Criminal Destiny

by Gordon Korman

  In other words, almost impossible is a synonym for ever-so-slightly possible.

  That’s how I end up in charge of a prison break.

  Our tiny motel room feels even smaller now that there are five of us. Gathered around the small desk, Amber makes notes on what we know about Kefauver:

  1.)Prison workshop produces mailbags for US Postal Service.

  2.)Prison laundry is directly next to workshop.

  3.)Prison hospital is directly above laundry.

  4.)Prisoners can get special permission for supervised picnics with visitors.

  The workshop is obviously the key. The mailbags they make for the post office are the only things that leave Kefauver without passing through all those security checkpoints.

  “Maybe we could smuggle him out with one of the shipments when he’s on work detail,” Malik suggests.

  Eli shakes his head. “No good. Rackoff was really specific on that. They’re nuts about counting heads every time a truck leaves the loading dock.”

  That gives me an idea “We’ll have to get him into a shipment when he’s not on work detail.”

  Hector’s brow furrows, making him look more like Rackoff than ever. “But you’re not allowed to wander around anywhere you please. The guards know where you’re supposed to be every minute of every day. That’s what Rackoff hates the most. You can’t burp without somebody knowing what you had for lunch.”

  “That’s what we’ll use against them,” I say triumphantly.

  “Haven’t you got that backward?” Eli asks. “Isn’t that what they use against the inmates to make sure they’re always accounted for?”

  “The more confident the guards are that they’ve got Rackoff covered, the more we can move him around. They won’t be looking for him because they’ll always be sure he’s somewhere else.”

  The plan begins to come together. In some ways, it reminds me of our escape from Serenity—with some important differences. Back then, we had the element of surprise on our side. But a real prison is always prepared for the possibility that one of the “guests” might try to make an early exit.

  The main difference is this: When we left Serenity, we had weeks to prepare, time enough to ensure every detail had been accounted for. Here in Texas, the clock is running out on us as surely as we can hear its tick-tock speeding up. At the Tumbleweed Inn, we’ve stopped using the front door, sneaking in and out via the bathroom window. Even so, it’s only a matter of time before someone notices that room 18 isn’t as empty as it’s supposed to be. And our truck is a time bomb just waiting to be spotted. We have to do this tomorrow, which means there’s no way we’ll be able to plan for everything.

  We’ll be flying by the seat of our pants.

  Two things we’ll need to make this work: split-second timing, and a picnic lunch. We can’t get either of those at the motel. (All they sell in the vending machine here are mini-packets of Tylenol, stale shrink-wrapped muffins, and dental floss.) That presents the problem of taking out the truck without attracting attention.

  The prison has an ear-splitting siren that can be heard for miles around. It’s probably the escape alarm, but yesterday at exactly noon, they ran it for about ten seconds. Close by (at the Tumbleweed Inn, for instance) it gets so loud that you feel your internal organs vibrating. We’re guessing it’s a daily test.

  We’re in the truck at 11:59. At the first onslaught of sound, Malik stomps on the gas, and we wheel out from behind the trees, our engine’s roar completely covered by the blaring siren. We bump up onto the pavement and speed across the parking lot. By the time the test is over, we’re already pulling onto the road.

  “Every bank robber needs a good getaway driver,” Malik tosses over his shoulder at me.

  “If I meet any bank robbers, I’ll tell them that,” I remind him irritably. (I’m not a bank robber; I just happen to be cloned from one.)

  Our destination is the variety store in Haddonfield. I’m the only one with a watch, which means we need four more. And there’s a supermarket next door where we can get sandwich stuff and drinks for the picnic.

  Amber goes crazy at the salad bar. It’s the first veggies she’s had access to in a long time. (I guess this means her goal weight is on again.)

  We’re on our way back to the motel, Malik at the wheel, when we pass a small roadside diner just on the edge of town.

  “Stop!” I scream right in Malik’s ear.

  Shocked, he jams on the brakes, and we fishtail onto the soft shoulder. “What?”

