The Rising(100)

“Here,” Alex said, his ear literally to the ground as he grimaced again from a sudden jolt of pain. “It’s right under us.”

“We need to find the doorway,” Donati replied, eyes sweeping about as if expecting the entrance to magically appear. “It’s got to be around here somewhere.…”

“There’s a doorway, all right, but we won’t find it here exactly,” Raiff told him, eyeing the shape of the prison.





103

THE FORT

THEY TRAIPSED UP A path toward the prison entrance, having it all to themselves since no public tours were available on Sunday nights. They ignored the warning signs credited to the National Parks Service and reached the big double doors through which some of the most notorious criminals of all time had been paraded. Raiff extended what looked like a baton that had been wedged through his belt into a whip-like device that cut straight through the middle of the doors, allowing them to sway inward.

“Welcome to Alcatraz,” he said, leading the others inside the prison.

*

Almost ten minutes had passed since Rathman had left the area of the dock with the bulk of his men, leaving Langston Marsh with two of them for his own protection and, Marsh suspected, to make sure he didn’t follow. Not that he would have, now that Rathman’s “insurance” was arriving in a small launch as opposed to a Zodiac.

Marsh studied the couple handcuffed in the craft’s open rear, shivering from the cold. Obviously their abductors hadn’t let them dress appropriately.

“I’m sorry this was necessary, I truly am,” he called to them.

“Eat me,” the man said.

“And choke on it,” the woman added.

“Douchebag.”

“Asshole.”

“I can see where your daughter gets her spunk, Mr. and Mrs. Dixon.”

*

His life had changed a great deal in an incredibly short period of time, but Rathman gave that little thought as he watched four figures, including one he was able to identify as his primary target, enter the prison complex, the big doors left ajar behind them. He also tried not to think too much about this pending “invasion” to which Marsh kept referring, convinced now that the boy was a key cog in its implementation. The group could have simply ventured inside the prison to hide, the connection between the explosions that had toppled the tour boat and pursuit by a committed force an easy one to make.

In this case, though, Rathman found himself agreeing with Marsh at least in principle. There were other strategic places to hide on this cluttered island that made far more sense than this one. For that reason, together with a nagging sense he couldn’t let go of, Rathman believed the boy and the others had a different purpose for entering the prison. But his was a soldier’s mind-set. He had a job to do and needed only to know where his target was, not why he was there.

“Target acquired,” he said into the Black Ops 2 Throat Mic connecting him to all his troops. “The entrance to the prison is our zero. Follow my lead.”

*

The inside of the prison was laced with a peculiar combination of scents ranging from cleaning solvent to musty mildew to cold, cracking concrete. The tile floors were chipped and dull, but slippery as if freshly waxed or finished. Raiff led the way, Alex professing to have no idea where to go from here now that his head was no longer throbbing. All Raiff knew was that they were close to whatever the boy’s chip had honed in on.

The accessible prison halls were cavernous and serpentine, eerie in their desolation. The kind of place that left Sam wishing she had someone’s hand to hold while traversing them. Made her feel like a little kid, afraid of the dark. But there were plenty worse things to be frightened of than the dark.

“Hard to find something when we don’t know what we’re looking for,” Raiff noted, his voice echoing in a tinny fashion through the abandoned confines.

“A doorway, an elevator shaft—something, anything,” said Donati.

“Wait,” Sam said, sneakers grinding to a halt. “That elevator we just passed for the second time.”

“What about it, Dixon?”

“It’s key operated. Did key-operated elevators exist back when Alcatraz was built?”

*

The doors parted with a whoooooshhhhh, after Raiff managed to work a twin-set of precise tools into the proper slots of the keyhole to twist it from left to right. He peered inside, hand on his pistol now.

“No buttons, no controls,” he reported.

Alex slipped past him, inside. “Then what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Nothing,” Sam ventured.

“I can think of plenty worse than that,” said Donati, joining them inside and leaving Raiff blocking the door from closing.

“I’m supposed to keep you safe, Dancer.”

“Then you better step inside,” Alex told him.

*

The old cab descended slowly, creakily, its ancient hydraulic system an odd match for technology millions of years advanced.

Raiff slid forward as the elevator squealed to a grinding halt.

“No,” Alex said, holding a hand against him, “stay behind me.”

Raiff’s chest felt like banded steel, hot to the touch. “Why?”

“A feeling.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Dancer.”