CHERUB: Maximum Security (20 page)

‘I told Curtis we should go into a heavily populated area to minimise our chances of being recaptured,’ James said. ‘Curtis says he knows people who used to work for his mum in Los Angeles, so that’s where we’re heading. He didn’t mention the escape to his visitors because he knows this room is bugged. Don’t forget, Curtis has spent his whole life on the run. He might only be fourteen, but he probably knows more about police and FBI operations than most major criminals.’

‘That’s a valid point,’ Theo nodded. ‘So is his plan clear? Has Curtis mentioned where any of these connections live, or how they came to do business with his mother?’

‘I get the impression they’re bikers,’ James said. ‘Or ex-bikers. The idea is that we get out of Arizona as fast as we can. When we reach LA, we find a phone booth and start making calls.’

They spoke for a few more minutes about the finer points of the escape plan, before the FBI man wished James luck and headed for the door. James gave Lauren another hug.

‘Play it safe,’ Lauren said. ‘Don’t go getting yourself killed tonight.’

Scott Warren took the 2:30 a.m. count. Unlike a standing count, when inmates stood to attention at the end of their beds, this one only required Scott to lean over the gantry and count heads. He’d only wake the inmates up if he couldn’t see someone.

When he was done, Scott clanked along the metal gantry to the control room. If things went as planned, the escape wouldn’t be noticed until the next count was due in four hours.

Scott reached the control room at the centre of the H-shaped cellblock and tore a form off his clipboard. He handed it to the chunky figure of Golding, who sat at a three-metre-long console covered in switches, surveillance monitors and lights.

Golding stared at the sheet as Amanda Voss came towards him and handed him another.

‘No escapes, boss,’ the petite twenty-three-year-old grinned.

Golding picked up a telephone and called the central control room. ‘Hey Keith, this is cellblock T for trouble. I’m calling in a count of two-fifty-seven inmates at two-thirty-seven in the a.m. Situation here is all normal.’

Warren rolled his chair back so he could put his feet up on the console and picked up a newspaper. As he did this, a buzzer sounded, accompanied by a flashing red light.

Golding angrily flung down his newspaper. ‘Those
freakin’
doors … Cell T4, side entrance B. One of you go and shut that thing up.’

‘I gotta take a dump,’ Scott said guiltily, looking towards the toilet. ‘Can you deal with it, Amanda?’

*

Good people sometimes get hurt when you’re trying to catch bad ones. When the door began to slide, James’ conscience tripped over the idea of laying out a girl; but the mission depended on him holding his nerve.

His fist smacked Amanda in the temple, with enough force to knock the opposite side of her head against the edge of the metal door. There’s no such thing as a good head injury, but a clean shot to the thinnest part of the skull was unlikely to leave Amanda with anything more than a mild concussion and a two-day headache.

James dragged Amanda’s unconscious body backwards and lowered her to the floor at the bottom of the spiral staircase.

‘Come on,’ James whispered anxiously to Curtis. He wanted the door closed before any other inmates spotted the opening and decided to come with them.

Curtis stepped through and slid the door shut, as James put on Amanda’s ADOP baseball cap, then unbuttoned her black shirt and pulled it on. Combined with his black trainers and a pair of Curtis’ black tracksuit bottoms, James could pass as a prison officer provided nobody looked too hard.

‘Tie her up before she comes to,’ James ordered. ‘Ankles and mouth gag, then tie her hands around the stair rail. Use the constrictor knot, like I showed you.’

Curtis had a couple of James’ plaited ropes slung over his shoulder. While he tied up Amanda, James swiftly ran up the spiral stairs and crept across the rail to the weapons rack. He grabbed a can of pepper spray and tucked a stun grenade into his pocket as Scott came through the door. James looked behind to make sure Curtis was still out of earshot.

‘You OK?’ James asked.

Scott nodded. ‘Go for my nose and make it look real bloody. Be careful around Golding, he was a football player at high school. Use the handcuffs in the blue storage cupboard behind the console.’

