by Mark Dawson
What am I doing to keep my family safe? Well, Mama, I’m colluding with two men I don’t know to spring a man accused of murder from the most secure prison in the country.
She insisted that she would get Angelo up herself, and read two of his favourite books with him before she glanced at her watch and saw that it was seven. She looked out through the window and saw Hicks and Ziggy in the car on the street, waiting for her as they had arranged the previous night.
Her mother watched her as she strapped on her gun belt.
“Be careful,” she said.
“I will. I’ll be back later.”
She kissed her son and her mother and made her way out to the car.
HICKS HAD rolled down his window.
“Morning,” he said as she approached.
“Good morning.”
Ziggy was in the back of the car today, so she went around to the passenger side and got in next to Hicks.
“You get some sleep?” he asked her.
“Some,” she said.
“You ready for this?”
“I think so.”
“You don’t have too much to do,” Hicks reminded her. “Just get the phone near to the computer.”
“I know,” she said. “I remember.”
Josie turned around and looked into the back of the car. Ziggy was in the middle of the bench seat, with an open laptop on either side of him. The phone that she had taken from him yesterday was hooked up to one of the laptops. He was wearing a pair of headphones through which she could hear the thump-thump-thump of bass. He didn’t look up.
“Don’t expect anything from him until we get there,” Hicks apologised. “He’s been working on this all night.”
“But he’s ready?”
“He says he will be.”
“Best we get going, then.”
Josie turned around and looked up at the window of their hotel room. She saw Angelo’s face between the curtains as Hicks put the car into drive and pulled away.
58
JOSIE WALKED through the open gate and made her way across the lawn and into the faux castle that, in turn, led into the main prison building. She walked with as much confidence as she could muster, doing her best to mask the fear that was churning in her gut.
Ziggy had worked on whatever it was that he was doing for the duration of the drive south, and his regular curses of irritation, rendered louder than they might have been by the fact that he was listening to music and couldn’t hear himself speaking, did nothing for her confidence. He had had all night to finish whatever it was he was working on, and he was still finalising it. The clatter of his fingers on the keyboard became faster and faster the nearer they got to Bilibid, and he only handed the phone over to her as Hicks pulled up in the same place that he had parked yesterday, outside the prison complex. Ziggy’s summation of his work as he folded up one of the laptops was that he had done the best that he could do; his dissatisfaction didn’t do much for her confidence.
She went through the main door and made her way through the lobby. It was busier again, with the same bustle of staff and visitors as she had seen during previous daytime visits. There was a queue of men and women waiting to pass through the scanner in the security lodge and, as she made her way across the hall to the Plexiglas window, she noticed that there were two people already waiting ahead of her.
That, at least, was good. It would grant her a little added time for Ziggy to do whatever it was that he was proposing to do.
But her good luck did not hold. A second clerk sat down behind the counter and beckoned her to step up.
“How can I help you?” the man said. It was the same clerk as last night. He looked up and recognised her, adding, “You again.”
“Yes,” she said. “Smith. Has a visit been arranged? I wasn’t called.”
“Hold on.”
The man turned to his computer and scrolled through the information on the screen. Josie reached into her pocket and took out the cellphone that Ziggy had given her. She looked down at the screen, pretending to use it. There was no indication that the phone was anything other than normal, no tell-tale information on the display that might betray the alchemy that Ziggy had promised.
There was a narrow sill on her side of the window, and she placed the phone on it, sliding it so that it was obscured by the computer on the other side of the glass and, she hoped, out of the clerk’s sight.
“Go through to the visiting block. They’ll bring him out when you get there.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She turned away and started for the security lodge.
“Excuse me!”
She stopped and turned back.
“Your phone.”
The woman who had been standing behind her in the queue was proffering the cellphone that she had left behind.
Josie managed a bashful smile, thanked her, and took the device. Her stomach dropped. She had only been at the desk for a minute. Ziggy had said that it might take him longer than that. Had she given him the time that he needed? There was no way of knowing and now she was committed. She had to follow through with the rest of the plan.
She felt sick as she put the phone back into her pocket and made her way to the lodge and the line of people waiting to be searched.
JOSIE WASN’T taken to the communal visiting room.
Instead, the guard led her farther down the corridor to a private room. She waited for the door to be opened and then followed the guard inside. There was a table and two chairs, one of which was positioned over an iron bracket that had been fitted directly into the concrete floor.
“Take a seat,” the guard said. “He’s on his way.”
Josie did as she was told, sitting down and lacing her fingers together on the table. They had taken her gun and the hacked phone when she passed through the security lodge. She had felt uneasy handing it over, relying on Ziggy’s assurance that his homebrew alterations were undetectable and the assumption that it would just be dropped into a box until she returned to collect it, but still fearful that it would give her away. She felt exposed and vulnerable.
