Banes’s car drew level with one of the trucks, and for a moment he had one of the attackers in his sights… another man with black hair and eyes that were alight with excitement. The man was wearing jeans and a tattered T-shirt and he’d painted streaks of red and white down the sides of his face. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Banes took careful aim and fired. But at the last minute, Koring jerked the wheel, avoiding a pot-hole in the track. The shot went wild. The car swerved off the track. Banes swore. The truck raced ahead.
“Who are they?” Koring rasped. His eyes were wide and he was sweating. Perspiration dripped from his moustache. It wasn’t just the heat of the night: Colton Banes scared him. This situation was out of control. And that scared him more. “What do they want?”
“They’re here for the boy!” Banes snarled. “Jamie Tyler. There can be no other reason.”
“What do we do?”
“Kill him! Kill Tyler! It doesn’t matter what else happens. He mustn’t leave here alive.”
Inside the Block, Jamie had heard the gunfire and the explosions. There was a loud bang and the lights failed again. His torch was still on and he swept it around him. All the other prisoners were awake now. He could hear them shouting and cheering in their cells. Daniel McGuire had already got dressed. Jamie had to admire him. He had been locked up for seven months and suddenly he had been woken in the middle of the night and in total darkness by a stranger who seemed to be covered in blood. A pitched battle was going on outside. But he was completely calm, waiting to be told what to do.
Joe approached, hurrying down the corridor behind the beam of a second torch. “My friends are here,” he shouted. He no longer cared if the cameras saw him. It didn’t take a great deal of imagination for Jamie to see that the Intake Officer wouldn’t be coming back. “Now we go!”
“What about the others?” Jamie asked.
There were twenty cells in the corridor, ten on each side. Flashing his own torch over them, he saw faces through the glass windows set in the doors. Not just boys – girls too. He remembered what Alicia had once told him. The kidnappers had been interested in both sexes, girls and boys, provided they had some sort of paranormal ability. He had no doubt that this was where they had all ended up. It was incredible. A prison within a prison. And he still had no idea why they had been brought here.
Joe Feather was waiting for him to go. But Jamie wasn’t moving. “We can’t leave them,” he said.
“We have to!” Joe exclaimed. “My friends came for you. Only for you. It’s too dangerous to take them outside…”
“But they’ve done nothing wrong!” It was Daniel who was speaking. He had a high voice; obviously it hadn’t broken yet. “They’re like me. They were all snatched and brought here.”
Joe shifted from one foot to the other as if he were standing on burning coals. “When you are out of here, then you can help them. You can speak with the authorities. But if we don’t go now, we will never leave.”
Jamie knew that he was right. It would take them too long to open all twenty doors – and what about his friends back in the unit? He couldn’t get them out either. Scott wasn’t here. His first job was to get Daniel back to his mother. Then Alicia would be able to go to John Trelawny. And the senator would see to the rest of it.
“Joe’s right. We have to go.” He turned to Daniel. “I promise you, we’ll come back and help the others.”
Daniel nodded, and just for a second Jamie had the weird sensation of being, for the first time in his life, the older brother. For so many years he had looked up to Scott – even though they were the same age. But Scott hadn’t been around for a while and maybe in that time Jamie had changed. He’d had to start to think for himself.
There was another explosion and more shooting. The gunfire had intensified and Jamie guessed that the supervisors must be shooting back. Following Joe, they ran along the corridor into the medicine wing. As soon as they were there and could look out of the windows, they saw the truth. A fierce battle was taking place in the prison grounds. There were gaping holes in three different parts of the fence and the cage holding the generator had been blown apart. The generator itself was on fire. That explained the second power failure, and for some reason the emergency generator hadn’t yet kicked in. Half a dozen different vehicles had come to a halt in front of the four units, the dining hall, the gymnasium. He saw figures, little more than silhouettes, popping up to take a shot at the prison windows. There were brief flashes of white as the supervisors returned fire.
The three of them pushed the door open and slipped out into the warmth of the night, crouching down in case anyone saw them. Daniel was next to Jamie, who put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him close. Joe Feather rose up and called out in a language that neither of the boys understood. It was almost a high-pitched war cry, his voice echoing across the compound above the noise of the shooting. A moment later, someone answered back. There was the sound of an engine starting and renewed firing as a pick-up truck came hurtling over the sand, making towards them.
“Now we go!” Joe said.
The truck slid to a halt. Jamie caught sight of a driver and a passenger leaning out of the window with a rifle balanced over his arm. They were both young – only a few years older than him. Quickly, Jamie helped Daniel into the back, then climbed in himself.
“Hold onto the back!” Joe told them. He was the last in. No sooner had his feet left the ground than they were on the move again.
There was a bar running across the back of the driver’s cab. Jamie found himself standing up, clinging onto it for dear life. Daniel was lying down, being bounced around on the wooden floor as the truck lurched forward. The ground suddenly seemed to be pitted with holes – maybe it was a result of all the explosions. More bullets were fired. One of them smashed into the side of the cab, ricocheting off with a loud clang. Whether it was a lucky shot or deliberately aimed at them, Jamie couldn’t say. They were heading for the fence, a few metres away from the gate that had been opened, less than a week ago, to allow Jamie in. The gate was still there but the fence had been blown apart. He could see the track and the guards’ houses on the other side.
They drove through. Jamie ducked down, afraid of being gashed by a piece of dangling razor wire. The driver fired a shot through a window and a guard spun backwards in the sand, wounded. The other vehicles were also leaving the prison. Looking back, Jamie saw half a dozen of them following not far behind.
The wind – warm and welcoming – rushed over his shoulders and through his hair. He almost wanted to laugh. He still didn’t know who these people were but they were on his side and they were taking him and Daniel out. He would contact Alicia and the prison would be shut down. And surely someone there – one of the supervisors, a nurse or an administrator – would know what had happened to Scott. There would have to be a record somewhere in one of the files.
They passed a jeep parked next to the track. Jamie saw it and assumed it was empty. He didn’t see the man rise up next to it. Nor did he see the gun aimed at his back.
Colton Banes had been waiting for him. He had realized that there was no point entering the battle inside the prison. Everything there was dark and confused. It would be better to wait just outside the compound. If they were going to bring out the boy, they would have to come this way. And he was right. He could see Jamie, standing up, holding onto the driver’s cabin for support. He was a perfect target, almost like one of those paper cutouts Banes had used for practice at the range.