James stepped back into a fighting stance and thrust his palm at the base of Scott’s nose. Blood trickled over Scott’s lips as he laid himself down on the metal floor. James ripped the safety pin from a can of pepper spray. He shot a quick blast into Scott’s hair and face, then quickly crammed a piece of balled-up rag into his mouth.

‘Sorry, mate,’ James whispered, as he rolled Scott on to his chest and began tying his wrists.

Curtis was coming up the spiral stairs a little too noisily for James’ taste. Scott went limp, as though James had knocked him out.

‘Ssssshh,’ James said. ‘Is she well tied?’

Curtis nodded. ‘Just how you showed me.’

‘Did you get her ID badge and swipe card?’

‘Course,’ Curtis whispered, grinning as he looked down over the rail. ‘I never thought I’d see the view from up here.’

James unhooked an electric shock device from Scott’s belt and stripped everything out of his pockets, including his keys and wallet, before shuffling down to tie his ankles. He threw Curtis the bunch of keys.

‘One of those works the gun locker,’ James explained.

Curtis opened the clear plastic front of the cabinet, while James bent Scott’s legs up and began tying the bindings on his wrists to the bindings on his ankles.

Curtis took one of the large baton-round guns. ‘Looks complicated,’ he said.

‘Help me move him, then I’ll show you.’

They pushed Scott’s body to the inside of the gantry, so that the inmates below couldn’t see him. James grabbed a small cylinder of compressed gas from the locker and snatched the gun from Curtis.

‘I watched the hacks do this the other day,’ James explained. ‘Screw the gas cylinder on the top of the gun, like so. Turn the valve, then you break her open and … Give us a baton round.’

Curtis handed James one of the fat plastic slugs. James slid it into the barrel, closed the gun and handed it to Curtis.

‘Only fire if we have to,’ James said. ‘You know how noisy they are.’

Curtis shoved more pepper spray, stun grenades and rounds for the baton guns into his pockets while James armed another gun for himself.

James opened the door at the end of the gantry. The short corridor led to the control room. James kept his back to the wall as they crept forward with their guns poised.

When James reached the end, he poked his head into the control room and eyeballed Golding; who sat with his feet on the console reading the sports page. It was eerily silent, apart from the hum of the air conditioning.

‘We’ve got to distract him from the console or he’ll hit the alarm,’ James whispered.

Curtis nodded, as James crouched down and pulled out one of Scott’s coins. He rolled the coin out into the room. Golding heard it drop in the middle of the floor and looked over the top of his newspaper.

‘You’ve dropped a quarter down here, Scott,’ Golding said. He stared for a few seconds, before shrugging and going back to his newspaper.

James looked at Curtis, shaking his head with frustration. He rolled another coin. This time Golding looked put out. Too lazy to stand up, he slapped his newspaper down and wheeled his chair backwards towards the coins.

‘What’s going on there, Scottie? You got a hole in your pocket or something?’

As Golding spun his chair around to look down the corridor, James and Curtis both fired. The rounds hit Golding in the chest and stomach. His chair shot backwards, before tipping over. The fat man roared as he blasted the chair out of his way with a powerful kick and rolled over, struggling to stand up.

James’ ears were whistling from the gun blast as he ran towards Golding and drenched his face in pepper spray.

‘See what we do when we catch you,’ Golding gasped, as he slumped blindly back to the floor, trying to rub the spray out of his eyes. ‘Scott … Amanda … Where the hell are you?’

‘They won’t be along any time soon,’ Curtis gloated.

‘When we get you two in the hole, I’m gonna come in after you and bust every bone in your bodies.’

Golding had plenty of fight in him and James didn’t fancy a tussle with somebody so heavy. He pushed another plastic round into the gun and held it menacingly in Golding’s face. Although classed as a non-lethal weapon, the baton round was deadly if fired into a vulnerable area from close range.

