“Good thinking,” Abbot said. “We need all the backup we can get. In fact, with Annette captured, and you probably being looked for by the police by now, we’d probably better not wait until Sunday to make our move. Northampton might decide to shut down their prison, or Annette might talk and give the show away. If we’re going to get Emily out, we’d better do it tonight.”
“I’m for it,” Jack said, more relieved by the decision to act than concerned about the possible consequences.
Abbot went over to the phone and started calling his people. But after an hour of short, sharp, and sometimes
angry conversations, only two members of Abbot’s resistance team had agreed to come.
“1 can’t understand it,” Abbot said bitterly. “What the hell’s the matter with these people? It’s like they’ve completely lost interest.”
“I’ve been noticing that myself,” Sally said. “It’s funny, people don’t seem to hate the Visitors so much these days.” “Can we do the job, just the five of us?” Jack asked. “We’re damn well going to give it a try. Okay, it’s after one. We’ll leave here separately, and each go our own way. We’ll meet at the K & K Cafe on Howe. That’s right near the prison. Be there by two, we’ll move as soon as we’re altogether, or by two thirty at the latest. Okay?” “Whatever you say,” Jack said.
“Are you ready for this, Jack?” Abbot asked with sincere concern. “There may be some shooting.”
“There’s already been some shooting. I’ve got a gun.” “All right. Ah, I don’t mean to be crude, but you've got only one arm. Can you take care of yourself?”
“1 fended off Salanis, Hadly, and another guy all right, remember?”
“Right. Okay, we’ll probably have just this one chance. If we blow it tonight, they’ll move the prison and take Emily somewhere else. So this has got to be good.”
“I didn’t lose this arm playing games,” Jack said, raising the black gloved hand. “We took out a Viet Cong command post that night.”
“Then let’s get moving,” Abbot said, and he was the first to leave.
File Seventeen: Friday Morning
Jack had forty minutes to kill, so he drove a roundabout way to the K & K Cafe. He kept a careful eye out for tails, but as far as he could tell, nobody was following him.
He got to the cafe just at two. Douglas Abbot and Sally Greenstreet were already there, in a booth at the back, having arrived just minutes before. With them was another woman, a tall, bosomy woman in her early thirties, with her dark blond hair tied back from her face. She wore jeans, a subdued plaid shirt, and was introduced to Jack as Jenifer MacAlister.
“I think we’re going to be able to pull it off,” Abbot said as Jack sat down. “Jenifer has been working on making contacts inside the prison from the moment we knew where it was.”'
“Most of the prison staff are humans,” Jenifer went on, “but a few are Visitors, and two of them have been known to us for some time as potential fifth columnists. We didn’t know where they were working until today. 1 was hoping they could get some floorplans, but there just wasn’t time. ” “What kind of humans would work in a place like that?” Sally asked.
“They’re all connected with the mob one way or another,” Jenifer told her. “The Visitors there don’t much like the company they’re keeping.”
“1 don’t blame them,” a heavy-set man in his late forties said, coming up to their booth. He was blond but balding, and wearing slacks and a designer workshirt. Abbot introduced him as Tom Sarbin, the last of their team.
“I’ve checked out all the streets around the prison building,” Sarbin said. “The best way in seems to be from the alley. I should be able to get us in without setting off any alarms.”
“That would be nice,” Jack said. “But then what?” “We shouldn’t have any trouble,” Jenifer said, “getting up to the top floors where the prison is. Once more, our contacts will let us into the prison proper. But we’re going to have to make this raid as quick and clean as possible. We don’t want to get our contacts in trouble, or put them into any more danger than we have to.”
“What about other prisoners?” Sarbin asked.
“If we can do anything for them,” Abbot said, “without endangering the rest of the operation, we will. Otherwise, we’ll just have to leave them there. There aren’t enough of us for a full-scale breakout.”
“No matter how careful we are,” Sally said, “they’ll know that their security has been penetrated. Why not just damage the place as much as possible before we go?” “With what?” Jenifer asked. “We have no explosives
tonight, no equipment but our guns. If we just sneak Emily out, the blame is likely to fall on the guards. But if we try to do a lot of damage, then our contacts will come under suspicion.”
“Quick and clean,” Abbot said, “that’s the way it’s got to be. We’ll free other prisoners if it’s possible and seems like a good idea, but the important point is to get Emily Velasquez out of there, and alive.”
“And about time too,” Jack said. “When do we move?” “Right now,” Abbot said. “We’ve done all the planning we can. But let’s get there the same way we got here. We don’t want to look like a mob, and maybe arouse the interest of our fine police.”
Tom left first, to give himself time to get the alley door opened. Sally followed soon after, then Jenifer, then Jack and Abbot together.
They walked up Howe to Bay Shore, then east along the front of the building where Lewis worked. South again, along Holiday, with the desolate night beach on their left, to the alley behind Lewis’s building. Up the alley, then to a recessed service door.
“This is it,” Abbot said. “The rest of this place is nothing, but the top three floors are held by a dummy corporation. ”
“The prison’s up there?” Jack asked. “But Lewis works here, I told you about him.”
“You’ve been here before?” Abbot asked.
