Dick Francis - Crossfire

More in hope than expectation, I hopped farther along the wall to the stable doors. As expected, they were bolted. I pushed at them, but unsurprisingly, they didn't shift. I would have stood and kicked them down if only I'd had a second leg to stand on while I did so.

Instead, I slithered down in the corner by the door until I was again sitting on the floor. Wiggling myself into position on my back, I tried to use my left leg to kick the lower section of the door. I kicked as hard as I could, but the door didn't budge. All I managed to do was to slide myself in the other direction across the stone floor.

I gave up and went to sleep.

It was light when I woke, and I could see my prison cell properly for the first time. It was nothing extraordinary, just a regular stable stall with black-painted wooden boarding around the walls, and timber roof beams visible above.

I worked myself back into the corner by the door and sat up, leaning against the wall, to inspect the bindings on my wrists that were beginning to really annoy me.

The black plastic ties looked so thin and flimsy, but try as I might, I couldn't break them. I twisted my wrists first one way then the other, but all that happened was that the plastic dug painfully into my flesh, causing it to bleed. The damned plastic ties seemed totally unaffected.

The length of chain was still attached to the ties. It was gray and looked to me like galvanized steel. There were fifteen links in all, I counted them, each link a little under one inch long with a shiny brass padlock still attaching the end link to the now-unscrewed ring. The chain looked brand-new. No wonder I hadn't been able to break it.

I tried to use the point of the ring to cut through one of the ties, but I couldn't get a proper grip on it and only managed instead to cut through the skin at the base of my thumb as the point slipped off the surface of the plastic.

I looked around the stable for something sharp, or for a rough brick corner, anything I could use to saw my way through my bonds. Up on the wall opposite the window was a salt-lick housing, a metal slot about four inches wide, seven high and one inch deep, into which a block of salt or minerals could be dropped so that, as the name suggested, the horse could lick it. The housing was empty, old and rusting.

I struggled up from the floor and hopped over to it. As I had hoped, the top of the metal slot had been roughened by the rust. I hooked the plastic ties over one of the edges, with a wrist on either side, and sawed back and forth. The plastic was no match for the metal edge, and the tie on my left wrist parted quite easily. Wonderful!

I massaged the flesh, then set about ridding myself completely of the remaining tie around my right wrist and the chain that still hung from it. That task proved a little more difficult, but after a few minutes, I was finally free of the damn things.

Stage three was complete. Now to get out of this stable.

Stable doors are always locked from the outside, whether or not the horse has bolted first, and this one was no exception.

I could just see the locks from the window. The metal bars were bowed away slightly from the frame, and by turning sideways I could use my left eye to see the bolts, top and bottom in the lower door and a single bolt in the upper. All three had been slid fully away from me, and then folded flat.

I took the window bars in my hands and tried to shake them. Not even a quiver. It was as if they were set in concrete.

So there was no easy way out, but I'd hardly expected there to be. No one was going to go to the trouble of shackling me to the wall with a chain and padlock only then to leave the door wide open.

The way out, as I saw it, was to go up.

I could see from the window that the stable where I was imprisoned was just one in a whole line of them that stretched away in both directions. The walls between the individual stalls did not go all the way to the pitched roof; they were the same height as the walls at the front and rear of the building, about nine feet high. So there was a triangular space between the top of the wall and the roof. A wooden roof truss sat on top of the wall, but there was still plenty of room for someone to get through the gap from one stall to the next. All I had to do was climb the wall.

Easy, I thought. There had been walls much higher than this on the assault course at Sandhurst, walls I had been forced to cross time and time again. However, there were some big differences. Either there had been a rope hanging from the top of the wall or there'd been a team of us working together. And I had been much fitter and stronger when at Sandhurst, and, of course, I'd had two feet to work with.

I looked at either side of the stable. Which way should I go?

In the end, the decision was simple. In the corner opposite the door was a metal manger set across the angle. It was about four feet from the floor. I may have had only one foot, but I had two knees, and I was soon using them to kneel on the edge of the manger while reaching up with my fingers for the top of the wall.

All those hours of trying to break the battalion record for pull-ups finally paid off. Fueled by a massive determination to free myself, together with the all-consuming craving for a drink, I pulled myself up onto the top of the wall and swung my legs through the gap in the truss and into the next stall.

Dropping down was less easy, and I ended up sprawled on my back. But I didn't care; I was laughing again. I turned over and crawled on my hands and knees to the door.

It was locked.

My cries of joy turned to tears of frustration.

OK, I thought, getting a grip on things, how about the window?

More bars. Squeezing myself up against them, I could see that there were bars on all the stable windows.

OK, I just have to keep going. One of these damn stables must have a door that's open.

Having done it once, it was easier the second time. I even managed not to end up horizontal on the floor. But the next door was also locked.

What if they were all locked? Was I wasting my energy and, worse still, breathing out precious water vapor in a fruitless attempt?

I clambered onto the manger in the corner and went over the next wall. The door to that stall was also locked. I sat in the corner and wept. I realized that I must be dehydrated, as I wept without tears.

What would happen, I wondered, when the lack of water became critical? I'd been thirsty now for so long that every part of my mouth and throat was sore, but I didn't feel that I was dying yet. How would my body react over the next day or so? What would be the first sign that it was shutting down? Would I even realize?

I thrust such thoughts out of my mind. Come on, I told myself. Maybe the door will be open in the next stall.

It wasn't.

My fingers hurt from pulling myself up, and on that occasion, I had twisted my ankle when I dropped down. Thankfully, it wasn't a bad injury, but it was enough to send me into another bout of despair. Was this how it would happen? Would I become an emotional gibbering wreck? Would I eventually just curl up in a ball in a corner and die?

"No!" I shouted out loud. "I will not die here."

Willpower alone pulled me up over the next wall. Beyond it I found not another stable but an empty and disused tack room at the end of the row. I used the saddle racks to ease my way to the floor and save my ankle from further punishment.

The tack-room door was locked. It would be.

And I could see there was nowhere else to go. The far wall of the tack room went all the way to the roof. It was the end of the building, the end of the line.

The door had a mortise deadlock, I could see through the keyhole. Why, I wondered, had someone bothered to lock an empty room?