The Equalizer (59 page)

McCall moved through the overlapping shadows, the Ruger in his hand. He stopped beside a faded poster on one of the walls. It was a diagram between two Czech pumping stations. Lines denoting oil pipes crisscrossed between them. Directions McCall didn't understand:
TEMPORARY PIG-TRAP—NONCONFORMING PIPES, GROUP 1, GROUP 2.
In the lower right-hand side it read:
DECONTAMINATED—EMPTIED AT THE BEGINNING OF SHUTDOWN
. Below the diagram it read:
FLOW OF CRUDE OIL
and
DIRECTION OF EMPTYING
with arrows pointing left—
DIRECTION OF CONTAMINATION
with an arrow pointing right. There were Section Valve squares and pipes with DN 400 and DN 850 written along them. Below the diagram was a blueprint of myriad fat lines, crisscrossing one another. None of it helped McCall in the slightest.

He walked on two steps, then turned and walked back to the chart again.

He stared at the blueprint of lines.

Oil pipes.

Leading out of this pumping station, but none of them carrying oil any longer.

McCall unclipped the iPhone from his belt and took a picture of the blueprint. Then he punched the small silver buttons until he found the program he wanted and accessed it. The blueprint of what Elena Petrov had stolen from Alexei Berezovsky—that he'd put into his cell phone from the flash drive Control had given him—flashed up onto the screen.

A series of what looked like tunnels.

Only they weren't tunnels.

They were
oil pipes
.

McCall punched more buttons, the way Brahms had taught him, and slid Elena's blueprint over the blueprint he had just taken on the pump station wall.

The stolen blueprint matched up
exactly
with some of the pipes on the pumping house blueprint. The highlighted pipes led from the pump house, and a couple of long pipes, also highlighted, stretched to the edge of the frame.

McCall jogged down a long concrete tunnel. There was an elevator at the end of it. It was running. It was not up at this floor. Diablo had used it to descend. There were more steel stairs beside it. McCall took them. He didn't want to take the elevator and alert the assassin that he was coming. Although he suspected the killer was long gone from the building.

McCall descended silently down another level until he came to where the elevator cage stood open. There were work lights that illuminated all of the levels, probably from a backup generator. McCall ran down another echoing corridor and came out into a big room, concrete walls with more panels of switches on them. There were three large horizontal pipes in the room, fourteen feet high, each of them with a door. McCall looked at the blueprint on the LED screen of his iPhone. The right-hand tunnel was illuminated from Elena's blueprint.

McCall opened the rusted door. He stepped into a round pipe down which he could have driven, if not a truck, certainly a golf cart. In fact, there
was
a golf cart left discarded by the door. McCall walked past it. Only the light from the room filtered in through the open door. The pipe stretched ahead of him into darkness. McCall put the Ruger back into the waistband of his jeans in the small of his back. He took out the flashlight, holding it in one hand and his iPhone in the other.

He ran down the large pipe.

Stagnant water pooled in places beneath his feet. The pipe stank of oil. McCall didn't think it had been used for oil. He thought it was probably a connecting tunnel. But he still had the terrible feeling that oil would suddenly come gushing down the pipe and overwhelm him. He kept running, glancing continuously at the LED screen in his hand. He couldn't tell how long the pipe was from the blueprint Elena had stolen. He wasn't sure he was even
in
the right pipe, but he was following the highlighted snakes on the blueprint.

In ten minutes he came out of the pipe. It just ended, as if it had been cut off with a huge circular saw. He ran out into a vast workroom with more charts on the walls, with smaller pipes and equipment. Another bare-bulb work light illuminated it. There was access to another tunnel like the one he had just come out of, but it was not highlighted on Elena's blueprint. McCall moved past it. The blueprint had a thinner, therefore narrower, pipe highlighted, leading out of the room.

