THE THOUSAND DOLLAR BREAKOUT: Colt Ryder Uncovers A Deadly Fight Club At San Quentin State Prison . . . Will He Escape With His Life?

by J. T. Brannan

  A ladder was thrown over a few moments later and I mounted it, climbing to the top like Gonzales had just a few minutes earlier, legs bent, ready to jump.

  Below, two armed guards waited to escort me back to the cells; at the rear walls were other guards, but with the crowd on its feet, they wouldn’t have a clear shot at me as soon as I was on ground level. There was a gun gallery above though, running between the mess hall and the cellblocks, and I noticed two sharpshooters stationed there. They had a better line of sight, but would surely still be wary of firing into a crowd.

  I looked into that crowd now, perched on top of the fence, and I grinned at them, even though the action caused a burning pain through the lacerated side of my face.

  “Hey guys!” I shouted down, to roars of approval. “Who’s gonna catch me?”

  I saw a rush of people leaving their seats, arms raising high in the air; and although the armed guards were reacting, not sure what to do, they were too late – I was already jumping.

  I felt arms and bodies catching me, supporting me, not at all bothered to have my blood staining their thousand-dollar suits; and then I was at ground level, back on my own two feet.

  I saw the armed guards then, one right next to me, the other just a couple of feet away; and in the blink of an eye I exploded forward, shrugging off the crowd, and punched the furthest man straight in the throat. He had nowhere near the resilience of Gonzales, and went down instantly. I then turned to the closer man, to the side of me now, and elbowed him across the face, smashing his nose and distracting him long enough to knock the rifle out of his hands, kick him hard in the gut, and then grab the Glock 9mm pistol out of his gun-belt.

  He dropped to the floor, and I knew that the other guards must have been looking to see what was happening, looking for their shot, but would be too scared to shoot due to the civilians that were crowded around me.

  And then I grabbed the man with the most expensive suit, pulled him in tight, and shoved the Glock up to the side of his head.

  The crowd’s screams of excitement had turned into cries of terror now, and they tried to retreat as I edged forward with my hostage; but there were too many of them, in too small a space, and they remained close to us, providing us with unintentional cover from rifle fire as we made our way to the cellblock doors.

  I could have taken one of the two guards hostage, but I knew the rich civilian was a better option. The death of a guard could be explained away by Gordon, in much the same way he’d used the riot to cover up a multitude of sins; but would he want to deal with the death of a civilian? Especially a rich one like this guy, someone who was probably well-connected. He would be missed, and a lot more resources would be spent looking into his death than that of Patrick Murphy. Unfair that may have been, but it was a sad fact of life; and I hoped that this realization would stay Gordon’s hand.

  “Shoot, damn it!” Bush shouted from somewhere nearby.

  “No!” the voice of Gordon rang out, further away than Bush’s but louder, more strident, and a lot more authoritative. “Don’t shoot! This is the warden, and I repeat, do not shoot!”

  Thanks, Nate, I thought as I neared the doors; and then I heard a commotion behind me, turned and saw Officer Herbert L. Bush running toward me, pistol in his hand, ignoring Gordon’s orders completely.

  I didn’t think twice, just removed the gun from the rich guy’s head for a split-second, pulled the trigger, and put it back before anyone else could react.

  The shot took the big dumb bastard in the chest, a plume of blood exploding right next to the badge he wore so proudly.

  He wouldn’t be missed; anyone who helped organize something like this was no servant of the law, but worse than most of the people they had locked up.

  I scanned the crowd for Gordon, wanting to give him the same treatment, but in the chaos and confusion of the mess hall, he was nowhere to be seen.

  The crowd thinned a little as we neared the cellblock doors, and although I knew there were still too many people here for the guards at ground level to risk a shot, I thought the boys upstairs might try their luck; and so I raised the Glock again and sent a couple of shots their way, keeping their heads down as we made it the last few yards to the doors.

