“This is all stuff we need to start game-planning,” said Alex.
“Timeline?” asked Tim.
“I think we should be ready to roll, if necessary, by the end of September. Plan on multiple trips. I’ll do what I can to get some support, either civilian or military. For now, it’s all hands on deck getting the outside of the house patched up. I picked up plenty of caulk and materials to plug the holes.”
“What about the toilets?” Charlie asked. “The pain pills cause constipation, but that ain’t gonna last forever.”
“Good God,” muttered Linda, shaking her head.
“Hey! Just giving everyone fair warning. That camping toilet ain’t gonna cut it when the time comes.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” said Alex. “Top priority tomorrow morning. I brought full replacements from Home Depot.”
“Toilets, shutters, caulking,” said Kate.
“And sleep. In that order,” said Alex.
PART II
“REARM”
Chapter 10
EVENT +7 Days
Maine State Correctional Facility
Windham, Maine
Eli Russell leaned forward in the front seat of the SUV and examined the Maine State Correctional Facility’s main parking lot as they approached the intersection at Mallison Falls Road. The lot looked deserted, sprinkled with cars abandoned after the event. He barely recognized the place. He’d visited his brother here on a few occasions in late 2009, long before the one-hundred-million-dollar upgrade. From what he could tell, few of the old buildings had survived the overhaul. He waved Grizzly on, pushing his convoy of six vehicles across the empty rural road.
“Liberty Two, this is Actual. Start your approach,” he said, releasing a second, smaller convoy along a jeep trail due east of the prison.
“Copy. Patriot Two inbound to target.”
“Liberty Three, proceed to secondary target and execute your mission. You should be able to disable the tower without engaging the personnel inside. The front parking lot is empty and completely obscured from the building by a tall row of bushes,” said Eli.
McCulver’s voice answered. “Copy. We’re making the turn off Elm Street. ETA thirty seconds.”
Everything was falling into place. The special-purpose group, aka Jimmy’s Vikings, had scouted the area surrounding the prison before settling in for a long day of surveillance. One of the first things they noticed driving River Road was a communications tower rising several stories above the trees. Thinking it was an odd location for a cell phone tower, they followed a few back roads to the tower, discovering the Cumberland County Regional Communications Center. A quick drive through the parking lot confirmed the presence of a running generator, which meant the center was fully operational. Since the communications center provided long-range emergency dispatch services to dozens of towns in the county, Eli thought it wise to disable the center prior to the attack on the prison.
McCulver suggested knocking the tower out with small explosive charges rather than trying to storm the building. The last thing they needed was a plea for help broadcast to every law enforcement officer in the county. With the tower destroyed, the dispatchers inside posed little threat to the operation. The only problem with McCulver’s plan was that it required him to blow up the tower and race to the prison in order to handle the explosives. Eli couldn’t rely on any of the men in the convoy to properly set and safely detonate the charges required to breach the back gate and the utility bays leading to the generator.
The whole plan hinged on McCulver’s unique skill-set, which left Eli feeling a little uneasy. Moving forward, McCulver would train an apprentice. The Maine Liberty Militia was one stray bullet away from losing its biggest force multiplier—an unacceptable risk given their overall plan.
Eli’s convoy cruised through the parking lot, passing the facility’s single authorized pedestrian entrance, which had been sealed from the lot by a rolling razor-wire-topped gate. Recent correctional “guests” within Jimmy’s group speculated that the few correctional officers on duty would congregate in the futuristic steel and glass administrative building. The correctional custody units beyond the building no longer contained their own control rooms, cutting down on the number of officers required to staff the prison.
All inmate movement was monitored and directed from a single control center located in that building, giving the officers little reason to be elsewhere, especially with the inmate population locked in their cells. Night shifts were reduced even further due to automation, explaining the paucity of vehicles in the parking lot. Jimmy’s men estimated they’d be up against a few dozen officers, most of whom had little to no practical firearms training.
Once inside, they should have little difficulty mopping up the staff if they decided to stay and defend the prison. Eli planned to leave the front entrance unopposed, to encourage the guards’ swift departure. If he could take the prison without losing any men—all the better.
Grizzly turned the SUV left toward the end of the parking lot, where the asphalt transitioned to a hard-packed gravel road that followed the prison’s eastern fence line to the loading bays and a utility garage. Yesterday, one of the bay doors had been left open for several hours, presumably to release excess diesel fumes from the generator they had pinpointed to one of the buildings next to the garage. If they could catch one of the doors open this morning, they wouldn’t have to wait for McCulver. As they raced down the fence, the second convoy appeared, trailing a column of dust as it barreled toward the garage.
“This is Liberty Two. I just saw one of the loading bay doors slam shut. Looks like they know we’re here. Over.”
Damn closed-circuit cameras!
“This is Actual. Proceed with caution, and wait for Liberty Three. Do not try to open any of the doors without explosives. Never know what’s waiting on the other side.”
They’d have to do this the hard way.
