by Joe Corso
“Why, yes. Two days ago, my phone line went dead. I called the phone company and they said I had a break in the line, and they’d send someone to repair it. A telephone repairman came shortly after and worked on the line outside my home and then he came in to check my phone to see if it was serviceable. Then he left.”
“I see,” Jason said. He showed Hayes the little transmitter and said, “This is what they did. There was nothing wrong with your phone line. They needed an excuse to bug your phone, so they disconnected the outside phone line leading into your home. I’ve been watching Jenkins. He’s heard every word you’ve been saying on this phone for the past two days. He was outside, listening, when you called for reservations. My guess is, tomorrow he’ll be on the same flight as your daughter. I suggest you call the airline and change her flight. Tomorrow morning I’ll pick up your daughter and take her to the airport and if I see anything suspicious, I’ll get on the plane with her. In any case I’m not taking any chances. I’m calling my office and having one of my agents meet Virginia at the airport. He’ll take her to her aunt’s home. Meanwhile, call the airline and change her flight.”
“I’ll do that right now. Thanks, Jason. I feel much better knowing someone responsible will be meeting my daughter at the airport. At least I know she’ll arrive at my sister’s house safely.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dutch Henry crawled through the tunnel leading to John’s cell every day. The two men shared stories and kept each other company while they dug. But, more than that, they saved each other’s sanity. Dutch Henry made sure he returned to his cell before meals were served so he would be there when the slot opened and his meal was passed through. It wouldn’t do for a suspicious guard to open the cell door and find the cell empty because the meal tray wasn’t taken. For months, the two dug, scraped, and pulled on the very large stone they had been working on for days, until it finally broke free of the rocks on either side of it. The stone they pulled out had to be large enough to allow the men to fit into through the opening but not that large where they would have trouble maneuvering it. It had to be at floor level, so when it broke free it wouldn’t have to be picked up. When they examined the stone, Dutch Henry noticed that Smith had put mortar only on the outer surface of the stone that faced the cell. He wanted to make it as easy as possible to get the stone out of the wall. Dutch Henry nodded and smiled. “Smart fella, that Smith,” he murmured.
Maybe it was the knowledge he was leaving this prison tonight, or maybe the stress of maneuvering the large stone that caused Dutch Henry to clutch his chest for a moment.
“What is it Dutch? Are you all right? Don’t you scare me now . . . you hear?”
“Don’t worry about me, son. It’s this old ticker of mine. It acts up every once in a while. I guess I’ve been overdoing it a bit with all this diggin’ I’ve been doing.” The pain slowly went away. “I feel better now. Hand me the candle, son, and let’s see what ole Willard Smith left us.” Dutch Henry took the candle and lit it. Then he got on his hands and knees and, with anticipation, crawled into the space left by the stone. He held the candle in front of him, letting it light the way into Willard Smith’s hidden room.
“What do you see, Dutch?”
“Come on in here and see for yourself. Pretty amazing man, that Willard Smith. I can feel him looking over my shoulder, looking at all the stuff he left us. He also left us a guest wearing a prison guard’s uniform.”
“Wha-what did you say?”
“I said he left us a guest in a prison guard’s uniform. Come on in here and see for yourself.”
John wiggled his way through the opening and into the room that had waited patiently for over one hundred years for someone to discover it. When John finally stood and brushed himself off, he looked over at Dutch Henry who, with a tilt of his head, motioned to his left. John turned to look at where he pointed, and backed away in shock, banging his head against the wall. Facing them in the corner was a skeleton in a guard’s uniform sitting in a chair. The flickering light of the candle caused the illusion that the skull was grinning devilishly at them, as if it knew some macabre secret.
“Good God. What is he doing here? And how in the world did he get here? And who put him here?”
“Hold on there, son. I expected this guy to be here. It was all explained in Willard Smith’s diary. This guard heard a noise one day and came to investigate it. When Willard and the boys working on this room heard him as he was about enter this room, he had his gun out ready to plug them. One of the prisoners hid by the entrance and waited for him to come in. When he stepped into the room, the guy hit him with his shovel, causing him to fall. He accidentally hit his head on the corner of a stone over there, killing him instantly. That saved them the trouble of killing him. They would have killed him anyway because he discovered their secret room and they couldn’t afford to let anyone know about it. They all knew that if they were ever put in this hellhole, any one of them could use this back door to escape. So, they killed him and kept it a secret. When he didn’t report for work in the morning, the guards searched for him, but he was nowhere to be found. The assumption was that he wandered off into the desert and died there. When there was no trace of him, an inquiry was made and that was the only story that made sense. Because there was no other explanation that would account for his disappearance, the theory that he wandered into the desert and died became the official story.”
