Deadly Journey

by Declan Conner

  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.

  Chapter 6

  No Plan B

  The T-shirt had dried, but my jeans were still damp as I dressed. Dragging the mattress to the hole, I glanced downward. My fear was that the mattress would bounce off the barbed wire and finish up out of reach. There was no way I could lever enough power to clear the barrier without taking a run and a jump, but the hole just wasn’t big enough. Cracks had appeared in the cement above the hole. If I took out any more bricks, the roof was likely to collapse and I’d be screwed.

  Thoughts that the noise of the mattress hitting the wire might disturb my captors’ sleep prompted my already thundering heart to race even faster. My mind might have wanted to jump, but leaden legs and my heart trying to escape my chest told me my body was reluctant to follow instructions. With the mattress leaning against the wall, I held out my hands. My fingers were bloody and blistered from clawing at the brickwork. They shook along with the rest of my body and I needed to get a grip.

  Looking at my fingers, my eyes widened... there was no wedding ring. My gut tightened and bile entered my throat. Defying logic, I wasted precious moments trying to recall if I had noticed the ring on my finger while I was in the cell. Getting out of captivity took second place as I scratched through the debris. With nothing found, I tried to restore some composure and attempted to convince myself that my captors had taken the ring. Long, even breaths brought the tremors under control and the shaking subsided. It was now, or never.

  I took hold of one end of the mattress and inched it out of the hole until it was vertical against the wall outside, the dead weight tugging at my armpits. With a final push away from the wall, so the mattress would fall horizontally, I closed my eyes.

  The sound of cowbells rang out as the mattress struck the wire and alerted the farm dog. All hell broke loose and my mind turned to spaghetti as their dog barked long and loud. My stomach was in the process of trying to escape through my backside at the thought that they had alarmed the wire. Light flooded outside and I rolled away from the hole. Springing to my feet, I took a quick glance down at the ground and then pressed my back against the wall. The mattress had landed perfectly as planned. How far I could get in ten minutes on stony ground, with already lacerated feet, ran through my mind and froze me to the spot. A vision of Squat’s AK-47 riddling bullets into my back as I ran cemented my fear. The “if only” scenarios started to bug me again. If only my arms were two inches longer, I could have opened the cell door and simply walked away.

  My head screamed at the thought that there was no plan B. The hopeless resignation that I had built my own bridge, left me knowing I needed to get over it, and I slid down the wall to sit on the floor to await the outcome. What a jackass.

  Outside sounded like mayhem. Over the dog barking, doors slammed. People were shouting and running around. Engines started, tyres screeched. A flashlight beam illuminated the cell, dancing through the hole in the wall, before turning its attention elsewhere. If you have ever reacted in a sort of daze to events happening while you were awake, then that’s how I felt. The feeling I was in another dimension looking in on the scene took hold, together with the notion that I was helpless to cross over and help.

  Why they didn’t check the cell, other than with the flashlight from below, I’ll never know. Maybe Dad had had a quiet word with Lady Luck after all. The sounds diminished outside and the dog stopped barking. Stretching my neck and scrambling to my feet, I closed my eyes and listened with my back melting into the wall. I could hear the sound of engines in the distance, but otherwise there was silence outside. One, two, three, I counted for courage, and took a glance through the hole to the yard below and then out into the distance. There were maybe five vehicles tearing away from the farm, probably trucks, or open-back jeeps. Besides the headlights, beams of lights were scouring the brush from atop of the vehicles.<
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  Dropping to a haunch, and thinking about the mood they’d be in when they returned, left little to the imagination of what they might do with me. If they had left a guard back at the farm, which was likely, then jumping and setting the cowbells ringing wasn’t an option. Picking up the belt, I started to flail my knees with the strap in a kind of self-flagellation. Then it dawned... Plan B.

  Nothing in life is easy, but like trying to hoop a prize at a fairground booth, the new plan was pure desperation, nothing short of impossible, and would cost in effort what the fairground cost in dollars. Thoughts of my body and mind ending up like an empty wallet made me shiver. Still, it had to be worth a try.

  Tiptoeing across to the cell door, I slipped the strap through the buckle of the belt to form a loop. With a firm grip on the strap, I extended my arm through the bars and ran my hand along the bolt to the bend, leaving the loop dangling. To say I was petrified of losing the strap would be an understatement as I teased it through my fingers to add small degrees of length and kept flicking my wrist. I thought my heart had stopped when the belt snagged at the flick of the wrist at the umpteenth attempt and I heard a metallic creak. Sweat poured from my forehead and smarted in my eyes. The strap was taut and I gave a final tug, releasing the creak from hell that amplified down the corridor.

  Praying to God wasn’t one of my strong points, but if it was to work, I made a promise to go to church every Sunday. The fear was that when I released the tension, the handle would simply fall back into place. It would have been impossible to grip the bolt without withdrawing my arm. God must have been listening, because when I hung the strap over a cross bar, I gripped the bolt, and it moved along and out of the door bracket with ease.