Sam was ready at ten to ten, standing just inside the door of his bedroom, waiting for the fire alarm.
He had accessed the fire control system and scheduled a fire drill for ten o’clock, then disabled the line of code in the program that knew it was only a drill.
As far as the computer was concerned, the fire would be real, and it would react accordingly.
His few belongings were shoved into the pockets of his warm jacket.
Everything now relied on Kiwi. He had agreed, a little reluctantly, to Sam’s request. If caught, he could wave goodbye to his hopes of serving out his sentence in New Zealand. But he’d agreed anyway.
Seconds ticked away on his watch and the minutes slowly dripped away as well.
Was he prepared for this? he wondered. A life of constantly hiding. A life without his family and friends. A life underground.
The fire alarm sounded just outside the door to his room. A long bell that went on and on.
When a fire alarm went off at Recton, the computers that controlled the facility would automatically unlock all the cell doors to make sure no inmates were trapped inside.
The door in front of him unlocked itself with a beep and the clunk of the electronic latch. Sam was through it and running down the hallway the moment the handle came free in his hand.
He had counted every step between the dormitory and the admin block and knew exactly how much time he had.
He’d make it, as long as he didn’t stumble or trip over.
He was flying out of the hallway door into the courtyard even as other doors were opening into the corridor behind him. Frightened, confused voices followed him out of the door.
He made it to the admin block just in time, flattening himself against the side wall as the door opened and three guards came out at a trot.
Three? The roster had said four.
He waited a moment longer to be safe, but no one else emerged.
He keyed in the security code and yanked on the doorhandle. The door opened without question and pulled itself shut behind him.
The guards would have fun trying to get back in. As of right now, the codes had all changed and only Sam knew the new ones.
He had never been in this part of the admin block before, but knew his way around as if he worked there, from the floor plans he had found on the central server.
He raced up two flights of stairs past the guards’ showers and changing rooms, down a short corridor with doors to the armoury and records room, and keyed the code for the door at the far end: the storeroom.
In here were all the belongings of the guests, in numbered cardboard boxes. His number was 5143 and he scanned along the shelves until he found it.
His wallet and cell phone went into his jacket pockets along with a few other odds and ends that he had been carrying when he’d been arrested.
He left the storeroom door open and ran up another flight of stairs to the watch-house.
The first thing he had learned, by studying the security plans for Recton, was that the main gates that formed the outside wall of the cage were not under any kind of computer control. Nor could they be opened manually from within the cage. They could only be opened from the watch-house.
The button for the gates was clearly marked. It was large and black and fitted with a plastic cover so it couldn’t be pressed accidentally.
The plastic cover was locked, but three quick blows from a fire-extinguisher smashed the hinges into plastic slivers.
He watched on one of the security monitors as the gates began to grind their way open.
He marked his watch. Plenty of time, but he had better not hang around. The gates would automatically shut after two minutes if left open.
He ran back along the short corridor and headed for the cage.
The gates were wide open by the time he got there. Heavy, metal, and open like a 7-Eleven.
Sam burst through the inner door to the cage and made at least five or six yards towards the gates before he heard a click from behind him.
He faltered, then stopped dead as the low tones of Warden Brewer came from near the door.
“Goin’ somewheres?”
Sam stood motionless, breathing heavily in and out, before turning to face Brewer.
The warden’s cap was pulled low, casting his face in shadow, but his eyes caught the glare of the incandescent bulbs at the end of the cage and glinted like cat’s eyes from under the peak. His fleshy jowls pulled up into a menacing smile, his teeth bared like a wild animal.
Brewer had a gun in his hand. Some kind of pistol. Sleek, black and deadly, and aimed right at Sam’s chest. At this range he couldn’t miss.
Sam took a step backwards. A step closer to the gates.
“That’s about as far’s you get,” Brewer said, rising off a wooden seat by the delivery dock. “Fire alarm at this time of night seemed just a mite convenient to me. And all the phone lines going dead? Very suspicious.”
Sam glanced at his watch. Over a minute was gone already.
Brewer saw the movement. “About a minute left,” he said, “before them gates close. After that it won’t matter what kind of trickery you got up to in the watch-house. They won’t be opening again.”
Sam didn’t doubt it.
“I guess you ’n’ me’ll just wait it out,” Brewer said. “Seeing as you don’t seem to feel much like talking.”
Sam remained silent and Brewer continued, “Police’ll be here in a minute or two. I dunno how you cut off the phones, but you forgot about the emergency radio.”
He must have seen the expression on Sam’s face because he whistled softly and said, “You didn’t forget about the radio, did you? What’d you do to it? Don’t matter, I guess.”
All Sam had done to the computerised radio system was to change the frequency. As simple as that. No doubt someone somewhere would have picked up the transmission but not the police or anyone else who would understand what it was.
“Don’t matter,” Brewer said. “’Cos the fire department gonna be here in a coupla minutes anyways. They’ll have their own radios in their trucks, and I don’t s’pose you figured out a way to screw up their radios now, did you?”
Sam took another step backwards, a couple of feet closer to the gates. His eye caught the security camera above Brewer’s head and a plan started to form in his mind.
“Don’t you move,” Brewer said, raising the gun, but Sam did move. He raised his hands high in the air and slowly turned around.
“Better,” Brewer said. “Now you’re getting the idea.”
In front of Sam the gates began to close.
He took a step towards them.
“Next step is your last, boy,” Brewer said.
“I don’t think so.” Sam found his voice. “You won’t do it.”
