“Yeah, we’ll draw first blood, create a diversion and then you dudes join in. We’ll do as agreed, as long as you get the payment ready.” Another deeper voice said. “We just hate the fucker and his gang of white boys as much as you guys do. Bitches acting like foremen.”
Teddy stopped breathing upon hearing those words. The voice wasn’t coming from a Cuban. Nor did it come from a Mexican or any Hispanic altogether. He was fairly certain that it came from a member of one of the Afro American gangs.
Are those cunts colluding with one another?
“Alright, alright. Three P.M. Be ready. And sleep well, my friend. It’s gonna be fucking epic,” the Hispanic voice said.
Teddy stayed in the toilet booth, chewing over what he had just heard, until yard time was up. Herrera’s puppets were about to make a move, and they had rallied other gangs to their cause. It was going to be brutal, Teddy could feel it. But this time, he would be ready to take the heat.
CHAPTER 27
Florida’s correctional system – the third largest in the United States – hosted almost a hundred thousand convicts. The average annual pay for correctional officers in state prisons stood at a meager twenty-eight thousand dollars, which essentially makes them among the lowest paid workers in any state. Adding to that, unsafe working conditions in many overcrowded housing units, and it was easy to understand why over a third of Florida’s correctional officers quit each year.
It follows that young, inexperienced and impressionable officers often had to step in for the leavers, while more seasoned, hard-boiled guards didn’t hesitate to trample the inmates’ most basic rights in order to maintain order. On the other side of the fence, and with the de facto elimination of parole, the convict population had become older, more cunning and more predatory.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this perfect storm would turn into a hurricane sooner or later,” Ray Cooper explained. “Now in Florida, dozens of correctional staff members are dying each year. Fucked up system,” he growled.
Teddy was very much aware that the guards’ firepower would mean little in the face of a major, coordinated uprising. Any hint at an imminent assault against one specific racial group would have to be dealt with at the gang level. The correctional staff wouldn’t be able to protect them, let alone shield themselves. “None of these phony officers consider their duty to protect inmates as a vocation. This makes them a liability rather than an asset for the gangs,” Teddy had argued to the Supremacists.
It was now two fifty-four in the afternoon, and Teddy recalled the conversation he had eavesdropped on the previous day. Shit is gonna go down at three P.M. Outside in the yard, he stood tall in the White Supremacists’ corner, alert to every unusual gesture and every sudden crowd movement. He had filled in his gang on the impending attack, and they all stood ready to shift to battle order and defend their brothers.
At two fifty-seven, Teddy remarked to Logan and Raymond that each and every member of the Afro American and Latinos gangs were huddled in their respective corners in orderly fashion – a rare occurrence. The gym training ground at the center of the yard was deserted, and even the roaming guards started to suspect the inmates might be up to something.
When the main clock on the northern housing unit showed three P.M., Teddy assumed the squat position. He lowered his hand to his ankle, ready to haul the knife tucked in his shoe. He scanned the yard anxiously. His visual range covered the entirety of the barren land, and enemy gangs were standing no closer than forty yards away from him. The absence of further tell-tale signs of an imminent murder attempt on his life was unsettling. “Let’s get this over with for fuck’s sake…” he whispered to himself.
At five past three, it looked as if some inmates were starting to resume their activities and the huddled assemblies split up. A small group of supremacists broke away from their corner and headed to the training ground in the middle of the outdoor complex. Members of the Black gang started to drift away from their designated area as well. The Hispanics, however, remained clumped and looked agitated.
At quarter past three, Teddy joined the supremacists in the center of the yard. From there, he would have a better vantage point over the Hispanics’ corner.
At twenty past three, Logan finished his third bench press set. The man still held the prison record, pushing six hundred pounds. He freed the bench for Teddy, who was next in line. Just as the young Englishman took position, carefully placing his hands on the cold metallic bar roughly twenty inches apart, a long screeching howl echoed from across the yard.
