Cam - 03 - The Moonpool

by P. T. Deutermann

  I did my standard exercise package, but ended up near the perimeter fence instead of the base of the pen, where I faked a leg cramp. I sat down on the grass and did a little kabuki, pretending to suffer through the act of straightening out my “cramped” thigh muscles. In between grunts and twitches, I examined the fence. I was looking for signs that it had been cut, but it hadn’t.

  Well, shit. So much for that.

  Then I scanned the grass and weeds outside of the pen. Immediately beyond the fence was the perimeter running track the Marines used. Beyond that, it was just wet weeds and foot-high grass all the way to the edge of the woods. And, yes, there were signs something had come across that field to the fence. Subtle signs, but to anyone who’d done any tracking, they were there.

  I examined the fence again. I had to be very careful here. I had to assume there was a video camera focused right on me because I was lingering near the forbidden fence and the white line of death-by-rottweiler inside the pen.

  I stood up, and then sat right back down again with a grunt of simulated pain. Two feet closer to the fence. I stared hard, but the fence was intact. What wasn’t intact was all the clips along the bottom of the panel of chain-link wire in this pen. They were all there, but they had all been severed. Assuming there was enough slack in this fence, I should be able to push my way out under the bottom of the chain-link.

  Okay. The guys had been watching.

  I got back up again and hopped around on my good leg while trying to make the other one work properly. In the process I turned out toward the woods, pointed at my watch, and then stretched three fingers against my stomach. Then I began limping back toward the other end of the exercise pen. I saw one guard watching me, but he looked more sympathetic than alarmed. I hobbled back to the end of the pen and sat down on the ground again, continuing to massage my thigh muscle.

  “You okay?” the Marine asked quietly through the fence.

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Fucking cramp.”

  “Heard that,” he said, one workout guy to another.

  I kept up the gimp act all the way back to my room. I heard the last cohort of exercise-bound people being mustered out in the hallway, and it sounded as if my next-door neighbor’s door had opened and closed. I waited fifteen minutes, and then went into the bathroom, where I took a long, hot shower to soothe my “cramped” limbs. When I was finished in the bathroom, I soaped a single word onto the mirror: talk.

  The lights went out throughout the facility at ten o’clock. Mad Moira was in my room ten minutes later. This time she was wearing her jumpsuit, and I could confirm what I needed to know—she was slim. I was the one who was going to have a problem getting under that fence, assuming we could even get out to it. I told her I was going out tonight.

  “Wow,” she said. “That was quick. You have someone waiting?”

  I ducked her question. “Can you get us to the exercise pen that’s the third from the left?” I asked.

  She thought about that for a moment.

  “I can get us to a door that goes outside; after that, it’ll depend.”

  “On?”

  “On the alarm system—the hallway room door card readers are locked down after ten o’clock. I don’t think the bathroom doors are. I think it’s a fire safety thing—they want one door that can be operated by a housekeeping card in case the main system goes down.”

  “You think?”

  She shrugged. “Well, I can hear the room card readers click off at 10:00 P.M.; I’ve listened to the bathroom hallway door reader, and it doesn’t.”

  “So it’s still possible there’ll be an alert the moment you key that door?”

  “Sure.”

  She must have seen the look on my face.

  “Look: The difference is, that door will open. These room doors won’t. There aren’t any readers on the stairwell doors—again, think fire safety. My plan was to key the door, open it, and run like hell for the fire stairway. After that . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said. “After that, it could get really interesting.”

  She shrugged again. “I’m ready to give it a shot. I’ve seen loading dock ramps that go down to the basement on the back of the building. The first floor is where the security station probably lives. I’d say try for the basement, then out.”

  “That’s where that damned rottweiler came from,” I said. “If he’s loose in the basement, we’re hosed.”

  “The dogs aren’t loose down there,” she said.

  “And you know this how?”

  “The Marines hang out down there at night. They use pistols, .22s, to hunt rats. They do it with rat-shot, so’s to avoid ricochets. They drop garbage in the basement corridors, turn off all the lights, wait for a while, and then go out with night vision goggles. They wouldn’t do that if there were dogs loose.”

  “And if they’re down there tonight? Maybe the basement is the wrong objective.”

  “If they are, they’ll be drinking beer right now. They like to get a buzz on before they go killing things in the dark. But they’re usually done by midnight—the major gets them all up at five thirty for PT.”

  It was my turn to think. I’d mimed the number three and pointed at my watch. Hopefully, this had been observed by my pals with binoculars hiding in the woods. Assuming they’d known it was me under that hood, and assuming they were even there. Lots of assuming. If they’d understood what I meant, we had to roll out of here a little after 2:00 A.M. to make it to the trees by three. One minute to get from the door to the stairs. Two to get down into the basement. And then?

  “Do you know if those stairs go to the basement or just to the first floor?”

  “Basement,” she said.

  “You really party with these guys?”

  “Nothing else to do,” she said. “Why the hell not? They’re physically fit. Besides, they’re just doing a job, so the guard thing isn’t personal. They didn’t put me in here.”

  “I wonder what the major would say if he knew his guards were sexually abusing the female prisoners.”

