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The Breakout

Page 23

by Ryan David Jahn


  James threw down the remains of his gun, waited for someone to make a move. His back was against the fence—he had nowhere to go—which meant he’d have to fight. But that was fine because a large part of him wanted to fight. He had as much violence in him as any man, more than most, and the only thing that kept it from erupting was the thin membrane of conscience that held it in place, the thin membrane between urge and action, and that membrane had torn open.

  “Let’s go, you fucks,” James said.

  One of the four men, bald motherfucker with a face like a bulldog, lunged at James with his weapon.

  James jumped aside, grabbed the wrist, and twisted it even as he punched the guy in the nose—one, two, three times—with quick but powerful jabs, the cartilage bending and snapping with the final blow. A sheet of blood poured down his face.

  The man yanked his arm away and swung again.

  James knocked the blow aside with the swipe of an arm and brought his foot up between the legs, lifting the motherfucker off the ground.

  When the guy came back down, his knees buckled. He dropped to the ground, clenching at his groin, forgetting the weapon he’d left lying in the dust.

  James stepped forward and swung down his fist as hard as he could, punching the temple and knocking the motherfucker out.

  But in doing so, he felt a knuckle in his middle finger break.

  He didn’t care. He leaned down to pick up the shiv.

  Another of the men came at him, his mouth either grinning or grimacing, it was impossible to tell which. Missing teeth made him look like a building with broken windows. But Pedro brought down his fist like a sledgehammer, burying the sharpened toothbrush in the man’s throat, and blood gushed out around it to the rhythm of his heartbeat, a carotid geyser, and the man grabbed at his neck as he fell to the ground.

  He’d be dead in a second. Good.

  James swung back around to face the last two men who would kill him.

  They stepped forward, weapons gripped in their fists.

  * * *

  Normal aimed his Springfield at the yard, panning the area. Guards were running toward James from all directions. He squeezed his trigger, leading one of the guard’s by a good distance, and almost a second later his round struck a foot. The guard he’d shot collapsed and his momentum flung him forward into the dirt. He rolled through a cloud of dust, silently screaming.

  Normal yanked back the bolt. An empty shell arced through the air. He chambered a new round. He panned the yard, found a second guard, squeezed his trigger a second time.

  He couldn’t let them reach James. If they managed to grab him, it would make getting him out close to impossible. If they managed to grab him, there’d be a tangle of movement, and it would be impossible to get shots off without the risk of killing James.

  If they managed to grab him, it was over.

  Normal panned across the yard, found a third guard. Guy was yanking a sap from his belt as he ran toward James.

  Normal squeezed his trigger.

  * * *

  Coop cringed as the armored truck barreled toward the fences, aimed at the four-foot space between a Ford Pinto station wagon and a small Dodge truck. It slammed into both vehicles simultaneously, the sound like thunder. The armored truck pushed both aside, rolling over the front edge of the Ford and flipping the Dodge onto its side. It tore through the fences like tracing paper. He spun the wheel left and slammed his foot on the brake pedal. A large plume of dust drifted around them.

  Guards aimed their weapons from their tower perches and fired, dotting the windshield glass with their bullets.

  * * *

  Bogart lined one of the guards up in his crosshairs, exhaled steadily, and in the space between breaths, the space between heartbeats, he squeezed his trigger. The rifle pulsed against the crook of his shoulder. Through his sight he saw a mist of blood hanging in the air. The guard fell to his knees, dropping his rifle to the ground below.

  Bogart panned to another tower, to another guard.

  * * *

  Pilar ran to the back of the armored truck with a pistol in hand and swung open the doors. She looked out onto the yard and saw James and three Mexican men staring at her. For a moment, for what felt like a long moment, nobody moved. They only stared.

  Finally Pilar shouted, “Come on, James! Let’s go! This isn’t a fucking picnic!”

  * * *

  James looked from Pilar to the yard surrounding him, taking everything in. Guards were shooting and being shot. Prisoners were screaming and rioting. One ran to the foot of a guard tower and picked up a dropped rifle and began shooting at the guards on the ground. One in the back. One in the face. He shot another prisoner in the abdomen. He fired into the air. He was screaming while he shot off rounds. Other prisoners tackled yet another guard and held him down while he was pummeled. James took this all in in less than a second, and then grabbed Pedro by the arm and said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  He ran toward the armored truck, pulling Pedro with him.

  They reached the truck and climbed into the back.

  But one of the men who’d attacked him, one of the last two standing, grabbed him by the ankle and began pulling him back out.

  Pilar shot him in the face.

  James scrambled back into the truck.

  Pilar slammed shut the doors.

  Coop looked over his shoulder and shouted: “We good?”

  “Go!” Pilar shouted back.

  The transmission was slammed into gear. The engine roared as the truck barreled forward, turning in a half circle.

  * * *

  Coop glanced in his side-view mirror and saw several guards in bulletproof vests rushing from one of the buildings. They had rifles in their hands. They stuck them into the crooks of their shoulders and began firing at the truck. The bullets thwacked against its armored exterior. Prisoners began rushing them and they shot the prisoners.

