Stephen Leather - Breakout

Ricardo’s expression was puzzled but he just said ‘So how much do you need?’

Harper did a quick mental calculation. ‘A couple of kilos should be enough. That’ll probably take you a few hours, so let’s RV back at the hotel this evening, grab some food and sleep, and then go back into the prison first thing tomorrow morning, as soon as they unlock the gates for the day.’

He gave them both some money and while they disappeared to carry out their tasks, he went to a flight centre and bought an open ticket from La Paz to London via Miami, using the name on one of his false passports. He then went back to the hotel and stashed the sat phone, some of the money, the air ticket, his passport and the Colt .45 in the hotel room, sticking the packet containing them to the underside of the wardrobe. An expert searcher from one of the intelligence agencies would find them soon enough, but the average sneak thief would almost certainly miss them.

Lupa returned within a couple of hours, bringing the shopping with her. ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘You might as well keep most of it with you, because there’s more chance of you taking it into the prison unchallenged than me, but give me the condoms, because I’ll need them before we go in tomorrow.’

By the time Ricardo eventually returned, Harper and Lupa were sitting at a street café, eating their evening meal. Ricardo dumped a bagful of yellow powder down on the table and slumped into a chair. His clothes, face and hair were covered in yellow dust, streaked where trickles of sweat had run down his forehead, and he gave Harper a baleful stare. ‘“Get some sulphur,” the man said, but he forgot to mention that I’d have to climb a mountain to get it.’

Harper smiled. ‘Sorry Ricardo, I sort of assumed you’d know that volcanoes tend to be quite high and pointy. But let me get you a beer so you can wash the dust away and then you can tell us all about it.’

Lupa peered into the bag. ‘It’s strange stuff, isn’t it? So how are we going to get it into San Pedro?’

‘Well, we could bribe the guards,’ Harper said, ‘but we don’t want to be answering any questions about what we’re planning to do with a couple of kilos of sulphur, so it’s probably better to hide it in something.’ He glanced at a couple of the market stalls that were still trading on the far side of the street, one selling sweets and cigarettes, the other fruit and vegetables. ‘We should be able to find something there.’ He sauntered across the street and came back a few moments later with a bag full of pineapples. ‘These’ll do it,’ he said.

‘Pineapples?’

‘Sure. We’ll cut the bottoms out of as many as we need and hollow them out. We can seal the sulphur in plastic bags and put them inside, then reattach the bottoms of the pineapples, using a needle and thread or wooden pins to hold them in place. We’ll leave a couple of untouched pineapples on top but,’ he winked at Lupa, ‘if you wear something low-cut, I’m betting the guards won’t even look at the pineapples! But if things do get awkward, just tell them you’re Don Lorenzo’s new girlfriend and I’m guessing they’ll back off very quickly.’

After they’d eaten, he ran through the outlines of his plan with them. ‘We need to rent one of the cells,’ he said. ‘Ricardo, that’ll be your job obviously. The nearer to the punishment block the better, but we’ll make do with whatever there is.’

‘We’re not planning to stay in there, are we?’ he said.

‘No longer than necessary, but we need somewhere to sort out Scouse before we get him out of the prison, and it’ll be handy to have a base of sorts, both so we can work undisturbed and so we won’t be surrounded by Don Lorenzo’s gorillas coming at us from all directions if things turn ugly… and trust me, they will.’

‘About that,’ Ricardo said. ‘I’m not frightened of a fight, but his guys are all murderers doing thirty year sentences. One more killing won’t bother them at all.’

Harper held up his hand. ‘Then we’ll have to make sure they don’t get the opportunity, won’t we? But don’t worry, if any of them get in our way, I’ll be the one taking them on. I’ll need you to watch my back but that’s it. This is my battle - well it’s Scouse’s really, but I’m fighting it for him. Okay?’ He paused. ‘Now, like I said, we need to rent a cell. Get it by the day if you can but if you have to pay for a week or a month, that’s not a problem because as you know…’ He smiled. ‘We’ve got plenty of money in a safe place.’

‘So what is the plan?’ Lupa said.

‘The plan is to keep a discreet watch on the punishment cells for 48 hours or so, as long as it takes to get a handle on the routine of the guards and Don Lorenzo’s thugs. Once we’ve got that, we can work out the best time to spring Scouse, but we will probably need at least a couple of hours and maybe more than that, between getting him out of the cell and smuggling him out of the prison.’

‘And how do you propose to do that?’

He gave a broad smile. ‘Straight out of the front gate. The time we spend taking turns to carry out surveillance of the punishment cells won’t be wasted because while one of us is doing that, the others will have a little basic chemistry to do.’

When they went back to the hotel, Lupa borrowed a needle and thread from the owner, while Harper and Ricardo hollowed out the pineapples, and once they were put back together, it would have taken a keen eye to spot that they’d been tampered with.

They headed back to the prison the next morning. Just before they set off from the hotel, Harper carefully rolled up most of his remaining US dollars into a tight roll, unwrapped one of the condoms and slid the roll of notes inside it. He looked up to see Lupa watching him, intrigued. ‘Can you give me a minute, you two? I need to stash these where the sun doesn’t shine, and it isn’t really a spectator sport.’

‘Right,’ Lupa said. ‘Now I understand what the condoms were for. I was wondering.’ She grinned. ‘We’ll wait downstairs.’

Harper joined them and they walked through the city to the prison. The gates had just been opened but already a queue of people, mostly women, were filing through, laden with food and all sorts of other merchandise. Each of them presented their bags to the guards for a cursory inspection, paid a few Bolivianos or dollars in bribes and was then waved through. ‘You go through separately, Lupa,’ Harper said. ‘They’ll be less likely to search you if you’re not with me.’

He waited as Lupa made her way through, smiling and flirting with the guards, who barely glanced at the bags she was carrying. She paid the modest bribe they charged her without complaint - Bolivian women paid a lot less than men and especially foreigners to enter San Pedro - then stood well back from the gates, waiting as first Ricardo and then Harper made their way through.

As on the previous day, Harper and Ricardo both had to pay $50 to the guards and to the chief warden, surrender Harper’s fake passport and have a number inscribed on their forearms before they were allowed to proceed. Fernandez was once more staring at a television showing one of the previous day’s Spanish football matches as they were ushered into his office. ‘Back so soon, gringo ?’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should arrange for you to stay here permanently, seeing you like it so much.’

‘Kind of you to offer,’ Harper said, with equal sarcasm. ‘But I don’t think I’d ever like it quite enough for that.’

The chief warden had already lost interest and resumed staring at the television. Harper and Ricardo rejoined Lupa in the courtyard. ‘No problems with the pineapples?’ Harper said to her.