  They weren’t locked – why would they be, with the other prisoners all dead or severely injured? – and I yanked them open with my gun-hand, rushing through with my hostage to the relative safety of the cellblock beyond.

  Chapter Eight

  The first part of my plan had worked – get out of the mess hall.

  Now I just had to get out of the prison, and then off the damn island.

  No problem, right?

  Only I was losing so much blood that all the adrenaline in the world was going to have a hard time keeping me going. Having my damaged forearm around the rich guy’s neck, in addition to being incredibly painful, was making blood pump out of the wound at an alarming rate. But I knew the serious stuff was on the other side of the forearm, and that no veins or arteries had been hit. I’d survive . . . for now, at least.

  I’d bolted the doors closed behind us, and I knew that would give us a little time. But I didn’t slow down; instead, I took my bleeding arm from around the rich guy’s throat, turned him around and marched him forward at speed, gun to the back of his head.

  “Faster,” I told him as we moved down the Boulevard, back toward the prison’s main entrance. “What’s your name?” I asked as we marched.

  “Ja . . . Jack,” he sputtered, struggling to get the words out. “Jack . . . Goodman.”

  “Well listen to me, Jack Goodman,” I told him, “you’re not going to get hurt, as long as you do exactly what I say, you got it?”

  “Ye . . . Yeah,” he gasped. “But you better not hurt me,” he managed after a few more steps, his confidence increasing, a bit of what I guessed was his perpetual state of entitled arrogance coming back to him. “I know people, I –”

  I smacked him on the back of my head with the gun. “Shut your mouth, fuck-nuts, or I’ll shut it for you.” The last thing I needed after being incarcerated at San Quentin and being forced into anything-goes, to-the-death prison fights was a warning from a rich, dick-less asshole like this.

  To his credit, he shut up and kept marching, and we were soon at the other end of the block. “Open the gate,” I told him, keeping the gun at his head.

  He did as he was told, and I risked a glance over my shoulder. Still no sign of the guards, but I knew it wouldn’t be long; they’d find another way out of there soon enough.

  As the door clanked open, Goodman screamed, and I turned back quickly, saw two guards there, just as surprised as us. I realized they must have been standing watch at the front entrance, and been radioed by the guys back in the mess hall. They’d been running to get inside, and weren’t prepared to meet us at the gate.

  For a moment I almost shot them, but then I considered the fact that maybe they didn’t know what was going on here. They’d been posted outside, maybe they hadn’t been trusted with the facts. Maybe.

  I gave them the benefit of the doubt though, reached around Goodman and cracked the first man in the face with the barrel of the Glock; and as he fell to the ground, I planted a front kick in the second guy’s chest, smacking him on the back of the head with the pistol as he fell.

  I knew Goodman was thinking about running, but before he could, the gun was back at his head. “Don’t even think about it, Jackie-boy,” I said, pushing him forward through the open gate. “Get moving.”

  We were in the sally port now, the far gate of which was wide open, and I could even see the main entrance doors beyond. Also wide open.

  We could hear the storm now, and it sounded even worse than before.

  Together, we left the prison and made our way out into it.

  Chapter Nine

  It was close enough to pitch-black outside, with only the main paths lit up with the floodlights.

  We stayed off the track, working our way past the
old lighthouse and the ruins of the warden’s house, but Goodman’s balance was poor, his fitness worse, and he was starting to slow me down. I wondered if I still needed him, weighed his value as a hostage against the liability of him slowing me down, and made the decision quickly. He’d outlived his usefulness, and I smacked him on the back of the head with the Glock. He dropped to the grass below, already invisible in the dark, and my legs pumped as I raced onwards without him.

  I could hear people behind me now, and knew the guards had finally made their way out of the prison complex and were coming for me. I wondered if Gordon was with them, wondered if I should maybe lie down and wait for him, use the Glock to shoot the sonofabitch in the head. Barbed wire cages? Broken glass on the floor? Machetes? The world would be a better place without him, that was for sure.

