The fall lasted a fraction of a second. He hit the drift, rolled over one shoulder the way he’d learned in gym class, and the bag of gold slammed painfully into his ribs. Sly landed after him like a cat.
And in that same instant, the world exploded with light. The backup generator kicked in, and the searchlights flooded the yard in white glare. The siren began to howl.
They lay in the drift, in a dead zone right under the wall of the headquarters building. A beam from the nearest tower passed within inches of their heads. “Don’t move,” Sly mouthed.
Everything now depended on luck and shadow angles. If the guard looked straight down, they were dead. But the guards were scanning the perimeter.
It never occurred to them to look directly under the commander’s own window. “Crawl,” Sly whispered. “To the boiler house. There’s a steam tunnel.”
They had to belly-crawl a hundred yards under crossing beams and watchful eyes. Alex crawled with the bag pressed against his chest. It was either his ticket to life or the stone tied to his neck.
When they dropped through the hatch into the steam tunnel and pulled the iron cover shut behind them, Alex collapsed against the warm, filthy pipes. He was shaking all over from the strain. Sly lit a cigarette and, for the first time, looked at Alex with something like respect.
“You’re no soft kid,” the burglar said with a crooked smile. “You’re a technician. I respect that.” Alex pulled the bag out and loosened the ties.
In the weak flame of the lighter, gold crowns, rings, and crosses glinted back. The common fund was here. He had done the impossible. He had solved the problem.
But looking at the gold, Alex understood that this was only the beginning. The hardest part of the equation still lay ahead. The Count had promised protection, but gold changes people. A lot of gold turns them into animals.
The steam tunnel felt like the intestines of some giant buried beast. Dark, suffocating, full of the smell of rust and wet insulation. Pipes wrapped in old fiberglass hummed with pressure as they carried superheated steam.
Down there, the rules of the outside world no longer applied. Only thermodynamics and greed. Alex crawled first, lighting the way with the stolen lighter. Behind him came Sly, breathing hard and clutching the canvas bag of gold.
The heat became unbearable. Sweat ran into Alex’s eyes and stung his skin. But worse than the heat was the feeling of a seasoned criminal staring at his back.
Alex knew that now, with the job done, he had become an unnecessary variable. Sly was a professional. To a man like that, gold was the objective, and a witness was just a loose end. In physics, it was called critical mass.
Once the concentration of value passed a certain point, the system exploded. In plain English: betrayal. “Stop, college boy,” Sly said, his voice muffled by the concrete walls. Alex froze at once.
He didn’t turn sharply. He slowly looked back. The lighter flame caught Sly’s face. It was wet with sweat and twisted by greed.
In his free hand, the knife glinted. “Heavy bag,” he rasped, licking dry lips. “Why bring it back to the Count? There’s enough gold here for three lifetimes.”
“We hide it in the insulation. Then when we get out…” “We’re not getting out,” Alex said calmly. He snapped the lighter shut, plunging the tunnel into darkness.
“If you touch me now, we both boil alive.” “Don’t try to bluff me, kid,” Sly said, though his voice wavered. “I can see in the dark.”
“This isn’t about seeing,” Alex said from the blackness, his voice sounding almost disembodied. “It’s about pressure. To your right is the emergency steam release valve.”
“It’s old and rusted, and I’ve got my foot on it. If I jerk from a knife strike, I’ll shear the threads. A jet of superheated steam at six atmospheres will fill this tunnel in two seconds.”
“Temperature: 266 degrees. Your flesh will come off the bone before you can ask for air.” Silence followed.
All that could be heard was the hum of the pipes and Sly’s pounding heart. He was a killer, but he feared pain more than death. The idea of being cooked alive cooled him faster than any argument.
“All right,” he muttered at last, lowering the knife. “You win, for now. But if the Count double-crosses us, I’ll kill you first.”
Twenty minutes later they emerged beneath Barracks Nine through a hatch in the supply room. Dirty, soaked, but alive. The barracks was quiet.
The lights were back on, but after the night’s alarm, the inmates slept like the dead. Only the Count was awake. He sat in his corner under the lamp, calmly laying out a game of solitaire.
When Alex and Sly dumped the contents of the bag onto the table, the boss didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Gold rings, watches, crowns, and crosses lay before him. He simply moved the cards aside.
“Clean work,” he said quietly, sorting through the gold with long fingers. “I knew you’d manage it, student. I just didn’t expect you to come back.”
“A lot of men in your place would have tried to run or hide the haul.” “There’s nowhere to run,” Alex said, wiping soot from his face. “And hiding it from you would be signing my own death warrant.”
“I solved your problem, Count. Now it’s your turn. You promised protection.” The boss looked up at him…
