“Where the hell are the guards?” He wondered aloud. His Mama wouldn’t have liked him cussing like that, but Dick figured that he was prison-hardened now. And if that meant he’d have to swear sometimes, then goshdarnit he would swear!
Dick walked through the halls, his prison-issued shoes padding softly against the metallic flooring. He squinted and looked up at the central control tower room, located a few floors above his section.
As far as he could see there wasn’t anyone there.
Surprisingly enough, Dick didn’t have any issues finding the exits. Prisons are mandated by federal government to have clearly marked escape routes, in the event of an emergency.
Dick followed the brightly lit “exit” signs all the way to a door which said:
“DOOR IS ALARMED. DO NOT OPEN UNLESS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY”
Once again Dick considered his predicament. He’d been lucky so far, he figured, so why not see if that holds up.
Dick’s luck seemed to have failed, however, because as he grabbed the push bar in his slender fingers and opened the door, the alarm went off, a grating siren which hurt his eardrums terribly.
At that moment Dick’ courage almost failed him. Undoubtedly any moment now the prison guards would come around the corner with their riot sticks.
But the sunlight peeking through the crack in the opened door was too much for Dick to give up.
If they were going to recapture him at least he would get a few moments outside first.
So instead of going back to his cell, locking the door and pretending this little walk never happened in the first place, Dick walked outside into the blinding sunlight.
It reminded him of his youth and his mother yelling at him to put on sunscreen so that he didn’t get the skin cancer. The feeling of the warm sun on Dick’s skin was almost too much for him to take.
For the first time since he’d arrived at the prison, Dick smiled.
It took five glorious minutes for Dick’s pale blue watery eyes to adjust to the bright midday sun. He spent that time sitting on the ground and feeling the grass with his hands.
He let an orange ladybug crawl onto his hands, laughing at how it tickled his fingers.
“Hi there, little guy! Ouch!” Dick flicked the bug away with his other hand. Who knew that ladybugs were biters?
Finally, the tall and lanky man stood up and stretched to the heavens. He could see that he was still in the prison courtyard, surrounded on four sides by a concrete fence fifteen feet high, with barbed wire at the top and prison towers on the corners.
“Maybe I haven’t escaped at all,” he said to himself, “maybe they’ve just finally decided to give me some outside time.
Given a choice between the two, Dick would have taken the escape, but nobody had asked him what his thoughts were.
At first, Dick walked around the courtyard. Then he ran until he was out of breath and tired. And finally, he noticed that the large gate, the exit to the prison, was open as well.
“What crazy luck I have today,” he beamed.
Dick took a moment to think of the consequences of his actions.
I’ve already gotten this far.
Given an appropriate amount of reflection time, Dick might have been able to figure out that he was not escaping from prison. But, caught up in the rush of freedom, he didn’t care.
Dick Mitey, jail-breaker, he thought to himself.
Had he been keeping track of the days he would have known that he had been in prison for just over a year.
Dick had no idea of any of the events which had transpired outside of the walls of the prison in the time he had been incarcerated.
Truthfully, he didn’t much care either. The sun was shining on his face, and the birds were chirping. It was glorious.
Dick Mitey walked through the menacing double gates of the prison compound and re-emerged into the world.
He wasn’t more than five hundred feet from the entrance when the gaping maw of the prison compound began to close once more.
Dick patted himself on the back for his good fortune and continued walking down the road. He found himself in the beautiful terrain of the German countryside.
Most distressing was that he didn’t seem to be near any civilization, barring the prison of course. And he wasn’t about to head back there any time soon.
Dick hoped that his incredible luck would hold out – that a car would be driving by and offer to give him a lift to town. But, after forty-five minutes of walking, he hadn’t seen a single soul.
His legs, unaccustomed to any exercise, were sore and stiff.
Dick sat down by the edge of the dusty dirt road, his prison issues jumpsuit covered with dirt and grime and pondered his situation. There was an expression for situations like this, he knew. “Out of the frying pan and into the freezer.”
Finally, given the apparent hopelessness of the situation, Dick said something that, if his mother had heard him say, would have gotten his mouth rinsed out with soap at least three or four times.
“Well, fuck,” Dick said, scratching his head. “What now?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Dick Mitey had been walking down the same dusty dirt road for a couple of hours now, shaded by the trees which guarded the way. His feet blistered, and he was beginning to get hungry.
Fortunately for Dick, he had grown up in the oppressive heat of the Southern United States, so the temperate climes of Germany in the late spring didn’t affect him too much, other than a slight pinkening of his prison-white skin.