  But I had no desire to be caught. Out here, in these circumstances, it would be a certain death warrant.

  And so I kept on running. My ribs and my arm hurt like hell – my entire body felt like it had been through a meat-grinder – and the freezing wind and rain was battering me left and right – but I kept on running.

  I knew the dock was to the left, and it would house all of the tour boats that the bettors had cruised in on. But with the weather as rough as this, I knew taking a boat out would be a risky business; and where the hell was I going to go, anyway? One call from Gordon, and the Coast Guard would be out in force; and if they didn’t catch me, there would be hordes of cops waiting for me at every dock and port in the Bay area.

  No, it was the choppers I’d go for; despite the weather, they’d still go, and I assumed the pilots would be waiting inside. It would be a lot quicker, and give Gordon a lot less time to organize reinforcements to intercept us.

  I saw them up ahead as I scrambled down a grassy slope – four of them, one for each prison.

  It was dark down there too, and I moved faster, reaching a graveled area, desperate to reach them, to see if escape was even an option.

  And then shots rang out from behind me, and I dived for the ground, the contact of the cold, hard, soaking wet gravel causing my lacerated body to convulse in agony. But the shots were nowhere near me, and I realized they were firing wildly, just hoping to hit something.

  And then I understood that they must be close, they must have found Goodman’s unconscious body, or else they wouldn’t risk firing at me, and I got back to my feet and started running again, trusting that they wouldn’t see me, wouldn’t get an accurate shot off.

  But one good shot was all they needed.

  I increased the speed of my legs, pain spurring me on, and I was suddenly there, right next to one of the choppers, and I flung the cockpit door open and pointed my gun into the dark space. “Get this thing moving!” I shouted. “Now!”

  And then more shots rang out, close to the chopper, and I looked closer and panic hit me as I saw the pilot wasn’t even there.

  The cockpit was empty.

  Chapter Ten

  By the time the guards got down to the parade ground where the helicopters had landed, the rotor blades of my chopper were already spooling up, blasting away the rain water from the landing site.

  I’d decided to take matters into my own hands and fly the damn thing myself. How hard could it be?

  The trouble was, it was one of the hardest things there was. It was a true specialty, and the powers that be never trusted Ranger grunts like us behind the controls of an expensive machine like this.

  But I’d been in enough of them to know the basics, and I’d chatted to enough Night Stalkers – the guys who ran special operations flights for JSOC – to have picked up bits here and there. I’d also had a couple of lessons as a civilian, although I’d forgotten most of what I’d learned.

  But I just had to hope it was enough.

  One of the Night Stalkers had explained to me the proper way to prep the copter to fly – battery switch, auto re-ignition, test warning lights, make sure throttle is in “cut-off” mode, depress starter button, introduce fuel, make sure fan speed is at N1, then roll to flight setting. He’d also explained to me that in an emergency – which was quite often, given the nature of their missions – he’d just “make sure the fuel was off and light the can”.

  And that’s just what I did, engines spooling up fast, rotors even faster; and as the shots of Gordon’s boys started to hit the fuselage, I pulled the collective and up I went, chopper rising unsteadily into the storm.

  It was far from text-book, the chopper tilting this way and that as I struggled to control it, tried desperately to remember what everything did – there was the throttle, the anti-torque pedals, the collective and the cyclic, and they all had to be handled just right for anything good to happen.

  I was trying to balance the controls as I’d been told, but it was an art-form and I was not even a novice. My forearm was on fire too, and I was losing the fine motor control in my fingers, forced to push and pull the collective with the heel of my palm, hand no longer able to grip properly. But somehow, I made the chopper climb higher, away from the shots, into the storm.

  But how to make the damn thing go forward? I juggled with the cyclic and the collective, tested the pedals, and – after an initial dip that scared the life out of me – I must have done something right, because the chopper started moving in the right direction.

