Lin Mei stepped onto the vinyl cushion of the driver’s seat.
She reached up with both hands, unlatching the red emergency roof hatch of Coach #404. The spring-loaded aluminum lid popped open with a dull thump, letting in the cold, oil-thick air of the upper rafters.
“Careful up there, Mei,” Mac Cole called up from the floor. “The rafters in this barn have teeth.”
“I’m keeping my center of gravity low, Mac,” Lin Mei answered.
She poked her head through the square hatch opening.
Forty feet above the concrete hangar floor, Terminal 9 was an endless web of rusted iron trusses, copper conduits, and suspended steel walkways. Thick bundles of three-phase electrical cables hung like dead vines from the corrugated ceiling.
Right above Bay 04, a narrow steel maintenance walkway hung suspended by heavy iron threaded rods. Its floor was made of diamond-mesh grating. Its side railings were painted industrial yellow.
“What do you see?” Julian Vance asked from the front step-well.
