Deadly Journey (3 page)

Chapter 4

No Way To Die

Miguel must have
known his words had sickened me and silence ensued. My insides twisted with
hunger. The plate of food had lost none of its appeal to look at, so I shuffled
toward it on my backside and picked it off the floor. The knowledge that I
couldn’t survive without water for very many days worried me, but I knew I
could go without food for a month before my organs gave up the fight. It has to
be one of the hardest things I have ever done, when I tipped the food over the
drain and used the edge of the plate to poke some of it through the grill to
make sure all of it was out of sight. I hoped there was a method to my madness.

A bloated stomach was giving me grief, with
gas rumbling around inside. I reached to unfasten the button of my jeans only
to feel the buckle of my belt. It was hard to believe they had left me with my
belt. Now I had something to work with to chip away at the cement and make an
escape. As hard as it was with swollen lips, I managed a smile, whipped off the
belt, and hid it through a tear in the mattress.

‘Miguel, what’s outside the window?’

‘A twenty-foot drop. We’re above a stable.
Do you have a plan?’

Telling him I had a plan would give him
something to bargain with to gain favour. Teaming up with a murderer wasn’t an
option, so I ignored his question.

‘What about the terrain?’

He groaned in pain, but managed an answer ‘Maybe
twenty yards and there’s a creek. Beyond that, it’s all scrubland and a dirt
road, if you can call it a road. Do you think there’s a way out?’

‘No, but if they let us out to exercise,
maybe we could make a run for it.’

‘Exercise!’ He snickered. ‘This isn’t one
of your American prisons with human rights. Besides, a bullet shattered my
kneecap and I’m shackled. I—’

He stopped talking. My ears strained at the
silence, and then I heard footsteps on a stairway.

I heard a bolt sliding, a door opening,
muffled voices, and then clicking heels that gave me the creeps before they
stopped some way down the corridor. Startled, my ears exploded at a gunshot,
intensified by the confines of the corridor. Ducking to a haunch, I froze to
the spot. I heard a piercing scream, followed by a grunt and something hitting
the floor, which released me from my stance. Survival mode took over and I
rolled to the side of my cell door, out of sight to anyone outside.

‘That’s your other knee, snitch,’ Squat
said and then laughed.

Miguel’s voice screamed out. ‘No, please
no. I have money.’

‘You mean, you had money. We’ve sacked your
bank account.’

Two more shots rang out to Miguel pleading.
A cartridge tinkled on the concrete floor. Wisps of smoke drifted through my
cell door, along with the familiar odour of spent powder.

Someone choked as if drowning. A final
rasping breath trailed off to silence. Then I heard hacking sounds.

It was hard to get a handle on what was
happening, but it sounded as though they had entered Miguel’s cell and they
were now dragging Miguel’s body down the corridor.

There was silence for maybe ten minutes,
and then footsteps returned along the corridor. The clicking heels stopped
briefly and then continued toward my cell door. The walls of my room spun as my
eyes danced, looking for a safer position. As I wished for the powers of a
chameleon to blend with the wall, the palpitations in my chest grew ever faster
and louder in intensity.

The lethal injection they gave to murderers
in some states sprang to mind and seemed like a better option, but it was
doubtful something like that was within their resume. I had second thoughts,
when the recent botched executions came to mind. Cold shudders ran through my
body and I pressed my back to one side of the door, craning to see who was
approaching. If I was to meet a similar end, they would have to open the door
to get to me and I would go down fighting.

My eyes rolled to the ceiling and I mouthed
a plea in a whisper.

‘Oh, Dad, what the hell do I do now?’

Stripped bare of any protection, like a
naked youngster, I’d not felt as vulnerable since I was bullied in middle
school. Gone was the protection of my badge and sidearm.