By the time Teddy sat up to peep at the origin of the piercing cry, a shot was fired in the air. He spun his head south and saw small platoons of black prisoners spreading out rapidly. He squinted, trying to make sense of the commotion. A guard was lying on the floor fifty yards away. One of the black prisoners snatched the man’s rifle and was now kneeling and aiming at one of the lookout towers. He fired twice and ran toward the other side of the complex.
Absorbed as he was by the surreal act of folly playing before his eyes, Teddy had not noticed that the Latinos were on the move as well. His heart sank when he saw that a swarm of Mexicans, Cubans and other Hispanics was gaining ground rapidly toward him. All the hours spent building up his muscle mass would be nullified in an instant by the unstoppable train that was about to crash into him, Logan and the others small group of supremacists that had moved to the central workout area.
Out of instinct, he plunged under the bench to stave off the impending impact. He took his knife out of his left sneaker and clenched both fists, bracing himself for a trip to hell.
Moments later, he felt the horde of raging Latinos storming over the bench, hitting his arms and stepping on his legs. He assumed the fetal position for protection, reasoning that waving his knife blindly would only anger them further. Logan and the other men on site were probably having an even tougher time right now.
What are the other supremacists doing for fuck’s sake!!
It took a while for Teddy to realize that the yells and war cries were moving away into the distance. In just a few seconds, the gym area had been secured. Teddy raised from his hideout and peered around him. White Supremacists were forming a wall around them. The tempest had passed.
But the riot was still raging down the yard, right in front of the facility’s entrance.
“They’re making their way toward the exit, fucking bastards!” Logan shouted.
It finally hit Teddy. He had never been the target. The Blacks and the Latinos were creating a diversion to attempt an escape.
Then everyone else started to connect the dots. A majority of the hundred-or-so convicts present in the yard rushed to the entrance gates. The circular protective wall of White Supremacists that had formed around the training area scattered and dashed to the exit like swarms of ants reaching for the anthill.
Two squads of a dozen correctional officers were dispatched from the East and West wings, but by that time, most prisoners had understood that it was a once-in-a-sentence chance to say goodbye to the hoosegow.
Teddy gazed at the scene, baffled by the collective boldness and still somewhat angry at his own short-sightedness. He heard another shot and a fellow inmate fell face first five feet away from him. Guards were now firing to restore order and suppress the mutiny. Staying still wasn’t a good idea, he reasoned.
A few isolated clusters of prisoners looked to be standing their ground, unwilling to participate in the escape, but the overwhelming majority of the convicts were headed for an early release. Pockets of infighting erupted across the complex, however correctional officers were vastly outnumbered.
In the heat of the moment, Teddy decided to make a run for the gates with the rest of the inmates. A hundred yards in front of him, inmates were pouring out of the complex through the narrow but thick steel doors. How the fuck did they manage to get this open?
The sheer number of inmates elbowing their way out was clogging the pipe.
&n
bsp; Teddy raced toward the back of the crowd of soon-to-be escapees and progressively slowed down to a stop. Further back in the yard, even more correctional officers were storming the place and started to regain their edge, subduing hostile inmates one at a time. They would soon be closing down on the rest of them.
As he searched a way through the blocked funnel, Teddy felt a sudden grip around his neck. The chokehold took him by surprise and was tightening at breakneck speed, blood rushing to his head. Coming back to his senses after the initial shock, he seized the man’s arm with his left hand to relieve the insane pressure on his throat. Almost simultaneously, he flipped over the knife that was still in his right palm and shoved it in his assailant’s thigh as hard as he could. Immediately the clutch loosened up, although not yielding entirely.
Teddy could inhale again, but his respite was short-lived. A second later the man resumed his stranglehold and Teddy had to clutch the pernicious arm with both hands to prevent the constriction from crushing his esophagus. The oxygen supply to his brain began to drop off, and his vision went blurry.
