The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(72)

The door to central security looked like solid steel, the only opening a tiny window laced with reinforced wire. Caitlin waved us back, out of sight. Then she ran to the door and hammered on it, twisting her face into a mask of raw panic.

“Help,” she cried, “I’m all alone out here. You have to let me in!”

I heard a muffled refusal from the other side.

“There are prisoners everywhere,” Caitlin begged. “You can’t let them get me, you can’t! Please!”

After a moment’s hesitation, the lock clicked.

Caitlin barged in. I was right behind her, shoving Jablonski and using him for a shield, one hand on his collar and one on the gun. On the other side, one guard lay on the thin blue carpet, knocked flat by the swinging door. Another two stood by a bank of controls and security monitors that ran the length of the far wall.

One went for his pistol. I put mine to Jablonski’s head.

“Uh-uh. You do, he dies.”

He was loyal enough, or dumb enough, to freeze. Caitlin moved fast, stripping the three guards’ weapons and herding them into one corner of the room. I studied the grainy black-and-white monitor feeds, trying to get eyes on Raymundo.

“A few days ago,” I said, “there was a riot in the yard. A few Calles bangers got sent to solitary. They still in there?”

“I…I think so,” one of the guards said. “I’m not sure.”

“And how do I get in there?”

“Y-you can’t. Not from here, I mean. Ad Seg is all manual. They never updated the cell doors.”

“Okay,” I said, taking a step back and rubbing my chin. “So what you’re telling me is all the other cell doors can be controlled from here?”

Nobody answered. I put my thumb on the hammer of my gun and cocked it back. A meaningless gesture on most modern pistols, but thanks to Hollywood it got the point across.

“I’ve got four hostages here, and I only need one. If I don’t have an answer in five seconds, we start making staff cuts.”

“There are overrides for evacuation,” one said, “in case of a fire. We can open up everything from here. The security gates, individual cells, everything.”

“Well then,” I told him, “you’d best get to it.”

He approached the console like a zookeeper walking into a lion’s cage. His fingers trembled as they touched the keys.

“Go on,” I said.

Ten seconds of rattling keys, the flip of a switch, and the wall of monitors flickered to life. All across the prison, locks disengaged and doors glided open as one. I saw tilted heads and curious faces peeping from their cells, and nervous-looking guards walking fast as they chattered into walkie-talkies.

“You’re crazy,” Jablonski breathed. “Do you even know what you just did?”

I gestured to a microphone at the end of the console. “Is that a PA system? Turn it on. I want to make a prison-wide broadcast.”

The guard obliged. I cleared my throat and leaned in over the mic. As I spoke, I heard a popping squeal and my own voice echoing back from loudspeakers outside.

“Good evening, Eisenberg Correctional. This is your new warden speaking. You may have noticed that every single door in the prison has just opened. This is in keeping with our new ‘leave whenever you want’ policy. We fully encourage you to explore this exciting new option! Also, for your information, the guards have been complicit in a scheme to orchestrate inmates’ deaths for profit, and you outnumber them by about fifty to one.”

I clicked off the intercom and looked at Jablonski.

“No, that’s crazy.”





39.




“Wait,” one of the guards said, looking from me to Jablonski. “Deaths? What the hell?”

“No time to explain.” I grabbed Jablonski’s collar and dragged him backward. “But I suggest you gentlemen barricade yourselves in here. And don’t open the door for anybody until the highway patrol moves in.”

Caitlin took one of the purloined guns and aimed at the console. Bullets blasted metal and chewed wiring, round after round until she’d emptied the clip. Now they wouldn’t be locking the place back up once we left. She gave the pistol a disdainful glance and tossed it to the floor.

“C’mon,” Jablonski said, “let me stay in here with them. I did what you wanted!”

“Not done with you just yet,” I told him. “Besides, that wrist looks pretty bad, and you’re awfully pale. If I left you in here, you’d probably die from blood loss before help came. What kind of a guy would I be if I let that happen? Move.”

As we approached the doors to Hive C, walking past access gate after open, abandoned access gate, I heard the muffled sounds of war whoops and gunfire. Freed from their cages, the locals seemed more interested in tearing the prison down and settling old scores than trying to escape.

The unlocked double doors opened onto pandemonium. Corpses littered the floor, some guards but mostly prisoners, the first casualties of the riot. The gallery floor was a free-for-all, shiv-swinging inmates tearing at each other in a brutal melee while others tried to hammer down the watchtower doors. The guards in the tower treated the hive like a shooting gallery, crowded up in their perch and raining down fire as fast as they could reload. The air stank of fresh blood and gun smoke.