‘Suck it up, son,’ Dad had said. ‘It’s part
of life. Okay, I can go and have a word with the school authorities.’ Which he
did. ‘But really, it could make the situation worse.’ And it sure did that; I
shrugged at the memories. ‘The only escape will come from within. Think about
how some animals protect themselves. Take the cat family; they puff up their
coats to make them appear larger than they are.’

I didn’t understand his analogy at first,
until he enrolled me in judo and later karate. After word got around about my
gaining my first-belt grade, it all became clear. Sure enough, I seemed to walk
a little taller, with my stature growing at every grade I achieved without
having to fight back. Most of my tormenters gave me a wide berth, but funnily
enough, some wanted to be my buddy.

What good my prowess at hand-to-hand combat
would do in my current situation, I couldn’t work out. I would have given
anything to trade in my judogi for body armour and my black belt for an assault
rifle with a stack of high-velocity clips of ammunition.

A loud clang on the cell bars got my
attention.

My eyes popped and my mouth gaped. Squat
stood there, carrying a machete in one hand and holding a severed head by the
hair in the other. A shiver ran from head to toe, as if what remained of
Miguel’s body in ghostly form had passed through me. Blood dripped to the floor
as he held it up at the cell door.

‘I’ll stew this for supper,’ said Squat,
followed by a bellicose laugh that grated in my mind, pretty much like taking a
bite on an ice pop with a sensitive tooth.

Miguel’s expression was frozen in time;
bulging eyes told the fear of his journey to hell. An acid taste rose through
my gullet and soured my mouth.

Squat let out another rumble of laughter
and someone joined him.

Squat said, ‘Take this to Miguel’s village
and spike it in the village square with a warning to anyone contemplating
snitching on the Internet. Then get hold of the tech guy, take a picture on
your cell phone and have him upload it to Miguel’s Facebook page with a
warning. That’ll spread the message wider, until they pull it down.’

The fact that he’d mentioned supper at
least gave the impression it wasn’t my time to die. Pressed against the wall, I
couldn’t stop quaking and wanted to vomit. I couldn’t remove the vision of
Miguel’s severed head from my thoughts.

‘I see you enjoyed your lunch. Next time
you can eat my shit. Kick the plate out.’

Killing a man isn’t easy; I’ve dropped two
in my career when they pulled a weapon on me. As for Squat, the pugnacious
bastard, I would have happily strangled him with my bare hands at that moment,
self-defence or not.

He strolled away. I kicked out the plate,
but returned to hide with my back against the wall and listened. Squat must
have been happy with his work as he whistled a tune to the sound of spraying
running water. A puddle seeped through the bottom of the cell door and then a
spray of water directed at the mattress.

‘Sleep well tonight, American.’

If he was saying there was to be a tonight,
then I had nothing to lose and everything to gain and I rushed to stand over
the drain. It was time to put Dad’s theory into practice. The water from the
hose directed near me and I threw him a sneer.

‘Hey, dickhead.’

It did the trick and I eagerly gulped down
the spray that hit my face, until I choked. To my surprise, Squat lost interest
and moved on down the corridor. While I had solved one problem, I had possibly
gained another and prayed it was going to be as hot during the night as it had
been during the day. I stripped off my soaked clothes down to my boxers.
Sleeping that night wasn’t in the plan, but then neither was coming down with
hypothermia. I moved the mattress into the beam of sunlight from the window,
together with my jeans and T-shirt in the hope they would dry.

Dad was right. Somehow, I had to make
myself bigger than my captors were, to outsmart them, and to gain my freedom.
It was just the thought of luck playing too large a part in what I had planned
that worried me. I prayed, for the sake of my wife and kids, that my parents,
God rest their souls, were up for giving Lady Luck a nudge in the right
direction.

Chapter 5

Time for a Plan

Time passed
slowly. The cliché “watching paint dry” took on a completely new meaning. Steam
rose from the mattress and my clothing. However many times I touched and turned
them, the drying process didn’t seem to make much headway. Rob would be tearing
his hair out by now, I thought. We had been friends ever since middle school
and had joined the force together. Not many people have the pleasure of their
friend as a partner. He’d been best man at my wedding, as well, and I wondered
if he would be the one to break the news to Mary. But then, thinking about it,
he would insist.