“Yes, just the other day, when I asked Lewis to keep his ears open for word of Emily. That’s how Annette got onto me.”
“Right, dammit. Don’t worry about Lewis, we won’t get him into any trouble.” He reached for the latch of the service door, and it opened at once. Tom Sarbin was waiting just inside. He led them through back corridors to where Sally was standing by a service elevator.
“it doesn’t go all the way to the top,” Sally explained, “just to the floor right below the prison. Jenifer is up there now.”
The four got in the elevator and took it as high as it would go. Jenifer met them in a service corridor. From there she led them by back ways to a small janitorial supply room near the center of the building. Right next to it, around a corner, were the main elevators.
They went into the supply room and turned on the lights. After a few moments wait there was a discreet knock on the door. Jenifer opened it and let in two Visitors, Samuel and Rosalind, both in red uniforms.
“We’ll do our best to leave you clean,” Abbot told them. “Now how do we get upstairs?”
“The elevators don’t go there anymore, ” Rosalind said. “All the fire and service stairs are locked, and they can only be opened from the inside. There’s one set of stairs that the human staff uses at the back. We’ve left it unlocked.” “All right. Now how about offices?”
“All administration is on the floor right above us,” Samuel said. “All that’s up there is the records on the seven people we have now.”
“Even those could be informative,” Abbot insisted, “we’ll check it out.”
“After we get Emily,” Jack said.
“No. Records first. Look, a secret prison like this has to tie in with other things that we’ve been working on for years. And there has to be some reason for it being right here, some reason for Northampton to take the risk of being discovered. ”
“You’re right,” Rosalind said. “Samuel and I supervise the human staff. And there’s a lot of them, not just warders and guards.”
“What I think,�
� Samuel said, “is that they’re doing experiments of some kind. Somebody will be brought in in the middle of the night, kept only a few hours, a few days at most, and then released again, taken back to where they were gotten.”
“They’re drugged,” Rosalind went on. “When those poor people get home, they probably don’t even remember that they’ve been here. Samuel and 1 are pretty far down in the ranks, but every now and then we hear something, like whether a test went well or not.”
“That’s exactly why I want to take a look at those records,” Abbot said. “Whatever it is they’re up to, i want to find out more about it.”
“I agree,” Jack said, “but that’s an extra. We came here to get Emily, dammit.”
“I’m sorry,” Abbot said, “but this is bigger than one person, however much she might be able to tell us.” “Doug is right,” Sally said. Jenifer MacAlister and Tom Sarbin nodded agreement. “We don’t know how useful Emily will be to us.”
“It’s bound to be a lot less than what those records can tell us,” Sarbin said.
“All right,” Jack capitulated. “Let’s get it over with.” Jenifer put her ear to the door, listened a moment, then stepped back, a look of alarm on her face. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. Samuel reached behind her shoulder and turned out the lights. After a moment they could hear footsteps, then someone grasped the outside doorknob. The door opened inward, a man was momentarily outlined against the night light of the corridor beyond, and then four pairs of hands grabbed him, pulled him in, and the door slammed shut.
The light came on. It was Lewis, dressed for work. His eyes were wide with shock and fear, and his mouth worked silently, the reptile tongue flickering spasmodically.
Abbot and Sarbin had their guns raised, ready to bring them down on Lewis’s head. “Wait,” Jack barked. “It’s Lewis,, he’s all right?”
“Sure he is,” Abbot said, but he lowered his gun. “So how did he know to find us here?” Sarbin brought his gun down too, but kept it pointed at Lewis’s head.
“It’s my closet,” Lewis said, his voice frantic. “I had to do some extra work, the regular night man called in sick.”
“How convenient,” Sarbin said.
“Come off it,” Jack said. “I’ve known Lewis a long time, he is a hard worker, this is exactly the kind of thing he would do.”
“All right, Jack, if you say so. But we can’t just leave him here.”
“Why not?” Lewis asked. “You can come into my building if you want to. Jack, what the hell’s going on?”
“Emily’s upstairs,” Jack said.
“You’re kidding. But—”
“The top three floors,” Jack went on, “are a secret prison and experimental lab run by the people in Northampton.”
“How can that be? Jack, I’ve been working here for over two years, I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“You ever been up there?” Tom Sarbin asked.
“No, no, the Benedict Company contract for their own custodial service, outside the building.”
“That’s right,” Samuel said, “except it’s all mobsters and thugs, not a regular janitorial service.”
“You ever see Lewis up there?” Abbot asked.
“Never,” Rosalind said.
“Jack,” Lewis said, “are you sure Emily is up there? How did they bring her in? Do you have passes?” he asked, turning to Rosalind, then Samuel.
“Take it easy,” Jack said. “The whole operation upstairs is totally illegal.”
“And yes,” Jenifer said, ‘’we’re sure Emily is there.” “Right in my own building,” Lewis muttered. “All this time and 1 never knew it.”
“There’s a lot more going on,” Abbot said, “than you might guess. And, unfortunately, you’re going to find out about some of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going up there, and we’re going to take you with us. You understand, Lewis, I just can’t trust you, at least, not until we’ve finished what we came here for.”