  Coop slammed the truck through the fences.

  More prisoners began to run through the hole and out into the desert.

  * * *

  Normal got to his feet as the armored truck rolled toward him, a cloud of dust kicked up in its wake and drifting on the hot summer breeze. It was followed by running prisoners, looking over their shoulders, shouting.

  “Let’s go,” Normal said.

  He and Bogart began to make their way down the hill, feet sliding through the sand.

  Guards down in the yard—wearing bulletproof vests, bearing rifles—shot at the truck and at the prisoners escaping on foot.

  Chaos in the yard.

  The armored truck came to a rumbling stop near the base of the hill, sliding sidewise in the sand. The doors swung open.

  As Normal and Bogart ran toward it, guards began to shoot at them, their bullets kicking up chunks of earth at their feet.

  Pilar, James, and some Mexican guy with James shot through the portholes in the side of the truck. Guards took rounds to their vests, were kicked off their feet.

  Normal’s left calf was now screaming with pain.

  He and Bogart jumped into the back of the truck. Bullets thwacked against it even as Pilar pulled shut the door and it roared away from the jail.

  37

  George Rankin sat down in his desk chair and looked at his blank computer monitor. He thought about what Francis Waters had said to him before he’d died on the floor in his cell while waiting for medics to arrive—either one or two words, George wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. It might have been Ellison. But it could also have been Edison or a lesson. It could have been none of those words, the sound leaving Waters’s mouth, as it had, with a gurgle of frothy blood that then rolled from the corners of his mouth and dripped to the vinyl floor. If it was Ellison, it might have been an accusation—Ellison is behind all of this—but it didn’t have to be. There were any number of things that might have followed or preceded the word. The man had been near death, his brain oxygen-starved, he might have been talking about not
hing at all.

  But George decided he had to check the camera recordings to see if someone had visited the holding cells without first signing in. If Francis knew something, Ellison—or whoever was behind this, but it almost had to be Ellison—would want him dead. He’d want whatever secret Francis knew to die with him.

  It was possible, of course, that Francis had simply ended his life because of the situation he was in. As a disgraced DEA agent, he’d lose not only his career but his entire life as he knew it. Even if he survived jail, which was questionable, he’d come out with nothing and no way of getting anything back. His trial and inevitable conviction would be news. His friends from the DEA would be his friends no more. Because he’d earned money selling information to a drug cartel, his finances and home would be seized. He might find a job, but it wouldn’t be in law enforcement. It probably wouldn’t be any kind of skilled position. Nobody would trust him.

  The man had certainly had time to think about all of this overnight, while he lay on the cot in his holding cell, which meant he’d also had plenty of reasons to kill himself.

  But George wasn’t about to take the situation at face value. There was at least one person out there who might have a reason for wanting Francis dead, and George was pretty sure he knew who that person was.

  38

  James was sitting in the backseat of the Toyota, squeezed in between Normal and Bogart, when Coop pulled into Hotel Amigo’s parking lot. Pilar was in the front passenger seat. Nobody said anything as Coop brought the car to a stop and killed the engine.

  After they’d roared away from the jail, Coop had driven down the street at high speeds before he jerked the car right, pulling off the road and heading through the desert. He’d parked the armored truck behind a large rock formation standing alone in the sand like the last structure on earth—all that remained of some ancient civilization.

  He killed the engine and gave James a set of civilian clothes, a pair of cutoff sweatpants and a Captain America T-shirt, and James quickly stripped out of his prison jumpsuit, shedding himself of it, feeling like a different person once he was no longer dressed like a prisoner, and changed into the clothes Coop had given him.

  Coop and Bogart wiped down the truck of fingerprints and everybody got out, stepping into the bright daylight. Normal put the weapons into the Toyota’s trunk.

  James and Pedro stood under the hot sun for a moment, looking at each other, neither knowing what to say. Pedro had saved his life, helped to save his life, but James sensed that now that he was out of jail, he intended to part company with them.

  “You can come with us,” James said. “We’ll squeeze you into the car.”

  “No,” Pedro said. “You have your thing to do. I think I should handle mine.”

  “Where are you gonna go?”

  “I’m going to find the men who killed my daughter.”

  “Let us drive you into town.”

  Pedro shook his head. “I think I’d rather be alone.”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere. You have no food or water.”

  Pedro turned his hands so his palms were facing up—it looked as though he were waiting for something to be placed in them—and stared down at his bandaged wrists. His eyes were sad.

  “Everything that could be done to me has been done to me. I’ve lost everything already. There are no worse fates. Good luck, James.”

  He turned and walked away, walked south, deeper into the desert. James watched him for a moment, but knew there was no time. They had to get out of here and in a hurry. The farther they got from the jail, the safer he was. The safer they all were.

  He and the others got into the Toyota. Coop drove out to the street. But when he glanced right, he saw a line of police cars rushing at him from La Paz, so rather than heading toward town right away, he drove across the street and parked on the north shoulder, car facing west, facing the jail. He put on the emergency flashers and they waited.

  Several police cars flew by with their sirens wailing and lights flashing.

