“Renzo!” she replied.
“The west wall is gone!”
“I see that.”
“You all right?”
“I think so. The tower is a mess,” she stated.
“We’ve lost control of the doors in C and D.”
“Jesus...”
“We have to expect a massive breakout within minutes.”
The sum of all fears was transpiring right before Renzo’s eyes. “What are your orders?”
“For the moment stay in the tower. It’s the safest place, and I want you reporting what you see.” Schoenaur’s voice dropped dangerously. “One other thing.”
“What’s that, Captain?”
“Shoot Cooper’s ass.”
Renzo shouldered her M4. “Copy that.” Her ears were still ringing and she didn’t hear the tower hatch open behind her.
“Officer Renzo?”
Renzo whirled. She saw Patrick Rudolpho with an issue Glock in his hand, and raised her rifle to pop him with a head shot. What stopped her was the sight of the Price woman bloodied and beaten, dressed in a Duivelstad uniform blouse and not much else. “Agent Price?”
The woman nodded. “Officer Renzo, we really need to talk.”
* * *
“PRICE SAYS GO!” Rudy announced. Bolan and Rudy burst out of administration and ran across the open space for B Block. The grounds in D-Town were filling with prisoners. Some milled about, but most were surging for the blown-down wall. Bolan wasn’t much worried by his fellow inmates. None would be willing to mess with the hero of the Hunger Games when he had a shield and pistol in hand. Most cheered as the soldier passed. Bolan waited for a bullet from the walls to hit him in the back.
“Cooper!” Rudy shouted. “Wait!”
“No time!” Bolan glanced back.
Rudy picked up a blackened and bloodstained pistol that had obviously belonged to someone who had been manning the west wall. Bolan nodded. “Let’s go!”
The two of them broke for Block B.
A feminine voice shouted, “Cooper!”
Marilyn came running across the dirt. She was still beautiful, but was dressed for action in D-Town issue denims, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
Bolan called over his shoulder to Rudy. “Entry gate to B Block!” The soldier reached the security door and it opened beneath his hand. He, Rudy and Marilyn lunged in and slammed the door behind them.
B Block’s control room was abandoned. The guards had put the whole section in lockdown and gone to deal with A Block and the rioting Aryans.
“I’m kind of busy, Marilyn. What can I do for you?” Bolan asked.
“I’m with you.”
“You don’t know where I’m going,” the soldier stated.
“You know what’s going to happen to me during a riot?”
“I can imagine.”
“Right now everyone is in shock. Fun time in this place should be starting at any moment. The safest place for me is with you,” Marilyn told him.
“I’m going to assault Block A.”
“Super. I hate those assholes.”
Bolan took the spare pistol from Rudy. “You know how to use a Glock?”
“I love Glocks! I had a pink one on the outside!”
Rudy frowned. “Yeah, but did you ever use it?”
“A guy once paid me to shove it up his—”
Rudy interrupted the thought. “Too much information!”
Bolan went to the B Block control board and opened a single cell door. The soldier punched the button for the inner gate and went to Billy the C’s house. The C hadn’t made a move. He and Tavo sat playing checkers.
Billy took in Bolan and his companions. “You are in a world of hurt, amigo.”
Bolan went straight to the point. “I need your tunnel.”
Billy the C’s face went blank with shock. “Cooper, you’re dead.”
“I need to get into Block A. The Aryan Circle has nuclear weapons. They blew the west wall with one.”
“I heard it.”
“They have a second one, and they’re going to blow C Block, and B will fall right beside it. You and your people are going to get buried.”
“You’re going to take Aryan Acres?”
“I need to secure that weapon.”
“You and what army?” Billy the C asked.
Bolan glanced back at Rudy and Marilyn. “I got the Rudolpho boys on my side, and Marilyn.”
Billy the C stared at Rudy and the hottest thing in D-Town in poorly concealed derision. “Vaya con Dios, amigo. Good luck with that. And no, you can’t have my tunnel.”
Kal stepped out of nowhere. His hands were stained with blood. “Give Cooper the tunnel or I’ll take it from you.”
Billy the C stared long and hard at Kal. “That’s fucked up, ese.”
Bolan gave the black warrior a hard look. “This might just be a one-way trip.”
Kal held up his book. “You are actually promising me California?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
Bolan asked the one forbidden question within the entire U.S. prison system. “Did you do it?”
Everyone recoiled at this incredible breach of prison etiquette. Bolan was pretty sure it was a ballistic shield and a sidearm stopping Kal from killing him. One of these days pushing Kal was going to get him into trouble. So far it was saving his life.
Kal’s jaw set and he stared Bolan straight in the eye. “No.”
“I believe you.”
“There was no DNA when I was convicted. Two of the lying-ass primary witnesses are dead. I don’t care how good your lawyers are. I got nothing.”
“Then it will just have to be a pardon.”
Kal stopped short of exploding. “You think you can get the governor to pardon a black man convicted of killing four white folks? You know there’s an election coming up?”
“Who said anything about the governor?”
Bolan had flabbergasted Kal several times during his incarceration. The soldier knew he had just topped himself. Kal stared at him. “You can get me a presidential pardon.”
