Gann went to a rack containing more than a dozen bright yellow packs with ESCAPE SUIT written on them in large letters. He took one of the packs, pulled open the seal, removed the bright yellow suit and draped it over the side of the rack. He opened a red box on the wall. Inside were a couple of small air cylinders. He removed one, checked that the contents gauge was green and that the full-face mask was secured to the end of its high-pressure tube. He turned the bottle valve, put the mouthpiece in his mouth, took a quick guff to ensure that it was working and placed it on the shelf beside the escape suit.
He faced the emergency escape tube which was basically a large pipe welded vertically to the ceiling and big enough for a man to crawl up inside. The bottom end, covered with a hatch, was just below his waist. He checked a gauge to ensure that the pressure inside the tube was the same as the ferry’s and squatted to take hold of the hatch wheel. He turned it a couple of times and the heavy hatch dropped open on its hinge and returned almost all the way back up on a pair of robust springs designed to counter its weight.
Gann got onto his knees, pushed the hatch fully open against its springs and poked his head up inside to take a look at the narrow space that was illuminated by an internal lamp. A hatch covered the other end of the six-foot-long tube, the brass wheel at its centre wet with condensation. A breathing umbilical was secured halfway up and he crawled sufficiently inside to reach up and press the spring valve inside the teat. An instant gush of air revealed that it was working and he inspected the small collection of valves and gauges that operated the flooding system. Satisfied that everything was in working order, Gann manoeuvred his large frame out of the awkward space and got to his feet.
He looked around to make sure there was nothing else he needed to prepare for his murderous plan and took a deep breath to steel himself. This was by far the biggest job he had ever taken on.
He walked back to the door and unclipped the two dog hasps. When he pulled open the door his gaze met Stratton’s again.
Gann stepped through the door, left it open a little and crossed over to Stratton. ‘You got somethin’ you wanna say to me?’
Stratton looked down, playing the passive-submissive card.
‘Then stop lookin’ at me. You ain’t my type.’
Gann brushed past him and Stratton watched as he stopped in front of the route-marker board where a blue light put the ferry a quarter of the way to the arrival dock.
Stratton sat back in his seat, beginning to wonder if this operation had any chance of success. It was always easier to see where the cracks were from the outside. On the other hand, the inside was where the reality was. He had no experience of penitentiaries and, frankly, the level of security so far was significant enough to suggest the job was going to have to rely much more on chance than the briefing had allowed for.There were things about the ferry that had not been reflected in the diagrams he had seen. They were small but significant enough.The control panel was in a different location for one thing, and there were three relief valves in the ceiling when he was sure there had only been one on the blueprints. Stratton’s knowledge of the layout of the prison was based entirely on plans that had not been updated in several years.
Then there was the total lack of information about the everyday routine life of the prisoners as well as the guard system. Procedures could change overnight, anyway.There were also the various unquantifiable characters who ran the place - such as Gann. Asinine prison officers were only to be expected but Gann was more like some kind of classic medieval dungeon guard more comfortable running the torture chamber than looking after the everyday welfare of an inmate. He could screw up the operation all on his own.
‘Hey, leave that open,’ Gann called out.
Stratton looked over to see he was addressing Palanski who was about to lock the door to the emergency escape room.
‘But it’s supposed—’ Palanski began but was cut off.
‘I said leave it open.’
Palanski walked over to Gann at the console. ‘We’re supposed to keep it closed while we’re in transit,’ he said in a low voice, as if he didn’t want the children to see their parents arguing.
Gann couldn’t have cared less what the prisoners thought. ‘And I want it open, OK,’ he said, glaring at his colleague. And then, as if regretting his anger, he calmed down, mimicking Palanski’s lowered voice. ‘I wanna go back in there and check on somethin’, OK? Between you and me I think one of the relief valves is sticky.’
Palanski looked up at the valve. ‘This whole friggin’ ferry needs a service if you ask me.’
‘Go check on Ramos,’ Gann said.
Palanski stepped back, glad that Gann had calmed down. He leaned over the Mexican whose eyes were heavily red-rimmed and looked as if he had taken a drug overdose. Palanski had no idea what he could do for the guy and so he made a meal out of checking him over.
Gann went back to the route indicator. The timing of the next phase was crucial. The ferry needed to be close to the prison dock but not too close. The dock was designed on a moon-pool concept.The ferry arrived from beneath, the cables rolling under a series of wheels before heading up inside at an angle. Once the ferry moved below the wheels it followed the cables and emerged as if from a pool inside an air-filled cavern. Gann’s plan was to sabotage the ferry and leave the prisoners for dead before it arrived at the dock. But the prison maintained a rescue team on standby whenever a ferry was operating in case there was a serious incident.
Gann estimated he would soon have to commence the operation and as he checked his watch he experienced a touch of nerves such as he had not felt since his earliest days in the business of skulduggery. He glanced up at the leaking relief valve, a pivotal element to his plan, and then at the prisoners sitting in a row, wondering which of them was the reason they all had to die. It was obvious that things were not well with the prison but perhaps his mission would solve the problem. The man was not just a threat to the future of the facility but also to Gann’s employment.This was a great gig for him, the best he’d had. It was more money than he had ever earned and he didn’t want it to end.