As he was struggling for his life, he prayed for Logan to show up and save the day. Or any White Supremacist for that matter. Even that weakling of Raymond Cooper would do…Help! Instead, Teddy was just conscious enough to see a dark-skinned colossus racing in his direction – a Cuban unmistakably – and the man’s face left no doubt to his evil intents.
The darting Cuban raised his clutched fist and Teddy knew what was coming. Just before the hit, Teddy remembered that he hadn’t taken a punch in the face since his Birmingham days, years ago.
He tightened all muscles of his face, bracing himself for the smack. The man triggered an extended, overhead right hook but the blow missed Teddy’s face, instead landing on his assailant’s nose.
Instantly the man let go of his hold and toppled backward on the dirt floor, knocked out cold.
Teddy fell on his knees as he gasped for air, but the colossus picked him up by the elbow and dragged him twenty feet to the East, away from the horde of inmates thrusting their way to freedom.
The man, bald and shirtless, looked like he had been artificially inflated by a blend of oxygen and steroids. He must have been over fifty and was so swollen that his belly button was popping out.
Away from the madness, Teddy was finally able to focus his thoughts. The man’s face looked familiar, and Teddy could have sworn he had seen him around the Hispanics gang’s leader many times, in a bodyguard capacity or something.
“Who are you, and why are you helping me?” he shouted, still catching his breath. “Why are you not escaping?”
“Teddy, I know you. You’re a good man. Wasn’t gonna let those bastards hurt you…all Herrera’s bitches,” the colossus said. “After all, you were on the better side of the Corporacion.”
“Better side of what? Wait…you’re a friend of Paco?”
“No time to explain…lots of bad men around here, we need to leave.” The man grabbed Teddy’s arm and motioned toward the gate. By now the crowd had dispersed somewhat, and there certainly was room for them to go through. It wouldn’t be easy with the guards clamping down on every roaming soul, but the massive Cuban powerhouse could certainly be repurposed as an unstoppable wrecking ball.
“Hold on a second, mate,” Teddy said. “We’re just gonna rush outside with no plan?”
“I got a plan. This has been a year in the making, even before you came. You think this is happening randomly?”
Teddy looked at him incredulously, and asked, “What tells me you’re not with Herrera? How can I trust you?”
“Listen, I could crush your skull with my bare hands right now if I meant harm to you. You weren’t part of the plan, but I know what you did for Paco. You don’t need to trust me, but I’ll take care of you on the outside if you come. Now follow me to the car, there isn’t much time.”
Teddy stood still as the correctional officers finally regained some control of the yard. Most prisoners had fled in the midst of the confusion, and surely, the sheer number of escapees would make it easier to swim through the mesh of the police net on the outside. If that mastodon of a Cuban truly had a plan, that is.
Thinking under intense pressure had never been Teddy’s forte, but he knew that this decision would be a momentous one. If he ever had to seize his chance, that was it.
He could spend another half year in the hell hole of the nicely-named Dade County Correctional Institute, looking over his shoulder and fearing for his life every passing second. The White Supremacists were all gone. The other, bolder option was to take a leap of faith, join Goliath on an adventure in the Everglades or God knew where, and make his way toward England at the first opportunity. He threw successive glances at the colossus, the army of guards and the open gates, and made up his mind.
CHAPTER 28
When he woke up the next morning, Teddy realized that the mental fog he had been under for the past six months had been lifted.
He hadn’t been towed out of a deep sleep by the frantic banging of a baton on his cell’s iron door, as had been the case every single dawn since his first day in the slammer. Neither did he have to endure the plonks and stench of Raymond’s nefarious early-morning bowel outpouring. The obscene repugnance of the man’s defecation was nothing less than baffling as the inmate diet was broadly the same for everyone, but Ray Cooper seemed to possess a dysfunctional nuclear muncher in lieu of a digestive system. Teddy had gotten used to suppress his urge to puke when the foul reek reached his nostrils.