“I don’t think you wanna find out,” Brewer said.
“See the camera?” Sam said, nodding towards the camera to the left above the gates. “CNN. Live feed. I wired it right into their network.” It wasn’t true, but how would Brewer know? He gestured towards the one on the right. “Fox News and the two at the back are BBC. You want to be seen all over the world shooting an unarmed teenager in the back?”
He took another step and there was no shot. He took one more. The gates were a quarter closed now. The gap was narrowing rapidly.
He sensed, rather than saw, Brewer holster the pistol, but he heard the heavy hasty footsteps behind him.
Sam dropped his head and sprinted towards the gates.
Brewer was older, fatter and slower than Sam. Sam would have easily beaten him if he hadn’t caught his left shoe behind his right ankle and gone sprawling across the tarmac four or five yards from the gates.
He was up quickly though and actually through the gates when a meaty hand latched onto the collar of his jacket. Sam was stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around to see the sweating, scowling face of Brewer just an arm’s length away.
“Gotcha!” Brewer said triumphantly.
“Not unless you want to lose that arm,” Sam noted.
It was true. Sam had slipped through the slenderest of gaps and Brewer was too large to get through behind him. The gap had already narrowed even more, and there was no way Brewer would be able to pull Sam back inside.
Only his arm was through the gates now, and the heavy metal edges were closing in fast.
Brewer swore violently and snatched his arm back inside, just as the gates slammed shut.
Sam didn’t wait around for any clever repartee. He just ran. He had allowed himself ten minutes to get to the intersection of MacArthur Boulevard and Little Falls Road. He had already used three.
Sam ran. A strong gusty breeze buffeted him, alternately pushing him backwards or helping him along. He stayed off the boulevard with its inconstant stream of headlights and ran on the grass of the reservoir park alongside, staying in the darkness by the high safety fence.
Sweat streamed from his face. His chest ached, his knee also. He must have hurt it when he had tripped inside the cage. No matter. He ignored it and ran.
Kiwi would have sent the “false alarm” message by now. The one thing Sam had needed him to do. It would take only a minute for the fire controller to relay that to the fire trucks and they would turn around at the first place they could, the MacArthur Boulevard and Little Falls Road intersection.
He had to get there first.
Sam ran.
He wondered what kind of confusion he had left behind him at Recton. The codes no longer worked. The phones and radios were inoperable. The cell phone jammer was still operating though; he had made sure of that.
The guards were captives in their own prison, and unable to tell anyone about it.
He would have laughed out loud, if he had had the breath. But he didn’t.
He ran.
The flashing red lights of a fire truck appeared along the boulevard in front of him, partly obscured by the trees in the narrow strip of parkland. Even as he watched, the truck slowed and the lights ceased.
It was only a few hundred yards away now, but the truck slowed further, signalled, and turned left, not right as he had thought, heading back down the other side of MacArthur Boulevard rather than taking the short cut back through Little Falls. No matter. As long as he got there in time.
Eighty yards to go, that was all, and the second truck, a large pumper unit, clearly visible in the glare of the intersection streetlights, turned and moved away in the stream of traffic heading south down the boulevard.
A third fire truck turned and was gone, and the fourth, and the last truck also, signalling and turning while he was still twenty yards away.
The last truck stopped in the through road, giving way to an eighteen-wheeler and a succession of sedans, before making the turn.
Sam caught the truck as it was just starting to move, grabbing a chrome bar with one hand, and swinging himself up onto the back running board, hanging on, barely, as it accelerated away.
Wind whipped at his hair and threatened to knock him off his perch, but he clung tightly to the round metal bar and pulled himself as close as possible to the body of the truck.
There was no traffic behind him, for which he was grateful, as it might be a bit hard to explain what he was doing there if an alert motorist noticed him.
The traffic was light heading back along Dalecarlia Parkway back to Friendly Village, and the trip passed without incident.
He stepped off the back of the truck at the first intersection they came to in the town centre, seeing the lights of a taxi stand at the end of the street.
He heard sirens now, not fire, but police sirens, only a few blocks away, without doubt sounding for him. Brewer must have found a way to raise the alarm.
Sam strolled casually along to the taxi stand, opening the door and sliding into the back seat of the first cab on the stand.
“Where to guv’nor?” the driver asked, sounding just like a London cabbie, or at least what Sam’s impression of a London cabbie was like, from TV shows and movies. He had a passing feeling that he had seen this driver before, but that was surely impossible.
“The train station,” Sam said calmly. He didn’t want to sound like a prisoner on the run, even if he was one.
“Bethesda or Silver Spring?” the driver asked. “Bethesda is closer, but the express goes through Silver Spring.”
“Bethesda,” Sam answered. He’d checked that out too. The express didn’t run this late at night, but Bethesda was on the red line and he could catch a train to Union Station. From there he could disappear anywhere he wanted.
“Rightio, Bethesda it is then, guv,” the driver said, turning around to face him.
He was surprisingly young for a cab driver, Sam thought. No more than eighteen and completely bald under a peaked cap. His face was long and thin, but there was a glint of a chuckle in his eyes. Sam had never seen him before in his life, and yet …
Then he got it. It was the voice. The accent, it was unmistakable.
The driver grinned, a slightly macabre, almost demonic, smile, even without the face paint. He tilted back his cap, revealing the tattoo of a biohazard symbol on his forehead.
“Skullface!” Sam cried out and the driver laughed.
“Took your bleedin’ time gettin’ out, ya muppet,” he said. “Another day an’ we’d have had to send you home.”