It was typical of Gann that never once did he question if all the men had to die. It made perfect sense. He was used to following orders that would result in the injury or death of people whom he did not know. He was more interested in how he was going to succeed. Gann knew his place in the great scheme of things. He always did. He was not the kind of man who could set up a company or a criminal organisation by himself. But he made a good lieutenant. Working at Styx had given him levels of responsibility he had never before been entrusted with and tasks such as this made it all so much more satisfying. If there was anything he could do to safeguard his job he would.
Gann’s introduction to inflicting violence on others as a means of gainful employment came at an early age, shortly after he’d left school in Toronto, the city of his birth. He became an ‘enforcer’, a glamorous title bestowed upon him by his first boss, a ruthless housing developer who specialised in turning low-class neighbourhoods into upper-middle-class luxury homes. Gann’s job was to put pressure on owners who did not want to sell. This he managed in a number of occasionally imaginative and usually violent ways. Once the houses had been bought the tenants were evicted. Normally the sight of Gann stepping in through the door and telling them that they had to get out was enough. If not, creativity was called for.
The turning point in Gann’s life came when a particularly tough tenant organised a group of friends to beat him up on the day he arrived to press his demand to vacate the premises. It was a serious case of misjudgement: several days later Gann followed the man to his place of work, approached him in an underground car park as he was getting out of his vehicle and beat him to death with an iron bar. At first Gann was worried, never having gone that far before. But instead of panicking he kept his nerve and rigged the murder to look like a mugging that had gone wrong.
A few months later Gann’s boss was slain as the re
sult of a private business disagreement and Gann was hired by a powerful loan shark in whose employ opportunities to improve his particular skills were plentiful. Gann’s reputation grew and he became a freelancer on the books of several major collecting agencies, becoming involved in bounty hunting abroad in places like South and Central America. The next honing of his developing skills was his introduction to assassination, a trade he took to effortlessly with his first task: the strangling of an accountant who had embezzled money from a New York crime family.
Gann carried out a number of similar ‘jobs’ for the same people until one day things took a turn for the worse. He was picked up by the FBI just before a job and, convinced he was looking at several decades in jail, he agreed to turn state’s evidence. As luck would have it, Gann managed to avoid imprisonment altogether due to shockingly poor management of the evidence against him. The feds, however, stuck with their witness-protection agreement and, armed with a new identity, Gann was free to start life over again.
Gann’s big concern now, however, was how he was going make a living. The feds had been quite clear in their threats about what would happen if he went back to his old ways. But depression and desperation soon set in when he failed to find satisfactory employment and just as he was contemplating his first armed robbery he received a call from a man who knew not just his real identity but every detail about his past. This man had called to offer Gann a job utilising his particular type of skill but this time for a legitimate company. Gann was curious, to say the least, and agreed to take a meeting in Houston at the headquarters of an outfit called the Felix Corporation.
After a brief interview he was hired as a special-duties prison supervisor, a position that, although he had zero experience of such work, filled him with excitement at the thought of its possibilities. His responsibilities were left vague for the time being and he was placed on a handsome retainer for six months. During that time he attended courses on the duties of a corrections officer, followed by training in sub-sea environments. Gann arrived at the prison several months before the first inmate and spent his time familiarising himself with the jail’s layout and procedures, its life-support systems and the ferry procedures. At the end of it he received his special-duties brief, which included giving every assistance to Mandrick, the new warden, as well as to the government agents who would be conducting prisoner ‘questioning’.
Gann had matured greatly since his early days and, anxious to keep his position in a company that, in his eyes, showed great potential for his personal enrichment, he made sure he did precisely what he was ordered to and did it as efficiently as possible. In the exclusive world of murderous lackeys, Gann was at the top of his game.
Therefore, when Gann was told it would be convenient if everyone in the ferry that day should die it was as good as done. He could also expect a handsome bonus at the end of the month.
Gann went to the communications set, surreptitiously unplugged the handset and put it in his pocket. He went to the control panel and pretended to study the various gauges while taking hold of an adjustable wrench attached to a chain fixed to the panel. The tool was used for turning tight valves. A screwdriver was similarly attached and he used it to prise open one of the wrench’s chain links and disconnect it. He reached for the interior main air valve and turned it until it was fully closed. The needle of the interior pressure gauge moved very slightly to indicate a drop in cabin pressure. With the screwdriver he undid the screw that secured the interior valve handle, removed the handle completely and, using the wrench, bent the valve stem enough to ensure that it could not be turned by hand. He placed the wrench in his pocket.
The gauge indicated that the pressure was dropping slowly and Gann looked up at the leaking relief valve in the ceiling to see the flow of the dripping water increase. He could feel the sudden decrease in cabin pressure in his ears and as the leak became a steady stream the other two relief valves began to drip. The prisoners beneath wondered what this sudden shower was all about.
