Bob Mayer
Synbat
To all who've served.
Prologue
The luminous minute hand slid one digit as the second hand rounded the twelve. Two more minutes. As beads of sweat formed on his brow, Chico Lopez's eyes and mind were totally absorbed by the march of time on his wrist. For the hundredth time he shifted uncomfortably on the state-issue mattress, careful not to dislodge the three hacksaw blades carefully hidden inside the back of his belt.
A flash of lightning flickered through the tall barred windows that lined the outside walls of Cell Block C, illuminating the building's Gothic architecture. Chico's cell was on the first level of the six-tier stack of eight-by-eight cubicles. Eddyville State Prison had been built at the turn of the century, when attractive surroundings for inmates had been an incomprehensible concept. The prison looked its task both inside and out: high gray stone walls with block turrets at all corners, perched on a hill overlooking the northern end of Lake Barkley. With the darkness of the thunderstorm adding to the blackness of night, only the occasional flares of lightning displayed the entire edifice. The searchlights from the guard towers fought a losing battle against the sheets of rain that pounded the Kentucky grassland outside the walls and the red dirt inside.
Another minute ticked off. Time. Chico quietly slid out of bed, taking his sheet with him, and stole over to the cell door. He'd been cutting the locking bolt now for a week, millimeter by millimeter. The last remaining fragment of bolt gave under his tug and he was out in the hallway. Chico's cellmate continued to snore, unaware that the first and easiest door to freedom was open.
As Chico turned the corner where the long tiers of cells met a cross corridor, two figures loomed out of the shadows. He pushed his accomplices into a dark recess in the outside wall where the main pipe for the fire sprinkler system rose to the ceiling eighty feet above. By crowding in, the three were out of sight unless someone walked directly in front of them and peered in.
"You're late," the larger of the two men hissed nervously, his eyes glinting in the dark.
"Fuck you, Parson," Chico replied as he took the bed sheets from the two men and tied them to his. "I'm on time. Give me your blades."
The other two convicts, Parson and Hill, handed over one hacksaw blade each. Chico tucked them under his belt with his own three blades. "When you see me go out, you climb up."
He looped the three sheets over his shoulder and grabbed the sprinkler pipe. Wedging himself between it and the wall, he crabbed up. He didn't look down as the dirty concrete floor receded. Thirty feet up he reached the base of an old window, aligned with the third tier of cells fifteen feet away.
Vertical iron bars eight inches apart ran from the masonry at the bottom of the window, all the way up to the top, twenty feet above. Chico tied off the end of the sheets to the closest bar and locked his right leg over one of the stanchions holding the sprinkler pipe to the wall, so that his hands were free. Then he slipped one of the hacksaw blades out from under his belt and began cutting. The blades had cost Parson a hundred dollars each in a covert deal with one of the contract workers building the new cell block. Half a grand for five pieces of steel was the cost of freedom for Chico and his partners.
After ten minutes and two dulled blades, a foot-and-a-half section of the first bar finally came free. Chico had planned to take out three sections across, but it looked as though they might be a hundred bucks short. He used longer strokes on the next bar, utilizing every part of the blade, his fingers tearing as he tried to hold onto the sweaty metal. He cut through the second bar in seven minutes, with some good teeth remaining on the fourth blade.
Above the usual coughing and snoring that resounded through the block at night, Chico could hear nervous rustling down below. It was more than twenty minutes since they'd left their cells; they had less than fifteen before a guard would make his rounds. If they were out by then, they might stay undetected until morning. If they weren't out, with Hill and Parson standing at the bottom of the pipe and Chico illuminated against the window, they would be spotted immediately. Chico cut faster, ignoring the blood that was now flowing from his slashed fingers.
Chico made the bottom cut on the last bar using the final good blade. He cut more than three-quarters of the way through the top of the bar before the blade was completely dull. Holding onto the remaining bars, Chico pressed both feet against the third bar and pushed with all his might. The bar bent ever so slightly, but that was all he needed. Wrapping part of the string of sheets around his fist, he punched out the bottom of the window; then he threw the cloth out into the pouring rain to hang down onto the slick outer wall of the cell block.
Hissing to let the other two know to come up, Chico forced his body in between the bars, his slight, five-and-a-half-foot frame making it through with little room to spare. He looked down at the wet mud forty feet below, then firmly grasped the sheets, which hardly covered a third of the distance. Hand over hand he lowered himself until he was hanging onto the very end. With a brief prayer, Chico let go and slammed into the ground, rolling over in the mud then onto his feet, all systems still functioning. He squinted up into the pouring rain and could see Parson's head pop out the window above.
Parson made it halfway out the window and then became stuck, the bar not bent far enough for his ponderous gut. Behind him, Hill put both feet squarely on Parson's rear and shoved. Parson let out a squeal of pain as the jagged edges of the cut pipe tore into his skin. Hill didn't hesitate and kicked again, popping Parson free. The fat man barely had time to grab the sheet rope before he was sliding down. The end of the sheets slid through his fingers and he was in free-fall for two seconds before landing with a loud plop in front of Chico.
"I broke my leg!"
"Shut the fuck up!" Chico warned, kneeling over him. He felt the indicated appendage. "It ain't broken. Get on your feet or I'll cut your fucking throat right here."
Hill hit on his feet and forward-rolled to absorb the impact of the fall. He popped up. "Let's go."
Together, Hill and Chico grabbed Parson and started dragging him toward the chain-link fence, the last physical obstacle between them and the outside. The searchlights from the guard towers, a hundred feet away on either side, were distant white spots against the blackness.
"To the left," Hill directed. The three men splashed to the low ground where the water poured under the fence in a rain-formed gully. Lying down, Hill went first, almost completely submerging as he slipped under the bottom links of the fence. Chico shoved Parson down and the fat man slithered through, the bottom of the fence tearing the shirt off his back and leaving long red gashes in his flesh. Chico easily followed and they were out.
The illuminated red numerals of the digital clock flickered to 2:00. Only four more hours. Stan Lowry had known when he'd applied for a security job this far out in the sticks that it would be relatively uneventful, but he hadn't suspected that it would be so thoroughly boring. Occasionally, when the empty nights got the better of him, Stan almost wished that a group of teenagers would come here to the hills and start hooting and hollering the parking lot. Anything would be better than the total lack of activity that Stan had experienced five nights a week, every week, for the last eight months.
He didn't even have to make rounds of the compact one-story building that was his nightly domain. Everything to be surveilled was displayed on the small TV screens stacked on the semicircular desk that was Stan's post in the building's front foyer. He listlessly scanned the twelve screens. Nothing on the three outside cameras other than the heavy spatter of rain sprinkling the darkened Tennessee countryside. The arc lights on the roof of the building barely penetrated the wet night, straining to reach the wood line on three sides of the building.