Undersea Prison

by Duncan Falconer

  Christine took the drink and held it to her mouth as she watched him take a sip of his. She let the glass touch her lips and poured a little of the burnt-gold fluid between them. It tasted bitter to her. She didn’t like hard liquor but on this occasion it reminded her of younger days in college after a game of touch football or baseball, joining the guys for a drink. They’d been purely bonding moments for her but fun nonetheless. Now those days seemed like ancient history. From college girl to secret undercover agent standing in the warden’s office of a damp, humid prison far beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

  As she watched Mandrick eyeing her with the confidence of a great cat, she was less sure of her strategy than ever. Her scheme was nothing more complex than to separate him from his minicomputer, remove the memory-storage cards without him knowing and then head for his personal escape pod. There were some glaring flaws in the plan. The first was the difficulty of getting the keypad entry code to gain access to the pod. She didn’t know it. The only way around that was to somehow get Mandrick to show her the inside of the pod and then make her move to get inside it and eject. The other flaw was that as she arrived on the surface he could have her picked up by his own people. She would be stuck inside the pod for hours anyway, waiting to decompress. He would also have plenty of time to cancel some of the information on the storage cards; PIN codes and passwords, for instance.

  It was not the best of plans by a long stretch but Christine was out of other ideas. She almost scratched the whole notion several times but the only reason she continued to pursue it was that she was not entirely desperate to pull it off. Taking the storage cards was surplus to the mission objective, anyway. It was all about personal ambition. If the ideal opportunity failed to materialise she would cancel it and surface just with her report.

  At that moment the scheme was certainly looking doubtful. Mandrick was being more forward with her than he’d been at any other time. He had a hunger in his eyes. She reckoned she had been too overtly sexual in setting him up and he was clearly expecting more than she was prepared to give. ‘Why don’t you take me on a tour?’ she suggested. ‘I can come on your rounds with you.’

  He put his glass down, moved closer and stopped in front of her, his eyes boring into hers. ‘What are you doing here, Christine?’ he asked in a cold voice.

  ‘You mean in this room, now?’ she replied, holding on to her composure.

  ‘That, yes. But first the prison. What are you doing here?’

  ‘You know what I’m doing here.’

  ‘I know what you said you’re doing here. But we all know that’s a load of crap.’

  Christine could never tell Mandrick the truth. Her career would be over. Perhaps even her life. He’d been prepared to kill an FBI agent. Why not an Oval Office agent? There was no real difference at the end of the day. He had no proof that she was not a prison inspector. He couldn’t have. He was guessing. She had no choice but to maintain her claim. ‘Where has this come from? I don’t understand you,’ she said.

  ‘OK. So if you won’t answer that question, why are you in this room putting on this pathetic display, attempting to seduce me when it’s the furthest thing from your thoughts?’

  Christine tried to laugh it off. She put her drink down. ‘Well. This is interesting. I thought we . . . I’m sorry. I obviously have it all wrong. Perhaps I should go.’

  As she moved past Mandrick he grabbed her hand and pulled her close to him.

  ‘Let go of me,’ she demanded.

  He wrapped his other arm around her before she could pull away. ‘How ’bout we make a deal?’ he said, holding her tightly, his nose almost touching hers. ‘You give me what I want and we’ll talk about your side of the deal. I might surprise you.’ He moved a hand down her back and over her bottom, sliding it between the cheeks.

  A combination of rage and utter disgust engulfed Christine and she slammed her forehead into his nose, breaking it and immediately following through by crashing a heel down onto the top of one of his feet. To his credit he managed to keep hold of her but she punished him further by bringing a knee up into his groin. It was this blow that finally forced him to release her.

  She went to the control panel and hit a button. As the door hissed open she made her way past him towards it. But before she could reach it another hiss signalled a reverse of the pneumatic valves and the door remained closed.

  Christine turned to face Mandrick. He was straightening himself up, trying to ignore the pain in his groin while dabbing at his bloody nose with the sleeve of his jacket.

