If not for the terrible aim of the two COs launching the grenades, Blood and I would have become a permanent part of the Crypt, our flesh and blood painting the floor, walls, and ceiling. Instinct kicked in, and we dropped flat onto our chests as the grenades passed overhead, striking the far wall behind us. We returned the fire, cutting down the last two COs only a split second before the elevator doors closed once more.
We got back up and onto our feet, brushed away the shards of concrete and glass from our bodies.
I inhaled and exhaled a hot, sour breath. Then, “You think that’s the last of them? There can only be so many on-the-take COs working the Crypt.”
“It’s not like they can sic all the guards on us,” he said. “They do that, they implicate themselves in some serious bad shit.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t more coming. And when they do, they’re likely to pack some tear gas canisters inside those grenade launchers. They can’t kill us outright, they’ll try to gas us, then kill us.” Shifting my focus to the vault. “Sweet, how you making out in there?”
“Come see for yourself!” he yelled.
Blood and I made our way in and nearly passed out from what we saw.
The vault was maybe fifteen feet by fifteen feet. Taking up almost the entirety of the floor space was no less than half a dozen aluminum laundry bins filled with cash.
I turned to Blood. “Rough estimate.”
He cocked his head, took a step forward, staring into the closest bin. “Large denominations,” he said. “Each bundle, maybe three to five million, give or take, depending upon the consistency of the denomination. All told, maybe upwards of thirty million.”
My eyes locked on the cash, glowing richly green in the overhead LED lamp light.
“My guess is they won’t miss a million or so, should those kids happen to take notice.”
“Cops might miss it when they investigate,” Blood said. “But then, you and me don’t take nothing for ourselves. That way, we don’t have to lie. Much.”
“We gotta keep up appearances, Blood. Do what’s right. But those kids deserve something after what they’ve been through. If the FBI questions us, we’ll feign ignorance.”
“Or, we could blame Sweet.”
The con’s brow scrunched up. “You let me go when this is all said and done, you can blame me all you want. It will be my pleasure.”
There it was again. The high-pitched wailing. The kids, locked in that room. Chained to the beds.
“Jesus,” I said, both hands still gripping one M16 apiece. “The kids. We’ve got to free them before we give this cash another thought.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Blood said.
Together, we exited the vault and sprinted the length of the battle-damaged corridor to the dormitory.
“Stand back,” I said, aiming the M16 at the door lever.
I put three rounds into the lever and the deadbolt above it, managing to rip a six-inch gash in the metal door. Raising my leg, I kicked it open and revealed a room filled with maybe twenty early teenage kids.
Their mostly gaunt faces displayed an odd emotional mixture of fear, sadness, anger, desperation, grief, and just plain happiness that someone—someone good—had finally come to rescue them. First things first: we needed a key. We couldn’t just start shooting the locks and spraying the room with lead and shattered metal. Not with all these kids around. Blood locked eyes on mine. As usual, he knew exactly what was running through my brain.
“I see some keys in the desk in the office. Sweet can help.”
He ran out of the room before I could respond and returned with several small keys a minute later. He dropped half of them into my palm and kept the other half. Both of us went to work trying them on the locks until it was discovered that I had the master. From that point on, it was just a matter of unlocking each child.
The kids then began to scream not because they were afraid but because they were finally free. Finally getting out of this place. Placing my fingers under my tongue, I whistled to get everyone’s attention.
“Hang on, everybody,” I said. “We’re not quite done yet. We still have to make it out of this prison and outside the gates. But before we do anything, I don’t want you leaving here empty-handed.” Then, turning to Blood. “Blood, my man, take a quick look in the kitchen. See if there are any bags we might use.”
Blood tore off in the direction of the kitchen, which was accessible to the dorm via an interior door. When he returned, he was holding piles of plastic supermarket shopping bags in his hands.
“This do the trick, Keep?”
“Damn straight,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”
Handing each child a shopping bag, we made the short hike down the corridor to the vault, then worked like a team stuffing each and every bag. When we were finished, I glanced at my watch. The whole money-grabbing operation took maybe ten minutes.
That was when Sweet turned to me.
“What about me?” he said. “I’m still planning on spending the rest of my days in beautiful Mexico.”
Sweet was a killer. A cop killer at that. A reprehensible human being by all accounts. But he did help us with freeing those kids. He did cooperate in exposing this dungeon of horrors. If he took some of the cash for himself, that was his business. Right was right, but sometimes it was more right when you put your blinders on.
“Do what you gotta do, Sweet,” I said. “And we never had this conversation. At this point, I just wanna get those kids out of here. Fast.”
I looked around for another way out besides the elevators. Then, I remembered the door at the far end of the office.
“That door,” I said to Sweet as he was filling a shopping bag with cash. “Will it lead us out of here?”
“It leads directly to the exterior of the laundry,” he said. “But you’re going to have to blow your way through the locks. You’re not going to find keys for them like you did the padlocks on those kids.”
“We’ve got more ammo than we need.”
I was just about ready to gather up the kids and escort them to the door inside the office when the mechanical noise of descending elevators once again filled the corridor.