The room was a fair-sized room. It was eight feet by eight feet square. Smith proved to be a fine engineer because he completed the back door escape in the hidden room without the guards knowing about it. Dutch Henry collected his thoughts and tried to remember where the trip mechanism to the door was located. He had committed his notes from the diary to memory. Now he was trying to recall the salient points that would help him to escape this place. When Dutch Henry asked Smith’s granddaughter if he could have the diary, she refused to part with it. He offered her a large sum of money for it and still she refused him. Smith’s granddaughter Priscilla wanted the diary to remain in the family so Dutch Henry had to settle for the notes he took. When he opened the front door to leave, he handed her an envelope. She asked what the envelope was for. He simply said that it was to repay her for the kindness that she had showed him by allowing him to read Smith’s diary. At first, she refused to take it, but the old man reasoned with her.
“Ma’am, you don’t know how much you have helped me. I will be eternally grateful to you, so please make an old man happy, and take this envelope.”
She looked at him and she could see how much it meant to him if she took the envelope. She took it from him but didn’t open it. “Thank you, Mr. Henry, for whatever it is, that is in this envelope. I will open it after you have left.”
“That’s right considerate of you, ma’am. Thank you again for helping me with my story. I’ll be leaving you now and I don’t reckon we’ll see each other again, at least not in this lifetime. Good-bye, now.” Dutch Henry left Smith’s granddaughter’s house but he left with the notes he had copied from Smith’s diary.
“Let’s check the air balloon’s canvas. Smith researched hot air balloons. He mentioned in his diary that some one-man balloons hold 30,000 cubic feet of air. The largest, holds over 800,000 cubic feet. The most popular size holds about 77,000 cubic feet and is about 70 feet high. The older balloons have ‘gondolas’ made of aluminum and fiberglass, but since fiberglass wasn’t invented in Smith’s time, and he didn’t have any aluminum, he decided to make the cage out of canvas secured to half-inch steel rods.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to inflate this thing?”
“If we’re lucky, we might do it in about 30 minutes. It’s good that we’re doing this at night, because Smith wrote in his diary that a balloon lifts better in cold air rather than hot air. Did you know that they used balloons in the Civil War?”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. I’m dead serious. They used balloons and filled them with
hydrogen. Wish I had me some of that hydrogen now. It would make getting out of here a whole lot easier. Come on. Let’s look around for that old butane burner Smith said he stored in here.”
The two men scoured the room and John found it sitting on a chest they hadn’t searched yet. “Here it is.”
“Good. Now look for the fuel he said he stored here. I hope it’s still good. I don’t know what kind of primitive outfit he was using. I just hope it works good enough to get us the hell out of here. Open that chest up. See if it’s in there.”
The chest wasn’t locked. John just unsnapped the fasteners and opened the chest. “Dutch Henry. Come over here and see what I found.”
The old man ambled to where John stood and looked into the old chest. “Well, lookee what we have here. Open those packages up and let’s see what Willard Smith left for us.”
John cut the cord with the sharp end of his shovel and pulled the wrapping from the packages. To their surprise, they found it contained cold weather clothes. Smith knew it would get cold at night and even colder when they climbed high into the cold night air. The first package contained three pullover sweaters. The second contained three pairs of pants made out of the same canvas as the balloon.
“God bless Smith. He thought of everything. There’s where he put the butane containers.” Dutch Henry said, pointing at the chest. “He put them under the packages of clothes. He knew that if he escaped he’d need to wear something besides his prison duds. Smart man, that one.”
The old man walked over the makeshift cage and tugged on the canvas nestled inside of it. The canvas folds fought him for a moment, and then came free. “The right way of doing this is to fill the balloon two-thirds of the way with cold air, then the rest with hot air. But we can’t get cold air into it, so we’ll have to use hot air. That is, if this gas is still good. Well, we won’t know about that until we try filling it. If that doesn’t work, I’m still leaving here. I’ll walk out on foot if I have to and I don’t care if I die out there. It’ll be better than remaining here.”
“Well then, let’s hope that this gas is still good.”
The old man thought for a minute, and then he said, “I think we should try filling the balloon with hot air from the forge. Smith rigged a fan, which we’ll have to turn to force the air through the hose in order to fill the balloon. Once it’s about two-thirds full, we’ll use the burner he left us to keep the balloon afloat. I guess that will have to be our plan, unless you can think of some other way to put air into this contraption.” The two men pulled the canvas from the balloon’s cage and set it by the wall where Smith indicated the hidden door was. They hadn’t tried the door yet, nor would they. Not until tonight. A lot of things had to go right in order for them to make it successfully out of there. The big thing was inflating the balloon.
“Look. I’m dying with curiosity,” Dutch Henry said. “Let’s see if the gas is any good. I’d like to try and ignite it for a moment. If it doesn’t light up, then we might as well throw in the towel and forget about it. We can save the back door for a time when our guards might get careless and leave a vehicle outside that we might borrow for a little while.” To their delight and utter surprise, they let out their collected breath as the gas ignited. With that accomplished, they shut off the gas and did a thorough check of the room to see if there was anything else that Smith had left that they might be able to use.
Smith had secured the guard’s gun and gun belt to a piece of board that was bolted to the wall near the door opening. “Smith thought of everything,” the old man said. “Look, he even left us the dynamite strung out and inserted in all the walls with a fuse leading to the front door, so when we’re ready to skedaddle, all we have to do is to light the fuse and get out of Dodge in a hurry. Smith wrote in large letters in his diary that he left a slow burning fuse timed to go off when we were in the air, a long way from here.” Dutch pointed to the gun. “Strap that gun on you. We might need it.”
