El Infierno

by Pieter Tritton

  I had always vowed that should I ever receive a sentence of ten years or more I would spend every day trying to escape. I knew that the British authorities were making attempts to extradite me to face the charge of being the head of a group who had imported nearly 100kg of pure cocaine to Britain worth an estimated £4.5 million. If they succeeded, I would likely be pulled from my cell in the middle of the night and flown back to Britain in handcuffs to face a lengthy trial. If found guilty, I would receive a long sentence, most of which would be spent as a category A prisoner in England’s hardest prisons. As SOCA had already made a request to the Ecuadorian judges that I be sentenced to the maximum of 25 years in prison, which is what they told me I would have received if I had been sentenced in Britain, I knew what I was facing if the extradition was successful. In a UK prison, there would be no visits in your cell three times a week, nor any sex, drugs, alcohol and whatever food you wanted brought in along with all your mod cons. It was this and the prospect of a much longer sentence that encouraged me to consider escape – and the thought of trying to survive at least ten more years in the prisons in Ecuador.

  In Garcia Moreno, there was only one obvious route out of the place and that was over the rooftop of the prison itself and down the other side of a very high perimeter wall to the street and away. There was one big problem with this idea. The roof was almost constantly patrolled by guards and police armed with shotguns and M16 assault rifles. Needless to say, I ruled this out quite quickly.

  During my time in Quito there had been a couple of escapes from A wing, which was supposedly the maximum-security wing. We were certain they had been assisted as both times they used a ladder to climb up on to the roof and escaped across part of the prison that used to be the chapel and had a pitched roof, so no security on it. At one point, a very famous trafficker from Ecuador by the name of Oscar Caranqui tried to escape out of A wing dressed as a police officer. He had paid the entire squad of police officers on duty that night somewhere in the region of $250,000 to supply him with a uniform. They walked him out the front door when they changed shift in the morning at 5am. For some unknown reason, Oscar decided not to cover his face, even though a lot of the officers wore balaclavas at night as it was so cold. As he was being led out of the prison dressed as an officer an off-duty prison guard coming in to work spotted him and raised the alarm. Everyone, including the police officers, was arrested. Oscar soon had his previous jailkeepers as next-door neighbours on the wing. About eight police officers were arrested and convicted of assisting an escape attempt. Unluckily for Oscar, he didn’t have too many years to live. He was transferred to another prison where he was killed not long after.

  Garcia Moreno had a long history of escapes, from single breakouts to as many as 40 or 50 at a time. People had simply walked out along with other visitors using fake ID or dressed as women, or they had dug tunnels, crawled through the sewers, shot their way out of the main gate, got over the roof and walls using ladders, escaped from the court, hidden in the rubbish and even dressed as guards and police officers – and of course they’d paid bribes to walk out the front door. When I heard all of these stories I was happy and relieved that it was definitely possible to escape. I would go to sleep each night plotting different ways to get out and then make my way to Colombia, where I had friends who would help me out. I also liked the idea of going all the way down the Amazon River into Brazil, where I knew there was no extradition treaty with Britain.

  I decided to talk to a couple of my friends about escaping to see if they had any ideas. I first discussed it with Sasha and a very good friend of mine from Rome by the name of Stefano. Between us we came up with many different ideas; some highly improbable but some more than feasible. Sasha wasn’t particularly interested in the idea of escaping as he was nearing the end of his sentence and it just wasn’t worth the risks involved. He was more than willing to assist us in any way he could, though, which was appreciated. He was a true friend who was there when you needed him.

  I also spoke to Andrew to see if he had any ideas as to how we might be able to get out of this place. He suggested I dress up as a girl, get a copy of the security stamps they put on the visitors’ arms, walk out the door and collect the ID of someone who was inside visiting. I would have to pay the girl whose ID I collected as she would be in for some fairly intense questioning. I came up with another level of subterfuge to add to this. We were able to obtain liquid latex, which the prison used in some of the art classes. I had seen the latex masks they created for special effects in films and wondered if we might not be able to find a make-up artist in Ecuador who was good enough to do the same, and was willing to help out for a nice chunk of change. The plan was to find someone reasonably similar in appearance to me and get them to come in on a visit along with the make-up artist. Over a period of time, the artist would make as good a copy as he or she could. Once the mask was ready the willing victim would come in to visit someone. I would take his clothes, tie him up so that it looked like he had been forced to cooperate, put on the mask, duplicate the security stamp on the arm and casually walk out of the prison, collecting the guy’s ID on the way. I would of course pay the poor guy for helping out. I still think the plan would have worked brilliantly had we been able to find a make-up artist willing to help. We couldn’t.

  A simpler version of this plan entailed finding someone who resembled me as closely as possible. It would then be the same idea: they would come in on a visit, I would tie them up and leave, collecting their ID. We thought it would be good to leave with a group of visitors. I considered trying to walk out among a large group already carrying a passport, so that when the others retrieved their IDs I could mingle with them and then make out I had just collected mine as well. This might have worked but there were too many things that could go wrong. If it had gone wrong the police could have done almost anything from beat the hell out of me at best to execute me at worst, and all manner of horrible torture in between those two extremes.