He almost didn't see it. It was blocked by more fat gray pipes, leading up and into the ceiling. There was a door into the pipe. It was hermetically sealed. There was a keypad beside the door. So oil must have once gushed through
this
pipe—or it was meant to, if the pumping station had ever got up and running. McCall had the feeling the station had been abandoned before
any
oil had come flowing down the Druzhba pipeline. They had probably tested the pipes, sending oil through some of them, but for whatever reason the facility had been abandoned. The main lines must have been rerouted, leaving this station as a derelict reminder of waste and over-spending.

McCall checked the LED screen on the iPhone to make certain this was the pipe that was highlighted. It didn't seem to go very far, but it was almost at the end of the blueprint.

McCall had no idea what code to use on the keypad.

So he just yanked on the door.

It opened, which meant it had already been opened by someone who had the code to the keypad beside it. McCall stepped into the pipe and switched back on the flashlight. This one was tall enough for him to walk if he stooped down, but very narrow. His shoulders almost scraped the sides. It also stank of oil.

McCall ran down the pipe, his footfalls echoing in the confined space.

He had no idea how far he had traveled from the pumping station. But he'd been below ground for almost forty minutes. In the wavering beam of the flashlight he noted the pipe was fractured in many places, especially overhead. It would have to have been repaired before any oil could have flowed through it.

He kept his pace as fast as he could, half crouched down. His ears strained for sound. He knew Diablo was somewhere ahead of him. He could be waiting for him in this pipe. He could have his sniper rifle trained right down the pipe, with an infrared magnified sight lighting it up like it was day. Even a green scope would have picked out McCall's milky figure coming at him.

One bullet in the head and it would all be over.

McCall's breathing filled his enclosed world. The claustrophobia of the pipe pressed in on him from both sides. It was like a long, narrow tomb that had no ending.

He would just run and run and run.

Then McCall saw a trickle of light ahead of him. He slowed down as he approached it. Finally the shape of a door took place in the metallic gloom. He clipped the iPhone to his belt and took out the Ruger again, switched hands, so that the gun was in his right and the flashlight in his left.

The door came up fast.

It was slightly ajar.

McCall stepped out into a shadowy area with concrete walls on four sides. He turned in four directions, the gun held out and steady. The area was deserted. In front of him three new pipes had been laid. One was boarded up. McCall flashed his light into the mouth of the second pipe. It ended in a rock wall after about fifty feet.

He moved on to the third pipe.

This one was even narrower than the one he'd just traveled down. It was about four feet high. A pipe from the ceiling led down into it, but part of it had been cleaved away. McCall looked at Elena's blueprint on the LED screen, superimposed over the blueprint of pipes on this level. This was the last one highlighted. It snaked along the bottom of the blueprint and then simply disappeared.

McCall shut off the iPhone and clipped it to his belt. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the pipe. The ceiling was just above his head. His shoulders scraped along the pipe on both sides. He switched on the little flashlight. All the beam showed ahead was darkness and the floor of the pipe.

McCall took a deep breath and started to crawl.

If the claustrophobia had got to him before, now it completely engulfed him. He felt like a rat that had been coaxed and tricked into a long dank tunnel from which there was no escape. He had no idea how long the pipe might run, as it had disappeared off the bottom of Elena's blueprint. It could be miles. In which case McCall would be trapped. The thought of having to
back out
the way he'd come was terrifying. There had to be a cutoff point. If he saw no light at the end of the pipe in twenty minutes, he would have to start crawling backward.

But he knew he couldn't do that.

He was sure Diablo was somewhere ahead of him. That he had taken this same elaborate route, using the same blueprint that Berezovsky had provided him with. He would not be expecting anyone to come along behind him—certainly no one crawling through
this
barely accessible piece of stinking, rusting pipe. But he would know how far he had to crawl to reach whatever his destination was.

McCall had no idea.

The minutes became meaningless in darkness only alleviated by the small white arc of the flashlight.

Which began to flicker.

McCall had not checked the batteries. He'd grabbed the flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen of his apartment. Stupid. He should have bought fresh batteries for the trip, but he'd had no idea if he'd even be using the flashlight.