“The Man does owe me a favor, but you’re going to have to crawl through a hole in the earth and help me secure a nuke.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a guy who enters D-Town of his own free will, crawls through a hole in the earth and takes nukes away from Nazis. I believed you. You believe me?”
“Strangely enough, yeah.”
“I’ll go with them!” Tavo Salcido surged up from the checkerboard excitedly. “I’ll see to our interests.”
“Interests?” Billy the C’s face twisted. “We have no interests, hermano! D-Town’s gonna fall! All I care about is my people not getting shot when the Pennsylvania National Guard retakes this place. I don’t care what Super Cooper says. We stand down.”
“So we either get blown up, or the National Guard takes D-Town and we all get transferred.” Salcido held up his hands. “Either way, why do we care about the tunnel, boss?”
“Because he loves that tunnel. He worked hard on it.” Bolan smiled. “And breaking up is hard to do.”
Billy the C scoffed at Bolan. “You really want to pop up under Aryan Acres and get butt-raped by a hundred Nazi assholes, chico?”
“No, I want to kill a hundred Aryan Circle assholes and steal their nuke.” Bolan shook his head. “I hate those guys.”
Marilyn winked. “We all do!”
Billy the C was amused against his will.
“You want to go with these assholes, Tavo?”
“More than anything.”
“Okay...” Billy the C and Salcido both grabbed the bunk the C had
been sitting on, and heaved. It and the concrete it was bolted to slid back two and a half feet to reveal a dark hole below.
Bolan examined the exposed seam and admired the camouflage. “Toothpaste and sand?”
“Every morning, ese. Every morning for ten years. I was doing push-ups against the bunk and I felt it shift slightly. Then I had me an idea. It took a year to cut through the concrete. But B Block is over a hundred years old. It was the first one built. Back when it was just one crazy man chained to the wall with a Bible in each cell. D-Town’s designer? He wasn’t ready for motivated boricuas on a mission.”
“No one is,” Bolan acknowledged. The soldier stared down into the hole. It was no concrete spider hole poured into the earth, or professional cartel smuggling tunnel propped up with supports. It was a mole hole in the dirt. Bolan wondered how much of it fell when the west wall was blown, and how much of it was ready to go at the slightest disturbance. He had been buried alive before and hadn’t cared for it. “I’ll take lead.”
“Nobody move!” Renzo snarled. Patrick and Price were with her.
Bolan stared down the barrel of her M4. “Officer Renzo.”
Renzo craned her chin at the tunnel. “You’re shitting me.”
“I would never shit a Sicilian,” Bolan said. “I’ve had run-ins with them before.”
“I just bet you have.” Renzo stared at the hole again leerily. “The Nazis have a nuke?”
“You saw the wall.”
“Yeah, I did. So when I have babies are they going to have two heads and stuff?”
“It was a demolition charge and blew the wall outward. One kiloton or less. The fallout should be minimal. When they blow the one in Aryan Acres, that will be more spectacular on a number of levels.”
Renzo’s eyebrows suddenly drew down in a V at Rudy. “Tell me that’s not my tablet, paisan!”
Rudy gave the muzzle of Renzo’s M4 a fatalistic look and shrugged. “’Fraid so. Officer.”
“Bastard.”
Officer Barnes bellowed and racked the action on a shotgun. “Nobody move!”
Renzo stared in disbelief. “Barnes?”
“Renzo!”
“They told me Cooper beat your brains out!”
Barnes didn’t take his shotgun off Cooper. The entire left side of Barnes’s face was swollen and purple. He gave Bolan a rueful look. “More like he swatted me out of his way like a bug. In his defense, I was shooting at him at the time.”
“We’re going to confiscate a Nazi nuke,” Bolan advised. “Are you coming?”
“It’s all over the prison that the Aryans have another bomb. I lost friends on that wall.” Barnes’s bruised jaw set. “I’m in.”
“Give Tavo your pistol.”
Barnes made a face. “You have my pistol.”
“Give him your new one. I believe historically, during prison uprisings, some trusted prisoners were armed.”
Barnes shook his head. “My trusted Tavo...”
Salcido took the pistol delightedly.
“Mr. C?” Bolan asked.
“Yes?”
Bolan nodded at Price. “Watch over this lady for me.”
“The senorita, with my life,” Billy the C swore.
The soldier held out his hand to Barnes. “Give me your tactical light.” Bolan took the light and slung his shield around his neck by the sling. He found it awkward going down the hole. It was summer, but the packed dirt was cool and disturbingly crumbly. Bolan dropped the six feet to the tunnel proper, which was low but wide, and as dark as the grave. The soldier clicked on the tactical light, knelt down and began elbowing his way toward Aryan Acres.
Marilyn made a noise behind him. “Eew!”
“You all right?”
“On your six, Coop!”
Bolan reserved comment. It was going to be a long crawl, and several of his team members weren’t in the best of shape. The soldier crawled. Puerto Ricans had crawled the path daily for a decade and packed the earth beneath him hard. The roof inches above, on the other hand, had a nasty habit of sifting down streamers of dirt for no apparent reason. You could time them by Marilyn’s comments of disgust, but she stayed on Bolan’s heels. He could hear Renzo swearing in Italian. Everyone else grunted or panted as the light behind them died out and only Bolan’s tactical led them forward.
