Stephen Leather - Breakout

‘So why are Don Lorenzo’s boys here then?’

Lupa chipped in. ‘Presumably because there is something - or someone - here of value to them.’

‘Exactly,’ Harper said, ‘so let’s find out what or who it is.’

The two convicts had been giving them baleful stares and one now pulled an ugly-looking knife out of his waistband and took up a fighting stance with the knife gripped in his right hand.

‘I thought you said weapons were the only things you couldn’t bring into the prison,’ Harper said.

‘You can’t - or not guns anyway. The guards are the only ones with those and make sure it stays that way, but knives… You can either pay the guards a big enough bribe to forget that rule for a few moments or you can get the metalworkers in here to make you one.’

One of the thugs took a step towards them. ‘ Qué pasa ?’ Before they could reply Mateo intervened, stepping in front of Harper. ‘ Mantén la calma, manejaré esto ,’ he said to the thugs.

He turned to face Harper and the others and spoke in Spanish, gesturing for them to turn round and go back the way they’d come.

Lupa translated. ‘He says we’re not allowed here, it’s off limits to all outsiders.’

‘Yeah, I’d already got the gist of that,’ Harper said spreading his hands in a show of resignation. ‘Oh well, in that case we’d better go. Vamos .’

Lupa and Ricardo exchanged baffled glances. ‘Are you serious?’ Lupa said. ‘That’s it? You’re just going to leave?’

Harper didn’t reply. He turned away from the cells and took a couple of steps towards the passageway, but then whipped around, brushing past Mateo and yelling at the top of his voice ‘Scouse! It’s me, Lex! If you can hear me, make some noise!’

The second convict had now also drawn a knife and took a few steps towards him but he stopped as Harper’s words were choked off by Mateo’s powerful arm clamping around his neck.

There was a weak cry from one of the cells. ‘Lex? Is that you, mate?’

Mateo’s grip tightened, setting Harper’s heart racing as he struggled for breath, but he threw himself back into him, smashing the back of his head into the bodyguard’s nose, then stamped down viciously on Mateo’s instep. The iron grip on his neck loosened and at once Harper tore Mateo’s hand away and forced it back against the wrist until there was a crack of bone and a cry of pain. Harper let go of the wrist, smashed a side-arm chop into the bodyguard’s Adam’s apple, rendering him speechless and unable to breathe, then felled him with a roundhouse punch to the jaw that put Mateo’s lights out.

The two convicts were now advancing on them again. ‘Get going!’ Harper said, pushing Ricardo and Lupa towards the passage. He shouted ‘Scouse! Keep the faith! I’ll be back!’ He stepped over Mateo’s prone body and dived for the passage. The convicts hesitated for a few seconds, torn between wanting to pursue him and the need to keep watch on the cells, and Harper used the time to get away.

He caught up with the other two. ‘Right, Ricardo, take the fastest way back to the main gates. We need to get out of here, regroup and make a plan, and then get back in.’

‘And Don Lorenzo?’ Ricardo said, as they hurried back through the maze of passages and courtyards. ‘He is not going to be pleased about what you did to Mateo and if we come back…’

‘Let me worry about Don Lorenzo,’ Harper said. ‘You just concentrate on getting us out of here now.’

Ricardo led them at a run through the warren of passageways and courtyards back towards the main gates. Harper then discovered that in order to reclaim his passport from the guards, despite having already paid them to get into the prison a further payment ‘ Una punta, por favor ’ - a tip - would be necessary to get them out again. Harper wasn’t inclined to argue on this occasion, so he handed over a further $50 and they were then ushered out of the gates. They pushed their way through the crowds clustered around the prison entrance and hurried away.

CHAPTER 13

Once safely away from the prison, they stopped at a cafe in a nearby square, ordered some coffee and then sat down to discuss their options.‘So,’ Harper said. ‘How are we going to get Scouse out of there?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Ricardo said. ‘Usually you can free someone either by paying his bail or bribing the guards - it comes to pretty much the same thing in the end. Either way you go free, and the guards are usually cheaper than the lawyers and more likely to keep their end of a deal. However, with Scouse it’s going to be more complicated. He may be sick, he probably has no money, no food, and maybe not even any clothes, and he will have been badly treated just because he’s a gringo and the prisoners, including Don Lorenzo, will think he’s either an informer, a cop or a DEA man. So they’re certainly not going to allow us to just walk him out of here.’

‘It may be worse even than that,’ Lupa said ‘Do you remember what I told you about sacrifices to Pachamama: llama foetuses, llama carcasses and maybe human sacrifices too? Homeless people, drug addicts and borrachos - drunks - would be potential victims of that, but the other source would be the jail. The lowest rank of inmates - men with no money, no food, no clothes, nothing - wouldn’t be missed by anyone if they went missing. And, if you were building something big, an apartment block, a narco trafficker’s mansion, or a hotel like that site we passed on our way here, a gringo - a Westerner - might be seen as an even more valuable gift to the gods. So perhaps he is being held to sell as a human sacrifice.’

Harper frowned. ‘It still sounds insane to me but it would explain why he’s being guarded so tightly and why everyone has been at pains to deny all knowledge of him. So we’d better get him out of there and quick. Who holds the key to those punishment cells?’

Ricardo looked blank. ‘That I don’t know. The guards or the chief warden I suppose.’

‘In any case we can’t rely on being able to get hold of the keys, so we need to make plans to bust Scouse out of there.’ He thought for a minute. ‘We could use explosives to blow our way into the prison - I could make a frame-charge and do a much better job than those bunglers who killed themselves trying to blow a hole in the walls - but it would bring every guard running, all guns blazing, and I’m very doubtful we’d have enough time to get Scouse out of his cell and back through the wall. That’s assuming we could avoid or neutralise the guards in the watch-towers, who would otherwise have a clear shot at us.’ He paused. ‘So we need to find another way to spring him, and that means starting from inside the jail, though we’re still going to need weapons and probably explosives.’

Ricardo shook his head. ‘But I’ve already told you, we’re not going to be able to get guns or bombs past the guards on the gate.’

‘So you did, but I think we can get most of what we need in there, and the other stuff can be disguised, so it seems harmless.’ He began writing in his small notebook. ‘We have to split up for a while. Lupa, you need to go shopping for me.’ He tore a page from his notebook and handed it to her. ‘I need a roll of gaffer tape, a pair of scissors, a razor, soap, a towel, make-up, hair dye - my colour - plenty of deodorant, a black marker pen, some vaseline and a packet of condoms.’

‘Why do we need all this stuff anyway?’

He just gave an enigmatic smile. ‘You’ll see. Now Ricardo, while she’s doing that, I’m going to need you to get me some sulphur. We can’t make it in San Pedro, and I don’t know if you can buy it in La Paz, but you can find it around any hot spring or lava flow - it’s bright yellow, so you can’t really miss it or mistake it for anything else. Since the western range of the Andes is pretty much one continuous volcano, it shouldn’t be hard to get some, should it? Just take the car, drive up into the mountains and head for the nearest plume of smoke and steam and you should be in business.’