Dangerous Attachments (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 1) (16 page)

Rosie ignored two C.O.s who were escorting an inmate past the room, and said, "Let's go outside, Herb."

Herb, followed by Sylvia and both investigators, marched through North's lobby, past C.O. Buyers, and out two sets of glass doors. Blowing dirt and snow immediately blinded them. Sylvia could barely make out Herb's shape. His overcoat slapped his thighs in the wind, and she heard his shouted words, "What were you doing with Lucas?"

Matt England guided Rosie by the sleeve to confer at a distance from Sylvia and Herb. Rosie kept her hands cupped around her face to ward off the stinging snow.

Sylvia had to yell to make herself heard. "I wasn't evaluating anyone. Lucas asked me to come. What he told me was confidential."

"You expect me to buy that? What about them?" He pointed at Matt and Rosie. "Goddamn it, Sylvia. I'm his lawyer. I need to know what he's telling you!"

"I'll talk to you tomorrow, Herb. After I get my thoughts together." She poked at the third button on his coat. "But I'll tell you this much: he thinks his father wants him dead."

Herb's cowboy hat blew up from his head, but he jammed it down with one gloved hand. He stood, mouth open, for several seconds before he said, "Bullshit! You told me yourself, he's paranoid."

"But you know the saying," Sylvia said. "Even paranoids have enemies."

R
OSIE WAS STILL
mulling over the aborted interview with Lucas Watson and the strange run-in with Burnett
when she returned to her office. A new incident report quickly monopolized her thoughts. It was lying on the floor directly below the mail slot. She scanned the contents as she opened blinds and shifted directional heating vents.

Due to high winds, a power outage at the pen and surrounding areas had occurred at approximately 4:10
A.M
. Backup generators had switched on according to the penitentiary's emergency contingency plan, but only after a 190-second delay.

In the middle of the night—last night!—all prison security systems had been without electricity for more than three minutes, allowing ample opportunity for a catastrophic breach of security. Rosie picked up the phone. The warden was not in his office. His secretary said he couldn't be disturbed from a meeting with representatives from Techtronics—the company that handled the pen's security—and New Mexico Property Control. Rosie hung up and bit her red nail thoughtfully. She wished she could talk to security wizard Pat O'Riley, but he'd left Techtronics last spring. His former employer had manufactured and replaced 90 percent of the penitentiary's current security system after the 1980 riot. Since installation, the new security system had failed repeatedly. Infrared barriers, locking systems, roof hatch alarms, fence rattlers, and the "hot" line were often or always dysfunctional. Techtronics was rumored to be one lawsuit away from bankruptcy. They might be out of business before they could fix everything that was wrong with prison security.

Her other line buzzed and a voice boomed from North Facility. Rosie said, "Hello, Colonel Gonzales."

"Rosie, we've got a sewage overflow in Two-A and -B.
Physical services says the pipes are jammed, can't swallow all the rubber the inmates are flushing. I also got half my shift out with vehicular trouble. I just wanted to warn you it's a mess over here. I already got the word from one inmate. Don't be coming to work tomorrow."

I
N CELL BLOCK
one, adjacent to the administration wing on the ground floor, the jackal frowned when the lights dimmed. He had capped his day poring over his most recent issues of
Omni
and
Scientific American
. There was an absorbing article on the moral dilemmas of gene-splicing, a long piece on DNA reconstruction, but most interesting of all was the story on autotomy in spiders. The jackal read and reread the paragraphs on limb regeneration and metamorphosis. He marveled at the arachnid's ability to tear off its own leg, take sustenance from its own juices, and (with luck) replace the limb. When he closed his eyes, his head filled with thoughts of biogenesis, and the scenes from last night's dream finally began to surface.

A great laboratory, lights so bright they were blinding, a black-and-white diamond pattern marking the giant chessboard floor. In his dream, the jackal saw himself enter the room and stand in front of the operating table. He wore a surgeon's smock and mask.

There was an oversize book mounted on a pedestal. A nurse appeared with a tray of instruments. Another wheeled in a tank with tubes protruding like a mechanical Medusa. "Do we have his head yet, doctor?" she asked.

The jackal was about to answer when the lights flickered, died, and flared again in CB-1.