‘Hands in the air, fat boy,’ James shouted ferociously.

When the muzzle touched his face, Golding put his arms up and allowed Curtis to knot them together. After this, he let Curtis stuff a piece of cloth in his mouth and tie a gag over it. Meanwhile, James located the rack of handcuffs Scott had told him about.

It took both boys to drag Golding a few metres across the polished floor towards the staircase leading down to the reception room. James cuffed Golding’s hands around the top stair rail. Curtis cruelly stepped on the bracelet, so it closed down a couple of extra notches.

‘Remember when you put them on me?’ Curtis snarled. ‘You like them nice and tight, don’t you, Golding?’

Golding screamed curses into his gag as the boys ran back to grab their guns. James noticed Golding’s backpack under the console. He tossed out a baseball magazine and sandwich box and stuffed the pack with baton rounds, pepper spray and stun grenades before slinging it over his back.

Curtis found a lightweight black jacket with the Arizona Prisons Department logo on, which had belonged to Amanda Voss. He zipped it over his black T-shirt and found that it fitted OK.

The boys sprinted downstairs, emerging through an unsecured door into the reception room on the ground floor. James jogged towards the exit door and swiped Amanda’s card through the lock. He smiled with relief when it clicked.

‘Keep calm,’ James said, as they stepped out into fresh air. ‘Remember, it looks suspicious if we run.’

James swiped the card again and they passed through a wire gate into the main prison compound. The tarmac road went arrow-straight, all the way down to the exit. The only light came from a few lamps around the wire fences of the cellblocks and the glowing watchtowers around the distant perimeter.

A passing refuse cart and a wave from a hack taking a cigarette break was the only excitement during the eight-minute walk towards the sally port, but James tortured himself with images of sirens, gunfire and the savage beating he’d undoubtedly take if the hacks recaptured him.

A hundred metres shy of the vehicle gates, there was a giant signpost ordering everyone to follow a colour-coded line painted on the asphalt: red for inmates under transportation, yellow for visitors and green for staff. The area beyond the sign was floodlit and CCTV cameras were perched every place you looked.

Curtis’ voice was quaking. ‘We’re never gonna pass through this.’

‘Act normal,’ James whispered. ‘We’re dressed like staff, we have swipe cards. Unless the emergency siren goes off, there’s no reason for anyone to look at us too hard.’

The green line ended at the door of a small metal shed marked
Staff Only
. James peeked through a window into a small room with a line of vending machines. A miserable looking hack sat on a plastic chair drinking from a tiny cup. James swiped his card in the entrance door, went up two steps and cautiously poked his head into a narrow corridor that smelled of floor polish.

‘Looks sweet,’ James said.

They stepped inside, passing by the frosted glass entrance of the room with the vending machines, then dashing along the corridor towards the staff exit.

James swiped Amanda’s card through the lock on the door. A man’s voice came out of a loudspeaker. James hoped it was the friendly Mr Shorter in the central control room, but he had no way of telling.

‘Look up at the camera, state your name and staff ID.’

‘Voss, Amanda, Y465,’ James said, trying his best to sound like a girl.

‘Who’s your buddy?’ the loudspeaker asked.

Curtis looked uncertainly up at the camera. ‘Warren, Scott, KT318.’

‘Hey Scottie, you don’t sound so good tonight. You got flu or something?’

‘Yeah,’ Curtis said uncertainly.

‘Sorry to hear that, man. You go home and catch yourself a good rest.’

The door buzzed to indicate that it had been unlocked. James and Curtis passed through and walked along a wire-enclosed path. They stood behind a red
Wait
sign, while a chunky door built into the armour-plated wall of the sally port rumbled backwards. Once it was fully open, the boys stepped into a tunnel.

When the door at their backs closed fully, a green bulb began pulsing above the door at the opposite end. James realised there was a slot for a swipe card. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to get interviewed a second time and was relieved when the metal door began rumbling.