When the red light went on, Mike was turned away from the readout, dutifully running a monitor scan and thinking idly about a tavern called McGill’s. McGill’s was the place in town where the married COs generally hung out—as opposed to Blinky Mae’s where the single guys went to try to hook up with a local girl for the weekend. McGill’s had a family room, with tables to eat at and a pool table and video games for recreation. There was a karaoke machine too. Mike was crazy about the karaoke machine. Sometimes, when things at McGill’s got friendly, he would allow himself to be talked into singing along with one of the tracks. He had a fine natural tenor and though he nursed a weakness for the sentimental Irish ballads his father had taught him, he could be a boogie-down dude when he had to be. Give him a couple of beers, a couple of chicks going doo-wa for backup, there was just no telling how far down he could get. Some of the black COs liked to kid him about it. “You a pasty Irish bastard to behold,” they’d say, “but you a brother in disguise, man.” Mike loved that stuff, loved it.
So he was thinking about McGill’s. Scanning the monitors, smiling to himself. Beginning to hum the first few bars of “Danny Boy” under his breath. And the red light went on and he didn’t see it. And then, almost soundlessly, the barred door to B Gallery blew.
The man called Ben Fry had been able to see Mike working in the booth. He had waited, flat against his cell, until Mike wasn’t looking and then come swiftly down the gallery to the barred door. He had mixed his chemicals on the door and edged back against another cell where he was difficult to see. There, again, he waited. A second, two.
Mike didn’t hear the hiss of the chemicals mixing. He didn’t see the barred gallery door inch open. But when it swung shut, he caught the movement from the corner of his eyes. He glanced over at the door through the control booth window. The door was closed. He could see right through it into the gallery. No one was moving in there. (By now, the man called Ben Fry was pressed against the control booth itself, beneath the window, out of Mike’s line of vision.) Mike saw nothing unusual at all.
Mike turned away again—and that’s when he spotted the discreet little red square, the indicator that a cell door was open…and now, suddenly, another light, a second light, went on, to indicate that the door to B Gallery was unlocked as well.
What the hell? Mike narrowed his blue eyes at the pair of red lights. Gotta be a glitch, he thought. Gotta be. He felt a little rabbity skip in his chest as it flashed through his mind that he might accidentally have tripped a couple of doors or something. But he reviewed it in his mind, it wasn’t possible. It had to be a glitch.
He looked at the door to B Gallery again. It seemed the same as always. It had to be the same as always. How could it be any other way?
Then, a creeping doubt. Mike squinted for a better look. It wasn’t possible the gallery door was slightly ajar, was it? And yet it almost looked to him as if it might be.
Mike lowered his eyes to the red squares on his monitor, raised them again to the gallery door on the other side of the thick Lexan.
Then the door to the control booth itself was ripped outward. Startled—flabbergasted—Mike spun round. Even now, he could not comprehend what was happening, what could possibly be happening. There was the inmate known as Ben Fry right in front of him, right there.
Mike didn’t think, he just lunged for the panic button, reached to slap his palm down on the red disk that would sound the alarm. It was too late. The man called Ben Fry was on him so fast. Too fast for Mike to react. Mike could only watch as if from a distance. Watch the inmate grab his hand, watch him twist it away from the button and snap the wrist. It was that fast. Mike never even had time to feel the pain. Even as his lips were parting to let out a shout, the man called Fry swarmed over him. Mike saw nothing but that face without emotion, those eyes without light: a man at work. Then Mike was dead.
The man called Ben Fry lowered Mike’s corpse to the control booth floor, went down with it, so he was below the window, out of sight. Quickly, he stripped the body of its khaki shirt, of its creased green pants. He stripped his own T-shirt and prison pants off. Mike’s clothes were a little big on the killer but that was all right, that was no problem. The belt cinched the pants tight, held them in place. That was good enough.
