Stephen Leather - Breakout

‘There we are,’ he said. ‘To fire them now all you need to do is touch a cigarette end or a bit of smouldering string to the powder and Bang! So we’ve now got single-shot pistols and crude grenades, but we’ll not be needing the stove again so we might as well make use of the gas cylinders too.’ He turned off the two cylinders under the stove, disconnected the rubber tubes that fed gas to the burners and used the clamps he had got from the blacksmith to seal the pipes. Then he turned the gas back on and checked for leaks. ‘Should do it,’ he said, ‘release the clamp, strike a match or a lighter and - shazam! - you’ve got yourself a flamethrower. Now one more thing - have you ever heard of napalm?’

‘The stuff the Americans used in Vietnam?’ Lupa said. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it. What about it?’

‘Well we could make our own version of it. All you need to do is boil up petrol with some sort of soap. Soap flakes are ideal but you can just chop up a bar of soap and use that instead. We haven’t got petrol, but kerosene should do the job. You just boil it up till it turns into a gel, and then throw it at the target and toss something after it to make it ignite.’

‘No, Lex,’ Lupa said. ‘I don’t mind the weapons, not even your bombs and home-made flamethrowers, but napalm is too horrible. Please don’t use that.’

‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, maybe you’re right. In any case we probably don’t have time to make anything else now.’ He took a cautious look out of the cell window. In the gathering gloom he could see that Don Lorenzo’s two thugs had now been joined by six others, and the attention of seven of the eight of them was wholly focussed on Harper’s cell. The other thug was running water into the pool in the centre of the yard. ‘They’re filling the piscina, ’ Harper said over his shoulder, ‘and I’m guessing that’s not because they fancy a dip.’

‘It’ll be for their other favourite sport,’ Ricardo said. ‘Drowning people.’

All of the thugs were carrying some sort of weapon - mostly knives, coshes or baseball bats - but as far as Harper could see, none had guns. Just the same, odds of eight to three were not that encouraging, but he had faced worse odds than that before and lived to tell the tale, and he did have a few surprises in store for when they made their move.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have visitors quite soon, I think. The door’s got three locks so that will give us some protection, but that ground-floor window is obviously another way in. Ricardo, give me a hand with these.’ The pair of them manhandled the table and chairs across the room and stacked them up in front of the window.

‘That’s pretty flimsy,’ Lupa said. ‘It isn’t going to stop them.’

‘It’s not intended to,’ Harper said. ‘We just need to slow them up enough to be sure of giving them the warmest possible welcome.’

He dragged one of the beds to the back of the room, tipped it onto its side and piled up all their mattresses and bedding in front of it. ‘There you are,’ he said, ‘Fort Apache, The Bronx! You two, take two of those home-made pistols each and get down behind that barrier. It won’t stop a bullet but I don’t think they’ve got any firearms anyway, and it will give you some protection from knives, flying glass and anything else they might have, including acid or something like that. If and when they come through the window, don’t fire until I tell you to. We’ll not have time to reload, so we’ll only have six shots, and there are eight of them, so we need to make them count.’

‘What about the other two?’

‘I’ll deal with them. And if I shout ‘Down!’ just do it - flatten yourselves and stay down until I tell you otherwise.’

‘And where will you be?’

‘In front of you, but not in your line of fire.’

He lifted the two gas cylinders in either hand, working out from the weight which one had most gas left, then put the heaviest one next to him and stood the other one directly in front of the window. He tucked the last two single-shot pistols in the front of his belt and slid the knife - its blade still bloodstained from the knife fight outside Scouse’s cell - down the back, next to his spine. He took the clamp on the rubber hose of the heaviest gas cylinder in his left hand and held his disposable lighter in his right. Then he waited, motionless and silent, just watching the window.

They could hear the sound of running water from the yard for a few more minutes, but then it stopped. There were no voices from outside, but, straining his ears, he could hear the scuff of footsteps across the yard, growing louder as they moved closer.

The silence was broken by Don Lorenzo’s voice. ‘You hear me gringo ? You have killed two of my men and you have cost me a great deal of money by freeing the other Inglés , and there is a price to be paid for that. But if you give yourself up now, you have my word that the other two will be allowed to go free. If you resist and I have to send my men in to get you, then you and the other man will both die, and I promise you that the beautiful señorita will be praying for death by the time my men have finished with her.’

Harper remained silent as the seconds ticked by.

‘Last chance, gringo , what is it to be?’ Don Lorenzo waited a few more seconds and then said ‘So be it.’

Harper could hear him holding a muttered conversation with his men and then a single set of footsteps could be heard moving away. ‘He’s not even staying for the show,’ he whispered to the others.

Someone standing outside the door slowly turned the handle. There was a pause and a faint creak from the door as the unseen person applied his weight to it, but then, realising it was securely locked, he slowly released the handle again.

‘Get ready,’ Harper whispered.

The silence grew, and Harper remained absolutely still, every sense attuned and his whole attention focussed on the window.

Two minutes passed, feeling like ten, and then he heard a few muttered words from outside, a brief pause and then a crash as a volley of stones and broken bricks were hurled through the window, shattering the glass.

He remained where he was as one of the thugs smashed the rest of the glass out of the bottom of the frame with a baseball bat, and was still motionless as the first two men, one with a murderous-looking machete and the other with the baseball bat, clambered through the window and began to push the flimsy barrier aside. Still Harper waited until the next two were halfway through the window frame as well and then shouted ‘Now!’ He only heard a single shot, but it struck home, dropping the thug with the baseball bat.

He released the clamp on the rubber hose and flicked the lighter. There was a spark and a jet of burning gas shot from the hose, engulfing the thug with the machete in flames. Harper switched targets at once, raking the other two with fire. One went up like a torch, emitting banshee screams of pain and terror as his clothes ignited and his flesh began to blacken and burn. The other man, partly screened by his comrade, dived behind the upturned table, before his clothing could do more than smoulder. The gas from the cylinder was already running out but Harper used the last of it to play his primitive flame-thrower over the second cylinder in front of the window, heating the metal valve and igniting the hose.

As the stench of burning rubber filled the air, he shouted ‘Down!’ and dropped to the ground himself as the hose was breached by the flames. There was a Whoosh! of fire and then a bang that sounded like a thunder-clap in the confined space of the room as the cylinder exploded. Fragments of metal flew past him, rattling against the walls and burying themselves in the mattress protecting Lupa and Ricardo.