by David Archer
Jason grinned. “It’s about half a mile away,” he said. “I’m running over there now. Want one of you guys to follow and bring back something to eat?”
“Good idea,” Noah said. “Marco, you mind?”
Marco grinned. “First thing you and I ever did was go have breakfast together, remember? I never turn down the chance to eat.”
Neil tossed him the keys to the Hummer, and he followed Jason out the door. He was back forty minutes later with cheeseburgers and fries, and three big cups of root beer, so the three of them cleared the table and sat down to eat.
Neil continued to watch the monitor, calling out when Sarah had left the day room and gone to eat her own dinner, then again when she ended up in one of the sleeping rooms. It was nearly 6:30 by then, and she was completely stationary after that.
At ten o’clock, Neil began yawning, so Noah told him to kick back and try to get some sleep. He took over watching the monitor, and Marco leaned back in his own chair. Ten minutes later, both of them were snoring softly.
* * * * *
When they left the chow hall, Sarah followed Sharon to the sleeping room without incident, and they were able to grab two pads side-by-side. She had no idea what time it might be, but knew it was still fairly early in the evening. The two of them sat and talked for a while, occasionally talking with some of the other women around them, but most of them were pretending to not speak English.
Sarah was amazed at the intensity with which most of the actors employed in the training facility played their parts. A few of the women claimed to be Americans who had been railroaded on drug charges, but most were playing native Thai or Cambodians. She heard about “ya-ba,” the local name for the methamphetamines that were the most common drug charge, and witnessed some of the bullying that went on among the inmates.
Sharon had explained to her about the way some inmates abused others. “The ones that look all Butch, those are the Toms,” she said. “The rest are Dees or neutrals. You can tell the difference because the neutrals don’t bother to pretty themselves up. The Toms and the Dees are lesbians, but you won’t see them up to anything in here. They tend to find some kind of privacy when they want to get mushy, and I’m glad of that. Sometimes, though, the Toms will just pick on any of the girls, just to be mean. I try to stay out of their way and not get their attention.”
Sarah looked her over briefly. “I take it you’re a neutral?”
“Yep. If anyone tries to give you nail polish, turn it down. As soon as you put it on, you’re fair game.”
Sarah shuddered. “Thanks for the tip, I’ll remember it.”
* * * * *
Noah was watching the monitor when it suddenly began beeping. That was the signal, he knew, telling him that Sarah had activated the “panic button.”
“Heads up,” he called out. “We’re ready to move.”
Neil and Marco came awake almost instantly, and Noah pulled the blueprint back onto the table. He pointed at a blank wall on the outside of the building, one of the places Jeremiah had selected, that seemed to be the back wall of the storage room. “We’ll go up onto the roof right here,” he said. “Grab the tools and guns and let’s get going.”
The tools Jeremiah had provided were in a bag that had been provided by R&D. The section of wall he had pointed out was about 400 yards from the main entrance, in a dimly lit area. Since the outer perimeter structure of the prison was a single-story building made of mostly just concrete and steel, there wasn’t much of an alarm system on the outer walls, but as Jeremiah had suggested, they planned to scale the wall and cut down through the roof. Noah had already marked out a path he hoped to follow to where Sarah was sleeping, but he had no idea how long it would take to get to her, or what obstacles might be in the way.
They made it to the wall without being spotted, and Marco used the air-powered launcher to shoot the grappling hook up onto the roof. It caught on a lip that ran along the edge of the wall, and he went up it hand over hand. Noah followed the same way, and once they were both on the roof, the two of them pulled Neil up.
There, they hit the jackpot. A skylight looked down into the storeroom, letting them see that the room was empty, but it had alarm contacts on three sides. Raising it would set off an alarm, so Marco began drilling a hole in the roof a couple of feet away from it. Once the bit had punched through, he began moving it sideways to cut a square hole big enough for them to drop through.
Noah used some of the wide, thick tape along that side to create a hinge, then used more of it to apply the little metal bars that would prevent it from falling in, creating a way to let the cut-out panel close over them. When they got it open, they were able to lower themselves onto the top of a shelving unit, then climb quietly down to the floor. The section they had cut out was still in place, held up by the tape and bars so that it wasn’t noticeable unless someone looked very closely.
“Chewing gum,” Noah whispered, and each of them put a stick of gum into their mouths and began chewing. While they were not using the real gas rounds during their practice, Mickey had told them that the genuine, antidote-laced gum would protect them from the gas in their guns for up to an hour, and they didn’t plan on needing it to last any longer than that.
Noah and Marco pressed the vibration-detecting cones against the inner wall that bordered the hallway, but they didn’t seem to register any vibrations. The doorway that led into the room was locked from the inside, requiring a key to open it from the hallway side. Noah turned the lock quietly and pulled it open enough to peek out into the hallway. He saw no one, so he opened the door wider and glanced in both directions.
A single guard was walking away from them down the hallway, some distance away. Noah froze until she had turned a corner, then motioned for Neil and Marco to follow as he stepped out.