  ‘That smart,’ he said, blinking away the water in his eyes. ‘Never experienced that combination before . . . You make that up or did they teach you that in prison-inspection school?’

  ‘Let me out of here,’ she said coldly.

  Mandrick exhaled loudly and relaxed his shoulders to help ease the tension. ‘Funny how quickly you can go off someone.’

  ‘Open the door,’ she said in a deliberate tone.

  He held up the remote. ‘Why don’t you try and take it?’

  Christine was experiencing a whole load of feelings, a growing concern predominant among them. But she no longer felt unsure. The job had come down to a physical conflict between the pair of them. She didn’t have to pretend to seduce him for a second longer.That was some relief in itself. If she could take him down she might even achieve the result she wanted. But she would have to flatten him, knock him out, tie him up, restrain him for several hours. She knew nothing about Mandrick’s past: his dossier was surprisingly slender for a file that was the result of a White House background check.There was a toughness about him which she put down to character rather than physique.

  However, he seemed to have dealt with the blows she’d given him quite quickly. He could take pain. If he did possess some level of fighting skill, which she doubted, she was confident she could take him. She had quite a few tricks designed for the weaker sex up her sleeve, not that she was much weaker than him. They were techniques rather than skills, such as knowing how best to strike at weak points. She was also confident that she was fitter than him.

  Had Christine known Mandrick’s pedigree, the numerous African battlefields that he had fought on, conflicts she could hardly imagine, she would probably never have entered the room. There was a world of a difference between skills learned in a dojo and those acquired in battle while fighting for one’s life. More importantly, Mandrick knew what it was like to kill and, worse still for her, he had never lost the taste for it.

  She decided to strike first, which suited Mandrick as he was more adept at countermoves. She lunged at him with a dummy kick intended to bring his hands low so that she could punch him in the throat. But he stepped aside and parried her fist with a calm ease that took her by surprise. She went for a straight kick to his shin. He avoided it and lunged at her but she caught his hand and tried to turn the wrist in. He took her feet away from under her with a side-sweep and she almost fell on her back. But as he came in to take advantage of her lost balance and grab her hand she elbowed him in the face with her other arm. Mandrick went back, reeling a little from the blow and looking at her with malice. Christine was confident that if she could keep this up she just might take him. But Mandrick had home-field advantage.

  He lured her forward as he stepped backwards, feigning fear and weakness, dodging attack after attack, blocking where he could as if he was retreating. On the wall behind him was a large air pipe with an opening at chest height that had a mesh grille across it. The warden’s office was the only room in the facility apart from the OCR that had a manual air-pressure control. It was an emergency feature, an override that allowed the operator to rapidly increase or decrease the pressure in the room either to open the door or prevent it from being opened.

  Mandrick put his back to the pipe so that he knew exactly where he was. As Christine came in for another blow he took a step forward, trapped her arm, pulled her around, slammed her back against the pipe and threw a lever on the side o
f the vent. There was a sudden rush of air that reached an immediate and painful pitch. Before Christine realised what was happening her back was sucked against the mesh. She twisted violently in an effort to free herself but was stuck like a fly to sticky paper.

  Mandrick stepped back, feeling his bruised face and taking his time about it. ‘Now it’s my turn.’

  As Christine struggled to reach behind her back for the valve handle Mandrick punched her on the side of her face as hard as he could. The blow knocked her almost unconscious. Her knees nearly gave way and she could only watch as he drew his fist back for another punch. This time he changed its direction and struck her in the gut. It struck so hard and low that she almost threw up. He followed through with a knee to her groin, then grabbed her by her throat and held her windpipe tightly, squeezing it until she began to choke.

  ‘I’m not interested in who you work for,’ Mandrick hissed between clenched teeth.‘That should worry you.’ He slammed his elbow into the side of her face and she went limp. Unable to focus properly she fought to stay conscious.

