Sean Black - Lockdown

Brand swung at her again. She ducked the blow and dived for his feet. His knee caught her on the side of the face, cracking her cheekbone. She jabbed the knife as hard as she could through the tongue of his right boot, piercing the soft leather and wedging the blade down and into his foot. It was Brand’s turn to scream.

The noise from the other cells was reaching critical mass. What Lock guessed were exhortations to victory, and Godly praise, made for a surreal background.

Mareta skittered around Brand’s back, her hand twisting as she kept a firm grip on the handle of the knife protruding from Brand’s foot. Then she let go and put her forearm around his neck, choking him out. This time she was too close in for his elbows to reach her.

Brand flailed as Lock struggled to be heard above the noise. The door was being forced open and his strength was draining by the second. ‘You come in, he’s dead!’ he yelled.

The pushing stopped.

Lock glanced back to where Brand stood, Mareta behind him, right forearm tourniqueting his neck, left hand up at the chin end of his helmet. Lock knew she was ready to swivel his head past the point of no return for his top cervical vertebrae as soon as the door opened.

‘Hold your positions!’ Brand shouted, in a half-strangulated voice.

‘Tell them to withdraw.’

‘You heard him. Fall back.’

Lock stayed at the door. ‘If I see anyone , he’s dead.’ He counted to ten and opened the door. He took a quick peek. Clear. Empty corridor all the way to the security gate at the far end, which was closed.

He stepped back inside the cell and stripped Brand of his baton, radio, taser and the pepper spray he’d never had a chance to deploy. The problem with just about every single non-fatal weapon was that cramped spaces rendered them useless. No room to swing a baton, pepper spray was non-selective, only the taser was an option, but once that was in hand it was easily taken.

Lock pressed the taser into the small of Brand’s back, finding the crack between his vest and his groin protector. Mareta released her hold, then Lock pressed the button.

Brand’s body jolted. ‘Shit. What was that for?’

‘My own personal satisfaction, asshole.’

Lock popped out the earpiece and microphone connector from Brand’s radio. ‘OK, so what’s your back-up channel?’

‘Three,’ Brand grunted.

Lock knew that there was always an alternative broadcast channel for comms in case the original was compromised. It was something agreed beforehand. Sometimes it went down in predetermined increments, twos or threes. Usually the patterns were easy to crack, as they had to be kept as simple as the simplest guy out there.

‘I’d better hear some chatter or I’m going to strip off that armour and let Mareta have at it with that Gerber,’ Lock said as he surfed down to three.

Sure enough, a full-blown Chinese parliament was in effect. Transmissions cut across each other, punctuated by bursts of static. Lock turned the volume down.

‘There’s no way you’re walking out of here, Lock.’

Lock buzzed Brand with the taser again. He yelped.

‘When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you,’ Lock told him.

‘Can’t you at least get that freakin’ knife out of my foot?’ Brand gasped.

‘Sure thing.’

Lock knelt down and pulled it from Brand’s boot. It came out with a sucking noise and a pulse of blood. He wiped down the blade and kept it in his hand.

There were a number of questions that had been nagging away at Lock. Not just about Josh — he’d figured most of those out for himself — but about the presence of Mareta and her colleagues.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Lock asked Brand with a jerk of his head.

‘Test subject. They need to try it out on human beings and she was the closest we could get.’

The smartass answer earned Brand another high-voltage pulse from the taser.

‘That why she’s still alive?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘And you took Hulme’s son to make him think it was the animal rights people? Scare him back on board.’

‘Not my idea.’

‘What about Stokes?’

‘He got wind of the human trials. Some upstanding citizen in the company must have leaked it. He used it as leverage to broker the deal, but you know how much the company likes loose ends .’

‘Hulme know any of this?’ asked Lock.

‘Doubt it. He seemed pretty shocked when he figured who was replacing the monkeys.’ Brand glanced at Mareta, who was standing with her head tilted back, pinching her nose to staunch the bleeding.

‘So why a Chechen?’

‘Search me. Probably got scooped up in the Middle East. I thought we’d be getting mostly ragheads or Guantanamo Bay’s leavings, but the bleeding hearts have most of them accounted for.’

‘OK, Brand. How do we get out?’

‘I told you, Lock, you don’t. Right now, this place is locked down tighter than a gnat’s asshole. You get past our guys, there’ll be army on the perimeter.’

‘We have you.’

‘Big whoop. I’m as dispensable as you are. Soon as they get a look, they’ll light you up like a Christmas tree.’

‘Better take off that body armour then.’

Mareta and Lock watched Brand closely as he stripped off. Lock, feeling slightly ungallant, took the extra padding of Brand’s clothes and put them over his own before slipping on the body armour, leaving the helmet off for now. He comforted himself with the fact that Mareta was the safest person among the three of them. Her status as a trial subject ensured that.

The radio chatter had fallen away. Lock turned up the volume and waited. Just as he was wondering if there’d been another change of channels there was a burst of static and Stafford’s voice crackled over the speaker. ‘Lock? You there?’

Lock raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. ‘I’m here.’

‘Is Brand alive?’

‘Everyone’s alive. For now.’

‘In five minutes the military will be here.’

‘The military?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Don’t drag them into this, Stafford. If anyone in the military knew what you’ve been doing, they’d drop you out of a helicopter over Tehran with a signed photo of Dick Cheney pinned to your shorts.’

‘Five minutes, Lock. I’ll kill everyone in that cell if I have to.’

‘Bullshit. You need the woman to make up the numbers.’

Stafford didn’t reply, which said a whole lot.

Lock turned to Mareta. ‘You’re the escape expert. What do we do now?’

‘We do this,’ said Mareta, slashing Brand’s throat.

Stafford stood at the end of the corridor, Brand’s Glock warm in his hand. Three doors down, Lock’s cell door opened and a broadly spherical object rolled out. It took a second for him to register what it was. The eyes blindfolded. The scalp shaved. A jagged wound snaking down the skull. It was Lock’s head. That crazy bitch had butchered Lock and tossed his head out into the corridor like a bowling ball.

Stafford’s stomach lurched, and a two-hundred-dollar dinner spattered over five-hundred-dollar split-toe Harris brogues.

A figure stepped from the cell, face obscured by his riot visor, pushing Mareta forward at knife point. Her face was a mess, her own hair matted slick with blood.

‘Well, screw me,’ Stafford said, gesturing for the two guards with him to open the door. ‘He did it.’

The figure gave Mareta another shove. Hard. The momentum carried her through the open door and into the two guards. They scrambled to get a grip of her.

As they did so, the figure reached out a hand and took the Glock from Stafford. Awed, Stafford didn’t even try to stop him.