  “It’s not abuse, big guy,” she said with a grin. “And the major most certainly knows about it. Besides, from what I hear, he’s not too crazy about holding American citizens. Iraqi insurgents? That’s different.”

  “You suppose you could sweet-talk one of your guard buddies to look the other way if he caught us trying to get out?”

  “Nope,” she said promptly. “These are Marines. They have a duty, and they’ll do it, no matter what they think about it.”

  “Even if they think it’s wrong for American military people to be holding American citizens?”

  “The major tells them that higher authority knows what it’s doing, and points out that nobody here’s being tortured, interrogated, or otherwise mistreated.”

  “Unless, of course, you try to go over that fence.”

  She winced and nodded. “Yeah, I saw that. But even then, it wasn’t a Marine gunning down a detainee. The major keeps reminding them that, mostly, we’re being kept out of circulation for the convenience of something they call higher headquarters.”

  “Right. The only thing we have to do is submit. That’s the attitude that made the Gestapo possible.”

  She snorted. “If you knew anything about the real Gestapo, you wouldn’t use that word,” she said.

  “Ge-sta-po,” I replied. “Geheime Staatspolizei. Secret state police. Heinrich Himmler’s flower children. Started as brownshirts, keeping order at meetings of the Nazi faithful. Graduated to much bigger things, didn’t they. If this place is any indication, just give it time.”

  But the fact was, I didn’t want to get into a human rights discussion with Mad Moira. I wanted to get out of here. She sensed my uncertainty.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” she asked. “You want to try it, or not?”

  “My brain says there’s too much we don’t know. My gut says now or never.”

  “Right on,” she said. “When?”

  “Tonight at 2:
00 A.M. Pray for fog.”

  Our prayers were answered. At a few minutes before 2:00 A.M. I took one final look out the windows and saw a solid wall of fog. I’d thought about flashing a signal out into the woods with the room lights, but not with this pea-souper outside. All I could see out the windows was the glow of lights down in the exercise yard.

  I was dressed in my exercise jumpsuit and shoes, minus the KKK headgear. There was nothing I needed to bring from the room. Moira had told me the sequence for fiddling the bathroom doors. She’d tap three times on her door with her bathroom card. I’d tap three times on mine. Then we’d position our respective cards, and next she’d tap four times slowly but in a definite rhythm with something hard. On the fourth tap, we’d simultaneously swipe our cards. According to Moira, either both doors would open, or alarm bells would go off downstairs. Or both, she’d said, sweetly.

  In the event, both doors yielded and we met in the bathroom. We each rolled up two bath towels in case we ended up having to go over the fence. We listened for a few minutes to see if anyone was coming down the hallway in response to our simultaneous card swiping. I could hear Moira breathing fast, and realized that, for all her bravado, she was as scared as I was. If the guards came now, we could claim that we’d been getting together for some boy-girl fun. But once we left the rooms and got out into the building, there’d only be one explanation for what we were doing out there.

  Even if we got to the fence, there was still that tiny little problem of the hellhound. And if my people were not there, we’d be making our stand with our backs to a river. It put me briefly in mind of the old bear joke: I didn’t have to outrun the rottie; I only had to outrun Moira. I decided not to share that thought with her just now. She saw me smile.

  “What?” she asked.

  “This is about the worst-planned escape attempt I’ve ever considered,” I said.

  “Yeah, but think of it the way the jihadis do: They never set a date and time for doing anything. They plan the operation, and then they wait. They see an opportunity to strike and they do. There’s no way for military intelligence to know in advance because the jihadis don’t know in advance.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I believe the whole Iraq war was based on a lie,” she declared. “I’m always on the side of the freedom fighters. In the case of Iraq, that ain’t us.”

  “You say shit like that in public a lot?” I asked.

  “All the time,” she said. “I’m one of those people who believe we brought 9/11 on ourselves, and that they hit precisely the right people when they did it.”

  I had to take a deep breath. The air in the bathroom was getting warm, and I was suddenly not so sure I wanted this left-wing nutcase along. I thought about cold-cocking her and taking the damned card. But she knew the building and I did not. Plus, she wasn’t trying to con me: That’s how she felt, and there it was.

  “We make it out of here,” I said, “you’re on your own. If my people are out there in the woods, we’ll get away from here. But after that . . .”

  “My sentiments exactly,” she said, her eyes defiant.

  “Okay,” I said. “Swipe that sucker.”

  She did, and we both heard the door lock click. She opened it and we stepped out into the hallway. We closed the door and stopped to listen, but the only thing we heard was the click as the bathroom door card reader LED reset itself to red.

  Our rooms were on one corner of the building. The elevator and the fire stairs were at the other end. On the outside wall were the room doors. On the inside wall were some cleaning-gear closets and one marked as a linen closet. There were red dry-chemical fire extinguishers mounted on the wall every fifty feet. The floor was more of the polished linoleum that decorated the rooms. Half the overhead fluorescent lights were off. My government saving electricity.