  Another idea we came up with, though this one was somewhat costly, was to hire a helicopter and pilot, then kidnap the pilot mid-air and get him to fly over the prison and airlift us out from the large exercise yard in B wing. This would have cost somewhere in the region of $50,000 in order to do it properly and I couldn’t raise that money quickly enough.

  Shortly before I arrived in the prison a group of heavily armed inmates succeeded in shooting their way out of the main entrance, and several of them managed to escape. There was a running gun battle between the inmates, guards and police that left at least four inmates dead and many more seriously injured. They had opened fire firstly in the centre where all the wings converge and worked their way down the narrow passageway that leads to the main entrance. They had then forced the door open and shot their way out of the prison. I met a few people who bore the scars of that day’s gun battle having been caught in the crossfire at the OK Corral.

  Andrew mentioned to Mario and our friends the Colombians that I was interested in planning an escape. All of them were pretty keen on getting out of prison and excited about helping out however they could. They told me that they could hire some friends who were members of the Colombian guerrilla force FARC to come down to Quito and blow a hole in the perimeter wall of the prison using an RPG (rocket propelled grenade). They would have several men with them to lay down covering fire with machine guns to fend off the police and guards should they intervene. This sounded feasible and I had heard of a successful escape using this method from one of the prisons near the Colombian border in the north. I told Mario to make some enquires to see if it could be organised and how much it would cost.

  The next idea we came up with was digging a tunnel out of the prison and/or using the sewer system that ran below. Various people had told me about numerous escapes involving tunnels that had taken place over the years. On one occasion as many as 30 people had succeeded in escaping. Mario told me it was like a rabbit warren under the prison and if you dug one tunnel you wo
uld be sure to come across two or three more in the process of excavating. There was a well-documented case of a garbage truck being driven over a tunnel that went under the road and collapsed under the truck’s weight. Mario knew of a half-completed tunnel that ran from the far end of B wing, which was adjacent to the perimeter wall, out towards the street. The people who had started it had been transferred to another prison. He proposed we purchased a cell as near to the end of B wing as we could and put some of our friends in it. We would then break into the tunnel, complete the job and make our getaway.

  I liked the sound of this. A few days later we bought the penultimate cell on the right-hand side of the ground floor of the wing. I funded a loud party on a visit day to disguise the noise of hammering as we set about breaking the concrete floor to create an entrance to the tunnel. We had sand and cement from the renovation work on my cell in C wing. With this we formed a concrete lid to cover the entrance. The party was a great success, as were our engineering works. We now had an active tunnel complete with lid. Mario’s guys got to work excavating, disposing of the soil and rocks as best they could down drains, in the exercise yard and in the rubbish. We had to be careful as the guards employed inmates to regularly check the rubbish for evidence of tunnels (and body parts).

  Mario estimated the work was going to take a good three or four months to complete. He suggested we rent one of the houses that lie just outside the prison wall on the hillside and pay someone to start digging inwards as well. He told me he could get some ex-miners to come and do the work if they were paid well enough.

  The tunnel proceeded. The first section was fairly easy, as we could just follow the line of the wall from the wing above. We had the concrete and tarmac of the exercise yard as the ceiling. I let them get on with the work and stayed well away. I planned to take as many people as I possibly could. There was a good chance we could make an escape down this rabbit hole but I was concerned that too many people were now aware of our plans. This was a constant worry as people loved to talk and spread rumours. It would only take one person to say the wrong thing and we would all be in big trouble.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  GHOSTED

  I LAY ON my bed in the darkness, staring out of the window at the Pichincha volcano behind the prison. I was restless in the heat of the night and couldn’t sleep after the lines of coke Sasha and I had taken earlier while watching a film. Thoughts kept racing through my mind about my family, friends, the case and how much longer I was destined to be locked up. My mind kept gravitating back to a feeling that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t help thinking that something was about to happen. Was I going to be extradited to Britain? I kept trying to suppress it and tell myself it was the cocaine making me paranoid, but it just would not go away. I could hear Sasha was awake too, on the bunk above me.

  ‘Sasha? Sasha? Are you still awake?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Da, I’m still awake,’ came back the heavily accented voice. ‘What’s up?’

  I paused for a brief moment, unsure whether to mention my thought or not. I didn’t want to come across as being paranoid.

  ‘Sasha, I’m worried I might get transferred to another prison, or extradited. I keep getting this feeling like something’s wrong.’

  ‘Ha! You being paranoid. That coke is strong, huh?’

  I bloody knew he’d put it down to that, I thought, as he laughed.

  ‘I knew you’d say that, Sasha, but that’s not it. I just keep getting this idea in my head. You know, like an instinct.’

  Sasha went quiet. He knew me well and that my instincts were good.

  ‘Listen, my friend,’ he started. ‘No foreigners ever get transferred out of this place. You have to be real big asshole for them to do that.’ He was trying to reassure me. He had been in the prison nearly a year longer than me, so he knew what he was talking about.

  ‘Oh thanks, Sasha. Don’t tell anyone what I said please.’

  ‘I won’t. I won’t. Don’t worry my friend. You not going anywhere soon. Ha, you got 12-year sentence remember?!’

