temporary subway entrance at the other end of the block. There was a sense of new hope in the air here, warm, like the abundant sunshine that blessed this destroyed part of the city. The new buildings were starting to go up now, after years of planning and excavation, and it was as though this terrible black bruise was finally starting to heal.
Only Fet noticed the oily smears discoloring the vertical edges of the curb. The droppings around the parking barriers. The gnaw marks scoring the lid of the corner garbage can. Telltale signs of surface rat presence.
One of the sandhogs took him down the haul road and into the basin. He pulled up at the foot of the structure that would become the new underground WTC PATH station, with five tracks and three underground platforms. For now, the silver trains entered through daylight and open air as they made their way along the bottom of the bathtub toward the temporary platforms.
Vasiliy stepped out of the pickup, down among the concrete footings, looking up seven stories to the street above him. He was in the pit where the towers had fallen. It was enough to take his breath away.
Vasiliy said, “This is a holy place.”
The sandhog had a bushy, gray-flecked mustache, and wore a loose flannel shirt over a tucked-in flannel shirt — both heavy with soil and sweat — and blue jeans with muddy gloves tucked into the belt. His hard hat was covered with stickers. “I always thought so,” he said. “Recently I’m not so sure.”
Fet looked at him. “Because of the rats?”
“There’s that, sure. Gushing out of the tunnels the past few days, like we’ve struck rat oil. But that’s fallen off now.” He shook his head, looking up at the slurry wall erected beneath Vesey Street, seventy sheer feet of concrete studded with tiebacks.
Fet said, “Then what?”
The guy shrugged. Sandhogs are a proud lot. They built New York City, its subways and sewers, every tunnel, pier, skyscraper, and bridge foundation. Every glass of clean water comes out of the tap thanks to a sandhog. A family job, different generations working together on the same sites. Dirty work done right. So the guy was reluctant to sound reluctant. “Everyone’s in kind of a funk. We had two guys walk off, disappear. Clocked in for a shift, went down into the tunnels, but never clocked out. We’re twenty-four/seven here, but nobody wants night shifts anymore. Nobody wants to be underground. And these are young guys, my daredevils.”
Fet looked ahead to the tunnel openings where the subterranean structures would be joined beneath Church Street. “So no new construction these past few days? Breaking new ground?”
“Not since we got the basin hollowed out.”
“And all this started with the rats?”
“Around then. Something’s come over this place, just in the past few days.” The sandhog shrugged, shaking it off. He had a plain white hard hat for Vasiliy. “And I thought I had a dirty job. What makes someone want to become a rat catcher anyway?”
Vasiliy put on the hat, feeling the wind change near the mouth of the underground passage. “I guess I’m addicted to the glamour.”
The sandhog looked at Vasiliy’s boots, his Puma bag, the steel rod. “Done this before?”
“Gotta go where the vermin are. There’s a lot of city under this city.”
“Tell me about it. You got a flashlight, I hope? Some bread crumbs?”
“Think I’m good.”
Vasiliy shook the sandhog’s hand, then started inside.
The tunnel was clean at first, where it had been shored up. He followed it out of the sunlight, yellow lights strung every ten or so yards, marking his way. He was under where the original concourse had been located. This big burrow would, when all was said and done, connect the new PATH station to the WTC transportation hub located between towers two and three, a half block away. Other feed tunnels connected to city water, power, and sewer.
Deeper in, he couldn’t help but notice fine, powdery dust still coating the walls of the original tunnel. This was a hallowed place, still very much a graveyard. Where bodies and buildings were pulverized, reduced to atoms.
He saw burrows, he saw tracks and scat, but no rats. He picked away at the burrows with his rod, and listened. He heard nothing.
The strung-up work lights ended at a turn, a deep, velvety blackness lying ahead. Vasiliy carried a million- candlepower spot lamp in his bag — a big yellow Garrity with a bullhorn grip — as well as two backup mini Maglites. But artificial light in a dark enclosure wiped out one’s night vision altogether, and for rat hunting he liked to stay dark and quiet. He pulled out a night-vision monocular instead, a handheld unit with a strap that attached nicely to his hard hat, coming down over his left eye. Closing his right eye turned the tunnel green. Rat vision, he called it, their beady eyes glowing in the scope.
Nothing. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the rats were gone. Driven off.
That stumped him. It took a lot to displace rats. Even once you removed their food source, it could be weeks before seeing a change. Not days.
The tunnel was joined by older passages, Vasiliy coming across filth-covered rail tracks unused for many years. The quality of the ground soil had changed, and he could tell by its very texture that he had crossed over from “new” Manhattan — the landfill that had been brought in to build up Battery Park out of sludge — into “old” Manhattan, the original dry island bedrock.
He stopped at a junction to make certain he had his bearings. As he looked down the length of the crossing tunnel, he saw, in his rat vision, a pair of eyes. They glowed back at him like rat eyes, but bigger, and high off the ground.
The eyes were gone in a flash, turning out of sight.
“Hey?” yelled Vasiliy, his call echoing. “Hey up there!”
After a moment, a voice answered him, echoing back off the walls. “Who goes there?”
Vasiliy detected a note of fear in the voice. A flashlight appeared, its source down at the end of the tunnel, well beyond where Vasiliy had seen the eyes. He flipped up the monocular just in time, saving his retina. He identified himself, pulling out a little Maglite to shine back as a signal, then moved forward. At the point where he estimated seeing the eyes, the old access tunnel ran up alongside another tunnel track that appeared to be in use. The monocular showed him nothing, no glowing eyes, so he continued around the bend to the next junction.
He found three sandhogs there, in goggles and sticker-covered hard hats, wearing flannels, jeans, and boots. A sump pump was running, channeling out a leak. The halogen bulbs of their high-powered work-light tripods lit up the new tunnel like a space-creature movie. They stood close together, tense until they could fully see Vasiliy.
“Did I just see one of you back there?” he asked.
The three guys looked at one another. “What’d you see?”
“Thought I saw someone.” He pointed. “Cutting across the track.”
The three sandhogs looked at one another again, then two of them started packing up. The third one said, “You the guy looking for rats?”
“Yeah.”
The groundhog shook his head. “No more rats here.”
“I don’t mean to contradict you, but that’s almost impossible. How come?”
“Could be they’ve got more sense than us.”
Vasiliy looked down the lit tunnel, in the direction of the sump hose. “The subway exit down there?”
“That’s the way out.”
Vasiliy pointed in the opposite direction. “What’s this way?”
The sandhog said, “You don’t want to go that way.”
“Why not?”
“Look. Forget about rats. Follow us out. We’re done here.”
Water was still trickling into the troughlike puddle. Vasiliy said, “I’ll be right along.”
The guy dead-eyed him. “Suit yourself,” he said, switching off a tripod lamp and then hoisting a pack onto his back, starting after the others.
Vasiliy watched them go, lights playing far down the tunnel, darkening along a gradual turn. He heard the screeching of subway car wheels, near enough to concern him. He went on, crossing to the newer track, waiting for his eyes to acclimate themselves to the darkness again.