The maple trees lining the path had come full bloom anyway, which offered Dick some protection from the sun while smelling absolutely delicious.
Dick Mitey was getting desperate. He had his freedom, of course, but what good was that if he died on the road? He had no scavenging skills to speak of. The closest he’d ever gotten to the wilderness before this had been when he had accidentally stepped in a pile of poison ivy in a Houston park, as a child.
The memory of home brought tears to Dick’s eyes. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his prison-issued jumpsuit and looked down the path.
There had been a time a few hours ago where he had expected a jeep to come roaring around the corner at any moment, sent by the prison to take him back.
They must have discovered that he was missing by now, he reckoned. The emergency alarm which he had set off notwithstanding it would have been time for him to receive his prison rations, meager though they were.
But they never came. Dick eventually concluded that they weren’t going to come, either.
“Why didn’t I bring water?” he said, his voice cracking. At this rate, he wouldn’t get much farther. Dick sat down under the shade of a maple tree and massaged his feet.
Dick Mitey had a lot of time to think during his long walk of freedom. He had come to realize that he had not escaped from prison at all. Someone had intentionally released him.
But who?
As far as he knew (admittedly Dick’s knowledge of prison workings was minimal at best), prisoners didn’t typically get released in the fashion which he had reached his freedom. All the cop shows which he had watched in his youth usually showed someone retrieving belongings which they had given over upon entering the prison.
Dick didn’t have any belongings, so he figured that he might as well not get too upset over that one.
Dick racked his brain, but he couldn’t think of anyone who would have the influence and the reason to let him out.
Some things were just meant to be mysterious, after all. Dick wasn’t about to dwell on it. He stopped massaging his feet and got up from the great cool shade of the maple tree. He continued walking down the dusty dirt path.
Finally, Dick saw something which he hadn’t seen in almost a year. Dick saw a house.
It was a beautiful A-frame farmer’s house with a long gravel driveway and acres of field growing wheat out back. The lawn was green and vibrant, and a swing set creaked quietly in the wind at the back
corner.
Children had played there recently, judging from the bare dirt patch under each swing where hours of repetition had killed the grass.
But Dick wasn’t thinking of any of those things. This place didn’t have the hard, metallic feel of the prison. It was people, not guards who lived here.
Hope! He thought, forgetting all about the aches and pains in his body. He ran up to the door and knocked vehemently.
A full minute passed, and nobody answered the door. Maybe they’re not home, Dick thought, looking at the windows.
But there were people home; he could see two – a man and a woman – watching him from the window.
They must not have heard me, he thought, knocking again. He waited for a suitable length and beat the door a third time.
Finally, the door cracked open a few inches. Inside, a nervous-looking man with John Lennon glasses peered out suspiciously. In his hands, he held a 12-gauge shotgun.
“Hello there,” Dick started cheerfully, clearly not having seen the shotgun, “My name is… Richard Mitey, and I was wondering if you could help me out.”
The mousey man said a few things in German and brandished the shotgun.
“Oh wow, I don’t mean you any harm.” Dick did the universal thing which people do that doesn’t make sense, but they do it anyway when talking to people who don’t speak their language. He spoke slower and raised his voice. “I… NEED… HELP. YOU… HELP… ME?”
Now, Dick learned a few things from that incident on a porch. Firstly, raising your voice and speaking slower does not help someone understand you better if you do not speak the same language. Secondly, hearing shotguns sing is even more terrifying.
The blast from the shell blew off part of the farmer’s awning, but he didn’t seem to care. He reloaded and pointed the gun directly at Dick.
Dick was frightened, but he wasn’t completely devoid of his senses. He backed up slowly with his hands in the air, then turned tail and ran.
He kept running for as long as he could until his lungs started to burn.
“So much… for the kindness… of strangers,” he gasped. He was sweaty now, his prison-issued jumpsuit was dirty and tattered, and he was sore in more places than he could count.
The prison jumpsuit, of course! Dick looked down at it. There was writing emblazoned in German across the front. Now, Dick wasn’t sure, but he bet that it read:
“Inmate number 54373.”
“So that’s why he was so grumpy,” Dick reflected. The farmer hadn’t known that Dick had not escaped from prison, he’d been let out.
In the distance, a car was rapidly approaching, spinning up dust in its wake. It was the first one he’d seen on this road since he began his long walk. Dick quickly took off the jumpsuit and stood in the path wearing nothing but his tidy-whitey underpants and an undershirt and tried to wave it down.