With Lewis in the middle of the group, they left the custodial supply room. Rosalind led them by a different route to the back of the building, to a stairwell there. It was open to the floor below, but the stairs to the next floor up were closed off with a newly installed firedoor. Rosalind did something with the latch, and after a few seconds the door slid aside.
They went up to the floor above, and out into a corridor. “This is all administration and interrogation,” Samuel | explained. “Rosalind and I seldom come down here. Mostly we work on the next floor up.”
“Where are the main offices?” Abbot asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Rosalind said, “but I think they’re over this way.” They followed her to where the corridor teed into a broader hallway, with doors up and down both sides. Rosalind took a case of magnetic card keys from the pocket of her uniform. “1 was lucky,” she said. “But the guy I stole these from this evening might find them missing. If he does, he could come back here to look for them. We’ll have to work fast.”
Rosalind went to the first door on the right and unlocked it. The room beyond was totally unintelligible to Jack. They didn’t go in.
“Not here,” Rosalind said as she closed the door again. “Let’s try the other way.”
The next room Rosalind looked into appeared to be some kind of laboratory. “That’s better,” she said, but again she backed out without letting the others enter. They moved down the hallway and toward the end she opened a third door.
“Okay,” she said, looking around what seemed to be just an ordinary reception room. “I’ve worked at other prisons and camps before, and they’re all laid out pretty much the same. So now I think I know where we are.” They left that room, too, and Rosalind led them to the end of the hallway and through a double door into a cross corridor. Once more, she unlocked the first door on the right.
“You want records?” she said, standing aside so the others could enter. “This is it.”
In the middle of the room was a desk, with three computer monitors set into the surface. Other monitors stood at smaller desks on either side. Between these, and all along the back were steel cabinets with no drawers or doors.
“You know how to work these?” Tom Sarbin asked her.
“I think so,” she said.
“Then let’s get to it.”
While Rosalind and Tom Sarbin figured out how to access the computerized files, Samuel and Sally Greenstreet kept watch at the door, with Lewis between them. Douglas
Abbot started pulling open drawers in the desk and riffling through their contents. Jack just stood back and watched.
After a while Abbot, having found nothing of interest, went to check out some of the cabinets, and look through the smaller console desks. Meanwhile, Rosalind and Sarbin had discovered the filing method, and were now reading through a long menu.
“Here it is,” Sarbin said. On the screen were a jumble of alien characters, but one line was written in English. “Emily Velasquez” was all it said, all it needed to say.
“Let’s print out the whole file,” Rosalind said.
“Might as well get all the others, too,” Sarbin suggested.
Rosalind went to one of the side consoles, flipped a switch, and keyed in a command. Immediately, one of the cabinets next to the console opened up, and sheets of paper began to drop down onto a receiving tray.
Rosalind had instructed the computer to print out all the prisoner files, and they came in numerical rather than alphabetical order. Emily’s was the third, and as soon as its pages started falling into the receiving tray, Jack took them out and read them.
Much of it was written in the alien’s language, with only occasional passages in English. But at the top of each page was Emily’s name, and some symbols. He showed it to Rosalind.
“That’s Emily’s cell number,” she said. “It will be two floors up, above services.”
“All right, Abbot,” Jack said. “When this stuff stop
s printing out, let’s go get Emily.”
“Not so fast, Jack,” Abbot said. He was standing over another side console. Sarbin was seated at the keyboard, and the printer next to it was spewing out more paper.
“We’re going to take all we can. Rosalind, let that thing run and get another console working.”
“What do you want?” she asked, sitting down at the console next to where Emily’s record had been produced.
“Anything that might give us some clue as to what the experiments are all about.”
“All right,” she said, and started typing instructions. Sarbin, since he could read a little bit of the Visitor’s language, had moved to the next console over, and did the same.
“God damn it,” Jack said, “we’ve got to get moving. This place might be patrolled.”
“It is,” Samuel said from the door.
“This is our only chance,” Abbot insisted. “We take everything we can get, and then we run.”
When all four printer consoles were going, Abbot and Rosalind sat down at the main desk and searched the master directory for anything else that could be spooled to the first printer that finished. To Jack, it seemed to take forever, and the stacks of printout got higher and higher.
“How are we going to carry all this stuff?” he asked. “With these,” Jenifer said. She took a strong plastic bag with a drawstring out of her hip pocket. “Why don’t you start stuffing, Jack?”
“Anything to get this show on the road,” Jack muttered. By the time he had four of the bags filled, each with over a thousand sheets of printout, the printers stopped. Abbot and Sally had been looking through them, hoping to find something they could understand right away. Most of the printouts were in the alien’s language, others, while in English, were in a kind of shorthand or code, and few were readable, and even those were unintelligible.
Jack stuffed the last of the printouts in a fifth bag, and as he did so, one of the pages caught his eye. It was the words, “extra low frequency radiation.” He’d kept Emily’s file handy, and he looked at that again. One paragraph seemed to be saying that she was ignorant of the implications of ELF—extra low frequency—and there was something more about its effects on the body and human mind, but the language here, though English, was esoteric jargon, and he could make little sense of it.
V 15 - Below the Threshold Page 10