Fond memories floated through my mind of
our wild teenage years. It was a wonder either of us had joined the police
force, what with some of the stunts we’d pulled... some of them illegal. I had
wanted to teach biology, but working with my best buddy was more appealing at
the time. That, and being able to carry a gun with the authority to take down
the scum who made the lives of ordinary citizens a living hell.

Reminiscing brought out a smile, as a
welcome distraction. Rob, I recalled, had always been the louder of the two of
us and used to come up with all the pranks. I was always a wimp when it came to
women. That’s probably where his swapping girlfriends idea came from. I’m just
thankful I had found my tongue by the time I met Mary and didn’t need his help.
Funnily enough, that must have been around the time he lost his gift of chat
and he knuckled down to making detective. It would have been great if he had
found a woman to settle down with, instead of acting as the gooseberry at barbecues.
At least I knew good old Uncle Rob would protect my kids until I returned and
he’d take his god parenting duties seriously.

The sounds of children laughing and a dog
barking caught my attention. Whoever my captors were, they had family there at
the farm. It was hard to work out why the kids’ parents would turn to crime and
how they could give life through their children on the one hand, but take it
away so readily on the other. Taking someone’s life is one thing when you have
a gun pointed at your or your family’s head. But carrying out the actions of a
psychopath as they had done with Miguel was a whole different Rollerball game.
Maybe, I thought, if an opportunity arose, I could gain some empathy by playing
on the family aspect.

Standing with my back to the wall, I
slithered down into a crouch and buried my head in my hands. Considering my
incarceration brought a saying to mind. “Take away all the pleasures in life
and all that remains for you to look forward to are death and ingratitude”.
Whoever said that escaped my memory, and in any event, it was of no consequence
in the scheme of the universe, but I hoped they were full of crap, because it
wasn’t in my plans to curl up and die.

One of those Dumbo moments struck while I
was staring at the cell door. I scrambled to my feet. There was no box with a
locking mechanism for a key, just the shaft of a bolt. Sidling up to the door,
I slipped my hand through the bars and ran it along the shaft of the bolt. Two
brackets held it to the wall, with one welded to the doorframe. The bend of a
handle was within reach of my fingertips and faced downward, but the handle
itself was beyond my grasp.

The light outside had started to dim when I
heard the door in the corridor open. Squat appeared at my cell door, unarmed.
He ordered me to stand against the far wall and passed through a plate of
sandwiches and a plastic water bottle. A sprint to grab the sandwiches and
water seemed the way to go, but it wasn’t necessary. He turned and walked the
ten paces along the corridor. The outer door closed, but I didn’t hear the bolt
sliding to lock the door.

He must have thought I had eaten the
urine-soaked food. That proved my initial attempts at the psychology of
emptying the food down the drain, and to make him think I had eaten it, had
worked. This time it was a porcelain plate, so at least I had another tool.
There was no point wasting time with the light fading, and I grabbed the
sandwiches, opened one and inspected the contents. An egg-salad sandwich had
never smelled or tasted so good. After yanking off the top of the water bottle,
I eagerly gulped down half the contents.

With my wristwatch gone, there was no way I
could determine the time. All there was to go by was the illumination from the
farmhouse and the hope that my captors went to sleep the same time as normal
folk. At least with the white walls and what little light there was from
outside, my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. As I retrieved my belt from
inside the mattress, hip-hop music blasted through the peace and quiet,
offending my eardrums. I hated any type of rap music. A woman called out.
Thankfully, the volume lowered, but it was still loud enough to mask the sound
of me scratching the buckle of my belt on the concrete to give it a sharp edge.
Much to my relief, after an hour of the music pounding, it gave way to the
sound of a television program. I couldn’t believe they had tuned into an
American broadcast. As luck would have it, the program pinpointed the time of
night and brought a smile to my face as much as it hurt.