As it approached he saw that it was no ordinary car at all, but a police cruiser speeding down with its lights shut off. The driver saw Dick at the side of the road and promptly pulled over.
The officer and his partner stepped out of the car, brandishing their weapons at him.
What is with people pointing guns at me today?
The tall, lanky man got down on his knees and put his hands behind his head, waiting for the two officers to slap him in handcuffs.
Dick Mitey, who had not hours ago walked out of prison and back into the world, was once again a prisoner.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sarah stared at the email which she had just received. She furrowed her brow, trying hard to process it.
The Berlin Police Department has arrested Dick Mitey.
How was that possible? He had been in prison for over a year now. To let him out and not extradite him, It made no sense.
According to the report he had been arrested after an incident at a farmhouse where he had threatened a man and his wife. They had called the police stating that there had been a prison break.
Sarah pondered the last part. It seemed out of character for Dick to threaten anyone. He had a goofy smile and a friendly personality, last time she’d seen him.
The local authorities had stuffed him into a holding cell in Berlin. According to her source, they weren’t entirely sure what they should do with him. A constable had called every prison in Germany, and not a single one claimed to have a prisoner by the name of Dick Mitey.
Sarah massaged her shoulder absentmindedly. It had ached since her altercation with Adrian Vandervoort in Ibiza.
Or was this one from the crash? She asked herself. All these old injuries seemed to blend together sometimes.
Following her return to Houston, Sarah had been placed on short-term leave by Mo Al-Azhar. No negotiation this time. Understandably she had been upset. “Right fucking pissed,” was how she described it.
In front of him, she swore, and she’d pleaded, and anything else she could think of that would get him to keep her on the case.
It was Sarah’s fault, though. Mo knew it, and Sarah knew it too. She had a golden opportunity to bloody the nose of Black Eagle and put Connor’s ghost to rest.
Instead, she had let Vanderfuck get away. Now that he was undoubtedly aware of the CIA presence he would be much more careful.
Sarah felt like shit. Mo had put his neck out when he had sent her to Ibiza, and she had let him down. He should have sent Rico instead.
He wouldn’t have fucked up. Not like that, anyway.
Sarah wondered if Mo regretted it, looking the older man in the eyes. She wasn’t quite sure what his wistful expression meant, even after all these years.
To his credit, Mo hadn’t once lost his temper as she had raged. He’d stayed calm and collected throughout the entire ordeal and had even given her time to compose herself before stepping out back onto the floor to gather her things.
She could feel the eyes of the other agents on her back as she walked through the door. She wondered how many whispered conversations they’d had about her.
If it were just lewd jokes, she wouldn’t have a problem with it. But it wasn’t, that she knew. They were questioning her competency behind her back and, try as she might, she just kept adding fuel to the fire.
You can always tell if someone is talking about you when you walk into a room.
She held her head high as she left. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her upset.
Although she had hated her impromptu two-month vacation from work, Sarah had to admit that it had done her wonders.
Officially termed “administrative leave with pay,” it was unofficially “stress leave.” Sarah didn’t realize how much she needed a break until she took one.
Her days had been tedious and routine. Get up, have a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios without the milk then go to the gym. Get home, take Charlie for a walk. Then, nothing.
Charlie loved all the extra time he got to spend with his mom, at least.
Early on she had visited Connor Browne’s grave. It had been a sobering experience for her.
“Hi,” she said to the tombstone. She kept shifting her weight from foot to foot with nervous energy.
Why are you nervous? Sarah asked herself. It was just a gravestone, and she didn’t believe in talking to headstones.
“Listen,” she said to the engraved piece of rock, “I just wanted to say… you know. Don’t you?”
She sat in silence for a bit, heard the leaves rustle in the trees and the sweet song of birds.
“This is stupid,” Sarah stood up, acutely aware of the pain in her shoulder, her knees. She made to leave but thought better of it. Finally, Sarah sat down again.
“I’m sorry, okay?” She said to the gravestone. “I know you wouldn’t think of it that way, but I can’t help it. I feel so guilty about everything that happened.”
And just like that Sarah started talking about all her frustrations, her issues with the other operatives and even her problems with her father.
It burst out of her like a
broken dam.
She talked for hours until her bum was sore from sitting on the ground and she was parched.
Afterward, she felt hollow but better. She yawned. It was exhausting work, talking about your emotions. In the weeks following her gravesite visit, she even managed to get a consistent six hours a night.
Far From Ordinary Page 19