  “That diner over there—the Bearclaw!”

  He’s mad. “Thanks a lot, Miss Keep-a-Low-Profile! I left half our tire treads on the road, and squealed the town down! Way to go!”

  “Look—in the parking lot!”

  There sits a large windowless cargo van, white, with the logo of the United States Postal Service stamped on the side.

  “Big deal,” says Malik. “A mail truck.”

  “I don’t think that’s a mail truck,” I tell him excitedly. “We saw mail trucks in Denver. They’re smaller, with an open door so the carrier can jump in and out and make deliveries. I think this is the one Rackoff told us about—the one that goes to Kefauver every weekday to pick up the mail bags from the workshop.”

  They listen to me—or maybe it’s Yvonne-Marie Delacroix they’re listening to. Either way, they’re willing to follow my lead. This could be the last piece of the puzzle.

  We park a quarter mile away so we can enter the diner on foot, waving and calling, “Bye, Mom” to an imaginary lift. It’s a nice clean-looking diner, deserted except for one waitress and one customer, a young guy in a postal uniform. He’s at the counter, having coffee and complaining about the cruller, which is “not up to your usual standards.”

  “I know, George,” the waitress apologizes. “We’re baking tonight, so everything should be nice and fresh for you tomorrow.”

  “Make some bear claws,” the USPS guy requests. “That’s what you’re famous for.”

  We settle ourselves at a booth, and order Cokes all around, except for Amber, who gets sparkling water. At the side of our table, built into the wall, there’s a small console with a coin slot and a booklet of plastic-covered lists of what look like titles and names.

  “What’s that?” whispers Malik.

  Eli turns the metal crank, scrolling through the different pages. “Snoop Dogg?” he reads, brow furrowing. “Imagine Dragons? Hootie and the Blowfish?”

  I shrug. We’ve gotten pretty good at decoding the outside world, but every now and then something comes along that we really don’t have a clue about.

  “Ask the waitress,” Amber suggests.

  I shake my head. “If this is a common thing everybody knows, it would draw attention. I just hope it isn’t important, like you’re supposed to use it to pay your bill.”

  Luckily, the USPS guy (George) bails us out by putting a quarter in a similar console at the counter. He presses a few buttons and a song begins to play in the Bearclaw.

  Light dawns. “It’s a jukebox,” I tell the others in a low voice. “I’ve read about them in books. You pay money to hear the music you want.”

  “Really? These are songs?” Amber peers through the plastic cover. “‘Da Bomb.’ Who’d write a song about a bomb?”

  “Maybe you would,” Malik offers sweetly. “Isn’t Mickey Seven the mad bomber?”

  “Big talk from the gangster DNA—”

  “Shhh!” I cut her off and make eye contact with the postal worker. “I love this song. It must be nice to finish your route early and have a little time to relax.”

  “Oh, I’m not a carrier,” he replies. “I’m picking up new product from the shop at Kefauver.”

  I’m confused. “New product?”

  “Mailbags,” he explains. “The prisoners churn them out by the hundreds. Don’t know why we need so many of them, but every day they’ve got a new load for me.”

  The waitress laughs. “You can set your watch by George. Eve
ry day, one thirty, coffee and a bear claw, Taylor Swift on the jukebox. One fifty—out the door. And twenty minutes later, tooting the horn and waving at me as he moves on.”

  “They’re nuts about their timetable at the prison,” George explains. “If I’m sixty seconds early, they make me wait.”

  “And if you’re sixty seconds late?” the waitress asks with a smile.

  He rolls his eyes. “The warden’s a stickler. I don’t like to cross that guy. I just make my pickup and get on my way, all nice and boring.”

  I look meaningfully around the table at my four accomplices. I’m still not sure exactly how things are going to go tomorrow, but this much is certain: it won’t be boring.

  None of us get much sleep that night; I’m pretty sure I get the least of all. Just the enormity of what we’re about to do has us totally cowed. We may have the right stuff to be criminal masterminds, but we’re not there yet. (I hope we never are.) Maybe Yvonne-Marie Delacroix stayed up the night before a big robbery with prejob jitters. Anyway, she wasn’t twelve.

