click. The safe opened, and he gasped as the light of his phone revealed its contents. The top shelf was crammed with bound stacks of U.S. dollars in denominations of twenties and fifties. He began stuffing them into the pockets of his leather trench coat, the one he’d bought after seeing how cool Corrales looked in his.
“Are you done stealing the cash yet?”
Jose shuddered. “I haven’t touched the money.”
“Okay, I believe you,” said the man with a snort. “See the walkie-talkie in there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not a walkie-talkie. Once the weapons team gets the guns through, you send them back into the tunnel, then you blow it while they’re still inside. Just power on and jam down the big red button. Can you do this for me, Jose? Are you fucking smart enough? Because if you are, you can keep all the money.”
“I’ll get it done. But who are you?”
“I’m Fernando. I am your boss. I work for Los Caballeros. And you are a gentleman just like me. That’s all.”
A wooden staircase constructed of two-by-fours and plywood lay at the far end of the tunnel, where the sound-dampening panels broke off and the ground rose about two feet. Dim light flickered from above, from either flashlights or something else. Moore thought he heard voices, faint but there, and the sound of a metal door clinking steadily as it was rolled open.
Holding his breath once more, and with Ansara still at his back, he slowly ascended the stairs, peered up past the ledge that was in effect the floor, and realized the entrance had been set within some kind of maintenance/electrical/plumbing room lined with pumps and lockers and other construction and custodial equipment. The door ahead was open, allowing him to gaze farther out into a large warehouse with at least a twenty-foot ceiling. Pallets of construction materials — cinder blocks, bags of concrete, stacks of rebar — were lined up in long rows to the right and left, but dead ahead stood a group of men and the Anvil cases containing the weapons, which were being loaded into the back of a Ford Explorer.
Moore turned back down to Ansara, widened his gaze, and motioned for him to hold.
And when Moore turned back, lifting his head just a little higher to get a better view, a thug with a goatee and sideburns that formed a chinstrap suddenly turned into the room—
“Hey, what the fuck?” he shouted, gaping at Moore. “Who are you?”
“We’re with those guys,” Moore answered quickly.
“Bullshit!” The guy spun back toward the others. “Jose!”
Just then Moore’s phone began to vibrate, and Ansara shouted, “Towers called. They’ve got a big group outside!”
Moore put two rounds in the screamer’s back, then faced Ansara. “Run!”
Jose broke away from the group as his man Tito collapsed onto his belly. Beyond him was the tunnel entrance, and he couldn’t see who’d shot his man but guessed it was someone who’d come up from the tunnel.
Breaking into a sprint, he hollered back to the three men who’d delivered the weapons, then burst into the maintenance room, searching the areas behind the pumps until he reached the tunnel entrance and the others arrived breathlessly behind him.
Jose gestured with his pistol. “Get down in there. Clear it out. I want the fucker who did this.”
All three were armed with their
His heart racing, Jose ran back to the others and screamed for them to hurry loading the weapons and that he’d join them in a minute.
And then, imagining that the weapons team was now about a thousand feet into the shaft, he began to chuckle, heady with the power in his hands.
Sonia waited at the door while Miguel entered the office and cleared his throat. His father glanced up from the desk and said, “Miguel, I’m sorry, I’m working late tonight and I’m extremely busy right now. Is there something wrong?”
“I want to see the vaults in the basement,” he blurted out.
“What?”
“Take me to the basement right now. Show me what you have in the vaults down there.”
His father finally glanced up from his computer screens and frowned. “Why?”
Miguel could not bear to utter the truth. “I just …I’ve never been down there. I thought I’d show Sonia. But you have a guard there — all the time.”
“Fine, then. Let’s go now.”
“Are you serious? You always say no. How many times have I asked you? At least twenty times over the years?”
“Okay, so now I’ll show you.” He bolted from his chair and stormed past Miguel, wrenched open the door, and startled Sonia, who was texting her father on her smartphone.
“Did you want the tour as well?” his father snapped.
“I’m sorry, senor. We didn’t mean to disturb you.”
His father raised a palm and stormed down the hall.
Miguel gave Sonia a worried glance, then hustled after the man.
They reached the twin doors leading to the broad staircase, and his father ordered the guard to unlock the doors and allow them to pass. “Turn off the alarms as well,” he said.
He tossed a glance back at Miguel. “I know what this is about. And I’m disappointed.”
Miguel bit his lip and averted his gaze. His father stomped past the door held open by the guard, and Miguel and Sonia got on his heels.
The staircase was heavily carpeted in a deep burgundy and turned onto two separate landings before reaching the bottom. Lights set into the ceiling controlled via motion sensors automatically clicked on as they shifted ahead across an ornately tiled floor. Behind them was a garage that again Miguel had never seen. There were at least ten antique automobiles and a lift to carry them up to a ramp leading outside. Miguel thought it amusing and not surprising that the basement of their house was as well decorated as the rest of the mansion.
Two vaults like the ones you’d find in neighborhood banks stood side by side on the far end. Both doors were shut. His father approached a control panel to the right side of one vault. He typed in a code, rested his hand on a dark piece of glass. A light shone in his eye; then he moved his hand to another device, where he inserted his index finger. A computer voice said, “Sampling.” He withdrew the finger, now spotted with blood, and licked it.
The vault door thumped several times, then hissed open, as though propelled by air.
“Go on in. Have a look, while I open the other one,” his father said.
Miguel motioned to Sonia, and they shifted past the giant door and into the vault, which stretched back at least twenty meters and was equally wide. Hundreds of pieces of art stood in rows on the floor or on easels, while in the far corner were at least twenty, perhaps even thirty, pieces of handmade furniture, desks and chests of drawers and armoires Miguel remembered seeing his father purchase but had forgotten about. More guns like the ones he collected in the vacation house were sitting on two long tables, with others tucked tightly in their cases stacked on the floor beside them. From a series of long poles to their immediate left hung twenty or more exotic rugs his father had no doubt purchased in Asia, the documentation for each still pinned in the corners. Still another series of humidity-controlled glass cases held collections of his father’s rarest pre-1900 literature, first editions that Miguel knew were worth a fortune. Sonia gazed in wonder at the items while Miguel turned back to the door, where his father had appeared.
His father’s tone turned accusatory. “What were you expecting?”