  ‘It would be churlish of me not to take full advantage of the situation, don’t you think?’ he said, ripping open her shirt to reveal her bra. He squeezed her breasts. ‘Very firm . . . Fortunately for you I’m not into necrophilia.’

  A buzzer sounded above the hissing of air.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he muttered.

  The buzzer went again soon after and he looked at the monitor to see that it was Doctor Mani. He hit the intercom on his desk. ‘What is it?’ he asked, still slightly out of breath.

  ‘Mr Mandrick? I have something very important to show you.’

  ‘Can it wait? I have my hands full.’

  ‘I think you would be very angry with me if I said yes. This is most important or I would never dream of insisting.’

  Mandrick sighed and straightened his clothes.‘I guess it just wasn’t meant to be,’ he said, turning the vent lever back into the neutral position. The air stopped hissing, releasing Christine who hit the floor like a sack of vegetables. Mandrick pressed the entry button on the desk and the door opened.

  Mani hurried inside.

  ‘What do you want?’ Mandrick said, feeling his nose.

  Mani paused on seeing Mandrick’s somewhat dishevelled appearance but quickly put any disquiet aside and focused on the urgency of his visit. ‘Sir,’ he began but stopped in his tracks as he saw Christine lying on the floor. ‘Dear God,’ he exclaimed, hurrying over to her. ‘What happened?’

  Mandrick was more concerned about his swollen nose and its blocked airways. ‘We had a disagreement,’ he said nasally.

  The doctor looked confusedly between Mandrick and Christine, noticing now that her shirt had been torn open.

  ‘She’s a spy - FBI, probably - trying to steal something, I expect. She’s one tough bitch, I’ll say that for her,’ Mandrick added, feeling his cheekbones again.

  ‘What did you do to her?’ the doctor asked, his tacit disapproval obvious as he inspected Christine’s bruised face and checked to see if she was breathing.

  ‘Christ’s sake, Mani, she attacked me. Just because she came off worse doesn’t mean I’m the bad guy.’

  The doctor shook his head. The girl appeared to be OK apart from a possible concussion. ‘I’ll have to get her to the hospital.’

  ‘Do what the hell you want with her . . . What was so important?’

  The doctor had almost forgotten. Quickly, he got to his feet and reached into a pocket. ‘This was inside that Afghan they brought in,’ he said, taking out the plastic bag with the card inside.

  Mandrick took the bag and inspected it. ‘Durrani?’

  ‘That’s right. It was in his abdomen. It had been placed there surgically.’

  ‘Any idea what it is?’ Mandrick asked, in case the doctor had an opinion different from his own.

  ‘We thought it was a memory card of some kind.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Gann was with me when I found it.’

  Mandrick took the device out of the bag and examined the embossed gold circuitry, agreeing with the assessment. ‘Anyone else know about this? Hank, for instance?’

  ‘I came right here.’

  ‘And Gann?’

  ‘He was going on about that prisoner, Charon - the one who survived the ferry accident. I think he went to talk to him.’

  ‘Talk, eh?’ Mandrick muttered to himself. ‘Yeah, I bet.’ He checked his watch. Things were stacking up rapidly to push him in one direction: a dead FBI agent, a panicking Forbes, a threatening Hank, an unconscious prison inspector, and now this memory card or whatever it was. It was clearly important and unknown to the CIA. Perhaps it was the insurance he was looking for. Hank was interested in Durrani for a reason, and so was Charon who, just to add to matters, was probably about to die at the hands of Gann if for no other reason than that he’d witnessed the ferry sabotage. Mandrick could not risk Hank finding out about the chip, whatever it was, and Gann could not be relied upon to keep his mouth shut. It was time to go.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Mandrick. I’m beginning to feel very uncomfortable with this whole set-up down here . . . It’s beginning to feel like a powder keg about to blow.’

  ‘You’re a very perceptive man,’ Mandrick said.

  ‘The company would warn us if things were going to go wrong, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I think the signs would be there for all to see.’

  ‘I’ll take my lead from you, then.’

