Chapter 4 - The Chimney of Glass
The tunnel smelled of wet limestone, motor oil, and ancient soot.
They crawled on their bellies through two inches of freezing slush, their knees scraping against jagged coal fragments. After fifty feet, the culvert opened into an underground boiler vault—a cavernous room filled with rusting iron pipes, broken gauges, and massive brick foundations supporting the silos above.
Above them, through the heavy concrete ceiling, came a faint, rhythmic thud.
Thump... thump... thump.
It sounded like heavy wooden crates being stacked on a loading platform.
Miller held up his hand, signaling for absolute silence. He flattened himself against a rusted iron pillar, peering around the corner into a lit hallway.
At the far end of the hallway stood an old freight elevator, its yellow indicator light glowing faintly in the dim dust. Beside the elevator stood a tall, broad-shouldered man in a heavy black winter parka, holding a tactical shotgun across his chest, a radio earpiece strapped to his ear.
"...Yeah, the transport truck is thirty minutes out," the man’s voice echoed softly off the damp concrete walls. "We got four units ready for load-out. Tell Vance to hurry up with the manifest. The storm is getting worse."
Miller leaned back toward Elena, his mouth inches from her ear. "There's at least three of them. The driver, this guard, and 'Vance' upstairs."
"Where are the children?" Elena whispered, her eyes searching the gloom.
"They won't keep them in the basement," Miller whispered back. "It's too damp. They'll be near the old office suite on the third floor where the heating vents still function."
Suddenly, from somewhere deep within the concrete tower above them, a clear, high-pitched metallic sound echoed down the ventilation shaft.
A small object fell through the iron grate five feet above Elena's head, landing with a faint clink on the soot-covered floor beside her boot.
Miller froze, his gun aimed at the ceiling.
Elena dropped to her knees, her flashlight beam flickering over the object on the floor.
It was a tiny, perfectly folded star made from the bright foil wrapper of a peppermint candy.
Elena’s hands trembled so violently she could barely pick it up. She lifted the tiny foil star to her eyes. Unfolding one of the five delicate points, she saw faint, indented lines drawn with the tip of a fingernail into the soft wax lining of the foil:
M-O-M
A gasp caught in Elena’s throat. A sob tore at her chest, but she slammed her hand over her mouth, crushing the tiny star against her heart.
She was here. Eighty feet directly above them.
"Frank," Elena choked out, her eyes burning through the darkness. "She knows we're below her. She dropped it through the old hearth vent."
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Miller looked up at the narrow, ten-inch iron duct running vertically up the wall into the darkness. "That vent runs straight into the old lime kiln control room on the third level."
"Then we aren't waiting for SWAT," Elena said, standing up, every trace of fear instantly erased from her body, replaced by a mother's absolute, lethal resolve. "We're going up."
