He heard the men singing, a murmur in the night as with leaves in a gentle wind…
The colonel swayed back in his chair. The words, telex typed, bounced at him from the page. James Carew had written to Mrs Hilda Perry. Mrs Hilda Perry lived at Churchill Close, Leatherhead, Surrey. Jack Curwen lived at Churchill Close, Leatherhead, Surrey. He swept open the drawer of his desk. He needed the telephone directory of the Department of Prisons.
He glanced at his watch. He was on the countdown. He started to mouth away the final seconds…
Jan ripped the lever of the first R.G.-42 high explosive grenade, tossed it through the window. The Beetle was coming slowly now past the wall of Local, at the junction with Soetdoringstraat. His finger was in the loop of the lever of the next grenade as they approached the gates of S.A.D. F headquarters.
He could see the camera rotating patiently towards him. He was fifty yards from the corner behind him, seventy-five yards from the camera ahead.
Jack twisted, ducked towards the wall. He heard the crack thump of the first grenade…
God, I love you, little bastard kids.
… The tube down on the ground, a foot from the wall, paying out the Cordtex equivalent and the length of safety fuse, looking for the camera and the camera moving at steady, inexorable pace towards him, about to include him in the vision arc. The second grenade explosion, the metal box thump of the grenade going. He looked again for the camera. He saw the camera swinging away from him, aiming for the main approach road that came from the direction of the grenade blasts. Struggling in his pocket for the lighter, and his fingers floundering with the car keys.
The third grenade explosion…
Brilliant bloody kids, because you've pulled the camera off.
… Pistol shots in the night, soft fire crackers half a mile away. The lighter in his hand. The flame cupped. The flame held round the cut edge of the safety fuse. Jack ran back.
He flung himself down onto the hard road. He pressed his face down onto the road surface. A moment of desperate stillness.
He felt the blast bludgeon over him. He felt the pain roaring in his ears. He felt the fine draught of the debris hurtling back past him.
He crawled on his knees and elbows into the grey dust cloud. He groped until he found the hole. His hands were in the hole and scraping to find the reinforcing steel cords.
Coughing dust, spitting fragments. Cutters from his pocket.
Finding the steel cords, fastening the cutters on them, heaving with his hands at the arms of the cutters, squeezing the arms of the cutters until there was the snap and the tension break. He was in the hole, choking, hacking. His shoulders were in the hole. If his shoulders were in then the hole was large enough. He wanted to scream, he wanted to shout that he had won. He was crawling through the hole and pulling his bag and lifting his shotgun. He wanted to shout because he thought that he had won something.
He came through. He crawled into a lit garden. Ahead of him was another wall, and the ground between him and the other wall was lit as by sunlight. He saw to his right the white flood brightness high on the stanchion poles.
He was charging forward.
It was 22 seconds after the exploding of the shaped charge.
He fired six shots from the pump action to blow away the lights. Not darkness, there were the distant lights above the watch tower on the back wall, but shadows thrown by trees and shrubs and bushes that were the gardens around the hanging gaol.
A charge now. Only speed mattered. He saw ahead the pointed roofs of C section I, and C section 2, and C section 3. The gaps between the roofs were the exercise yards, covered by the grilles.
He ran towards the gap that marked the exercise yard of C section 2, and his fingers were in his bag, reaching for the rope that was lashed to the length of bent iron.
19
He could hear nothing.
His ears were dulled by the explosion at the outer wall.
In silent ballet a deer that was no taller than his knee cavorted away from him. He saw between shadows the noiseless flight of a young warthog.
The piece of bent iron was in his hands, and the rope. It was his grappling hook and his climbing rope.
Jack came to the wall.
He arched the bent iron over the wall. He lost sight of its fall. He heard the first sound that infiltrated his senses. He heard the scrape of the bent iron on the metalwork of the grille above the exercise yard. New sounds now flooding his ears as he pulled on the rope, tested the strain. There was the sound of a siren, rising as if it were cranking itself awake.
There was a shout. He heaved on the rope. He slid back as the bent iron slipped, fastened again, slipped again, held.
Once more he tugged at the rope, using desperate strength.
The rope and the hook were steady. The iron was lodged as a hook into the grille. He tucked the shotgun, barrel up, under the shoulder strap, weighed in by the bag hanging across his stomach and his thighs, and he started to climb.
His feet stamped on the wall as he dragged himself upwards.
It was fifty-two seconds of time since the shaped charge had detonated against and through the outer wall. A life time of Jack's experience. All about speed, all about confusion, all about men staying rooted in their positions for precious seconds, all about officers who made decisions seconds after being asleep in their homes or dozing in the armchairs of their mess. Speed from Jack, confusion from the prison staff, his certain purpose, their being taken by surprise, on these his chance depended.
He tried to walk up, throw his body back from the wall.
The way the marines or the paratroopers did it. But the marines and the paratroopers weren't carrying a shotgun, and the marines and the paratroopers had proper combat packs and not a grip bag on a shoulder strap. And the marines and the paratroopers wouldn't be alone. Jack climbed the wall. His ears now were filled with the howl of the sirens.
He reached the top.
He was a darkened figure that swung first an arm and then a leg and then a shoulder and then a torso over the top of the wall, nursing his weight off the shotgun. He rolled from the top of the wall to crash onto the grille above the exercise yard. There was a moment when he was dazed, when he saw below him the dull colours of flowers in a small square of earth under the grille. If he let himself stop for more than a split second he was dead. He pushed himself away from the wall, out over the grille, the shotgun free in his hands, pressing back the safety catch.
He saw the spit of flame from the window to his right, from the window that gave air onto the catwalk above the corridor of C section 2. He was rolling, swivelling his hips to turn himself, to keep the momentum from his fall. Because he was rolling, moving, the rifle shot had missed him, and the second shot missed him. Sharp, granite chips of sound against the blanket wail of the siren. He aimed the shotgun at the window. There had been a pale face visible between the slats of the window. The pale face was scarlet, peppered, gone. A scream of pain, of fear, to merge with the siren.
Jack crouched.
Left hand in his bag. The charge with the detonator in his fingers. The moment when he had to stop. The moment when he had to put down the shotgun on the grille. He had the charge in his hand and the roll of adhesive tape. Fast movements as he pulled himself onto the sloping roof above the cell block, as he reached for the window in front of him, the window that led to the catwalk. The window was a set of vertical bars, four inches apart, concrete, with louvred glass slats. He slapped the charge against the central bar. His fingers were stripping adhesive tape from the roll. He was kicking with his feet to hold a grip on the metal of the sloping roof. He had the charge in place, he had the adhesive tape back in his bag, when he saw the man who lay on the catwalk and moaned and who held his hands across his face. He dropped the length of Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse back down the slope of the roof. He let his grip go, his feet slide, came to rest on the grille. The lighter was in his hand. He guarded the flame against the safety fuse. He ducked, reached for the shotgun, plucked out of his pocket more cartridges, reloaded.