Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

As Glinn had anticipated, the door to guard station 7 had been left unlocked in the hasty departure of the first responders.

Pendergast slipped inside, then threw an arm around the guard’s neck and injected him. The guard slumped without a word and Pendergast laid him out on the floor, then half covered the guard’s comm mike with his hand and yelled hoarsely into it, “I see one of them! I’m going after him!”

He quickly undressed the unconscious guard while a burst of shouted countermands came over the speaker, ordering him to remain at his station. In less than a minute, Pendergast was dressed in the guard’s uniform, equipped with badge, Mace, Taser, stick, radio, and emergency call unit. He was more slender than the unconscious guard, but a few minor adjustments rendered the disguise quite acceptable.

Next, he reached behind the large rack of servers until he had located the correct port. Then, taking the flash drive from the plastic bag, he inserted it into the port. He then turned his attention back to the guard, taping his mouth shut, his hands behind his back, and his knees together. He dragged the drugged guard back to the nearby men’s room, seated him on a toilet, taped his torso to the toilet tank to keep him from falling over, locked the stall, and crawled out beneath the door.

Moving to a mirror, Pendergast pulled the bandages from his face and stuffed them into the waste can. He broke the glass capsule over a sink and massaged the dye into his hair, turning it from white blond to an unremarkable dark brown. Exiting the men’s room, he walked down the hall, made a right turn, and-just before coming to the first video camera-he paused to glance at his watch: 660 seconds.

He waited until the display read 640, then continued on, moving at an easy pace, all the while keeping one eye fixed on his watch. He knew that many eyes would be watching the video feeds. Even though he was dressed in a guard’s uniform, he was walking in the wrong direction-away from the breakout-and his face was still battered and bruised. They knew him well in building C. Anyone catching a glimpse of him would recognize him.

But he also knew that for ten seconds-from 640 to 630-this particular video feed would be controlled by the flash drive he had plugged into the security computer. The drive would temporarily store the previous ten seconds of feed from that camera and play it back again. It would then leapfrog to the next video camera in the chain and repeat the process. The loop would run only once for each camera: Pendergast had a ten-second window, no more, to pass through each field of view. The timing had to be perfect.

He walked past the camera without incident and continued down the long, vacant corridors of building C-the guards had been drawn off to other areas by the escapees. Sometimes he quickened his step, sometimes he slowed it, passing each camera at the precise moment in which its video signal would be replayed. Frequently his radio blared. Once, he was passed by a knot of running guards, and he quickly dropped to tie a shoe, turning his swollen, bruised face away from them. They tore by without a glance, their interest otherwise engaged.

He passed the dining hall and kitchen of building C, the smell of disinfectant strong in the air. He took another turn, then another, at last reaching the final stretch of corridor before the checkpoint and security door between Herkmoor Building C/Federal and Herkmoor Building B/State.

Pendergast’s face was well known in building C. He was not known at all in building B.

He approached the security door, swiped the credit card, placed his hand on the fingermatrix screen, and waited.

His heart was beating at rather more than its customary rate. This was the moment of truth.

At exactly 290 seconds, the security light glowed green and the metal locks disengaged.

Pendergast stepped through into building B. He walked around the first bend in the corridor, then paused in the dark corner made by the dogleg of the hallway. He reached up to the deepest cut on his cheek and, with a vicious tug, pulled out the row of stitches. When the warm blood began to run, he smeared it over his face, neck, and hands. Then he pulled up his shirt, examining the stitched wound in his side where the shank had penetrated. He took a deep breath. Then he yanked that wound open as well.

They had to look as fresh as possible.

At 110 seconds, he heard running footsteps, and, as previously planned, one of the escapees ran by-Jug-who had dutifully followed the escape plan laid out for him by Glinn. Of course, it would not be successful-he would be apprehended at the exit to building B if not before-but this, too, was part of the plan. Pocho’s gang was a smoke screen-that was all. None would actually escape.

As soon as Jug passed him, Pendergast screamed and threw himself down onto the floor of the corridor, while at the same time pressing the emergency button on his comm unit:

“Officer down! Immediate response! Officer down!”

Staff Nurse Ralph Kidder kneeled over the supine form of the guard-who was sobbing like a baby, babbling about being attacked, being afraid of dying-and tried to focus on the problem at hand. He checked the man’s heart with a stethoscope-strong and fast-examined the neck and limbs for any broken bones, took the blood pressure-excellent-examined the cut on the face: nasty but superficial.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked again, exasperated. “Where are your injuries? Talk to me!”

“My face, he cut my face!” the man shrieked, finally gaining a measure of coherence.

“I see that. Where else?”

“He stabbed me! Oh, my chest, it hurts!”

The nurse gently felt the ribs, noting the swelling and faint gravelly feel of a couple of broken ones, not displaced. There was indeed a stab wound, bleeding copiously, but a quick check indicated a rib had deflected the blade and prevented it from piercing the pleura.

“It’s nothing that a convalescence won’t fix,” Kidder said sharply, turning to the two responding EMTs. “Load him and take him down to infirmary B. We’ll do a blood workup, an X-ray series, stitch up a few of those cuts. Tetanus booster and a course of amoxicillin. I don’t see anything so far that’ll require a transfer to an outside hospital.”

One of the EMTs snorted. “Nothing’s going in or out until the escapees are apprehended and all prisoners accounted for, anyway. They’ve had a morgue-mobile idling outside the gate for half an hour already.”

“The morgue-mobile’s never in a rush,” said Kidder dryly. He wrote down the guard’s name and badge number on his clipboard. He didn’t recognize the man-but then, he was from building C and his face was cut up pretty bad.

As they were loading the patient onto the stretcher, Kidder heard a sudden uproar of shouting from down the corridor as another prisoner was apprehended. Kidder had been working at Herkmoor for almost twenty years and this was the biggest escape attempt yet. Of course it had no chance of succeeding. He just hoped the guards weren’t beating hell out of too many would-be escapees.

The EMTs raised the stretcher and trundled the whimpering guard off to the infirmary, Kidder following. These guards acted so tough when everything was under control, he thought, but knock them around a bit and they fell apart like so much overcooked meat.

The infirmary in building B, like the other infirmaries in Herkmoor, was divided into two completely separate, walled-off areas: the free area for staff and guards, and the incarceration area for prisoners. They wheeled the guard to the free area and covered him with a blanket. Kidder worked up the man’s chart, ordered some X-rays. He was starting to prep the guard for stitching when his radio beeped. He lifted it to his ear, listened, spoke briefly. Then he turned to the patient. “I’ve got to leave you for a while.”