CHERUB: Maximum Security (13 page)

James was wounded. ‘I’m mature,’ he said defensively.

‘If you say so, bro’,’ Lauren snickered.

James didn’t get a chance to push the argument, because there was a white car pulling up on the driveway.

The Arizona police car sprang up like it was letting out a sigh, as Marvin Teller hoisted himself out of the driver’s door and sited his cowboy hat on his head. Today’s suit was custard yellow, with white leather boots.

Marvin walked around to the trunk and reached inside. James felt a nasty pang of reality when Marvin lifted out two sets of bright orange overalls and swung a body chain over each shoulder.

Everyone gathered around the table to eat breakfast. Dave, John and Marvin raved about Lauren’s cooking and tucked away seconds; but James could only manage a few bites.

His stomach was turning somersaults. He ran upstairs to the toilet and retched a couple of times, but didn’t bring anything up. All the stuff James had learned about the dangers inside prison was really getting to him. He splashed cold water on his face and took slow, deep breaths to try and get hold of himself.

When he got back down to the kitchen, John looked concerned. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nervous,’ James confessed.

‘You know the rules,’ John said. ‘You can pull out of this mission at any time and you won’t be punished.’

It was true that James wouldn’t be punished. It was also true that if he bailed on a critical mission at this stage and ruined it, nobody would ever offer him a spot on another one. He’d spend the rest of his time at CHERUB doing routine surveillance, break-ins and security checks. James wasn’t prepared to throw away all the effort he’d put into training and missions, because he’d woken up with a touch of nerves.

‘Don’t sweat it,’ James said, trying to sound cool. ‘Once the mission starts, I won’t have time to worry.’

Marvin took the boys through to the living-room, while John and Lauren stacked the dishwasher. Marvin told them to strip everything off, including watches and jewellery. They replaced their socks, T-shirts and underpants with prison issue. The underwear smelled of disinfectant, but the stains and rips were an uncomfortable reminder of previous occupants.

The baggy orange overalls they wore on the outside were designed for high visibility, so that a prisoner who escaped in transit could be easily seen. Two suits with
Omaha State Prison
printed on them had been shipped in especially for the occasion. In addition, James and Dave had to pull on fluorescent yellow bibs, like the ones kids wear in football training. They had
DANGER: ESCAPE RISK
printed on them in huge letters. The only normal clothes the boys were allowed were their trainers.

‘You won’t get any toilet breaks once these are on,’ Marvin explained, jangling the chains.

James and Dave both dashed upstairs and took a piss. When they got down, Marvin had the two sets of shackles laid out on the carpet.

He put James’ on first. James winced as Marvin clamped the bracelets around his ankles.

‘Does it have to be so tight?’

‘It’s supposed to bite the skin so the bracelet can’t move,’ Marvin explained. ‘Someone would ask questions if I fitted them on loose … Hands front.’

Marvin squeezed cold metal cuffs on to James’ wrists. A length of chain linked the ankle bracelets to the handcuffs, preventing James from raising his hands any higher than his waist.

‘Take a stroll around the room while I fix up Dave,’ Marvin said. ‘Moving around in those things takes some getting used to.’

*

The individual holding cells at the Phoenix courthouse were barely one pace wide by three long. The only facilities were a drinking fountain and a filthy steel toilet bowl. James had passed more than a dozen of these sweltering little cages on the way to his own and, judging by the shouts and screams passing in all directions, there were hundreds more.

James and Dave were supposed to have gone into court first thing that morning, but something caused a hold-up and James had lost track of time. Inmates weren’t allowed watches and there were no windows. James guessed it was between twelve and one when a cling-film-wrapped sandwich and bottle of no-brand cola got passed through the bars, but that had been several hours ago.

‘Rose, James,’ a woman’s voice shouted.

The stocky female guard stood by the bars outside the tiny cell holding a clipboard. She had a red face and a torrent of sweat drizzling out of her hair. James scrambled up from the floor. He still had the ankle bracelets on, but his handcuffs had been released on arrival.

‘Cuffs,’ the hack said sharply.

James picked the handcuffs attached to his ankle chains off the floor and put them on a small metal shelf in the barred door.

‘Come on,’ she said crossly, ‘wrists.’

James realised he was supposed to post his hands through the slot so the hack could fix the cuffs on. She squeezed them a notch further than Marvin Teller had done: tight enough that the tendons in his wrist hurt every time he moved his fingers.

‘What’s the dirty look in aid of, kid?’

They walked past two rows of the tiny cells and up six flights of stairs to the second floor of the courthouse. This level was air-conditioned and James was pleased to catch sight of Dave waiting outside the courtroom.

‘What was the hold-up?’ James asked.

Dave shrugged. ‘Like they’d tell us.’

The hack knocked on the courtroom door and waited a few seconds, before the boys were ushered in. James had expected a grand setting, with loads of people in the room and wood panelling, like you see in the movies. He got a windowless office with frayed carpet, barely bigger than his room on campus.

The grey-haired judge sat behind a cluttered desk in her stockinged feet, sipping out of a Starbucks cup. Her shoes and handbag rested on the floor, beneath an American flag mounted on a pole. There was a stenographer sitting at a smaller desk off to one side, a guard armed with a shotgun and two lawyers, one of whom James and Dave had met briefly that morning before being taken down to the cells.

The lawyer had explained that when an Arizona defendant pleads guilty, the case is dealt with using a system called
plea-bargaining
. The charges and prison sentence are haggled over in advance between the judge and the two opposing lawyers. The court hearing was a formality.

James and Dave stood in the back third of the room behind a red line. A sign on the wall guaranteed a ninety-day sentence to any prisoner who dared step over it.