What he relished most about that very morning was the sense of safety and inner peace that overwhelmed his senses as he awoke and became slowly aware of his whereabouts. There was no malicious Latino around the corner ready to stick a blade into his stomach. He wondered to what extent his being alive at that very moment was in fact due to the pressure applied by the colossal Cuban on the head of the Latino gang over the past months.
Teddy was still bewildered by the reach of the fratricidal divide that had plagued the Corporacion. The antagonism was deeply ingrained at all level of the local Cuban community, even as far as southern Florida prisons.
But this didn’t matter anymore. Even with the prevailing uncertainty around his detention, he was certain of one thing. His stay in the United States was coming to an end.
He sipped on some hot coffee, pondering what his next move would be. Over seventy-two percent of the convict population of Dade County Correctional Institution had vanished overnight, and federal and local authorities were on red alert throughout the country.
It had been the most audacious and successful mass prison break in the state of Florida in over a century. The story made the headlines of all national news media for a week, as a state-wide manhunt for missing convicts was launched. Flights were grounded and roadblocks established on all major arteries of Florida. The entire prison staff was being questioned in connection with the improbable escape.
Teddy followed the hunt on TV with a dauntless sense of defiance, knowing that he risked nothing where he was.
He was saddened to hear that Logan had been shot dead after five days on the run. The man had taken a taxi all the way up North to Pembroke Pines, in Broward County. There, he had wandered for three full days trying to steal private planes and boats while spending his nights rough on farmland. On his fifth day on the run, an off-duty prison officer had walked on him as he was taking a leak in one of the city’s lakes. The officer had gotten scared as Logan ran toward him, his dick swinging out of his unzipped fly. The man had pulled out his gun and cut him down in a hail of bullets.
Raymond Cooper had had better luck. He knew he was no match for the physicality of trained officers, so once he was spotted in the vicinity of Miami airport, he had immediately surrendered. He was returned to custody only two days after his escape.
Out of the missing two hundred and fifty-eight inmates, over half of them were recaptured in the week following the jailbreak, and within a month eighty-five percent of
them were back to the Dade County Correctional Institute. Thirteen were shot dead during a police raid in an abandoned warehouse they were squatting on the outskirt of Palm Beach. Twenty-seven remained on the loose.
The County’s commissioner stepped up his appearances on state television in an attempt to inform and reassure the populace. In each of his interviews, he was careful to follow the official line to the letter, demonstrating an unwavering belief that all remaining convicts would be caught shortly.
This rehearsed circus mattered little to Teddy. When he took the momentous decision to stand his ground despite the promise of safety of the big Cuban, he knew that it would play in his hand. Following blindly reckless escapees into an unprepared exile was the best way to extend his sentence, he reasoned. It was easy to make a fatal mistake when on the run. Logan and his bullet-riddled body could vouch for that.
The first few days after the mass prison break were blissful and bore more resemblance with an all-inclusive holiday stay in a cheap motel with high vacancy rate than actual joint time. The formerly overcrowded correctional facility was at its emptier since the day of its inauguration, and the remaining convicts were all tamed offenders with under five years left on their term.
“All the prisoners under backdoor parole seized the opportunity and hit the road,” Ray had said, after he was recaptured. “Those lifers have nothing to lose.”
“Most of these guys can’t function in society anymore,” another left-behind convict had replied.
“Exactly. and I’ll tell you what. What surprised me the most in all this madness wasn’t the prison break in itself. Everyone knew that a concerted effort from the convicts could overthrow that weakly guarded shithole,” Ray had said. “No, what really blew my fucking mind was the sheer number of inmates breaking loose, following the crowd like sheeps. Almost every single one of them! Can you believe this shit? The herd effect is powerful my friend. Even I did so. Just makes me another dimwit I guess.” He had then gone on to elaborate on another of his theories that was supposed to shed light on how a strong sense of community and close-knit family ties favored Hispanics over other races in a spontaneous prison break.
Little Havana Exile Page 12