McCall stopped as the voices in his head began to scream at him.

Get out of this metal coffin! Get out!

He snapped off the flashlight to save the batteries. He closed his eyes in the utter darkness. Slowly he regulated his breathing. He opened his eyes again, switched back on the flashlight, and crawled forward. His breathing was the only sound in his world, and his hot breath came back at him, stale and rancid. There was little air in the pipe, and he was using it up fast.

Time had stopped, the way it had stopped for Serena Johanssen in the isolation of her solitary prison cell.

No light.

No human contact.

No sound.

And McCall was buried deep in the ground.

Then his world began to
vibrate
. There was a far-off rumbling sound. At first McCall couldn't imagine what was causing it. Then he got it.

A train.

Thirty seconds later the train thundered very close to the buried pipe. Pieces of it collapsed and rained down onto McCall's figure, along with rock and dirt and cement.

He was buried in an avalanche of choking filth.

McCall coughed and retched. The cave-in lasted only a few seconds, then the vibration ceased and the sound of the train became distant until there was utter silence again.

The silence of a tomb.

McCall tried inching forward. More debris rained down on him. He squirmed his body to either side, crawling out of the debris on his elbows and knees. He shook the dirt out of his eyes. It was caked through his hair. He stopped again, coughing rackingly as the dust cloud settled over him.

He remained absolutely still and waited.

Slowly the choking cloud dissipated.

McCall lay in the pipe, his shoulders up against both sides of it, his heart hammering in his chest. He had to bring his heart rate down or he'd hyperventilate. It took him a full three minutes, but he calmed his screaming nerves until they were just a murmur. He breathed in and out very slowly for another full minute. He inched forward again and came out of the last of the debris.

Which was when he realized he'd lost the Ruger .357 Magnum in the cave-in.

He felt around for it behind him, but his fingers didn't close over the cold metal. He started to inch back, but more debris rained down.

Not going to happen.

He couldn't turn around.

He crawled forward.

It might have been a few minutes later—it might have been an hour—but the darkness ahead of McCall seemed lighter. Grayer. The flashlight beam was very pale now, a sliver of wan radiance.

Then it went out.

McCall dropped the flashlight beside him and crawled forward faster. The grayness became more apparent. Just up ahead there was a thin swathe of light. It reflected off the pipe. The air was not as close and musty. It smelled fresher.

McCall crawled the last few feet to the pale radiance.

The pipe ended in a chunk of rock. The jagged opening was slightly smaller than the pipe itself. McCall wedged his shoulders through it. It would have been better to put his legs out first, but that was impossible.

He got stuck.

He took another couple of steadying breaths and heaved. First one shoulder, then the other moved through the pipe.

Then his shoulders jammed again.

Wait. Breathe. Center.

He scraped one shoulder forward.

The other shoulder.

Squirmed on his stomach and fell out of the pipe onto the ground.

He rolled over, breathing in the night air, but didn't dare just lay there. Diablo could be standing over him with a gun pointed at his head.

McCall pushed up onto his knees. That's as far as he could go before his head started pounding. He waited another couple of seconds for the nausea to clear, then got to his feet and looked around.

Trees marched right up to the rocky shelf of rock. Moonlight flared through them. There were moving shapes and lights far below him.

McCall knew exactly where he was.

 

CHAPTER 42

The grounds of the chateau covered twenty acres. From where McCall stood he could see the imposing mansion far below, probably over a mile away and down in the valley, emblazoned with spotlights. There were people on the front lawns, vehicles moving up a long driveway, security everywhere. To the east and north of the chateau were heavily wooded areas. A hill rose up on the east. Here, on the west side of the estate, the hill was almost a mountain, climbing up through more thick woods, winding gravel and dirt paths laced through them. There would be no way to get onto the chateau grounds from either mountainside—theoretically. McCall was sure that Control had done a sweep on the east and west grounds anyway. They would have been pronounced clear on both sides.