The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  “Are you going to kill me and then spend the rest of your lives in here, never knowing if I was telling the truth?”

  “He’s full of shit,” said Juggy. “He did Pocho, remember?” He lunged forward again, but the Albino skipped sideways and turned, like a matador. Borges grabbed Juggy’s arm with a grip of steel.

  “He fucking did Pocho!”

  “Let the man talk.”

  “Freedom,” Albino continued, his drawling accent making the word sound delicious. “Have you been caged up so long you’ve forgotten what the word means?”

  “Borges, nobody gets out of here,” Juggy said. “Let’s finish this.”

  “Jug, don’t fucking do anything.”

  Juggy looked around and saw that the others were staring at him. He felt incredulous: the Albino was sweet-talking his way out of a shank.

  “Hear the man out,” said another gang member, Roany. The others nodded.

  “This is the guy that waxed Pocho,” Juggy said again, feeling the conviction begin to drain out of his voice.

  “So?” said Borges. “Maybe Pocho needed a little waxing.”

  The Albino continued, speaking in a low voice. “Borges is going out first,” he said. “He believed me first. Jug, if you’re ready, you’re next.”

  “Going out? When?” Borges asked.

  “Right now, while the guards are gone.”

  “The hell with this,” Juggy snarled.

  “Okay, instead of Jug, I’ll take you.” And the Albino pointed to Roany. “Are you ready?”

  “You know I am.”

  “Wait a goddamn minute.” Ochoa took another lunge with the shank, but there was a sudden flashing movement that took him utterly by surprise, and when it was over, Albino held the shank.

  Ochoa backed up. “You son of a bitch—”

  “He’s just wasting our time,” said Albino. “Another word out of him and I’ll cut out his tongue. Any objections?” He looked around the group.

  Nobody responded.

  Ochoa stood there, breathing hard, saying nothing. The bastard had killed Pocho and taken over, just like that. How could it have happened so fast?

  “Anyone who doubts me, look at this.” Albino reached over to the fence and grasped the links at a welded seam at a post, giving a sharp tug. The links parted effortlessly. He drew them back a bit more, stretching out an opening just large enough to admit a human being.

  They stared in disbelief.

  “Follow my instructions and you’ll all get out of here—even you, Mr. Jug. To prove my sincerity, I’ll go last. I’ve worked it out to the final detail. On the far side of the fence, you will scatter, each going out by a different route. Here’s the plan . . .”

  44

  Pendergast waited until the last one, Jug, had climbed through the slit in the fence and disappeared, all of them tumbling through the gap so quickly they hardly cared whether he followed or not—which was precisely what Pendergast had hoped. They would each be following separate escape routes, exquisitely choreographed by Eli Glinn to create a maximal uproar and response.

  After Jug had disappeared, Pendergast grasped the cut fence, which had sprung back into place, and pulled it as wide as he could, stretching and bending the metal to leave the gap obvious for the guards who would soon be coming. He stepped back and examined the digital watch on his wrist, which in Pendergast’s case had far more sophisticated guts inside than its cheap plastic casing suggested. Those guts included a receiver unit that downloaded ACTS satellite time signals, which would be of the utmost importance for the impending operation. He waited until the precise appointed time, then pressed a button on the watch, activating a timer. The display began counting down from 900 seconds.

  Pendergast stepped back and waited.

  At 846 seconds, the sudden howl of emergency sirens filled the air. Pendergast turned and walked swiftly across the yard into the angle of the building closest to the door, where two shabby cement walls came together at a right angle. There, he reached down into a drainpipe and retrieved a long, thin tube: the same tube D’Agosta had placed inside it a few days earlier. He released the catches at both ends, unrolled it like a flag, and gave it a sharp shake. Immediately, it popped out into its intended shape: two equal squares of fabric about three feet per side, joined along one edge by plastic stays to create a V shape. The squares were coated in very thin sheets of brilliantly reflective Mylar. The entire construction, in fact, had been modified by Glinn from a standard portable light reflector such as those used in outdoor advertising shoots.

  Now Pendergast moved into the corner, putting his back against the bricks and crouching low to the ground. He positioned the device in front, snugging it up close to him and making sure the outer two edges of the V-shaped reflector were tight against the walls on each side, forming a ninety-degree angle.

  It was a simple but highly refined application of one of the oldest stage illusions of magic: using carefully angled mirrors to make someone vanish. It had been used as early as the 1860s, when Professor John Pepper’s “Proteus Cabinet” and Colonel Stodare’s “Sphinx” act—in which a woman was placed in a box that was subsequently shown to be empty—were the rage of Broadway. Pressed into the corner of the prison yard, the reflector accomplished the same effect: creating in essence a mirrored box that Pendergast could hide behind. Its mirrored surfaces reflected the cement walls on either side, creating the illusion of a vacant corner where the two walls came together. Only someone actually walking over to examine the corner would discover the deception—and the current panic was calculated to prevent that.