Next, the man called Ben Fry leaned down close to Mike’s head. The Irishman’s rough, friendly features were disfigured now. There was a red hole in the center of them where the killer had driven Mike’s nose cartilage up into his brain. But the blue eyes were still intact, open, staring. The man called Ben Fry dug his thumb deep into the corner of the right eye. He was going to need that eye to get through the retinal scan.
When he was finished, he wiped his hands on his prison clothes and stood up. He turned to the control booth’s main panel. He took a moment to orient himself, but he’d already studied the schematics, he already knew what he wanted to do. Everything had been perfectly planned, just like always. The man called Ben Fry knew exactly where he was going to go next. And there was nothing to stop him now.
Sixty-Five
Then Weiss sat forward in his chair. Sat forward quickly. In the depths of his frustration, waiting helplessly for news of the disaster, his glance had fallen on something, something at the edge of the computer’s glow. He took it in his hands now. My report. The pages of my report on Father O’Mara. He hadn’t given much thought to it before. He had been too busy working out the Shadowman’s plans. But suddenly now a string of connections flashed through his brain. The way I hadn’t lived up to his expectations, had missed the discrepancy he was sure I’d see. The way I’d been sitting in here drunk, loudly insisting that the priest was clean…The whole picture—the whole picture of me—came to him at once, as these things did. He realized that I had lived up to his expectations, that I’d gotten drunk not because I didn’t know but because I did know and had lied.
At the same time he realized these things, an idea came to him. It was only half-formed but he couldn’t wait for the rest of it. There was no time. He snapped the phone up once again. Reading from the top of the report, he punched in a number quickly.
The man who answered sounded wary, as if he weren’t used to receiving calls this late at night and suspected it might be bad news.
“Hello?”
“Father Reginald O’Mara,” Weiss said quietly.
“Yes, speaking. Who’s this?”
Weiss leaned farther forward, staring, intense. His heavy features glowed in the monitor light. The rest of his hunched, urgent figure was sunk in shadow.
“My name is Weiss. I run a private detective agency.”
There was a long silence. “Yes,” the priest said finally. “I spoke to one of your operatives this evening.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
Weiss held his breath a moment. It was pure bluff but he had nothing else, he had to try it. “I want you to know we’ve decided to keep your little secret to ourselves,” he said. There was no answer. Weiss’s stomach dropped. Was it a mistake, a bad guess, a desperate guess? “My client will probably be convicted and go to prison, where he belongs,” he went on. “And the people you want to protect, including your brother, the governor, will be safe. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh.” O’Mara was still wary—still not sure it wasn’t bad news after all. “And what do you want in return, exactly?”
“I want a favor,” Weiss told him at once. “And don’t get me wrong—this isn’t blackmail.”
“Oh no?”
“No. I understand you wouldn’t go for that. Whatever you decide to do, your secret’s safe. Consider it a gesture of goodwill.”
“All right,” the priest said. He sounded as if he was beginning to relax a little. “What do you want then?”
“I want you to listen to me,” said Weiss in the same even tone. “I want you to listen to what I have to say—and then I want you to get me through to the governor.”
Sixty-Six
Later, th
e California Department of Corrections convened a Board of Inquiry to try to reconstruct what happened next, but after nearly three months of investigation, no one was ever completely sure. The man called Ben Fry had to pass two more control booths to get to Whip Pomeroy’s cell. According to an internal systems check, he accomplished this in little over half an hour. And yet the officer in the first booth, booth four, claimed never to have seen him. And as for the control booth in the priority watch pod, it couldn’t even be approached but through a complex protocol involving a retinal scan and a double key lock. There were no signs of a forced entry there but both the booth officer and the security officer were found dead at their posts. Obviously the man called Ben Fry had borrowed the retina he needed from Mike O’Brien. But how he got hold of the keys remained a mystery, as did the killer’s ability to travel through the galleries unseen. Whatever speculations the CDC Board came up with were never made public for “security reasons.” Likewise, the exact type of explosive the killer used to get through the doors was revealed only in a classified section of the report. It was apparently a pretty simple mixture and the authorities didn’t want to spread the word.
