P Deutermann - The Moonpool

The lights went out throughout the facility at ten o’clock. Mad Moira was in my room ten minutes later. This time she was wearing her jumpsuit, and I could confirm what I needed to know-she was slim. I was the one who was going to have a problem getting under that fence, assuming we could even get out to it. I told her I was going out tonight.

“Wow,” she said. “That was quick. You have someone waiting?”

I ducked her question. “Can you get us to the exercise pen that’s the third from the left?” I asked.

She thought about that for a moment.

“I can get us to a door that goes outside; after that, it’ll depend.”

“On?”

“On the alarm system-the hallway room door card readers are locked down after ten o’clock. I don’t think the bathroom doors are. I think it’s a fire safety thing-they want one door that can be operated by a housekeeping card in case the main system goes down.”

“You think?”

She shrugged. “Well, I can hear the room card readers click off at 10:00 P.M.; I’ve listened to the bathroom hallway door reader, and it doesn’t.”

“So it’s still possible there’ll be an alert the moment you key that door?”

“Sure.”

She must have seen the look on my face.

“Look: The difference is, that door will open. These room doors won’t. There aren’t any readers on the stairwell doors-again, think fire safety. My plan was to key the door, open it, and run like hell for the fire stairway. After that…”

“Yeah,” I said. “After that, it could get really interesting.”

She shrugged again. “I’m ready to give it a shot. I’ve seen loading dock ramps that go down to the basement on the back of the building. The first floor is where the security station probably lives. I’d say try for the basement, then out.”

“That’s where that damned rottweiler came from,” I said. “If he’s loose in the basement, we’re hosed.”

“The dogs aren’t loose down there,” she said.

“And you know this how?”

“The Marines hang out down there at night. They use pistols,. 22s, to hunt rats. They do it with rat-shot, so’s to avoid ricochets. They drop garbage in the basement corridors, turn off all the lights, wait for a while, and then go out with night vision goggles. They wouldn’t do that if there were dogs loose.”

“And if they’re down there tonight? Maybe the basement is the wrong objective.”

“If they are, they’ll be drinking beer right now. They like to get a buzz on before they go killing things in the dark. But they’re usually done by midnight-the major gets them all up at five thirty for

It was my turn to think. I’d mimed the number three and pointed at my watch. Hopefully, this had been observed by my pals with binoculars hiding in the woods. Assuming they’d known it was me under that hood, and assuming they were even there. Lots of assuming. If they’d understood what I meant, we had to roll out of here a little after 2:00 A.M. to make it to the trees by three. One minute to get from the door to the stairs. Two to get down into the basement. And then?

“Do you know if those stairs go to the basement or just to the first floor?”

“Basement,” she said.

“You really party with these guys?”

“Nothing else to do,” she said. “Why the hell not? They’re physically fit. Besides, they’re just doing a job, so the guard thing isn’t personal. They didn’t put me in here.”

“I wonder what the major would say if he knew his guards were sexually abusing the female prisoners.”

“It’s not abuse, big guy,” she said with a grin. “And the major most certainly knows about it. Besides, from what I hear, he’s not too crazy about holding American citizens. Iraqi insurgents? That’s different.”

“You suppose you could sweet-talk one of your guard buddies to look the other way if he caught us trying to get out?”

“Nope,” she said promptly. “These are Marines. They have a duty, and they’ll do it, no matter what they think about it.”

“Even if they think it’s wrong for American military people to be holding American citizens?”

“The major tells them that higher authority knows what it’s doing, and points out that nobody here’s being tortured, interrogated, or otherwise mistreated.”

“Unless, of course, you try to go over that fence.”

She winced and nodded. “Yeah, I saw that. But even then, it wasn’t a Marine gunning down a detainee. The major keeps reminding them that, mostly, we’re being kept out of circulation for the convenience of something they call higher headquarters.”

“Right. The only thing we have to do is submit. That’s the attitude that made the Gestapo possible.”

She snorted. “If you knew anything about the real Gestapo, you wouldn’t use that word,” she said.

“Ge-sta-po,” I replied. “ Geheime Staatspolizei. Secret state police. Heinrich Himmler’s flower children. Started as brownshirts, keeping order at meetings of the Nazi faithful. Graduated to much bigger things, didn’t they. If this place is any indication, just give it time.”

But the fact was, I didn’t want to get into a human rights discussion with Mad Moira. I wanted to get out of here. She sensed my uncertainty.

“So what’s it gonna be?” she asked. “You want to try it, or not?”

“My brain says there’s too much we don’t know. My gut says now or never.”

“Right on,” she said. “When?”

“Tonight at 2:00 A.M. Pray for fog.”

Our prayers were answered. At a few minutes before 2:00 A.M. I took one final look out the windows and saw a solid wall of fog. I’d thought about flashing a signal out into the woods with the room lights, but not with this pea-souper outside. All I could see out the windows was the glow of lights down in the exercise yard.

I was dressed in my exercise jumpsuit and shoes, minus the KKK headgear. There was nothing I needed to bring from the room. Moira had told me the sequence for fiddling the bathroom doors. She’d tap three times on her door with her bathroom card. I’d tap three times on mine. Then we’d position our respective cards, and next she’d tap four times slowly but in a definite rhythm with something hard. On the fourth tap, we’d simultaneously swipe our cards. According to Moira, either both doors would open, or alarm bells would go off downstairs. Or both, she’d said, sweetly.

In the event, both doors yielded and we met in the bathroom. We each rolled up two bath towels in case we ended up having to go over the fence. We listened for a few minutes to see if anyone was coming down the hallway in response to our simultaneous card swiping. I could hear Moira breathing fast, and realized that, for all her bravado, she was as scared as I was. If the guards came now, we could claim that we’d been getting together for some boy-girl fun. But once we left the rooms and got out into the building, there’d only be one explanation for what we were doing out there.

Even if we got to the fence, there was still that tiny little problem of the hellhound. And if my people were not there, we’d be making our stand with our backs to a river. It put me briefly in mind of the old bear joke: I didn’t have to outrun the rottie; I only had to outrun Moira. I decided not to share that thought with her just now. She saw me smile.

“What?” she asked.

“This is about the worst-planned escape attempt I’ve ever considered,” I said.

“Yeah, but think of it the way the jihadis do: They never set a date and time for doing anything. They plan the operation, and then they wait. They see an opportunity to strike and they do. There’s no way for military intelligence to know in advance because the jihadis don’t know in advance.”