Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day Read Online Free PDF

water level?’ PT asked, as he ripped off his gloves and coat and yanked muddy blue overalls over his street clothes.
    ‘Not great,’ Leon answered. ‘I’ve been pumping solid for the last hour and there’s still a good inch and a half of water in the middle of the tunnel.’
    ‘Should do us for tonight, and that’s all we need,’ PT said, as he sat over the edge of the hole and dropped down a metre and a half, clay spattering under his boots as he landed. The main shaft of the tunnel was less than half a metre wide. The ceiling was held up with heavy gauge mesh and metal hoops, while crude wooden rails ran along the floor.
    PT lay chest down on a wooden trolley, head and feet hanging off opposite ends. He checked that all four wheels were aligned to the rails and rolled his head into the start of the tunnel. After reaching blindly at the ceiling he flicked a length of wire, ringing a bell directly above his head and another at the opposite end of the tunnel.
    It was possible to pull the cart through the tunnel using the walls and floor as leverage, but once someone was stationed at each end it was faster to signal with the bell and have someone pull you through on a rope.
    The trolley jerked suddenly – it would disappear from under you if you got your balance wrong – and began trundling through the blackness. Water always seeped through the clay, but the snow melt made it worse than usual and drips pelted PT’s neck as he rattled along with the rails centimetres in front of his face. It was pitch dark, but he’d been through hundreds of times and he knew every dip and twist, even down to the rattling noises made by the joins between individual pieces of rail.
    The tunnel spanned thirty-eight metres, beneath the barbershop and beauty parlour next to Unicorn Tyre and Parking. Just beyond mid-point the clattering of the wheels changed to a rushing sound. The water was deep enough to plough over the front of the fast moving cart and give PT’s chest a soaking. After a slight kink to the left, he was able to look into electric light and see his father’s trousers and dirty arms pulling the rope hand over hand.
    PT arrived into an underground chamber nearly two metres high and his father, Miles, reached out to stop the cart running into the mud wall.
    They were directly beneath the New York branch of the Federal Reserve Exchange. The tunnel had been dug at a steady sixty centimetres per day for sixty days, and it had taken a further three weeks digging out the chamber and perfecting the running of the railway.
    PT stood up, his face spattered with clay and dripping brown water that soaked him from his chest down to his thighs.
    ‘Looking wet, son!’ Miles Bivott said. ‘You get the drill bit?’
    ‘Two,’ PT said. ‘In case we break another.’
    ‘Good man. Any bother?’
    ‘A and H was alarmed. Cops went in the front but I made it out the back. I’m more worried about the water level in that tunnel.’
    ‘It’s been there near a hundred days,’ Miles said reassuringly. ‘We only need it for another hour or two.’
    PT looked at the hole in the ceiling. This final break into the basement floor of the Federal Reserve Exchange vaults was critical: they could take their time building the tunnel, but once they broke through the floor they only had a few hours until the whole enterprise was uncovered by the morning security patrol.
    ‘Let’s get up there,’ Miles said. ‘Don’t want fingerprints, so get your gloves on.’
    There was a ladder, but PT was light enough for his father to give him a boost. PT placed his hands flat against thick marble tiles and hauled his body into the brightly lit basement.
    After the tunnel it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Apart from the hole in the floor and his father’s muddy boot prints, PT found an orderly, wood-panelled space the size of two cars parked abreast. A staircase wound its way around a doorless cargo lift. At the opposite end of the room were