  ‘You see me jump, you go right ahead and jump too,’ Mandrick said, with a sarcastic smile.

  Mani nodded.‘What about that?’ he asked, indicating the memory card.

  ‘You think I should take it to the FBI?’

  ‘Why not? Insurance.We need to start thinking about protecting ourselves.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  Christine moaned.

  ‘I’d better get her to the hospital,’ Mani said, crouching beside her. ‘Come on. Up you get.You’ll be fine. Help me get you to the hospital.’

  Christine appeared to understand enough to help him get her to her feet although everything else was a blur. Mandrick’s image kept flashing across her mind, a memory only, disconnected to time and her current location despite her efforts to marshal her thoughts. She heard the doctor’s gentle voice that she remembered and trusted urging her to take a step. She obeyed.

  Mandrick watched Mani help Christine through the door. He hit the close button and removed his minicomputer from his belt, opened the leather cover, placed the card inside one of the small pockets and returned it to his belt.

  He opened a cupboard beside his desk to reveal a safe with a keypad on its face and punched in several numbers. A beep indicated that it had unlocked. He pulled open the door, removed a CD box on top of a pile of US banknotes, opened it, selected a red CD at the back of the box and carried it over to the main operations panel with a degree of care.

  Mandrick hit several commands on a keyboard, following a series of paths offered on the monitor, and pushed the CD into a slot on the panel. A few seconds later an alert flashed on the monitor, warning that the disk was unauthorised and could contain potentially lethal viruses. Permission to continue was authorised for password holders only and Mandrick typed in a code. Seconds later the monitor indicated that the CD had been accepted.

  The image changed to a graph of the prison’s gas systems, showing the different pressures throughout. As the information reeled off the CD a warning flashed onto the screen that deleting certain files could have disastrous effects.

  Mandrick left the program to run as he picked up a waterproof bag, put it on his desk, removed the money from the safe and placed it in the bag along with the other CDs, some paperwork and a pistol. The last item he removed from the safe was a leather pouch whose opening was secured with a drawstring, which he untied. Inside were a substantial number of gems of various colours and sizes. He refastened the drawstring, placed the pouch inside the w
aterproof bag and looked around to see if he had forgotten anything. His hand went to his belt and his minicomputer which he unhooked, placed in the bag and pulled an airtight zip tightly across. That was everything.

  He went back to the monitor to check on the progress of the virus. The warnings continued as one section after another began to flash red.

  Mandrick picked up the phone on his desk and punched in a number. ‘Mandrick here. Are the ferries ready for that scheduled stores run? . . . Good. I want you to send them. I want all those stores cleared off the platform and brought down here . . .Yes, do it now. I know there’s a ferry booked for the inspector this evening but she’s not leaving until tomorrow . . . Just do what I goddamn say, OK?’ He put the phone down, checked his watch and went back to the computer monitor that showed how the virus was spreading.

  In the OCR a light flickered on the main panel, accompanied by a beep. The controller and his assistant were seated at a table, eating sandwiches and drinking coffee.

  The assistant took a large bite out of his sandwich, got to his feet, walked over to the panel and eyed the read-out curiously as he brushed his hands on his chest. ‘Pressure spike in C cell,’ he said, his mouth full of food.

  ‘The interrogation chamber?’ the senior controller asked as he flicked through the pages of a girlie magazine.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘They’ve got nothing booked for right now.’

  ‘Nope,’ the assistant agreed, checking a calendar on the side of the panel.

  ‘Give ’em a call. Tell ’em we’d appreciate it if they let us know before they start playing their little games.’

  ‘You want me to ask it exactly like that?’

  The senior controller frowned without looking at his colleague. ‘Just ask ’em what they’re doing.’

  The assistant picked up a phone and punched in a number.

  The CIA interrogation-room technician was in the pressure chamber, checking the wiring to the central chair, when the phone on the wall buzzed. As he stood up to reach for it he felt suddenly flushed and paused to loosen the clothing around his neck.