  Eventually, the others doze off, and I stay up, tossing and turning beside Amber. When they made me the chief planner, they made me the chief stresser too. Is that even a real word? If not, it should be. I’m stressing like crazy over this.

  I watch them for a few minutes—Amber next to me, Eli and Malik in the other bed, Hector wrapped up in a blanket on the floor despite the heat. In the distance, air conditioners roar on.

  I’m proud of the way they rely on me, but nervous too. I don’t want to let them down, because in our case, a letdown means total disaster. Any kind of arrest would be the end of the road for us. Even if, by some miracle, the prison authorities decided to let us go, they wouldn’t cut five unsupervised kids completely loose in the world. And when they looked around for our families, there would be the Purple People Eaters, waiting to take us “home.”

  Another reason it’s so hard to sleep: because I put together most of the plan, I understand better than anybody what could go wrong. There are a million variables, and that’s just with us. What about C. J. Rackoff? Any swindler successful enough to count as a mastermind can’t be considered trustworthy. Besides, he doesn’t know about any of this. And he won’t until it’s already in motion.

  I must doze off out of sheer exhaustion, because the next thing I know, I awake with a start, and the door is opening! I see a sliver of the night outside—and the menacing silhouette of an intruder entering Room 18!

  I consider waking the others. If this is the Purples moving in on us, we’re all going to have to fight for our freedom. But that would just inform the enemy that I’m awake, and I see him. I need to strike now, while I’ve got the element of surprise.

  I reach down and pick up the first thing my hand closes on—a metal wastebasket. In one motion, I’m out of bed, across the room, and swinging my weapon at the shadowy figure.

  Whack!

  “Ow!”

  Wait a minute —

  (I know that ow.)

  “Eli?” I glance over at the other bed, and see the outline of only one person under the blanket.

  “Jeez, Tori, you nearly took my head off!” he hisses.

  I’m frantic now. “Are you all right?”

  “What’s this sticky stuff? Is it blood?”

  I hustle him into the bathroom, and turn on the light. It is blood, but just a trickle from a small impact cut above his left eye. It’s easy enough to clean up, but he’ll probably have a bruise tomorrow. “What were you doing out of the room?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he admits. “I kept thinking that, when it’s time for me to hack into the computer system at Kefauver, what if I can’t make it work from my iPad? So I went to the computer room next to the office.”

  “And?” I prompt.

  “Well,” he explains, “the main site has a lot of security, but the hospital’s different because they have to exchange medical records and information with outside doctors and clinics. I can get in—that’s if I don’t have amnesia from being bashed in the head.”

  “Sorry about that.” I flush. “If things go bad tomorrow—if it turns out, you know, this is the last time we see each other—” Suddenly, I can’t finish my own thought. I’m not sure I ever knew what I was trying to tell him. Maybe this: We went through something pretty terrible. We’re still going through it. The one thing that’s made it bearable is that you’ve been there.

  (I could never say that out loud.)

  He takes my hand and squeezes it, holding on so long that I actually count: One . . . two . . . three . . .

  “It’ll be fine,” he tells me finally.

  I wonder if he believes it any more than I do.

  Lugging the food bag between us, Hector and I cross the highway and start up the drive for the front gate of Kefauver Federal Detention Facility. The time is 12:15. We’ve all synchronized watches.

  “Nice day for a picnic, huh?” Hector says nervously.

  I look around as if noticing the weather for the first time. It is a nice day—cloudless sky, sunny, with that inevitable Texas heat. It occurs to me for the first time—what would we do with our picnic if it was pouring rain? Is that how good this plan is? How many other important things didn’t I think of?

  Kefauver policy may allow picnics, but that doesn’t stop the gate sentry from searching our food bag with everything short of an electron microscope. After he paws through it all, he invites us to move on. As we proceed through the security procedures, our bag is unpacked and searched twice more, X-rayed once, and passed through two metal detectors. It definitely spoils the picnic mood. But, of course, this has never been about lunch for Hector and me. We’re scared out of our minds.

