by David Archer
Noah nodded. “Set us up, then,” he said. “We need to get started on the practice runs today.”
Wally grinned at them. “Hold on,” he said, “not so fast. We got a couple other little surprises for you. Follow me.”
He led them through a series of hallways and into yet another room. An older, balding man rose from his seat as they entered.
“Jeremiah, this is Team Camelot. Noah, this is Jeremiah. Whenever we run into a need for a special tool, he’s the guy we come to.”
Noah shook hands with Jeremiah, who smiled softly.
“Pleased to meet you,” the older man said. “Wally briefed me on your mission and told me to think about what tools you might need. I managed to get a copy of the blueprints of the prison, and started thinking about what might be required if you had to create your own way in.” He turned to a large table where the blueprints were laid out. “Looking at what we got on their security, it appears to me there are numerous places where it would be possible to literally cut through a wall or roof to gain entry. The trick to that, of course, is how to do so without attracting a lot of attention. Now, I looked at every angle I could think of, including the possibility of going in from under the building. It has a basement level, but that would require digging. Any kind of excavation would be pretty difficult to keep hidden unless you started some distance away and constructed a tunnel. For that reason, I decided to look at simply going through the building itself.”
He pointed at various places on the designated walls near the women’s section. “These are spots where I think it would be possible to cut through the wall and make an entry point, but the problem is that such an entry would be difficult to conceal. On the other hand, if you take a look at the top of the building,” he added, as he flipped the blueprint away to show what appeared to be a large print of a satellite photo, “there are some pretty big sections that aren’t easily observable by security. According to our intelligence, these areas that I’ve marked aren’t even subject to video surveillance.”
He turned away from the table and stepped over to a workbench where numerous tools were laid out. The first item he picked up looked like a simple tube about twenty inches long and three inches in diameter. “This is an air-launched grapple and rope. When you press the trigger button here near the bottom, compressed air shoots out a folding grappling hook that trails fifty feet of high-strength nylon line behind it. At the places I marked on that photo, that’s enough for you to shoot it onto the building where it will catch on the architecture. You can then use the rope to climb up and onto the roof. The grappling hook is made of a very strong plastic and coated in rubber. It shouldn’t make a very loud noise when it lands on the roof.”
He set the tube back on the table and picked up the next item, a cordless drill with what looked like a sock hanging off the side, and fitted with a twenty-four-inch drill bit. “This started out as a standard cordless drill, the kind you can buy in any hardware store, but I’ve made a few modifications to it. The bit, on the other hand, is my own design. You can drill straight through up to twenty-four inches of wood, brick or concrete, but the length of the bit is based on spiral cutting technology. The long spiral you see that runs the whole length of it is essentially a cutting blade. Once you’ve drilled through, you can simply push the drill sideways and cut out a large section of whatever you drilled through. You’ll be surprised at how quickly it works, and how silent it is, but the best feature is that I’ve added a small but extremely powerful vacuum attachment. All of the dust will be sucked up and blown into this sock, so it won’t be falling into the room and giving away what you’re doing.”
Noah took the drill and looked at it closely. “So, as long as we pick a room with nobody in it, we should be able to cut through without being noticed?”
Jeremiah nodded his head. “Our intelligence indicates that their security doesn’t use vibration detection. That being the case, it’s a safe bet that if you can find an empty room and enter through the roof, no one will be the wiser. And, just to help keep it that way, I came up with a couple other little gizmos.” He took the drill back from Noah and set it on the table, then picked up what looked like a six-inch-wide roll of duct tape. “This tape will stick to absolutely anything, and I’ve tested it on every type of material you’re likely to find in that building. When you make your first straight cut, put a strip of this tape on it. Then, when you make a parallel cut, you can use another strip to secure a couple of these flat metal bars to keep that side from falling through, so that the first strip of tape will act as a hinge. That’ll make a simple trapdoor that you can close behind you. Unless someone looks up and pays close attention, your point of entry should go completely undetected.”
Noah looked at the tape and bars, then turned to Wally. “I think I like this guy,” he said.
FOUR
The training center occupied several thousand acres to the northwest of Kirtland, and was surrounded by some of the most impenetrable fence in the world and under a no-fly zone so it could not be observed from above. Inside its borders, mission planners could construct mockups of any building or urban area, any sort of terrain and even create limited modifications to the climate. The main gate looked like the entrance to a military reservation, which is how it appeared on maps. Entry was restricted to E & E personnel or other government employees who might be temporarily attached.
The guards on the gate were just as meticulous as the ones at the R&D center, carefully examining the identification Noah and his team presented before allowing them to pass. One of the guards handed Sarah, who was driving, a quickly printed map that showed them where to go.
They drove along a wooded lane for more than three miles, and the quickly constructed mockup of the Bangkok prison came into view. It was built of wood that was covered with a sprayable plaster, so that it resembled the concrete building it was based on.
