Stephen Leather - Breakout

Lupa had followed the last of the beggars’ army into the main courtyard and strolled across to the far side. Choosing her moment, when the guards were already distracted by the growing numbers of prisoners crowding around them, she reached up with the knife, slid the point of it under the phone cable just below the chief warden’s windowsill and severed it with the razor-edged blade.

Harper walked out across the roof towards the foot of the other tower, spreading the washing he had gathered as he went, trying to look as casual as possible. He waited until he saw the guard looking away from him, his attention caught by the growing numbers of prisoners flowing into the main courtyard. Harper dropped the rest of the washing, hurried to the foot of the tower and began to climb it on the side furthest from the courtyard and the other guard tower on the far side.

As they had arranged, Ricardo began a silent count as soon as he saw Harper disappear from sight. Harper too was also mentally counting down from fifty as he scanned the tower for handholds. It had brick pillars at each corner, supporting the flat concrete roof above it, but with a glazed window on the side facing outwards, beyond the prison. The open sides on the other three faces were shielded only by waist-high wrought iron railings. The brickwork was newer than much of the prison’s other masonry, but it was a short climb to reach the bottom of the railings and, using the clamps that held the wiring for the floodlight that was fixed to the tower and the places where the mortar between the bricks had begun to crumble enough to give finger-holds, it was easy for Harper to climb it and reach up to grasp the bottom rail.

He clung there for a moment, completing the countdown in his head and listening to the ever-louder hubbub of noise from the main courtyard below as his beggars’ army crowded around the guards. He was already beginning to swing himself up and over the railing as he heard the sound of the first grenade detonating on the roof at the far side of the courtyard.

The guard had his back to him and was unslinging his rifle from his shoulder as he scanned the crowd below for the source of the explosion. Harper saw him stiffen as he identified the target - Ricardo, who was now sending another grenade flying after the first one - but as the guard put the rifle to his shoulder and started to bring it to bear, Harper was already in motion. He covered the two metre gap between them in two strides, smashed his fist against the side of the guard’s head, momentarily stunning him and followed up with a karate chop to the throat. As the guard began to crumple, Harper tore the rifle from his grasp and brought the butt crunching down on the guard’s skull. He then stepped over him to the front of the tower and sighted through the guard’s rifle. It was a .30 Carbine, a vintage weapon, used by the US Army in World War Two. Short, light and with a good rate of fire, it was first issued to US Paratroopers and tank crews, but it had also proved perfect for use in guard towers.

Harper heard a third detonation and the sound of shrapnel rattling across the metal roofing as he squinted through the iron sights of the rifle, aiming at the edge of the other tower. He concentrated until the iron railing was in sharp focus. As the echoes of the last grenade blast ebbed away, the other guard cautiously raised his head. Harper only had to swing the barrel a couple of centimetres to bring the man’s head into line with the round rear sight and the front blade sight, to create the perfect sight picture he had been taught many years ago as a Para on the ranges at Aldershot. He sharpened his focus still more, then exhaled and gently squeezed the trigger. Even as he felt the recoil in his shoulder, he saw the man’s head disappear, replaced by a mist of blood droplets and fragments of bone.

At once he switched his aim to the guards in the courtyard, who were hemmed in by the gates and struggling to hold back the mob pressing in around them. Two of them had already drawn their pistols and one fired a warning shot into the air, hoping to frighten the mob and drive them back, but as the pressure increased, Harper saw the pistol barrel swing down and in that moment he drilled a shot through the guard’s head. Without waiting to see the impact, he swung the sights on to the second guard and shot him too, the bullet’s steep downward trajectory punching a neat hole through his eye and then exiting through the back of his neck.

The beggars army let out a collective roar as they saw their tormentors fall and they overwhelmed the four remaining guards. Only one even managed to draw his weapon - the others were already being punched and kicked to the ground - and before his fumbling fingers could raise it, the pistol was torn from his grasp by the bar-room brawler Harper had put in the front rank, who clubbed the guard with the butt and then shot him through the head at point blank range, spreading his brains all over the ground in front of the gates.

Still holding the rifle, Harper vaulted over the rail, clambered down the tower and ran across the roof, the metal panels rattling underfoot. As he reached the edge, he slung the rifle over his shoulder, swarmed down a drainpipe to the floor of the yard and then ran to join Lupa and Ricardo. The mob was already carrying off the three guards they had overpowered, beating and punching them as they dragged them toward the passage that led to the punishment block and the piscina, where the body of Don Lorenzo still lay on the bottom.

Even if the three men’s fate was to join him there, Harper felt little sympathy for them. They had all brutalised the prisoners who now held them captive, men who had no money, friends or influence to protect them and couldn’t fight back. The guards had forced many of the prisoners’ wives, girlfriends and even children to perform sexual acts in return for access, or simply to prevent further beatings for their men, and they had robbed, extorted bribes and swindled countless others. Now the reckoning was being made.

The remaining guards, off duty or asleep in their dormitory, were rounded up, stripped of their weapons, uniforms and money, and then, after Harper intervened to prevent further drownings, they were force-marched down to the punishment cells or the bare concrete floors that the lowest of the low had been occupying.

Some of the members of Harper’s beggars’ army were trying on the guards’ uniforms, and taking over their weapons and roles. The remaining section bosses within the prison, drawn by the gunshots and general commotion but watching from the safety of the far side of the main courtyard, just shrugged. Don Lorenzo was gone, and the chief warden’s guards had been deposed, but business as usual would soon resume, just with a different bunch of guards to pay off. A few of the other prisoners had taken the opportunity provided by the temporary absence of guards to leave the prison and go back on to the streets. Whether they could survive there for long without falling foul of the police and finding themselves back in San Pedro was not a question that appeared to concern them, any more than it did Harper; they’d been given a chance, whether or not they now took it was up to them.

CHAPTER 17

Only one loose end remained to be tied up: the chief warden, Fernández, was still holed up in his office behind a locked door. Squinting through the keyhole, Harper saw him sitting behind his desk facing the door, with a pistol gripped in his hand and his nightstick still lying across the corner of the desk. Keeping to the side of the doorframe in case Fernández tried to fire through the door, Harper called out to him, making sarcastic use of the word ‘Don’. ‘It’s over for you now, Don Fernández. Your men have all been killed or captured, and you are the only one still holding out. As you’ve no doubt noticed, your phone line’s dead and there won’t be any cavalry riding to your rescue, so you’re on your own.We’ve now got three options. We can simply sit here and starve you out, though with the amount of excess weight you’re carrying, that might be a long process. The second way is to blow the door in or toss a grenade through the window, but both of those will be messy - first for you, and then for us when we have to scrape what’s left of you off the floor, walls and ceilings. So the best option for you and for us, is for you to put that gun down, prise your fat arse off that chair, walk over to the door and unlock it, and then come out with your hands above your head. I’ll give you five minutes to think about it and if you haven’t come out by the end of that time, we’ll be taking option two. Okay?’