Neil was holding the tablet, and held it up so Noah could see the overlay. Based on where they had entered the building, Sarah was about 200 yards away from their position, and they would have to follow the current hallway fifty yards before turning left.
Moving as stealthily as they could, they made their way to the first turn. Noah leaned out for a split second to look down the hallway, then used hand signals to tell the others that there were three people in the hallway they had to follow. As soon as he conveyed that information, he turned the corner and began moving quickly toward the three guards he had seen.
One of them noticed him and started to speak, but Noah squeezed the trigger on the gun he was holding. The gun burped softly several times, and about a dozen of the little gel rounds shot out, striking the guards and the wall behind them. The practice rounds were empty, of course, but the actors had all been coached on how to react to them. Almost instantly, they froze, simply standing where they were and staring in his direction.
The three men slipped past them, ignored by the guards. The monitor led them to another turn, this time to the right, and once again Noah peeked around the corner.
There were only two guards standing in the hallway, so Noah stepped out and fired at each of them quickly. Just like the ones before, they simply seemed to lose interest in anything and stood where they were.
One of them was standing just in front of the room where they expected to find Sarah. Noah stepped up to the barred door and looked inside, but it was dark and all he could make out were many forms lying on the mats.
“Sarah?” Noah said in a loud whisper, and he saw her rise quickly from a spot near a corner. A second woman got up with her, and they began hurriedly making their way toward the door. Unfortunately, that meant stepping over and occasionally on other inmates, who began complaining loudly. Noah tapped the bars with his gun, and most of them quieted down.
Marco was looking at the lock on the door, and turned to the guard standing nearby. A quick pat down found a ring of keys, and he began trying them in the lock. There were eleven keys on the ring, and it was the ninth one he tried that finally opened it.
Sarah and Sharon stepped ou
t, but suddenly the lights came on and an alarm sounded. Noah glanced back down the hall and saw a number of guards rushing in their direction.
“Busted!” one of the guards shouted. “A little too much noise. No luck this time, you’re going to have to try again.”
Noah and the others lowered their guns as they were surrounded by the female guards. This first attempt had met with failure, but Noah had expected as much.
“We got farther than I expected,” he said. “To be honest, I figured we’d have been caught quicker than this.”
One of the women grinned at him. “If you’d been a few minutes quicker, you probably would’ve gotten away with it. Our shift change takes about fifteen minutes. I might’ve known your girl would think that was a good time to try the escape, but you have to move a lot faster if you plan to use it in the real mission.”
Noah nodded his head. “Good advice,” he said. “Let’s reset, and try it again.”
The guard nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Go back out and let’s call it a signal in fifteen minutes.” She looked at Sarah. “I’m guessing you sent the signal when they locked you down?”
Sarah nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Sharon said that happened about ten minutes before the shift change, and that we have about fifteen minutes with reduced guards once it began.”
“That’s correct,” the guard said. “Realistically, it’s probably a good plan. Fifteen minutes, okay?”
Sarah and Sharon went back to their pads while the guards who were leaving their shift came back into the hallway. Noah, Marco and Neil walked out without interference, and went back to the planning room. Neil was watching the time on the monitor so that they would know when it was time to start again.
“Now,” he said when it was time. Once again, they took off toward the same wall and Marco shot the grappling hook onto the roof. Up he went, followed by Noah, and then Neil, and they went through the motions of cutting through the roof again.
This time, since they were already familiar with the route, they moved a little more quickly. They made it to the sleeping room after encountering the same number of guards, then got the door open and let the two women out. Some of the other inmates began clamoring to be released as well, but Noah shut the door and locked it before any of them could get out.
Noah had studied the blueprints of the building well, and decided not to follow the same path back to the storeroom. He gave Sarah and Sharon each a stick of gum, then took off in a different direction and cut into another hallway, where he had to shoot two more guards. They hurried past them, then made two more turns without running into other guards. The last turn took them back into the hallway with the storeroom, and they slipped inside and shut the door quickly, locking it behind them.
Marco went up the shelving unit and out onto the roof first, then reached down to help Neil and the two women. Noah came up last, just as an alarm began to sound below them.
It was only about twenty-five feet to the ground, so Marco swung himself over and hung by his hands for a moment before dropping. Noah tossed the rope over to him, and Sarah, Sharon and Neil slid down it as quickly as they could. Noah waited until Neil was down and off the rope, then tossed it down, slid over the side and dropped the way Marco had done.
Guards were beginning to come out the front entrance, but they seemed disorganized. Noah led the group into the darkness, and they made it undetected to the side of a building a short distance away from the prison.
Guards were moving toward them, but they seemed to be paying more attention to the prison building itself than anything else. Noah led the group deeper into the lane beside the smaller building, and found a spot behind it for them to hide. A few minutes later, still undetected, he declared the rescue a qualified success.
“We got them out of the prison,” he said, “so I think we’ve got the basis of a plan. The trick is to cut our trapdoor ahead of time, that will save us several minutes when the actual rescue takes place.”