Stratton also felt the drop in pressure and looked up as Gann walked past him towards the emergency escape-room door.The three relief valves popped and sea water burst into the cabin as if from fire hoses, soaking the prisoners who shouted and struggled in their seats.
Palanski was as confused as he was alarmed. ‘Gann!’ he shouted over the sound of gushing water as his colleague stepped through the doorway into the emergency compartment. ‘What the hell’s happening?!’
‘Looks like we got a problem,’ Gann shouted back.
Stratton sensed something odd about Gann’s tone. He looked between the control panel, the rapidly flooding vessel and the empty doorway into the escape room. The relief valves were designed to allow any increase in internal air pressure over a specific setting to bleed out of the vessel and not allow any water into the cabin if the pressures reversed. But all three valves had failed - which suggested they had been tampered with.
The frothy grey sea water had already filled the shallow sump beneath the flooring grille and was lapping around Stratton’s feet. He instinctively pulled on his chains - they were fixed solid - while his mind raced to search for a solution to a situation that was clearly catastrophic.
Palanski hurried to the control panel to check the gauges. ‘The pressure’s still dropping,’ he shouted to no one in particular. He reached for the inlet valve, only to discover that the handle was gone. He searched frantically for it, on the panel and on the floor. Unable to find it he reached for the wrench, only to discover nothing on the end of the chain. In desperation he tried to turn the valve stem with his wet fingers but it was impossible.
Stratton watched Palanski give up on the valves and look around in despair.
‘Break the pipe!’ Stratton shouted.
Palanski focused on him, a confused expression on his face.
‘Break the inlet pipe! The one the valve’s attached to!’ Stratton yelled above the hissing water.The extreme gravity of the situation was horrifyingly stark. Stratton might have little experience with prisons but he knew a hell of a lot about submersibles and the dangers of them flooding under pressure. The situation had ‘extremely serious’ written all over it.
Palanski realised the prisoner was making perfect sense. If he could puncture the inlet pipe between the valve and the exterior air bottles it would have the same effect as opening the valve. But there was something else Palanski realised he could do in the meantime and his eyes went to a large red button near the door. He reached up and punched it in. An alarm sounded.
He grabbed up the screwdriver and began to force it behind the high-pressure air pipe in order to prise it away from the wall.
Gann appeared in the escape-room doorway wearing the yellow one-piece emergency escape suit, the transparent hood hanging down his back. The suit made him appear twice as big as he was. He waded through the cabin, the water already to his knees, and brutally grabbed Palanski’s arm to spin him around. Palanski looked at him wide-eyed, confused by the escape suit.
Gann did not give his colleague a second more to consider the implications and brutally slammed him across the face. But Palanski was no slouch when it came to fighting and, driven by the added desperation of the situation, he surprised Gann by bringing the screwdriver down hard towards the man’s face. Gann would have been skewered had the chain attached to the screwdriver not reached its full length and abruptly halted the tool’s progress in mid-air, an inch from his eye. Gann did not hesitate and punched Palanski in the gut with a mighty uppercut.
Palanski bent over double but recovered enough to lunge at Gann with a mid-body tackle. Both men bulled down the row of prisoners. Gann only barely managed to stay on his feet, his back slamming into the steel wall of the escape room with Palanski still bent down in front of him. Gann took hold of Palanski’s arm, spun the man around and, positioning the limb across the open doorway, slammed the steel door on it, crushing the elbow joint. Palanski howled as he grabbed at his injury and Gann slipped the wrench
from his inside pocket and brought it down onto the side of Palanski’s head. Blood streamed across Palanski’s face as he fell into the water.
Satisfied that Palanski was no longer a threat, Gann stepped through the emergency escape-room door, took a moment to look back and glare at the prisoners, and closed it behind him.
Stratton watched the dog hasps, waiting for them to turn to secure the door, but they did not and the door opened slightly though he could see nothing inside.
The water continued to flood in through the roof. Every man knew this was the end if they could not free themselves. They fought with their chains, their wrists bleeding as the shackles cut into the flesh. They shouted, growled, whimpered as they fought in desperation for a way out of the watery coffin that they were trapped inside.
In marked contrast, Stratton sat almost still as the ice-cold water lapped around his waist. He had been through every possible escape scenario in his mind but any one of them depended on first getting out of the seat chains. He looked down at the only possible chance of survival that was left - Palanski, sitting in the water, his chin just above it, teetering on the edge of consciousness.‘Palanski!’ he shouted. But the guard did not respond.
The two duty controllers in the prison OCR (Operations Control Room) sprang to life with the triggering of the shrill ferry alarm, both of them flashing looks at a blinking red light on the master control board. Beneath it were four route-indicator maps, each similar to the one on the ferry: a small blue LED light was flashing on the far-right map indicating that the number four ferry was five hundred metres from the prison dock.
The senior controller reached for a button on the console and pushed it as he leaned towards a slender microphone protruding from it. ‘Ferry four, this is Styx control room . . . Ferry four, this is Styx control room. Speak to me. Pick up the handset and speak to me!’
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