A
HALF MILE
away, as the crow flies, C.O. Anderson slammed the thick metal door behind himself and swallowed hard. It was better if he didn't look up at the vertical tunnel of the sixty-foot tower before he approached the first row of pale orange rungs. His vertigo would kick into gear if he didn't follow his routine to the letter, and there were six sets of rungs ahead of him.

The tough leather soles of his boots clanged against metal as he climbed, and the wind yowled like a trapped beast inside the narrow tunnel. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the top and pulled himself up onto the ten-foot-square tower platform. C.O. Anderson shivered as a concrete wall of air blasted tempered glass, slid through cracks, and blew the calendar, roster sheet, and daily log from a small table.

There was no room for a door in front of the lone, freestanding toilet. Loose sheets of paper had blown up against its porcelain base.

The C.O. had to stoop down or stand on his toes to peer through the scratched windows that overlooked North Facility. The original architects must have had a sixty-inch officer in mind when they designed tower visibility levels. If a C.O. was over five feet, he or she had better be at least six feet three to see above the solid panel that separated window bands. Anderson grunted at the sharp twinge in his back, a chronic pain when he was working the tower. Blowing snow obscured his 360-degree pan of North administration's roof, the gym and main yard, psych units, housing units 3-A and 3-B, as well as the medical sally port. The grounds were deserted.

When he squinted through the white glare of electric
lights, he could see the roof of 3-B and a double stretch of live alarm wire shivering against the wind. There was equipment on the roof of the gym—left over from work the construction crew was doing before they got stormed out. If they didn't reopen the rec facilities soon, they'd have a friggin' riot on their hands. C.O. Anderson smiled.

He felt a strong vibration as wind ripped at the tower. In the distance, the giant perimeter isolation zone lights flickered off, then back on, bare yellow circles against the snow.

O
NE HUNDRED YARDS
north of the tower, Lucas Watson paced his narrow cell. He did five sets of one hundred sit-ups each, and seventy push-ups on the concrete floor.

The heater wasn't working. The stench of sewage leaked through the walls. Watson forced himself to sit on the concrete bunk. He stared down at a half-written letter. After a few minutes, he stuffed it into an envelope and quickly scratched an address on the front.

The unnatural silence in the housing unit made an awful contrast to the storm outside.
Too still, too quiet, too dead
. He'd heard the rumor just like everyone else in North Facility. The nervous animal energy seeped from every man's skin; it even seeped from the walls. The riot was about to go down.

CHAPTER TWELVE

O
N
T
HURSDAY MORNING,
the jackal kept his hand over his eyes as the truck negotiated snow and ice on the mile-long stretch of road between Main and North Facility. His first day of duty at North was not off to an auspicious beginning. The storm had done anything but abate as yesterday's weather report had forecast. The jackal sighed. His teeth were chattering and his fingers had a bluish cast. The faces of the two other porters working North settled into grim masks as ice thickened on their eyelashes.

When the truck pulled up in front of the concrete fortress, his blood quickened. He felt a thrill the moment he entered North's outer doors. He stood next to the porters in front of the glass that separated them from C.O. Elaine Buyers. Rage and frustration was about to erupt. The sparse hair on his arms stood up.

"Take off your shoes," C.O. Buyers demanded. Her voice was tight, whittled down to size by the tiny
speaker set in glass. She waited while the inmate removed his shoes.

"Okay, try it now." Her face revealed irritation clamped over fear.

As the porter shuffled through the open doorway, the metal detector went off. On the third try, the whining alarm was silent. It had gone dead after a power surge.

"Shit, not again!" C.O. Buyers admitted all three porters and ran the battery-operated hand detector over the outline of their bodies about three inches from the surface of their suits.

While they waited, she used her phone to report the breakdown. "It's not just the metal detector. My radio is out, too. I don't know if it's batteries, or what!" She chopped her chin up and down as she spoke. "I did! I reported that three hours ago! They said they won't have another 'til lunch."

Dumbly, the jackal followed the other two men through the door and into the hallway that accessed offices, C.O. lounge, and the shift briefing room. The other inmates began the job of cleaning the men's toilets. The jackal would not go near the bathroom mirrors so he claimed a vacuum from the supply room.