But this much, at least, was publically agreed on: Once the man called Ben Fry breached the control booth in priority watch, there was nothing to keep him from the Identity Man. Whip Pomeroy might never even have seen him coming if he hadn’t been startled awake by the sound of his prison door sliding open. When it did, Whip sat up on his cot. His delicate fingers started fidgeting at once. His delicate lips were already mouthing their silent monologue and his damp eyes were darting this way and that. His heart beat wildly. His mind raced to find an explanation. Afraid, he struggled to his feet unsteadily.
And then—incredibly—there he was: the man called Ben Fry. He stepped to the door of Pomeroy’s cell as if it were the usual thing, as if it were not amazing for him to be there. His expression was like that too, matter-of-fact, businesslike, competent and calm. That expression terrified Pomeroy more than anything. The man called Ben Fry was simply here, he was simply going to do what he was going to do. There was not a possibility on earth that anyone could get in his way.
In the wild panic of his fear, Whip Pomeroy let out a sob. He flung himself back into the corner of his cell. He sank down the wall, sank to the floor, his fingers working themselves together in a frenzy. His lips moved even faster and out of his inaudible whisper he sobbed again and cried out, “I won’t tell you! I won’t tell you!”
“Oh yes,” the man called Ben Fry said simply. “You will.”
He took a step toward the cowering prisoner.
And at that moment, by a peremptory order from the governor of the state, the prison’s night warden set off the emergency escape response, and the screaming, deafening sirens overwhelmed everything.
Weiss had gotten through.
Sixty-Seven
It was then the Apache came within range. Chris checked the fire control radar and saw the prison’s cruciform pattern moving to the center of the screen. He glanced at the GPS. Eight thousand feet away, seven thousand, six. He scanned the horizon with his free eye and made visual contact. A little more than a mile distant, the white halo of the place shone out of the black woods and up into the black sky.
Working the rudders with his shoetips to keep the helo steady, Chris slowed her to a hover and pressed hover control. The big bird hung steady, moon high above the forest.
Hirschorn checked the flight clock. “We’ve still got two minutes.”
“I’ll acquire the target,” said Chris.
Hirschorn just nodded. He was sitting in the gunner’s seat but he was no gunner. There was nothing for him to do. He had only come along for the ride on the orders of the man called Ben Fry. That way, he could keep the operation secret until the last minute and make sure that it was carried out exactly as planned.
But when it came to setting up the missile attack, Chris was on his own. He had to reach forward awkwardly into the gunner’s well in order to activate the Hellfires and prepare them for lock-on before launch. But when that was done, he only had to sit back and look out through his helmet monocle. The helmet monocle—the Helmet and Display Sighting System—was the greatest part of the Apache for Chris. It had taken him a long time—eighteen hours of training—to learn how to use it but man oh man, once you got the hang of it, it was uncanny shit indeed. The HADSS was slaved to the Apache’s Target Acquisition and Designation System so that all you had to do was look through the eyepiece at what you wanted to destroy and the fire-and-forget Hellfires would know right where to go. Lock-on became like a body function. Which made Chris feel as if he were the monster head on top of some mythical whirling creature—a flying dragon of some kind, ready to reach out and strike with its fire-dealing claws.
There was a word for what he felt just then but he couldn’t think of it. It was a kind of glow inside. He hadn’t felt this way since he was in the Army. No. He had never felt this way. Never. Not until now.
Chris raised his head and turned his monocle on the prison. He focused the green ball on the northeast gun tower.
“I’ve got the target,” he said a moment later.
“One minute,” said Hirschorn.
They waited. At that distance, and with all the chopper noise, neither of them could hear the sirens going off below. But suddenly—and they could see this—the halo of light around the prison grew brighter, stronger. It began to sway and reach and probe the dark.