A guard shack just outside the front entrance housed two men, one of whom stepped out as they parked the car and got out. Noah showed his ID, and the others produced their own.
“I’m Camelot,” he said. “We’re supposed to start our mission training today.”
“Yes, Sir,” the guard said, “we’ve been expecting you. My name is Jason, I’m supposed to give you a tour right away, and then let you set up your training as you like.”
“Sounds good. Lead the way.”
The guard, a stocky redheaded man in his mid-thirties, turned and led them toward the front entrance of the big building. “This is the main entrance to the women’s section,” he said. “There’s an administrative office inside here, with holding cells for incoming inmates. We’ve got it staffed with actors, just ignore the fact they’re not necessarily ethnically correct, okay?”
Noah and the others followed Jason into the building. There was a counter set up with four people behind it, whom Jason told them were acting as intake personnel. Once they began their training, Sarah would actually go through the intake process just the way she would when the mission began.
From there, Jason led them into the main building of the women’s prison. Laid out just like the real thing, they saw a long hallway with doors off either side. Some of the doors led to medical facilities, feeding facilities, work and day rooms, while the rest went into large rooms covered with mats on the floor. The work and day rooms held a number of women who simply looked at them.
“In the actual prison, the women sleep on these mats and are all crowded together. From what we’ve been told, they’ll be literally crowded up against each other throughout the night. Only the cell bosses, inmates who are designated to hand out work assignments and such, get any space for themselves.”
Next to each of the large cells was another room that contained lockers. Each inmate, they were told, was assigned a locker, but there was no way to secure them. “Anything you stick in a locker is likely to be stolen,” Jason said. “Most of the women keep anything important to them hidden inside their clothes or in their po
ckets, but that doesn’t guarantee it won’t be stolen. Most of them are lucky to hold onto their toothpaste, from what we were told.”
The tour continued through other parts of the building that were normally not accessible to inmates. Noah, Neil and Marco would have to familiarize themselves with those passages, since they would probably be part of the path they would have to take when it came time to break Sarah and Sharon Ingersoll out. There were many twists and turns, and many rooms that were commonly used only by the prison staff. These included offices, storage rooms, locker rooms and a separate dining area.
“One thing I found interesting,” Jason said, “is that they apparently don’t use any video cameras inside the prison. The only place they have any video cameras as part of their security system is in the intake office and in the visiting areas. Other than that, they just don’t bother.”
Noah nodded his head. “That is interesting,” he said, “but it’s also good to know.”
When the tour was concluded, they went back out to the guard shack. Jason showed them a room there that they could use for planning and staging their training, then left them to begin working out the details.
“Well,” Noah said, “we might as well get started. Sarah, I’ll walk you in as if you were being dropped off at the prison, then the guys and I will start setting up the trackers. Within a couple of hours, we’ll be able to follow you all around the building.”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “I’m assuming there’s somebody in there playing Sharon? I’ll do what I can to find her, and try to work it out so that we’re both in the same place at some point, so you’ll know where and when to pick us up.” She turned to one side and affixed the tracker to her leg, then lifted her shirt enough to put one of the temporary panic buttons on her left side. “Guess I’m ready.”
Noah took hold of her arm and walked her out of the room, through the guard shack and up to the front door of the building. There was a doorbell button beside the door, and he pressed it.
A gruff-looking woman opened the door and peered out. “Yes?”
“New prisoner for you,” Noah said.
The woman looked Sarah over, then reached out and took hold of her other arm. She dragged her through the door without saying another word. The door closed in Noah’s face, and he turned and went back to the planning room.
Marco had found a detailed map of the building and laid it out on the table. He looked up as Noah entered. “Okay, boss man,” he said, “I’ve been going over the blueprints. If you take a look at these plans, I think you’ll see the best place to put our sensor units is here, here and here.” He pointed at three different places on the drawing of the surrounding area.
“Looks good,” Noah said. “Let’s get them set up, and then see how well they work.” he picked up the small case that held the relay units and the others followed him out the door.
It took a few minutes to orient themselves and determine where they wanted to set them up, but it was done within a little more than an hour. Neil pulled out the monitor and turned it on, and a red dot appeared on an overlay of the inside of the women’s prison.
“Got her,” he said. “Looks like she’s in one of the holding cells in the intake section.”
“It’s working, then,” Noah said. “Now all we have to do is wait for her to make contact with the target.”
They went back to the planning room and settled into some chairs. Neil kept one eye on the monitor, and reported periodically as the red dot moved from place to place on the overlay. “Looks like they put her straight to work,” he said at one point. “She’s in one of the workrooms, the second one we saw. I think it was full of sewing machines, wasn’t it?”
Marco nodded. “Yeah, it looked like they were making the prison uniforms there.”
Noah said nothing, instead just continuing to recline in his chair.