  Finally, we’re standing in the same visitors’ meeting room we were in yesterday as C. J. Rackoff is escorted to our side.

  “The crowd’s getting smaller,” he comments. “Was it something I said?”

  I try to laugh, but it comes out a strangled sound. “We brought you a picnic lunch, Uncle C.J.”

  He looks to the guard, who nods. “You’re approved for the outdoor tables. Let’s go.”

  We’re marched down echoing corridors, and through steel security doors. I catch a few questioning glances from Rackoff, but luckily he knows enough to keep his mouth shut. Hector has always been the smartest of us, and this must be where he gets it.

  There’s only one way to describe the picnic area: secure. There’s a little grass—half a knoll between thirty-foot fences topped with razor wire. One of the guard towers looks directly down on the wooden tables. It’s not indoors and behind bars, but it might as well be.

  At least they leave us alone. As we unload the sandwiches and drinks, I drop a napkin and stoop to pick it up. What I’m really doing is checking the underside of the table for listening devices. What we have to say doesn’t need to be shared with the prison authorities.

  Rackoff says, “I ask for my freedom, and you bring me a sandwich. Excuse me for being a little disappointed.”

  “Maybe you can have both,” Hector retorts.

  He looks intrigued. “Tell me more.”

  “We’ll get you out,” I say in a low voice, “but only if you promise to help us tell our story to the world.”

  “You have my word,” he replies readily.

  I look to Hector, who has the best chance of anyone alive of knowing what’s inside the head of this master criminal. He nods.

  “Okay,” I begin. “Listen carefully, because we have to get this exactly right . . .”

  25

  ELI FRIEDEN

  I wonder how the picnic is going.

  I check my watch. 1:17 p.m. By now it’s in full swing, and Rackoff knows exactly what our plan is. I hope he can pull it off. He’s an accomplished con man and professional liar. But let’s face it—if he was that good, he wouldn’t be in prison in the first place.

  The parking lot of the Bearclaw is just a dirt clearing beside the tiny diner. It’s back from th
e road and surrounded by high bushes, where we’re crouched, hiding.

  If that waitress is to be believed, George is due here in his post office truck in exactly thirteen minutes. I can already feel lines of sweat streaming down under my shirt. By the time George arrives, I’ll be a puddle.

  Malik slaps at a mosquito on his cheek. “How come there always has to be bugs?”

  “You think Gus Alabaster’s afraid of mosquitoes?” Amber says in amusement.

  “I’m not afraid of them. I just hate them.” He takes the three-foot crowbar he’s brandishing and uses it to disperse a cloud of gnats. The thing comes dangerously close to my head, and I duck. I’ve already been coldcocked by Tori. My face doesn’t need any more rearranging.

  My eyes are never far from my watch, until 1:30. “He’s late—” I begin. But before the echo of my words has time to die, the USPS van is turning into the drive. The waitress is right. You can set your watch by George.

  He pulls into the parking lot and gets out of the car, heading for the entrance to the diner.

  “This is it!” whispers Malik, preparing to step out of the bushes and intercept the post office man.

  An instant later, a second vehicle pulls into the Bearclaw parking lot—a Texas state trooper. I haul Malik back down into the cover of the foliage.

  Malik wrestles himself free and peers through the leafy branches. George is almost at the front door. “He’s getting away!”

  “What are you going to do?” I demand. “Threaten him in front of a cop?”

  “We’ll just have to wait till he comes out,” Amber decides.

  “What if the cop’s still here?” Malik asks frantically.

  “You can’t see the parking lot from the restaurant,” I soothe. “We’ll have to chance it. It’s our only way of staying on schedule.”

  We cool our heels, which is almost impossible in this climate.

  A few minutes later, the cop emerges carrying a candy bar and a diet Dr Pepper. He drives off. Still no sign of George, who is probably enjoying the fresh-baked bear claw he was promised yesterday.