The westbound convoy crossed ahead of Eli’s SUV, screeching to a stop on the pavement outside of the corrugated metal garage building. His convoy sped past the loading area, following a tight dirt road around the security fence until it connected with a paved road that cut right down the middle of the facility. They accelerated toward the gate at the end of the road, stopping several feet in front of the gate. A closed-circuit television camera mounted to the underside of the adjacent building panned in their direction, no doubt filling every screen in the control room. Eli stuck his compact AR-15 out of the passenger window and fired three bullets into the boxy, plastic contraption, shattering it.
He opened his car door and walked up to the gate, shaking it. Sturdy, but far from indestructible. He was tempted to have one of the vehicles ram the gate, but the thought of disabling a car right in front of the primary breach point chased the idea away. Unobstructed vehicle access along this road was critical to his plan. He had no reason to hurry inside the gate, since they couldn’t access any of the secure prison areas until thirty minutes after the generator was destroyed.
If McCulver is right about the automated lock system.
He was rarely wrong. They were probably better off waiting at a standoff distance, anyway. The guards had access to military-grade weapons, and there was no reason to tempt any of them to play Rambo.
“Liberty One. Form a defensive perimeter around the vehicles, focused on the building to our right. We don’t want any surprises while we’re waiting,” he said into his radio.
The primary assault team took cover behind the SUVs, aiming at the windows and doors along the building, while one man from each vehicle watched the opposite direction. A few days of vehicle drills had paid off. The men actually looked like they knew what they were doing.
Three nearly simultaneous cracks hit Eli’s ears, followed by a slight tremor.
“Liberty Actual, this is Liberty Three. The tower is down. I say again, the tower is down. En route to first breach point,” said McCulver.
“Hot damn, Liberty Three!”
he said into the radio, unable to contain his excitement.
This was going down like a real military operation.
“Copy, en route to first breach point.”
Eli reached through the passenger window and grabbed a pair of binoculars sitting on the dashboard. He focused the wide field of view on the administrative building at the end of the road three hundred yards away. Beyond the fence, the utility road was flanked on both sides by gray, one-story correctional units, which fed into the recreation fields lining the prison’s perimeter fence. The units were connected by a long security hallway, which meant they would have to be careful on their approach. Enterprising guards could catch them in a lethal crossfire on the way to the administrative building. If Liberty Two didn’t breach the utility garage soon, the guards could work their way to the adjacent building, forcing Liberty One to retreat. Worse than that, they could keep Liberty Two from disabling the generator, severely complicating the operation.
At that point, they would be forced to use bolt cutters on the fence, which would put them on foot looking for an entrance leading to the generator room that could be forced open. Everything depended on McCulver, who should be arriving any minute to blow a hole in one of the garage bay doors.
***
Dave Camp magnified the camera feed and counted the men visible near the vehicles.
Jesus. They have a fucking army out there.
This was entirely too much. He needed to get the hell out of here before it was too late. Most of his shift took off as soon as it became apparent that they were dealing with more than a downed power line. The first wave crammed into the few vehicles that worked, heading out before shift change at 6:30. A few vanished on foot over the next hour or two, slipping out of the utility garage and walking east to River Road. He watched them peek nervously over their shoulders until they were out of sight, but never said a word.
He notified Casey Norton, the nightshift captain, when motion sensors triggered cameras in the main garage next to the administrative building. Three guards tried to hotwire one of the facility’s fifteen-passenger prisoner transport vans, but were stopped by Norton, with the seemingly reluctant help of the remaining officers. Norton surprised them all by offering to drive the rest of the shift home in the van, if that’s what they wanted. Five guards, including the three caught stealing the van, took him up on the offer. When Norton returned with the vehicle around ten in the morning, they were down to fourteen correctional officers and Stanley Collier, the deputy warden, who rode his bike to the prison.
He should have taken Norton up on the offer to leave but didn’t have any compelling reason to go. His shared apartment in Westbrook was most likely stripped of any food, and his family lived north of Waterville, well outside of Norton’s advertised delivery range. The prison offered a secure bed, food, and access to the dispatch center across the street, which seemed to be the only way anyone was communicating after the event. At the time, it seemed like the best deal available. The idea of an armed attack against the prison never crossed his mind. Nobody wasted time thinking about how to break into a prison, which was why the group of men on his monitor scared him.
“I have about fifteen heavily armed men at the back gate. They’re wearing camouflage and carrying assault rifles. I’m not sure what they’re waiting for.”
“Did you say fifteen?” asked Collier.
“More than that. I can’t see the whole group from this angle and distance. They shot up the camera at the gate,” said Camp, pointing toward one of the center images on the sixty-inch flat-screen monitor above his station.
He shifted his hand left, highlighting a different screen.
“I have at least twelve more outside of Vendor Services. They’re playing with one of the delivery bays,” added Camp.
“Can you see what they’re doing?”
“Trying to get in,” said one of the guards watching on a different screen.
“Jesus, these guys are heavily armed. I don’t think we can hold them off if they get inside,” said Collier.
“Not armed with batons and pepper spray. We need to access the armory, Stan, before it’s too late,” said a thick, gray-haired guard standing in the control room’s doorway. “My people are getting nervous.”