  At 821, Pendergast heard the electronic bolts disengage; the doors were flung open, and four “first responder” guards from nearby guard station 7 charged into yard 4, Tasers at the ready.

  “Fence is cut!” one cried, pointing to the gaping hole at the far end.

  As the four sprinted across the asphalt toward the gap, Pendergast stood, snapped the two sides of the Mylar reflector together, rolled it back into a compact tube, and returned it to the drainpipe. Then he slipped through the doors into the prison, sprinting around a corner and into the nearby bathroom. Quickly, he entered the second-to-last stall, stood on the toilet, and lifted the acoustic ceiling tile overhead. There, taped to the upper side, he found a plastic bag containing a slim four-gigabyte flash-memory chip, a credit card, a small hypodermic needle and syringe, some duct tape, and a tiny capsule of brown liquid. Pocketing the items, he exited the bathroom and darted down the hall to guard station 7. Just as Glinn had predicted: of the five guards on duty, four had responded to the escape call, leaving the lone commanding guard at the console, surrounded by a wall of live video feeds. The man was shouting orders into a microphone and punching up feed after feed, frantically searching for the loose inmates. An overwhelming response had been mobilized to deal with the mass escape attempt. Based on the guard’s excited chatter, already one of the inmates had been run down and recaptured.

  As Glinn had anticipated, the door to guard station 7 had been left unlocked in the hasty departure of the first responders.

  Pendergast slipped inside, then threw an arm around the guard’s neck and injected him. The guard slumped without a word and Pendergast laid him out on the floor, then half covered the guard’s comm mike with his hand and yelled hoarsely into it, “I see one of them! I’m going after him!”

  He quickly undressed the unconscious guard while a burst of shouted countermands came over the speaker, ordering him to remain at his station. In less than a minute, Pendergast was dressed in the guard’s uniform, equipped with badge, Mace, Taser, stick, radio, and emergency call unit. He was more slender than the unconscious guard, but a few minor adjustments rendered the disguise quite acceptable.

  Next, he reached behind the large rack of servers until he had located the correct port. Then, taking the flash drive from the plastic bag, he inserted it into the port. He then turned his attention back to the guard, taping his mouth shut, his hands behind
his back, and his knees together. He dragged the drugged guard back to the nearby men’s room, seated him on a toilet, taped his torso to the toilet tank to keep him from falling over, locked the stall, and crawled out beneath the door.

  Moving to a mirror, Pendergast pulled the bandages from his face and stuffed them into the waste can. He broke the glass capsule over a sink and massaged the dye into his hair, turning it from white blond to an unremarkable dark brown. Exiting the men’s room, he walked down the hall, made a right turn, and—just before coming to the first video camera—he paused to glance at his watch: 660 seconds.

  He waited until the display read 640, then continued on, moving at an easy pace, all the while keeping one eye fixed on his watch. He knew that many eyes would be watching the video feeds. Even though he was dressed in a guard’s uniform, he was walking in the wrong direction—away from the breakout—and his face was still battered and bruised. They knew him well in building C. Anyone catching a glimpse of him would recognize him.

  But he also knew that for ten seconds—from 640 to 630—this particular video feed would be controlled by the flash drive he had plugged into the security computer. The drive would temporarily store the previous ten seconds of feed from that camera and play it back again. It would then leapfrog to the next video camera in the chain and repeat the process. The loop would run only once for each camera: Pendergast had a ten-second window, no more, to pass through each field of view. The timing had to be perfect.

  He walked past the camera without incident and continued down the long, vacant corridors of building C—the guards had been drawn off to other areas by the escapees. Sometimes he quickened his step, sometimes he slowed it, passing each camera at the precise moment in which its video signal would be replayed. Frequently his radio blared. Once, he was passed by a knot of running guards, and he quickly dropped to tie a shoe, turning his swollen, bruised face away from them. They tore by without a glance, their interest otherwise engaged.

  He passed the dining hall and kitchen of building C, the smell of disinfectant strong in the air. He took another turn, then another, at last reaching the final stretch of corridor before the checkpoint and security door between Herkmoor Building C/Federal and Herkmoor Building B/State.

  Pendergast’s face was well known in building C. He was not known at all in building B.

  He approached the security door, swiped the credit card, placed his hand on the fingermatrix screen, and waited.

  His heart was beating at rather more than its customary rate. This was the moment of truth.

  At exactly 290 seconds, the security light glowed green and the metal locks disengaged.

  Pendergast stepped through into building B. He walked around the first bend in the corridor, then paused in the dark corner made by the dogleg of the hallway. He reached up to the deepest cut on his cheek and, with a vicious tug, pulled out the row of stitches. When the warm blood began to run, he smeared it over his face, neck, and hands. Then he pulled up his shirt, examining the stitched wound in his side where the shank had penetrated. He took a deep breath. Then he yanked that wound open as well.

  They had to look as fresh as possible.