  The last two in the line pulled off the road only ten yards in front of the Toyota, dust swirling around them. A cop stepped out of each vehicle. James’s heart thudded in his chest as he watched them through the dirty windshield. One of the cops popped his trunk and removed a spike strip. He and the second cop spread it across the street.

  Once they were done with this, they both glanced toward the Toyota, and spoke to one another. They walked to the car. James hadn’t been out of jail fifteen minutes and he was about to go back. Unless they incapacitated the cops. The easiest way to do that was to kill them, but James wanted no part in murdering men who were only doing their job. He’d rather go back to jail. One of the cops knocked on the driver’s-side window.

  Coop looked over his shoulder, said, “Be cool,” and rolled down the window “What’s going on?” he said to the cops. “We were on our way to visit a friend.”

  “There has been a breakout. You need to turn around and head back to the city.”

  “A breakout? What happened?”

  “Turn your car around, sir, and head back to La Paz.”

  Coop nodded. “Okay.”

  He turned the car around in the dirt. James looked south to the desert, but Pedro was already gone. Vanished from the horizon.

  Nobody talked.

  James couldn’t be certain but he’d be willing to bet that none of them had anticipated the chaos the breakout had resulted in. They’d been thinking only about getting him out of jail before he was murdered. They’d failed to consider how other prisoners in the yard might respond. But this sort of operation was unpredictable. The Marines in the car had known that, even if Pilar didn’t—or hadn’t. They’d taken villages in Afghanistan in order to capture al-Qaeda members and it was never pretty. But maybe the fact that they weren’t in Afghanistan made them forget what this sort of operation looked like in the real world. It always seemed so neat on paper—get in, do your thing, get out—but plans and reality never aligned.

  Reality was always much uglier, and it was always much messier.

  The only good thing about the chaos was that authorities wouldn’t be looking only for James. At least half the prisoners in the yard had escaped through the fence, which meant La Paz police force would be spread thin. Even though most of them were on foot—some had probably stolen cars from employees or visitors—many would reach La Paz. There’d be break-ins, clothes missing from lines as escapees tried to get out of their jumpsuits, and random assaults. There’d be robberies, and as night fell, burglaries. None of this was good for the people of La Paz, but it was—in a way—good for James.

  It was good for everybody in the car.

  Even after the others pushed their way out of the Toyota, stepping onto the Hotel Amigo parking lot, James sat in the empty car and stared straight ahead through the dirty windshield and thought about what had happened. Very recently he’d been in jail, sure he was going to die. But now he was both alive and free.

  He pushed out into the sunlight.

  Coop said, “You okay?”

  James nodded and they made their way into the hotel.

  * * *

  James and Pilar lay on the bed in her room. They were on their sides, facing one another. James was looking into her eyes, stroking her arm, thinking about the fact that when he woke up this morning, he was pretty sure he’d never see her again. He leaned forward and kissed her mouth. Ran his fingers through her hair.

  “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too,” Pilar said. But then she pulled away, rolled onto her back, and looked up at the ceiling. She exhaled a heavy sigh.

  “What’s wrong?”

  For a long moment, she only stared at nothing, her mind seeming far away, but finally said, “I have to tell you something.”

  “What is it?” His head was suddenly spinning with possibilities. She had to tell him something, but she also didn’t want to tell him. It made his stomach feel tight.

  S
he glanced toward him, but quickly broke eye contact.

  “You can just tell me.”

  “I—I almost had sex with someone else.”

  “You what?”

  “You’d broken up with me. I was angry and hurt and I—”

  “Pilar.”

  She turned to look at him. Tears stood out in her eyes. He didn’t think the emotion she was feeling had as much to do with her admission—or the guilt she felt about it—as it had to do with what they’d just gone through. She wasn’t a soldier or a Marine, she was a civilian, and only an hour ago she’d helped to break him out of jail, and shot someone in the process.

  “What?” she said.

  “Whatever you did or didn’t do isn’t important. I don’t wanna hear about it. I don’t want details. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about you with another man. But whatever happened is as much my fault as yours. I broke up with you and left for Mexico. You didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. I’m sorry for the way I reacted to my sister’s death. I’m sorry for the way I made you feel. You have nothing to be sorry for.” He stopped talking a moment, swallowed. “Now let’s never mention it again.”

  “Okay,” she said. She rolled back toward him. She leaned in and kissed his mouth. “I love you, James Murphy.”

  “I love you, Pilar.”

  * * *

  Later, as they lay in bed with their fingers interlaced between them, James stared at the ceiling and thought about his sister. He was out of jail now—he was free—but the charges against him still stood, and now he’d broken out of jail, which would only add time to his eventual sentence. When he was done with Rocha, he had to make a decision. Either he’d flee to a country that didn’t have an extradition treaty with Mexico or turn himself in. With Rocha dead, he wouldn’t be in danger of being murdered in prison, he wouldn’t be in more danger than everybody else, but first he had to take care of business. It was why he’d come to Mexico in the first place, and he was a man who finished what he started. Rocha needed to pay for what he’d done to Layla, needed to be prevented from doing the same to anyone else.

 

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