“Casey, they can’t get into any of the buildings directly connected with the correctional areas,” said Collier.
“They’re in!” yelled Camp, drawing everyone to the surveillance station.
A cloud of smoke rose above the building as men poured into the delivery bay. One of the vehicles backed out of the delivery lot and sped along the fence toward the back of the facility. He’d missed whatever they’d done to the door.
Shit!
“You were saying?” said Norton.
“Did they use explosives?” Collier asked.
“I didn’t see,” said Camp. “But the smoke wasn’t there a second ago.”
“Stan! If they take out the generator, we’ll have a big problem on our hands in about thirty minutes.”
“They don’t know how the system works,” stated Collier.
“You willing to bet your life on that?” asked the shift captain. “They seem pretty organized to me. I bet that car racing toward the back is carrying enough explosives to blow the gate and a few of the external doors.”
An out-of-breath guard ran into the control room. “The dispatch tower across the street is down! That’s what we heard! The whole thing fell over. What the fuck is going on?”
“That’s it, Stan. We have fifteen officers on duty, including you. It’s not enough if they get inside. I’m opening the armory,” said the shift captain.
“Even if they manage to trigger the thirty-minute lockdown fail-safe, they can’t get into the administrative building. We’re safe here.”
“With nine hundred pissed-off prisoners on the loose?”
“They’ll run for the gate,” said Collier.
“They’ve been drinking out of their toilets for the last several days. We haven’t exactly been taking good care of them.”
“What else could we do? The facility isn’t equipped to handle this kind of an emergency. Orders from the governor were clear. Hold the prisoners until—”
“Until what?”
“I don’t know. They’re working on something,” said Collier.
“They’re working on something, all right. The state can manage to deliver diesel for the generator, but they can’t be bothered to feed the inmates?”
Collier shrugged his shoulders. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to give me the keys to the armory. Whether we stay or go, we need weapons,” said the captain.
“We can’t take the weapons out of here. They’re state property,” stated Collier.
“What if they got another team out there waiting for us to leave?”
“I don’t know!”
“You better start thinking really hard about the situation. You think none of these fuckers knows where you live? I guarantee your home address is public knowledge in the high-security unit.”
“What, I just issue weapons and drop everyone off at home?” said Collier. “How am I going to explain that one to the governor’s office?”
A muted thud echoed in the room, followed by a brief second of darkness before the emergency lighting activated.
“Set your watches,” grumbled the shift captain. “Thirty minutes until we no longer have the option of leaving.”
Camp thought about Norton’s input for a few seconds. What the fuck was he waiting for? He’d give the deputy warden one more chance before walking out on his own—with or without a firearm. If he headed west, he could hide along the banks of the Presumpscot River until these inmates cleared the area, maybe warn a few of the folks living in South Windham. With nine hundred prisoners on the loose, the nearby houses were sure to be attacked, along with the residents inside.
“We need to get out of here, sir,” said Camp, standing up from his compute
r station. “Cameras show the front is clear. Our van is in the parking lot. They obviously don’t know the van works. We could make a quick getaway.”
“Damn it, all right. Get all of your men back to admin,” said Collier.
“They’re already here. I just need to get into the armory.”
Collier balked, grimacing at the suggestion before nodding.
“The keys are in my office safe.”
***
Sammy Vaughn heard a car door slam, freezing him in place. He twisted slowly onto his stomach and faced uphill, scanning the row of vehicles facing the road behind him. The parking lot sat twenty feet higher than Vaughn’s position, on an incline that restricted his view of the parking lot. Pressed into the grass at the base of a tree, he could only see the tops of the tallest vehicles. A powerful engine started as he scanned for signs of movement. It sounded like a diesel. He focused on the top of the big-ass, gray passenger van he had seen when he was running across the parking lot to the trees.
Has to be the van.
“Liberty Actual, this is Overwatch. I have a vehicle starting in the parking lot. I think it’s the prison van.”
“This is Actual. Can you confirm how many are in the van?”
“Negative. Not without giving my position away. Hold on. It’s backing up. I should have a solid visual when it drives out of the lot. I could hit them with the IED. No point in letting them raise the alarm.”
“Negative. Without the dispatch tower, they’d be talking to themselves. Do not trigger the IED. We can’t afford to waste any explosives,” said Eli.
“Roger that,” Vaughan said, slipping the radio into one of his cargo pockets.
When the top of the van disappeared, he grabbed his binoculars and sprinted to a second stand of trees closer to the exit, making sure to stay as low to the ground as possible. He’d been extremely lucky with the van. If he hadn’t been lying prone on the ground, scanning the road, the guards might have spotted him. Vaughn raised the binoculars and waited for the van to appear beyond the parked cars at the end of the lot. When the van cleared the cars, speeding toward Mallison Falls Road, the first thing he noticed was Casey Norton’s shit-eating grin—plainly visible through the open front passenger window.
Point of Crisis (The Perseid Collapse Post Apocalyptic Series) Page 10