The door opened and she heard the jangle of metal. A guard came through first, stepping aside so that Milton and a second guard could follow him inside. Milton’s wrists were shackled together; the metal chain rattled as he moved. The guard pulled back the chair for him so that he could sit, and then knelt down and attached a tether to his chain and fastened that to the bracket.
The guard turned to Josie. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Then he goes back again.”
“Thank you.”
The guards retreated to the edge of the room, but made no move to leave.
“Alone, please,” she said sternly.
The guards paused.
She nodded down to the loop of chain that connected the cuffs around Milton’s wrists. “What’s he going to do? If I need you, I’ll shout.”
The guards exchanged a glance. The first guard shrugged, repeated that she had ten minutes, and led the second one outside. The door was closed. She could see the silhouette of one of them through the smoked glass.
“Talk quietly,” Milton said in a low voice.
“Bugged?” she mouthed silently.
“Probably,” Milton said.
She shifted in her seat. She was aware of a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades, as if someone was behind her, watching.
“I’ve met your friend,” she said.
“He came?”
She nodded. “Is he usually so strange?”
“He has a way about him,” Milton said.
“They said you killed someone.”
“One of the inmates who was working for the man responsible for this. I wouldn’t waste any sleep over him.”
You sound just like the president, she thought. She started to allow herself to think about the moral equivalence between the two of them, both prepared to be the arbiter of whether someone should live or die. She quickly stopped herself.
She didn’t want thoughts like that in her head. She had committed herself to Milton and his friends. They were the only way she could see to untangle herself from the problems that, paradoxically, had been caused by her refusal to ignore the obvious injustice of Milton’s plight. The last thing she needed now was to start second-guessing herself, and him.
She lowered her voice again. “They wanted me to tell you that you’ll need to be ready.”
“What did they say?”
“Ziggy says you’ll know when it happens.”
“Nothing more specific?”
“He says he’s working it out. I think he’s the sort of man who favours big gestures.”
“About as vague as I’d expect,” Milton said with a grimace.
“He gave me a phone number. He said when it all starts, you should get to a phone and call it. He’ll guide you out. He said you need to remember it.”
“Go on.”
She recited the number. Milton closed his eyes, made her repeat it, and then nodded.
“You’ve got it?”
“Yes.”
She looked up at the door; she could see the silhouette of the second man now, too. They were both close to the door.
“Thank you, Josie. I know you’ve taken a risk to help me.”
“You’ll help me? Once you get out? Me and my boy?”
“You have my word.”
“Good luck.”
She got up and looked down at him. He had been battered, his face marked with bruises that ran through blues and purples and blacks, but there was a certainty of purpose about him that was impossible to mistake. He reminded her of her father. He had been a promising catchweight fighter before an accident at work had ripped up his knee. He had died when she was a teenager, but she still remembered the fights that her mother had taken them to watch, and the iron determination in his eyes as he stepped through the ropes to face opponents who were often bigger than he was.
Milton had the same dauntless certitude.
They exchanged a glance.
The door opened.
She walked out on him without turning back.
59
THE GUARD unclipped the tether from the bracket and told Milton to get up. He did as he was told. The cuffs were tight, cutting into the flesh on his wrists, but he didn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that he was sore. That was just the latest of his inconveniences: his muscles were still tender from the beatings that he had taken, one of his teeth had worked its way loose, and his neck and shoulders ached from being forced to sleep on the cold stone floor.
The guards took their places again, one in front and the other behind. “Move,” the guard behind him said, jabbing him in the back with the point of his baton.
They escorted him out of the visitors’ block and back toward the main building. He recognised the entrance to the isolation wing, but they passed by it.
“Where are we going?”
The guard jabbed him in the kidneys. “Quiet. Walk.”
They made their way to Building No. 1 and went inside through the main door. They followed the corridor until they reached the stairs, then climbed up to the second floor.
The door to Milton’s old cell was open.
Two guards emerged from the cell. They were bearing a stretcher between them. There was a body on the stretcher. Milton looked down at it as the guards negotiated their way around him.
Isko.
The man’s eyes were closed and one arm hung limply over the edge of the stretcher.
He was dead.
The guard behind Milton put his hand on his shoulder and pushed.
Milton took another step. He turned and looked into the cell.
There was a man inside. He was big—much bigger than Milton—and wearing an evil grin.
Tiny.
HICKS LOOKED at his watch.
It was ten. Josie had been inside the building for an hour. He had a good view of the prison forecourt from their spot outside the gates. He could see the parking lot and the lawn and, finally, the ostentatious building with its vinyl banner and grand entrance. He had watched her disappear inside, but she had not yet come out.