The lights extinguished in the farmhouse,
along with the sound from their television. Felons and house raids had taught
me that between two and four in the morning was the best time to rob or enter a
house. Close to four was the best time, when people are typically in a deep
sleep. That’s when you can walk right up to someone sleeping in their bed, make
faces at them, and they would never know you had been there... until they awoke
and found their house ransacked. I preferred our battering-ram type of entry.
It relies on a swift run up the stairway, but even then, the scum would be so
disoriented that none of them escaped the cuffs. Stealth was the plan; the last
thing I needed was for them to awake before I reached safety.

The next two hours were unbearable. There
was no way of knowing if they would check up on me. The belt buckle was
razor-sharp and, like scraping butter, I cut a one-foot square in the damp
cement down to the brick. I scraped away the residue until all the bricks were
exposed. Something brushed my bare foot and I felt a nip at my ankle. Damned
rat couldn’t wait until I was dead, attracted by my blood-caked feet. Never
knew they could squeal that loud as I launched it against the cell door with a
well-aimed kick.

Worry that it would be difficult to run far
without shoes made me scream inside at having left them behind. That’s when I
cursed at having wasted two hours waiting and spent the next twenty minutes or
so in cutting up some of the fabric from the mattress to fashion a covering for
my feet, before the belt buckle blunted from what I had planned. I felt around
the brickwork for the cement holding them together and I began to scrape.

At the rate I was progressing, I reckoned I
would be skeletal before I removed the first brick. Desperation took hold, and
I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand at the realization that the
bricks were not solid, or hardened. I had noticed earlier that they had an
outer skin of around quarter of an inch, a cavity, and then another quarter of
an inch leading to another cavity and then the outside edge.

Taking deep breaths, one foot in front of
the other, legs slightly apart, creating a comfortable stance and with knees
slightly bent, I cleared my head of all thoughts. I went to that special place
in my mind that people who do what I was about to do know well. With clenched
fists, I reached out, measuring the distance with my left arm, touching the
wall with my knuckles and then drew back. More steady breathing, and like a
cobra strike, my fist twisted from vertical to horizontal. The force of the
blow made a crunching sound as my knuckles hit the brick. All that was missing
was the distraction of a war cry, to numb the pain. Standing in silence, eyes
closed, I continued to breathe steadily and then relaxed, dropping my arms to
my sides. My knuckles stung like hell and I hoped the effort was worth the
pain.

A silent prayer and I inspected the damage.
The surface of the brick had shattered, cracking the inner lining and the
cement holding it to the next brick, and I pried away with the belt buckle.
Feverishly I pulled away at the loose debris. That one blow had turned the wall
into a house of cards and in no time the brick was out, with more to follow.

Dropping to my knees, I peered through the
hole. There it was, freedom: a short distance to the creek and then thick shrub
as far as the eye could see in the moonlight. That sort of upped the tempo, and
without having to resort to more blows, or scraping, only pulling and pushing,
I soon had a hole large enough for me to get some serious fresh air.
More
frantic pulling and pushing at the bricks and hole was big enough for me to get
through with a stoop.
Not forgetting the twenty-foot drop, all
I had to worry about now was not to break a leg with the jump, or so I thought.

Lying on my belly, I inched my body to get
my head through the large hole and peered downward. The feeling of anxiety in
my chest was akin to a passenger on a damaged ship, ready to sink and without a
lifeboat to launch into shark-infested waters. Below and against the wall I
could see two lengths of coiled barbed wire running the length of the stable.
My captors were obviously wise to anyone attempting to escape, but they forgot
about the hidden lifeboat, or should I say the mattress. It was simple, throw
the mattress out first to land on the razor wire, and then jump with a soft
landing on the mattress. Only the vision of Miguel’s severed head made it all
seem plausible... that and a vision of Mary and the kids willing me on.