Deafened by the harsh industrial drone, the jackal steered the cumbersome machine over the carpet. Two secretaries disappeared behind office doors. Methodically, he made his way down the hall toward the lounge where a haggard-looking C.O. slammed his fist against the pop machine. A Pepsi banged into the metal gutter. The C.O. left the room without looking at the jackal.

The jackal circled the pool table, sucked up a pile of
plastic scraps behind the microwave, and then swung a left toward the vending machines. His eye caught motion outside the wall of windows covering the east end of the room. In the parking lot, a black garbage bag sped madly across ice, driven by a tempest. Other plastic bags had caught in the rolling razor ribbon that decorated the edge of Administration's roof. Shredded by wind and sleet, they waved like streamers on a used car lot. As the jackal stared open-mouthed at Siberia, the whine of the vacuum ceased, and he was surrounded by sudden silence. The stillness was so dense it was another barrier; the facility's power was dead.

W
ITHIN THE THREE
pods of housing unit 3-B, in reaction to a second power surge and break, the cell doors rolled open and froze halfway. In their cells, the inmates stopped reading, pacing, eating; they waited. The C.O. making rounds inside the first pod stopped, also. For several moments, the tableau was set. Neither guard nor inmates stirred. Then, Bubba Akins peered out from his ground-floor cell into the pod's concrete gloom. Within ten seconds he had a shank at the guard's throat; he pushed his hostage through the pod door and down the hall to the locked entry of the unit's upper-level control center.

C.O. Rafael was in the bathroom when the second surge occurred. He stepped out into dim light, moved past the large L-shaped control panel, and peered through the angle of windows that provided a shadowy bird's-eye view of each two-tiered pod. All three pods were arranged around and below the control center like segments of a baseball diamond. Guards working control had at least a partial view of thirty-six cells. The
windows also offered restricted sight lines of the hallway separating inmate living areas from control.

C.O. Rafael heard, but did not see, his partner request entry into the control center. He pulled the long lever that manually unlocked the control center door when electronic methods failed. He managed to radio a 10-33 before he was beaten by four inmates who stormed up the eight-rung metal stairs into the room. When the communications officer radioed back for confirmation, Bubba Akins forced his hostage to give the 10-22.
"All clear."

Two inmates scaled the ladder to the escape hatch that gave access to the roof from control. Within another minute, they had gathered up blowtorches, staple guns, drills, and hacksaws left behind by the work crew, and they passed them down through the hatch fire-brigade-style.

The first murder of the riot took place in protective custody when a snitch was strangled by two pod-mates immediately after the power surge. Two hours later, hostages were held in all three housing units of North Facility.

A quarter mile to the east and south, respectively, inmates at the Main and South facilities remained relatively quiet.

L
IKE A STEER
in a slaughterhouse, Lucas Watson's first instinct was to escape when the riot broke out. He slipped out of his cell and crouched on the concrete balcony of the pod while Bubba Akins pushed his hostage through the door below. Watson knew that sides would be chosen and lines of battle drawn. What mattered now was the strength of your army. . . or your invisibil
ity. Lucas Watson had no army in the joint. He was alone. To survive, he would have to make his powers work for him. He reached under his shirt for the pouch but felt bare skin. He heard his own cry of rage bouncing off the cold, angular walls. Carried by the raw edges of that sound, he bounded down the eight curving stairs to the lower level and slammed through the door to the hall. He knew the entire yard around 3-B was a steel cage. He turned in the direction of the utility rooms.

T
HE MIDNIGHT SKY
streaked red as flames licked the edges of North Facility administration. Fire trucks, ambulances, helicopters, dog teams, the media, and National Guard vehicles created a symphony of chaos. The governor of New Mexico had set up a command center in North's parking lot. With the help of Colonel Gonzales, Rosie Sánchez worked to establish radio contact with the rioting inmates inside North.

T
HE JACKAL DIDN'T
know how long he stayed hidden in the women's locker room. Long after the initial panic of personnel exiting the building he remained tucked between several stacks of lockers. Once, he moved to the shower stall and crouched behind boxes of building materials and cleaning supplies, but that had become uncomfortable. At some point, there was a great chemical explosion and he vomited from the fumes.