He turned and looked into the back of the car. “Well?”
Ziggy had taken out a USB dongle and inserted it into the port of one of his laptops. He ran his finger down the screen, chewing on his bottom lip. “Here,” he said, finally. “TUUSAN 21. That’s the Bluetooth connection I saw from before.”
“What are you doing?”
“Running a Linux script. Getting the unique ID of the keyboard.” He paused, dragged his finger across the laptop’s trackpad, and stabbed his finger on the return key. “There,” he said.
“Done?”
“I’ve spoofed it to this laptop and paired with the computer.”
“You’re in?”
“Nearly.”
Ziggy’s fingers flashed across the keyboard.
“How much longer?”
“Nearly there.”
“She can’t stay there.”
“Shut up, Hicks. It’ll take longer if you keep distracting me.”
He typed in commands and then sat back, leaning against the seat, his hands held up. He turned the laptop around so that Hicks could see the screen. There was a download bar slowly filling with green from left to right.
“What’s that?”
“I’m connected to the FTP server that has the exploit I wrote last night. I’m uploading it to the computer in the security building.”
The bar crawled. “It’s taking ages,” Hicks complained.
“Download speed here is prehistoric,” Ziggy said with a shrug. “Not much I can do about that.”
The bar was halfway full.
“INSIDE.”
“Again?”
“Inside.”
He jangled the cuffs. “At least take these off. Give me a fighting chance.”
“Move,” the guard said curtly, putting his hands on Milton’s shoulders and shoving him.
Milton staggered into the cell. Isko’s bedroll had been shoved to one side; Milton could see splashes of blood on it. He held up his hands. “Come on,” he said. “You just killed an old man. You want to try with someone who can fight back?”
Tiny dominated the space. His head was just an inch or two beneath the ceiling, and there was barely enough room to pass on either side of him. Milton was close to the door. The guard put his foot against his lower back and pushed, causing him to stumble another two steps inside.
The door scraped across its runners and then clattered as it crashed into the other side of the doorway, the lock fastening with a loud click.
Tiny was almost within touching distance.
“Take these off,” Milton said.
The big Filipino maintained his hungry grin.
“You scared?” Milton said.
“You die now,” Tiny said, his English awkward and halting. He raised his hand up and drew his finger across his throat. “Like your friend.”
Milton heard excited voices behind him and, when he risked a quick turn of his head, he saw that the guards were still there. They had been joined by three others.
Front-row seats. The guards were going to watch him take his beating.
Milton laced his fingers together. He knew that he was outmatched. Tiny was bigger and stronger than he was, and, despite the rest that he had managed to get without being beaten every day, his body was still bruised and sore. In addition to all of that, his hands were cuffed.
Tiny took a step forward.
Milton swung both hands at him. It was impossible not to telegraph it, and Tiny leaned away from the clubbing blow, raising one arm and deflecting it with his wrist. Milton lost his balance and stumbled closer in. Tiny crashed his right fist into Milton’s face. It was a quick jab, without too much momentum behind it, but it was still stiff enough to jerk Milton’s head back against his shoulders. He staggered away until his back was up against the bars of the cell door.
He heard laughter from the watching guards.
He felt the taste of his own blood in his mouth and spat a gobbet on the floor.
Tiny smirked.
Milton laced his fingers together again.
60
JOSIE CAME through the security lodge and waited in line to collect her gun and the phone.
“Josie?”
She stopped.
“Wait.”
She turned. Bruno Mendoza was hurrying in her direction.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
Her breath was clenched deep in her gut. “I came to see Smith,” she managed.
“Why?”
“I had some questions for him.”
“More questions?”
“Loose ends.”
“I don’t understand,” Mendoza said. “I told you this was finished. I said you were wasting your time. Why did you do what I told you not to do?”
“I was being thorough. I had to speak to him again.”
Mendoza reached out and grasped her firmly around the elbow.
“What are you doing?” she protested.
“I want to talk to you.”
He led her into the lobby. She tried to jerk her elbow free, but he just tightened his grip and yanked her after him.
“You’re hurting me.”
Mendoza pulled her over to the left, toward the doors that led into the administrative wing of the building. There was a guard sitting at a desk next to the door.
“Open it,” Mendoza said.
The man was looking down at his computer. He pressed the return key half a dozen times, each one harder than the last.
“I’m sorry, sir. My computer is down.”
Mendoza looked from the guard and then back to Josie. She flinched; there was no way that he could possibly have guessed what Ziggy was trying to do, yet she felt as if he was able to look past the lies and obfuscations and see the truth.
“Open the door,” Mendoza said.
The man got up from the desk and opened the door.
Mendoza yanked on Josie’s elbow, and she followed him inside.