“Look, Dutch, I never killed anybody and I don’t intend to start now.”
“I know that. But we might need it if we land somewhere and meet up with a pack of wolves or a mountain lion or some such critter. Hell, we don’t know where this balloon will take us. We don’t have any control over it, or where we want it to go. We can only go where it takes us, and to be honest with you, anywhere it takes us is just fine with me, as long as it’s far away from this hell hole of a prison.”
John W. Hardin strapped on the gun. He swore that he felt his namesake’s hand on his, as the gun fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. It was as if it belonged there. He checked the old police .38 Special for rust, but because of the dry heat of the desert, it was like new. He pulled the cartridges out and checked them, but they too were still like new. He turned each cartridge around in his fingers to see if there was corrosion or a sign they might be dangerous to fire. But the bullets were as dry as the day they were loaded into the chambers of the gun.
“Come on over here and help me get the balloon out of the cage. I want to stretch it out and get it ready so that all we have to do tonight is fire up the forge and open the hidden door and bring the hose line to the balloon. When that’s done, we’ll inflate it. When we’re ready to go, since you are younger than me, you will bring the hose back into the room, set the fuse and then you’ll get your skinny ass out of that room. The last thing you’ll do before getting into this here balloon will be to close the hidden door. But make sure the fuse is lit and burning properly before you do that. You hear now?”
“Yeah. I hear now, so don’t worry. I know exactly what I have to do.”
“Okay, then, we’re all set for tonight. Once we start, things will happen fast. I’m hoping that the guards will be playing cards tonight like they always do. I don’t want one of them sauntering out here and seeing our balloon filling up with hot air. I’d hate to do what those old prisoners did to that guard that stumbled upon them, but if I have to, I will.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jenkins waited patiently until all the boarding passengers got on line. Then he boarded the plane. He was careful to walk around the partition on the other side of the aircraft, opposite from where Virginia’s seat was. He walked to the rear of the plane to his seat, where she wouldn’t be able to see him. When they exited the plane, he would catch up to her at the luggage carousel. Then he would act as if it were a coincidence that he just happened to be there at the same time that she was. He was as giddy as a teenager on his first date. He was sure this would work. He couldn’t wait for the flight to end so he could talk to her. But what he didn’t know was that Virginia had left on an earlier flight.
A private detective by the name of Daniel Harlbager would be waiting for Virginia by the luggage carousel, holding a sign with the name “Hayes” on it. He had instructions to keep her safe and to escort her to her aunt’s home in upstate New York. If necessary, he would remain there and watch for any suspicious persons or activity. If a telephone repairman or a utility man came to their house, he was to instruct Virginia to call him immediately or, if he were on site, to inform him immediately of the visit and then show him exactly what the man touched or repaired. Sweeney knew McCormack’s influence didn’t reach as far as New York. This was Sweeney’s turf and they would be playing by his rules and not McCormack’s or Holland Wilson’s.
Virginia spotted her name on the card the man was holding and she walked over to him. “You must be Mr. Harlbager.”
“And you are Virginia.”
“That’s me,” she said with a smile.
On the drive upstate, Harlbager gave her a small button. “Please keep this on you at all times. If a stranger comes to your door, press this button. It will activate a transmitter and I will hear it. Please don’t be offended, but I don’t care if it’s a policeman, a fireman, mailman, utility guy, or a telephone man. Push the button and it will enable me to listen to what’s being said. I will take a room in town, but I’ll spend most of my time in my car near your aun
t’s home. Remember what I’m telling you. It’s very important that you do exactly as I tell you. Most likely, nothing will happen. The people that threatened your father and framed your fiancé don’t have power in this state, but it never hurts to be prepared. Any questions?”
“No!”
“Tell me again. What are you going to do if someone rings your doorbell and tells you some bull crap story that your phone is out or you have an electrical problem, or your TV is out. What are you going to do?”
She smiled and said, “I’m to push this button.”
“Very good. Now don’t forget to do it, because if you don’t, I won’t know what’s happening.”
“Don’t worry. I got it.”
He smiled, and relaxed for the first time. “Good. I don’t mean to worry you, but it never hurts to be prepared.”
Harlbager dropped Virginia at her aunt’s house and waited until she was safely inside. He drove to the nearest hotel and rented a room not far from the house. Since he didn’t know how long he’d be renting the room, he gave the man his credit card as security. He had his laptop with him, loaded with movies or he could watch the Mets or Yankees through his sling box. Now it all came down to patience and he had a lot of patience. He felt in his gut that something would happen. He didn’t know what, but he had the feeling it would happen soon and he wanted to be close when it did.
Jenkins waited until all of the passengers deplaned and were at the luggage carousel. Jenkins couldn’t understand where she could have gone. He walked to the Delta ticket counter and asked them to check on the status of a Virginia Hayes who was on flight 442. The woman checked her computer. No, she wasn’t on this flight. She arrived on an earlier flight, which arrived two hours ago.