  Great that he was finding this amusing, I thought. ‘Yeah, thanks for reminding me.’ I eventually fell asleep but the thought stayed with me even after Sasha’s reassurances. He was probably right. Why would they want to transfer me? I was slipping all the guards a few dollars every week and not doing anything too crazy that would draw attention. Where would they transfer me anyway?

  Everyone told me I needn’t worry about extradition as I had now been sentenced and would almost definitely have to finish that sentence before the Ecuadorian government would even consider looking at the documents. I wasn’t so sure, but I did have to agree that extradition felt unlikely. There was nothing I could do about it anyway but wait and see.

  It was a Wednesday and visit day. I was in my cell with the door locked, not feeling much like seeing or talking to anyone. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, so I was watching a DVD and dozing when there was a loud knock on the door, the kind that normally only a guard made. I snapped awake and quickly hid my phone in a secret compartment in the leg of the bed.

  Bang, bang, bang. ‘Abre la puerta! Abre la puerta!’

  Shit! The guards. Just what I needed, and on a visit day when they normally left everyone alone. I opened the door and sure enough there was a guard who I really didn’t like, carrying a length of wood. What the hell was this?

  ‘Que pasa?’ I asked. He told me I had to come down to the office of the jefe de guia immediately because he wanted to speak to me. I was worried. This sounded like trouble or a shakedown to squeeze money out of me. I certainly hadn’t done anything to warrant the aggressive approach. I locked the cell, and luckily Sasha arrived just as I was being led down the stairs to the wing entrance. I gave him the keys to the cell and told him to find Nizar, the caporal, as something was obviously wrong and I didn’t know what.

  I reached the jefe de guia’s office and immediately asked what was wrong. ‘Te vas traslado’, he replied: you’re being transferred. At first I thought he was joking and they were playing some kind of prank on me, perhaps to squeeze me for a few dollars. But he was insistent. What the hell? So I had been right. I couldn’t believe it – I had actually predicted my own transfer and vocalised it to Sasha.

  I asked the jefe de guia if I could please be allowed back on to the wing to collect some of my belongings. ‘No!’ There was no way I would be allowed back there; this was it. I stood there in just my tracksuit bottoms, fleece top and trainers, with no money, none of my belongings and I felt the colour drain from my face.

  A couple of people from the wing passed me and I asked them to tell Nizar that I was being transferred and could he please grab some of my clothes and phone numbers. Under the bed was the large black holdall with which I had left France that fateful day two years ago. Nizar arrived with it and some of my other belongings a short while later, for which I was very grateful. I asked him to talk with the jefe de guia to see if we could perhaps work out some sort of deal to take me off the transfer list – I was willing to pay him. The jefe de guia wasn’t having any of it and told me that my own embassy had requested the transfer, which baffled me. I started to panic. Was this the dreaded extradition? Nizar reassured me there was no way it could be extradition as that was a complicated procedure that took a while, and papers had to be served by the British government.

  I asked the jefe de guia where I was going. He seemed reluctant to answer. I finally persuaded him to tell me. It was absolutely the worst possible outcome. The Penitentiary Litoral de Guayaquil. No, there must be a mistake. He checked and double-checked. Yep, the infamous ‘Peni’. At the time this was the fourth most dangerous prison in the whole of South America. Completely gang-controlled, with multiple murders every week, frequent gunfights – a place no one wanted to go.

  ‘Who else is being transferred?’ I asked, looking around the reception area, where sat only one other person.

  ‘Just you and the Dutch guy,’ the jefe de guia told
me.

  Special transfer. Jesus Christ! This really was serious. I vaguely knew the Dutchman, who was called Kelvin. He had run into problems here in the prison and had a death sentence hanging over his head from one of the gangs. His embassy had made a lot of noise and managed to get him a transfer as far south as you could go, to the town of Machala on the Peruvian border. He looked quite happy to be going. I, on the other hand, was not at all happy. Just when I was really getting on my feet and organised here, they’d pulled the rug from under me. Surely they couldn’t know about the tunnel? Was this how it was going to be from now on? Just like in Britain – regular transfers to stop you getting settled and forming friends.

  I sent messages with a couple of people who passed by to any of my friends who I knew were well-connected to the gangs in Guayaquil, asking them to phone ahead with a recommendation for me so that I would be well-received and not be a victim of extortion as a new arrival would normally be. At this time, I had been exercising with Sasha in the gym for two hours every night and had become quite muscular and very strong. At least I would be able to put up a hell of a fight if they wanted to go down that road.

  Nizar kept saying to me, ‘Put me in charge of your cells. I will collect the rent and send it to you in Guayaquil.’ I thanked him for the offer and said I would make contact once I was there and had decided what to do, but it made me immediately suspicious that perhaps this transfer was a big ruse in order to take control of the three cells I owned on C wing and the one on B wing, along with all the contents. This totalled more than $15,000 and was more than enough for someone to be interested in robbing me. For the moment there was nothing I could do. Whoever had instigated this had the upper hand and I was on the back foot. Until I was able to start taking control of the situation again, I just had to go with the flow.