* * * * *
The gruff woman had taken Sarah directly into one of the holding cells and pushed her inside. There were no other prisoners in it, and its only furnishing was a bench so she sat down to wait. The staff actors went about whatever they were doing for an hour, leaving her to sit and wait, but finally she got frustrated.
“Hey,” she called out. “This is only training, we don’t have to make it that realistic, do we?”
A couple of the actors looked up at her, but then looked away. It was nearly half an hour later before the same woman pulled her out of the cell and plopped her into a chair beside a desk. For the next twenty minutes, she answered questions about her name, where she lived, what she was doing in Thailand, etc. When that was finished, another woman grabbed her arm without warning and yanked her up out of the chair, then marched her through the hallway and into the shower area. She was handed a uniform and told to strip, put her personal clothing into a basket and then shower before putting the uniform on.
Sarah rolled her eyes, but did as she was told. The basket with her clothing disappeared while she was in the shower, so she put on the uniform and sat on the bench beside the shower entrance until one of the women came for her again.
This one simply told her to follow, and led her to one of the workrooms. “See that big gal with the short hair? She’s the work boss. Go tell her you’re here to work.” The woman pushed her inside and shut the door behind her.
Sarah walked up to the woman who seemed to be in charge and said, “I’m supposed to tell you I’m ready to work.”
The woman glared at her. “Then get to work,” she said sarcastically. “Go around to every station and pick up the finished clothes, then sort it out by size and put it on the racks.” She pointed at some wheeled shelving units.
Sarah looked around and saw that several of the women running sewing machines had stacks of finished pants and shirts on their tables, so she began gathering them up. None of them had size tags, so she was forced to simply hold them up and guess at which shelf they went on, but no one corrected her.
On her second pass around the room, she asked several of the women if they knew an American girl named Sharon, but each of them simply shook her head. She kept working for a couple of hours, and then the work boss blew a whistle. The workday had apparently come to an end.
The other women lined up by the door, and a moment later it was opened. Sarah got into line and followed them as they went into one of the day rooms. There was a television on one wall, but hardly anyone was watching.
The workroom had held about forty women, but there were more than a hundred in this room. She began asking around about Sharon once again, and finally one younger woman looked at her and frowned.
“I’m Sharon Ingersoll,” she said. “Who are you?”
Sarah grinned at her. “Believe it or not, I’m here to get you out. I need you to stay as close to me as possible, so that I can signal my team to come and get us. Is there any way to know whether we’ll be sleeping in the same room?”
“Sharon” shrugged. “If you haven’t had a room assigned, then you can go into any of them. Just follow me, and maybe no one will say anything.” She looked Sarah up and down. “I had a visitor recently who said something about maybe getting me out of here, but they didn’t say how or when. How do I know you’re telling the truth? I’ve never seen you before, you could be somebody they planted here to try to get close to me.”
Sarah glanced around before she answered. “Let’s just say you and I have some of the same friends,” she said. “My bosses say that your bosses want you back pretty badly, bad enough to send us to get you.”
The girl looked at her closely for another moment. “Do you know how hard it would be to get us out of here? We’re pretty much always surrounded, either by guards or other inmates. You see those guards over there? Those little clubs they carry hurt like hell if they hit you with them. Unless you’ve got a squad of Marines out there somewhere, I don’t see how this could work.”
Sarah gave her another grin. “Trust me,” she said, “the guys I’ve got make a squad of Marines look like
Girl Scouts. We just need to pick the right time and place for them to come get us. Anybody gets in their way will wish they hadn’t.”
Sharon didn’t change her expression, but cocked her head to one side. “The guards change shifts at midnight,” she said. “They lock our doors and almost all of them disappear for about fifteen minutes or so, then the new ones come in. They don’t actually come into the room, but there’s always two or three of them outside each door. During shift change, that drops to one or two in the whole hallway. That would be the perfect time, if you’re for real.”
Sarah nodded at her. “Is there any kind of clock or anything in the rooms? Some way we can know that it’s getting close to shift change?”
“No clocks,” the girl said, “but they lock our doors about ten minutes before. Would that be enough advance notice?”
“I guess it’ll have to be,” Sarah said. “What do we do until then?”
“We hang out here for a while, then they take us to eat. I’ll warn you now, the food really sucks. As soon as we’re finished eating, we go to the bunk rooms. Stay close to me then, and if nobody drags you away then maybe we can get a couple of mats together. Everybody just sits on them for a while, talking and such, then when the lights go out we all have to be quiet.”
“Good. Then as soon as they lock that door, I’ll signal the guys to come get us.”
FIVE
Jason came into the planning room at a little after four and told Noah that he was about to leave for the day. “The new shift is coming on,” he said, “but they won’t bother you. You guys hungry?”
“We’re getting there,” Noah said. “Is there someplace around here to grab some supper?”