  It was moving forward anyway, although I had no idea where “forward” would take me, in terms of geography. Was I heading to the mainland, or out to sea? Hell, maybe I was heading straight back to San Quentin, and I’d crash-land in the prison yard?

  But after a few moments, I managed to see lights ahead of me – a lot of them – and knew I must be heading for dry land.

  And then I also spotted lights out of my side window, and turned, my heart sinking as I saw that the other choppers were in the air now, hot on my tail.

  And these choppers had real pilots who knew what they were doing, and probably guys with rifles who’d be shooting out of the doorframes at me.

  I breathed out slowly.

  The coast was only just over a mile away.

  I’d just have to grit my teeth, and hope I made it.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was right – the choppers did have guys with guns on board.

  The other three helicopters swarmed around me as I struggled with the controls. I was going a hundred feet up and down, and another hundred left and right, for every fifty feet I made forward to the coastline, and it didn’t take the professionals long to pull alongside me.

  The storm was wild, battering my chopper, and I almost didn’t hear the shots ringing out across the ink-black night sky. But then I did hear them – the shots themselves, and the impacts on my helicopter’s fuselage.

  A moment later the cockpit glass cracked with one of the shots, and I couldn’t even see the other choppers around me, but I knew they were there, buzzing like bees, flying in and out while the sharpshooters tried to pick me off.

  I could see the lights of the city up ahead though, growing larger and brighter through the cracked canopy glass and the misty gloom, and I prayed I would make it.

  If I just kept on going, I could make it.

  But then another shot hit the cockpit glass, this one at the side, and I began to instinctively try and shake them loose by moving the controls to one side and then the other; but I wasn’t good enough to play games, and the chopper started to slow, to drop, and I didn’t know what I’d done but I did know that I’d lost control. And although I regained control for a moment or two, my heart soaring in response, a moment later it was gone again, the rotors seizing, the chopper dropping, down, down, down, falling to the freezing cold waters of San Francisco Bay below.

  Chapter Twelve

  The chopper was going into a spin, and I knew if it hit the water with me inside, I’d be dead; and so I tried to get my head together, to counteract the g-forces of the spin, and I wrenched open the cockpit door, steadied myself, and jumped, trying to get as far away fr
om the stricken vehicle as I could.

  I didn’t know how high up we were, couldn’t see anything at all since I’d leaped out of the chopper, but I counted the seconds as I plummeted to the waters below, stomach in my mouth.

  One . . . Two . . .

  I hit the water, and I hit it hard; I’d tried to straighten my body as much as I could, get into a pencil-shape to pass through the water more easily, but the impact still drove the air of me, the surprise of hitting the water just as bad, and as I went under – deep, deep under – my arms started clawing wildly at the freezing water, and I was scared I would go into shock with the fall, the impact, the cold, the surprise, the fear . . .

  I didn’t know how far down I was in this swirling, freezing hellhole, or if I would ever make my way out of it; I didn’t know where my chopper was, how close it was, how far away; I didn’t know where my pursuers were, if they were just hovering above the waters of the Bay, ready to take their shots when I emerged.

  But I had to breathe, my lungs felt as if they were being crushed, and I felt the icy grip of panic upon me as I thought I might drown – I didn’t know which way was down, which way was up, I was swimming now, but where to?

  I held my breath and fought against the water, battling it with everything I had left, straining every fiber of my being to get to the surface and breathe . . . And then I realized that I’d already broken the surface of the water, my head reaching up above the waves; only because the night was so dark, and the storm was so severe, and I was so disoriented, I hadn’t realized; I was at the surface and – dumb bastard that I was – I hadn’t even realized.

  I opened my mouth and breathed in deeply, the oxygen so sweet, so beautiful; but moments later I was swallowing rainwater, and I stopped and spluttered, and then a wave hit me and my mouth filled with salty seawater too and I felt like I was drowning again. I felt another wave coming and dived under, coming up on the other side of it and breathing deep once more – although not too deep this time, just enough to live . . . to survive.