The cold and damp swiftly turned into a dripping sweatbox. The soldier passed the side branch of the tunnel that led to the old sewer system. He pressed on. It wasn’t the worst hundred yards he had ever done, but it was close.
Bolan recognized Barnes making sounds of distress behind him and he sensed people stopping.
Salcido snarled. “Move, Gordo!”
Barnes wheezed and whimpered. The guard was out of shape, already exhausted, was under the earth in a tunnel that could barely fit his girth, had a concussion and was freaking out.
“I’ll kill you!” Salcido shouted.
Kal spoke low. “Shit-can, that...”
“He won’t move! I ain’t dying down here behind his fat ass!”
Renzo hissed. “Leave him alone!”
“He won’t budge!” Salcido complained.
The entire line came to a halt.
Bolan contemplated the tons of earth scraping the top of his head. Trying to make Barnes crawl backward to the light of B Block would be impossible. There was no way to go but forward. Barnes required better motivation than Tavo’s Glock against his backside.
The soldier roared in his sergeant’s voice, “Officer Barnes!”
Barnes sobbed.
“Stick your left elbow forward!” Bolan ordered. He heard a whimper and movement.
The soldier’s voice cracked like a whip. “Now your right! Use your knees!”
He could hear Barnes moving.
Salcido muttered, “About time, you—”
Bolan bellowed the cadence and moved forward. “You had a good home but you left!”
Marilyn of all people responded. “That’s right!”
“You had a good home but you left!” Bolan called.
Kal laughed and joined Marilyn. “That’s right!”
The line began moving again.
“You had a good home but you left!”
Everyone joined the call and response. “That’s right!”
“Hump it, maggots! Hump it! Hump it! Hump it!” Bolan’s voice rose to subterranean operatic heights. “I don’t know, but I’ve been told!”
The line roared as a group. “I don’t know, but I’ve been told!”
Bolan ad-libbed, “B Block tunnels are wet and cold!”
“B Block tunnels are wet and cold!”
The soldier called out cadences. The line responded. Bolan’s assault team humped their way beneath the earth toward Aryan Armageddon as a unit.
Chapter 18
BOLAN SLID UNWILLINGLY from the hole and found himself chin-deep in human muck. He rose as Marilyn splashed down beside him. “Eew!” she said.
The team extruded itself out of the tunnel one by one like people being squeezed out of a toothpaste tube into what appeared to be a cistern turned septic tank. Barnes gasped and slid like a corpulent otter into the filth as Salcido gave him unasked for help from behind. The Puerto Rican hit with a splash of muck. “The sewers leak in down here.”
“No shit,” Kal replied.
Bolan played his tactical light on the wall before him. Someone had spent a great deal of time working on it until he had figured out it was the wall to A Block and not the old sewers. It looked like a three-foot golf divot dug in stone. “Barnes.”
Barnes looked as if he might start crying again. “I’m sorry, I’m so—”
“Officer Barnes, what am I looking at?”
Barnes regained his professional demeanor. “We’re looking at A Block’s basement. That’s where they keep the emergency generator. In a situation they would have shut down main power to the block and would have shut down the generator remotely, as well. It’s not normally accessible from the block, but if they have the guard station and the main gate, then they have the generator room.”
“Rudy, ask for a geothermal on A Block. Is the generator on?”
Rudy wiped his hand on the least filthy part of his shirt and typed. The rest of the team once again stared at Bolan in awe.
“Yeah,” Rudy replied. “Bear says definite heat signature, well within the range for an industrial diesel generator.”
“Kal, you got those charges I gave you?”
“I do.”
Bolan eyed the chipped, three-foot-circumference crater that had been dug in the ancient, crumbling concrete. “Put both in the middle, but don’t push in the pins.”
Kal placed the charges while the soldier made a five-point star around the edge of the excavation. Bolan put his thumbs on two of the detonator pins and Kal followed suit.
“Marilyn,” Bolan said, “do you want to have some fun?”
“This girl was built for fun!”
“Put your thumbs on those pins, but don’t push yet.”
Marilyn took position. Bolan nodded. “This is a boricua tunnel. You want some of the action?”
“Definitely, ese!” Salcido put his thumb on the last pin. “On three?”
“On go,” Bolan ordered. “Go!”
Everyone pushed their pins and jumped back. The seven charges flashed like very unsafe fireworks and the stone chamber echoed. The smoke cleared. The divot was blackened and had six deeper pockets in it, but there was no hole.
Marilyn cocked her head. “Well, it was fun.”
Bolan grimaced. He was running out of time. “Tavo, I need you to go back and get whatever kind of digging tool Billy the C has.”
Salcido shook his head defeatedly. “The biggest thing we have are screwdrivers. It took ten years, amigo.”
Kal ran his hand over the cratered stone. “We cracked it.”
Renzo gazed heavenward for strength. “Are you packing a sledgehammer I don’t know about, Kal?”
Prison Code Page 17