Neil grinned, but Marco expressed some doubt. “Do you really think it’ll work in the real situation? Maybe we should think about trying some other scenarios, maybe at different times of the day or going in from different access points.”
Noah turned to look at him. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The whole point of this mockup is that it’s designed to look and operate as much like the real prison as possible. I don’t know how they got information about building security, or about the shift changes and how they work, but it’s almost certain that this is just the way it is in the real one. I’d rather have one concrete plan and refine it by running through it over and over than try to have multiple plans and run the risk of confusing parts of them when it comes down to the wire. That shift change is likely to be the best opportunity we’re going to get, so we need to keep working on it until we’ve got this down to the level of ballet choreography.”
Marco grinned and shook his head. “You’re the boss, Boss. I’m just here to do what you tell me.”
“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
SIX
Since Noah had chosen the midnight shift change as his target opportunity, the actors and staff of the prison agreed to stop paying attention to the real hours of daylight and keep running the shift change scenario over and over. Noah called a halt to their simulations for the night, and they all bunked down in the planning room to get some sleep.
The following morning, they began running the shift change scenario in earnest. Noah gave Sarah her cell phone to use as the signaling device and sent her back into the mockup to get ready. She and Sharon would bunk down together in a simulated “lights out” situation, while Noah, Neil and Marco ran through multiple scenarios on how to get her and the target out in the least amount of time possible.
That meant trying other avenues of entry, but by the time they ran the tenth simulation, he decided that his instincts the first time had been correct. Going through the roof over the storeroom was the quickest and most effective way to get into the building. Interestingly, the actors playing the staff of the prison didn’t even figure out how they were getting in until the third attempt, but they continued to act as if they knew nothing, of course.
The prison staff scheduled their mock shift changes at random times, so that they would not know when to expect the signal. As soon as the cell door was locked, Sarah would hit the speed dial to Noah’s phone, let it ring once and end the call.
Simple as it was, the system worked. After fifteen practice runs, they knew each turn by heart and could use the vibration detection cones well enough to tell how many people were in the hallway outside the storeroom, and whether they were to the left or right of the door. That made it extremely easy to know when and how quickly to move.
Both Neil and Marco occasionally had to use their guns, and both of them were proficient enough for them to be effective. After the first few runs, Noah settled on putting Marco at the rear with himself on point, leaving Neil in the middle. Neil was authorized to fire anytime he thought one of the others didn’t see a target, or just to make sure the targets got hit. Noah had to caution him about giggling a couple of times, but after that he became as silent and stealthy as the others.
Noah wasn’t ready to quit, however. They caught a few hours of sleep Tuesday night, then continued practicing all the way to Wednesday evening. When he finally called a halt, Sarah shouted, “Hallelujah!”
They had made twenty-seven practice runs, and Noah was confident that they had greatly improved their chances of success during the real mission. He declared a holiday for the next day, and even though the weather was pretty cool, he invited them all out on the boat on Thursday afternoon.
Marco had asked if he could bring a date, and they arrived at just before noon. “Noah, Sarah,” he said, “this is Renée. She’s cool, she works out at R&D in the administrative offices there. Renée, this is Noah and Sarah.”
Renée was about thirty, a little older than Marco’s twenty-seven, and s
he wasn’t what you might consider a pretty woman, but she had a personality that could light up a dark room. “Oh, my gosh,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you guys, it’s a pleasure to finally get to meet you.”
“Same here,” Noah said, but Sarah took to her instantly.
“Pleasure’s all mine,” she said. “Nice to have another girl around, what with all this testosterone. You guys been dating long?”
“About six months, now,” Renée said with a nod. “Marco was assigned to us for a couple of weeks, helping out with some equipment testing, and we just sort of hit it off. When he found out he was being assigned to your team, he called me up and took me out for a steak dinner to celebrate. You’re pretty much all he’s talked about since then.”
Neil and his girlfriend Lacey came walking over from his trailer a few minutes later, and Renée was introduced to them. Moments later, the three girls were chatting away as if they’d known each other for years. Noah watched them for a moment, then he and the other two guys grabbed a couple of coolers full of lunch and soft drinks and led the way down to the boat house.
The sun was up and shining, but the air temperature was only in the mid-sixties when they started the boat and headed out onto the lake. Noah cruised along slowly, trying to avoid giving them a chill, but the steady breeze made them keep their jackets on. When they were about half a mile from shore, he shut down the engine and let the boat drift. The six of them sat out in the breeze for a little while, but then moved into the cabin.
Sarah turned on the radio and let the local rock station play in the background as they sat and talked. Renée broke the ice by telling them a few funny stories about Marco’s time in R&D.
“Marco was sent to us to help in testing some equipment they were developing,” she began, “but nobody told him what it was. When he got there, Wally just dropped him off at one of the workshops and told him to do whatever they needed him to. He was all excited about getting to be part of the operation, so when the techs told him to put on this jumpsuit, he thought it was something to wear while he was working. Then they told him to stand in a particular spot and handed him a helmet with a face mask.”