How he would get everyone out the same hole in a timely manner, he’d figure out later.
Right now, he needed to concentrate on getting in.
Knowing her parents would forbid her if she told them what she intended to do, Jabala sneaked away from the school, pushing one of the motorcycles they had obtained, until she felt she was far enough away that she could start the motor without anyone hearing it.
She took with her only four items: a large bottle of water, a flashlight, the satellite phone with its charger, and a backpack to carry them all in. After talking to Leon from America, she knew, despite his warning, she had to go to Mumbai. It seemed he had valuable information about the survival stations that Sanjay and Kusum needed to know now. Waiting for them to return might be too late. Anything that would lessen the danger her sister and brother-in-law were facing was worth the risk of the journey.
She didn’t let the fact that she didn’t know exactly where they were deter her. She was aware of what part of town they would be in, and was confident she could find them.
So she rode into the night, only her bike’s headlamp lighting the road in front of her. Everything else was blanketed in an unnerving darkness. To keep her mind off what might be out there, she turned the trip into a game, seeing how long she could stay on the centerline without drifting to the side.
By the time she reached the outskirts of Mumbai, her record was fourteen minutes.
Pulling the dirt out of the way wasn’t the issue. No, the issue was the large rock sticking out of the ground, limiting the space to squeeze through. Sanjay thought he could move around it, and knew that both Kusum and Darshana would have no problems, but Arjun would never be able to slip through. Chances were, many of the other prisoners would get stuck, too.
He had no choice but to dig it out, wasting twenty minutes he could have been using to free everyone. When it was finally out of the way, he slipped through the hole and into the compound. Moving quietly, he headed around the piles of debris and between two storage buildings. On the other side was the parking area Pishon Chem had used to keep excess vehicles — a couple dozen Jeeps, nearly as many light trucks, and a handful of sedans. At the time, Sanjay had barely given them a second thought. Now he knew they had always been intended for use after the flu outbreak.
Unlike before, the lot was nearly empty. All the Jeeps were gone, as were most of the trucks. The only vehicles left were three pickups and five sedans.
Leapfrogging his way through the lot, he moved from vehicle to vehicle until he neared the main building. This would be the difficult part. He had to run along the side of the building, over to a storage area, and then around an annex before he finally reached the back of the holding areas.
It took him two minutes to reach the annex building and drop to the ground at the corner. Peeking around the edge, he could now see the holding areas. The one to the left was where Kusum, Darshana, and Arjun were located. It was a bit farther away than the other one, and he would have to travel across an open area to get there, but there was no moon tonight and little other illumination bleeding into the area. If he was careful, he should be okay.
Forcing himself to move at half speed, he crawled across the open ground until he reached the first of the double fences. He studied the enclosure. No one was outside, which meant they all had to be inside the only building.
He checked the guard posts he could see from his position. No one seemed to be paying the holding areas any attention. From his shoulder bag, he removed the heavy-duty wire cutters he’d found in a shop several streets away. With one hand gripping the handle, and the other covering the snips to muffle the sound, he began to cut. He went up and over two meters in both directions, creating a flap. After he passed through, he put the flap back in place so it wouldn’t be noticeable. He made a similar opening on the inner fence, pulled it out of the way, and entered the holding area.
Please do not let that have been the easy part, he thought.
Hugging the building, he circled around to the door and went inside. From his observations, he’d determined no guards were inside the holding areas, so, as he’d hoped, he didn’t find any inside the barracks, either. What he did find was a room filled with twenty bunks, three beds high, the seventeen current residents scattered among them.
A few moved at the sound of the door opening and closing, but most remained as they were, some snoring, some breathing deeply, every last one asleep.
He found Kusum, Darshana, and Arjun at the far end, the women on the same lower level of side-by-side bunks, with Arjun sleeping on the mattress above Darshana.
Seeing his wife, Sanjay had never felt so relieved in his life. Though he had not admitted it to himself, he had known there was a chance he’d never be this close to her again.
He leaned over and gently touched her shoulder. “Kusum,” he whispered. “Wake up.”
She stirred but remained asleep.
“Kusum. It’s me. Wake up.”
She blinked and looked at him, half asleep, then her eyes widened.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Why did you let them catch you?”
He hugged her and whispered, “No one caught me.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“I came for you.” He pulled the wire cutters out of his bag and showed them to her.
“You broke in?”
He nodded.
The change in her expression was quick and dramatic. First she was stunned and confused, and then she was angry.
“Are you crazy? You could have been killed.”
“How could I let you stay here? If I was the one trapped, you would come for me.”
“I would not.”
“You would,” he said. He didn’t have to see it in her eyes to know he was right, but it was there anyway. “Now get up so I can get you out of here.”
“Not without the others.”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t mean just Darshana and Arjun,” she said, correctly sensing that was his intention. “We need to get everyone out of here.”
“And we will, but I need to show the three of you the way out first so you can help me. All right?”
This time she was the one who pulled him into a hug.
It didn’t take long for Jabala to realize the empty darkness of the country was preferable to the partially lit silence of the city. The reality of what she was seeing kept fighting with her memories of how things used to be. Even at this late hour, Mumbai had always been active, always full of people.
Not tonight. Not ever again.
The closer she got to the center of the city, the more the noise created by her motorcycle concerned her. But the thought of getting off and walking terrified her more, so she settled for lowering her speed as much as she dared so that the drone of the engine would be kept to a minimum.
Ten minutes later, she was glad she did. The reduced sound allowed her to hear a car heading in her direction. She killed her engine and moved tight against a taxi parked at the curb, just as the lights of the car came into view.