  We hurried down toward the other end of the hallway. I didn’t see any surveillance domes in the ceiling or along the walls, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone watching. On the other hand, it was an old building, with concrete interior walls and ceilings, so back-fitting built-in cameras and wiring would have been difficult. When we got to the fire stairs, though, we discovered that Moira had been wrong about card readers. There was one, and its LED glowed bright red.

  “Oops,” she said.

  I felt a pit in my stomach. Trust a liberal to fuck it up. Then we heard the elevator machinery start up, and saw the green numbers over the elevator doors begin to light up in sequence as the elderly machine ground its way toward our floor, probably filled with a Marine reaction force.

  To our right was another hallway, identical to ours. Rooms on the outside, closets and storage on the inside wall. The building was probably a hollow square, with an air shaft in the middle. There was a set of fire stairs down at the far end, but even from where we stood, we could see another little red light laughing at us. That pit in my stomach was growing. I looked at Moira, whose face was tight with fear. The green light marked 2 went off, and the green light marked 3 lit up.

  Then I remembered what I’d done to Billy the Kid. There was a fire extinguisher mounted right next to the elevator door. I grabbed it and told Moira to grab another one and get back here. She understood immediately and ran to our right, so that she’d be out of the sight line when the elevator doors opened. The green light on 3 went out, and the light for 4 came on. Here they came. Thank you, Moira: wrong about damned near everything. Or part of the detention program.

  She was back, and I showed her how to remove the seal without firing it. I positioned her on one side of the door, and myself on the other.

  “That door opens, step in front of them and pull the trigger. It shoots low, so aim just above their heads. We want to blind them, pull them out, get in the ’vator, push B for basement, and then hit the door-close button.”

  Assuming it went to the basement, I thought. And that it didn’t require a card reader to operate. My pit was becoming a bowling ball.

  I readied my extinguisher and hoped like hell it was charged. The green light for 4 emitted a tiny ping. If the reaction force was properly constituted, there’d be no guns. Prisons had learned a long time ago never to arm the guards if they were going into the population. The elevator thumped to a stop behind the sliding doors. The doors opened in a blaze of yellow light. I nodded to Moira, and we stepped out.

  We faced two very startled Marines. Fortunately, they were neither armed nor dressed out in any particular kind of SWAT gear. They wore the usual cammies and black gloves, and each carried a police baton under one armpit like a swagger stick and what looked like a black mace canister in his hand.

  I fired first, but Moira was right there with me. In an instant the Marines’ faces were covered in white powder and they had dropped the sticks and canisters in an attempt to protect their faces. I stopped shooting for a second, and they instinctively went into defensive crouches, and then I resumed, coating their hands and spraying more white stuff in their faces. Moira’s extinguisher piled on with equal fervor. Then I dropped mine and grabbed the first Marine by his right sleeve and flung him out of the elevator, where Moira turned and continued to spray stuff into his face. The second guy tried to resist, so I kicked him hard in the shin and then flung him on top of the other guy.

  “In,” I said to Moira, and in she jumped as I hit door-close and then B for basement. The doors shut with agonizing slowness, but Moira had kept her extinguisher and continued to shoot it fiercely at the two white figures on the floor until the doors closed. I let out a big sigh of relief when the elevator began to head down.

  Now it would be a matter of how fast the two disabled guards could make contact with their control center and get someone to intercept the elevator before we got to the basement. I hadn’t seen any shoulder mikes or radios, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a security phone they could get to. Once they could see.

  Moira bent down and collected the Mace cans and the batons. We were leaving 4 and headed
for 3. “These might be useful,” she said.

  “Forget the batons, but we’ll keep the Mace cans,” I said, and I showed her how to fire the Mace. We passed 3 and headed for 2.

  “Why not the sticks?” she asked.

  “You ever fought a man with a stick?” I asked. “There’s an art to it.”

  We passed 2 and headed on down to 1. That’s where we’d find out if we were going to make it to the basement or have to fight our way out the front door, which, of course, wasn’t ever going to happen.

  As we came up on the first floor, I heard voices shouting in the hallway outside, but the elevator, bless it, kept going. A few moments later, the door dinged and opened into the basement vestibule. I had my Mace can ready and pointed at the doors in case there was a welcoming committee, but the vestibule was empty. I jammed Moira’s fire extinguisher in the elevator door to disable it. The fire stairs did make it down to the basement, and I tipped a fifty-five-gallon drum of floor wax under the handle just to slow things down a little. Now we had to find those loading docks.

  The basement layout matched the floors above in the hollow square configuration, except all the interior walls were steel mesh interspersed with concrete structural columns. The lights down here were single bulbs in metal frames, and instead of rooms there were storage cages, holding tools, boxes of old files, and supplies. The ceiling was crisscrossed with pipes and electrical cables, and the whole area smelled of old pipe lagging, dust, and heating oil.

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “Down this way,” she said, pointing straight ahead, and then indicating we’d need to go left to the other corner. “That’s where the loading docks should terminate.”

  We took off, running this time and making no effort to be quiet. From here we could see that the building was built in the shape of a capital B, with two air shafts, not just one. There was heating and air-conditioning machinery at the base of the air shafts, and we were running from the lower left corner of the B, across the base, and up to the middle area where I remembered the loading area ramps ought to be.