  At 110 seconds, he heard running footsteps, and, as previously planned, one of the escapees ran by—Jug—who had dutifully followed the escape plan laid out for him by Glinn. Of course, it would not be successful—he would be apprehended at the exit to building B if not before—but this, too, was part of the plan. Pocho’s gang was a smoke screen—that was all. None would actually escape.

  As soon as Jug passed him, Pendergast screamed and threw himself down onto the floor of the corridor, while at the same time pressing the emergency button on his comm unit:

  “Officer down! Immediate response! Officer down!”

  45

  Staff Nurse Ralph Kidder kneeled over the supine form of the guard—who was sobbing like a baby, babbling about being attacked, being afraid of dying—and tried to focus on the problem at hand. He checked the man’s heart with a stethoscope—strong and fast—examined the neck and limbs for any broken bones, took the blood pressure—excellent—examined the cut on the face: nasty but superficial.

  “Where are you hurt?” he asked again, exasperated. “Where are your injuries? Talk to me!”

  “My face, he cut my face!” the man shrieked, finally gaining a measure of coherence.

  “I see that. Where else?”

  “He stabbed me! Oh, my chest, it hurts!”

  The nurse gently felt the ribs, noting the swelling and faint gravelly feel of a couple of broken ones, not displaced. There was indeed a stab wound, bleeding copiously, but a quick check indicated a rib had deflected the blade and prevented it from piercing the pleura.

  “It’s nothing that a convalescence won’t fix,” Kidder said sharply, turning to the two responding EMTs. “Load him and take him down to infirmary B. We’ll do a blood workup, an X-ray series, stitch up a few of those cuts. Tetanus booster and a course of amoxicillin. I don’t see anything so far that’ll require a transfer to an outside hospital.”

  One of the EMTs snorted. “Nothing’s going in or out until the escapees are apprehended and all prisoners accounted for, anyway. They’ve had a morgue-mobile idling outside the gate for half an hour already.”

  “The morgue-mobile’s never in a rush,” said Kidder dryly. He wrote down the guard’s name and badge number on his clipboard. He didn’t recognize the man—but then, he was from building C and his face was cut up pretty bad.

  As they were loading the patient onto the stretcher, Kidder heard a sudden uproar of shouting from down the corridor as another prisoner was apprehended. Kidder had been working at Herkmoor for almost twenty years and this was the biggest escape attempt yet. Of course it had no chance of succeeding. He just hoped the guards weren’t beating hell out of too many would-be escapees.

  The EMTs raised the stretcher and trundled the whimpering guard off to the infirmary, Kidder following. These guards acted so tough when everything was under control, he thought, but knock them around a bit and they fell apart like so much overcooked meat.

  The infirmary in building B, like the other infirmaries in Herkmoor, was divided into two completely separate, walled-off areas: the free area for staff and guards, and the incarceration area for prisoners. They wheeled the guard to the free area and covered him with a blanket. Kidder worked up the man’s chart, ordered some X-rays. He was starting to prep the guard for stitching when his radio beeped. He lifted it to his ear, listened, spoke briefly. Then he turned to the patient. “I’ve got to leave you for a while.”

  “Alone?” the injured guard cried in a panic.

  “I’ll be back in about half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, with the radiologist. We have some injured inmates—”

  “Taking care of inmates before me?” the man whined.

  “They’re in need of rather more urgent care.” Kidder didn’t tell him about the call he’d just received. It was as he feared: the guards had beat the crap out of several of the escapees.

  “How long will I have to wait?”

  Kidder sighed irritably. “Like I said, maybe forty-five minutes.” He readied a needle with a mild sedative and painkiller.

  “Don’t stick me with that!” the man cried. “I’ve an awful fear of needles!”

  Kidder made an effort to control his annoyance. “This’ll ease the pain.”

  “It’s not that bad! Turn on the TV for me. That’ll distract me.”

  Kidder shrugged. “Have it your way.” He put away the syringe and handed the patient the remote. The man immediately turned it to an asinine game show and cranked up the volume. Kidder left, shaking his head, his already low opinion of prison guards having sunk even lower.

  Fifty minutes later, Kidder returned to the infirmary in a ferociously bad mood. Some of the guards had jumped at the chance to settle scores with a particularly unsavory group of inmates, breaking half a dozen bones in the process.

  He checked hi
s watch, wondering about the guard he’d left behind. Fact was, in any of the big New York emergency rooms the man would have had to wait at least twice as long. He pulled back the curtain and gazed at the guard, all bundled up and turned toward the wall, sleeping heavily despite the excessively loud game show playing on the television.

  Are you sure, Joy, that door number 2 is your choice? All right, then, let’s open it up! Behind door number 2 is . . . (huge groan from the audience) . . .

  “Time for your X-rays, Mr.—” Kidder glanced at the clipboard. “Mr. Sidesky.”

  No response.

  . . . a cow! Now, isn’t that the most beautiful Holstein cow you’ve ever seen, ladies and gentlemen? Fresh milk every morning, Joy, think of it!