‘OK,’ the judge said, taking a quick glance at her watch. ‘It’s late, let’s roll this along. James and David Rose versus the state of Arizona, case number six-zero-one-nine-nine. Minors charged as adults, with one count of robbery and one count of murder. The defence council has offered to plead guilty to charges of robbery and second-degree murder, with an attached term of eighteen years. Does the prosecution formally accept this bargain?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ the prosecution lawyer nodded.

The judge looked up at James and Dave. ‘Has your lawyer explained to you that by pleading guilty to these charges and accepting the bargain, you lose any right of appeal?’

James and Dave both nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Very well,’ the judge said solemnly. ‘Let the record show that sentence of eighteen years has been passed on James and David Rose.’

The two lawyers leaned forward and took turns shaking the judge’s hand. James looked at the clock on the wall and realised that he’d spent the whole day sweltering in a cell, waiting for a hearing that had lasted less than three minutes.

The bus to Arizona Max had a metal cage blocking off the exits and bars over the windows. Two hacks with pump-action shotguns sat up front, facing towards a dozen prisoners riding a bus with room for more than fifty.

James and Dave sat near the back. A couple of women had been placed in the middle, and the men were at the front. Pride of place went to a giant with a long red beard, who’d been put on board last and clamped into his seat with a tubular metal bar.

James looked back to Dave in the row behind. ‘What the hell did he do?’

The only other kid on the bus leaned across the aisle and answered. He was a skinny fellow called Abe, who was no taller than James. The tuft of bristles on Abe’s chin was the only hint that he was nearly seventeen.

‘That’s Chaz Wallerstein,’ Abe said, as if this should mean something.

James and Dave both looked blank.

‘You know,’ Abe said. ‘Bank robber, turned into a hostage deal. He shot up fifteen people, killed eleven of them. It was all over the TV news. Where have you two been, Mars?’

James straightened up his overalls so you could read the word
Omaha
. ‘They had us in solitary up there.’

Abe smiled. ‘Mars, Nebraska, same kind of thing I guess … You know you’re gonna cop trouble when the hacks see those escape-risk bibs?’

*

Arizona Max was opened in 2002 to deal with the state’s rapidly expanding prison population. It was a multi-role prison, capable of holding 6,500 inmates, inside fourteen H-shaped cellblocks. Nine blocks held maximum-security adult male prisoners, two held female prisoners, and two were super-maximum-security (supermax) units containing Death Row, along with the most dangerous inmates in the state. The final unit held close to 300 boys under the age of eighteen.

The vast prison compound stretched over thousands of acres and was surrounded by three electrified fences and two stacks of barbed wire coils more than ten metres high. All vehicles or persons entering the prison had to pass through a single entry point.

The bus carrying James and Dave drove through the first set of gates and into a small holding pen, surrounded by twenty-metre-high walls. These outer gates were operated from a control building beyond the prison perimeter, while the inner set operated from the main control room inside the prison. This dual-control security system, known as a
sally port
, means that inmates can’t escape, even if they manage to overpower every guard inside the prison.

Only when the gates behind the bus were locked could the second set of gates leading into the prison be opened. Once they’d passed into the compound, James pressed his face to the window and looked out at the concrete cellblocks radiating across the desert.

He watched the inmates in the wire-fenced exercise yards around each unit. There were armed guards on the roof of the buildings, ready to take a shot if trouble broke out, and tiny specks of men standing inside the air-conditioned watch towers dotted along the perimeter, several hundred metres away in every direction.

Hacks received the prisoners as the bus drew up outside each cellblock. The men got dropped off first, then the women, then Chaz Wallerstein was left outside the supermax block and his single cell on Death Row. The young offender unit was the final stop, a quarter mile further along the road, past a stretch of bare ground set aside for building more cellblocks.

The ankle chain was kept short to stop a prisoner from moving fast. It also meant the only way off the bus was a two-footed jump off the step. Abe, who didn’t seem the most athletic type, managed to lose his balance. One of the hacks grabbed him out of the dust and bounced him furiously against the wire fence.

‘Better keep upright if you don’t want your ass kicked.’

The two hacks shoved the kids through a wire gate and towards the cellblock. The twin-level building was made out of prefabricated concrete sections, with a flat metal roof and every window deliberately narrower than a human body. They passed through a steel door, into a spartan reception area, with a long plywood counter down the middle and showers off to the side. A black inmate, who looked about fifteen, stood behind the counter.

One hack removed James’ chains and told him to strip off and run to the shower stall at the end of the room. The other one shook green disinfectant powder over James’ head and handed him a chewed-up bar of soap.

James felt sorry for Abe as he twirled in the shower next to him. There was no muscle anywhere on Abe’s body and his arms and legs were like sticks. James reckoned Lauren could have taken him in a fight. He wouldn’t even make a light snack for the prison bullies.

‘Ain’t got all day,’ the guard shouted, as he dragged James from under the water and handed him a towel. James put the towel to his face and realised it was damp and musty, like it had been used plenty of times before.

By the time James threw his towel down, the guard had pulled a thin flashlight out of his shirt pocket and stretched a set of disposable gloves over his fingers.

‘Face the wall.’

The hack began his search at the bottom, making James lift each foot in turn, to inspect his soles and in-between his toes. Next he made James bend forward and pull apart his butt cheeks, before shining the torch under James’ armpits, in and behind his ears and vigorously rubbing his fingers against James’ scalp to make sure nothing was hidden in his hair.

‘Face front.’

The hack shone the light in James’ eyes, up his nose and inside of his mouth, including under his tongue and around his gums, assisted by a finger that tasted of rubber. He crouched down and flashed the light into James’ belly button, before making him lift up his penis and balls and finally roll back his foreskin in case he’d stashed anything naughty up there. When the hack was done, he gently smacked James on the arse.