”
“Nah, shit. We’ll fill her halfway up with shit.”
Tyler neared the open tank. “Washington is sealed. Vehicles entering or leaving the city are being searched. A tank will certainly be stopped and checked.”
“But what about the company?”
“Company?”
Laurel pointed to the block capitals stretched over the tank’s side—O’MALLEY CLEANING Services, 24/7—and a phone number.
“It’s a real setup—a small family business with six vehicles like this and twenty employees, established almost forty years ago. We bought it yesterday.”
“We?” Laurel asked.
“Antonio, Barandus, and me,” Tyler answered. “Could be a good business.”
“If a patrol checks who owns it, won’t it look suspicious that the company just changed hands?” Lukas asked.
“Good point, but it hasn’t,” Tyler said. “This is a small, unlisted firm. Although the sale was executed yesterday, it won’t be filed until tomorrow. By then there shouldn’t be any heat.”
Laurel shivered at Tyler’s choice of words. Hibernation tanks were a hairbreadth above freezing. She scanned the others. Behind their somber faces, she could almost see the thoughts—the chances of an accident and death by suffocation in sewage.
“How long will they have to be locked up there?” Floyd asked.
Tyler’s left eyebrow shot up. “They? No way. Russo, his attending physician, and Antonio will go in the tanks. That will do nicely. You’re his doctor, and Antonio can help you carry him when we get there.”
“But—” Floyd had paled.
“I will ride up front with him,” he said, glancing toward Henry. “Raul, Lukas, Laurel, and Barandus will make the sham run toward the TV studios in the van. Barandus will lie on the stretcher with Laurel attending him. Raul will drive, with Lukas up front. The DHS will snatch photographs along the way to identify not just Russo but you. In fact, they can’t identify Russo; they’ll just assume it’s him when they identify the rest.”
Something didn’t add up in Tyler’s plan. “Why is it so important they identify us?” Laurel asked.
“I don’t know. But whoever is helping us insisted the DHS must make positive identification for the plan to work at all.”
She’d been balking at the thought of being under tons of sewage, but suddenly the prospect didn’t seem as harrowing as facing the DHS agents, who would undoubtedly shoot on sight. “Where are we going?” I know where we are going: to our deaths.
“The Senate.”
A few inches over her head, a sharp intake of breath exploded. “Hang on a minute. We’ll never get within a mile of the Capitol in that,” Floyd blurted, his eyes on the truck.
“Oh, but we will.” Henry jumped down from the tank, landing with a sonorous thump. “We’ve got a job to do: a major sewage-pipe blockage needing our expert attention. The urgent request came a while ago, with a job number and the head of maintenance’s signature.”
“But you said the tank would be full of shit,” Floyd said.
“No, I didn’t. Half full, just enough to cover the drums.”
“Sloshing every time you brake?”
“Nope. These panels will go back in place across the tank once everyone is cocooned. No sloshing.”
Floyd’s eyes continued to dart all over the truck. “Forgive me, but I can’t figure out how you can justify going to a job with a tank already full.”
“Only half full, remember. We’ve made an earlier call.”
Antonio smiled. “We were drowning in pig shit—” He bit his lip and seemed to wither under Henry’s caustic stare.
“But to open the drums, you have to empty the tank …” Floyd insisted.
Henry opened his arms wide, an expression of fatalism on his face. “Well, shit is shoveled around Congress all the time. Another cartload won’t make any difference.”