Hirschorn’s voice was in Chris’s headset again. “Spotlights.”
That’s what they were. They could see them through the windshield. Going off everywhere around the prison’s perimeter. Their broad beams wheeled this way and that, covering the yard around the prison buildings.
“What the hell’s that about?” said Chris.
Hirschorn didn’t answer. He didn’t know. And the heat of the lights scotched any chance for the FLIR to pick up any of the action on the ground. They couldn’t see the men running to their emergency stations. They didn’t know the armory had already been unlocked. Warned of the approaching Apache, specially trained officers were shouldering Stinger-style missile launchers as others scanned the skyline with night scopes, searching for the invader. But Chris and Hirschorn didn’t know.
Nervously, Hirschorn checked the flight clock. “Thirty seconds,” he said.
“Jesus,” said Chris staring out at the lights below. “I think they might be looking for…”
“Fire ’em!” Hirschorn shouted. “Fire! Fire!”
Chris hesitated. It was still too soon. But then the order sunk in. Quickly, he flicked the guard up, brought his thumb down on the button. The Apache jerked as if startled by the missile’s release. Chris fired the second one even as the first was sizzling through the night air.
The explosions came one on top of the other. A bright orange plume of fire rose up over the legs of the prison gun tower, then another fireball right away, just beyond the first, ripping through the innermost fence. Chris forgot everything else at the sight of them. By the light of the second blast, he could see the silhouetted gun tower sink down heavily, then tumble into the flames. He fired a third missile, and a fourth. He still had four more to go. He felt as if his heart were pumping electricity through him. He let out a whoop, a roar, a laugh. It was the happiest moment of his life.
“What the hell is…?” Hirschorn started to say.
Chris’s mouth was still open on that laugh as a blinding ball of light detached itself from the fire on the ground and came streaking straight toward them above the trees.
Sixty-Eight
“Mr. Weiss?”
“Yes,” said Weiss huskily into the phone.
“This is Norman Kamen at the governor’s office.”
“Yes,” Weiss repeated. He held his breath.
“The governor wanted to let you know that the emergency response systems at the prison have been activated. Apparently a National Guard helicopter has confirmed the pre
sence of an incoming aircraft. The guards will be armed accordingly.”
Weiss’s eyes gleamed in the computer light. He clutched the phone hard, his palm sweating. “And the prison’s shut down?”
“Completely. No one is going to escape tonight, believe me.”
Weiss nodded, staring at nothing. Staring, unseeing, at the girl on the screen.
“Mr. Weiss,” said Norman Kamen, “the governor wants to thank you for your information.”
Weiss went on nodding, hardly listening. When he’d hung up, he still sat forward in his chair. His sweaty hand closed into a sweaty fist. A small smile played at the corner of his sorry features.
“Got you, you son of a bitch,” he whispered.
Sixty-Nine
But it was another long moment before the man called Ben Fry took the full measure of the catastrophe. It was just too hard for him to accept the fact that this plan of his might fail, that the only thing on earth he had ever really wanted might slip from his fingers at the last instant.
He stared with burning eyes at the convict cowering in the corner—at Whip Pomeroy, the one man who could lead him back to Julie Wyant. He stared at him but, like a vapor, like a momentary faintness, it was another face, her face, that passed before his eyes. Her laughing face.
He had no words for how he felt about her, what she’d done to him, how he’d altered inside from the moment he’d first seen her. That moment, he remembered still, it was as if some dream he hadn’t even known he’d dreamed had been ripped out of him and into the world, full-blooded suddenly and real. He knew, at the single sight of her, that her image had been growing, all these years, inside his brain, that she had burst forth now into reality, his creation, part of him in some way. In some way, she was the part he loved most and she was also the part he most wanted to shred and savage. It was all one thing in some way, the savagery and the love.
Dynamite Road Page 26
