Stephen Leather - Breakout

There was a long silence from the other side of the door, but then Harper heard the creak of a chair and Fernández’s slow footsteps moving across the office. Harper nodded to Ricardo on the other side of the door. Both of them were now armed, not with their primitive single shot weapons, but with pistols that had been liberated from the guards. They flattened themselves against the wall on either side of the doorway, pistols cocked and pointing at the door. There was a metallic scraping sound as the key was turned and a creak as the door began to open. Fernández then emerged, his pudgy hands held above his head. Harper grabbed him by the arm, swung him around and pushed him, none too gently, face against the wall and held him with a pistol at his neck while Lupa patted him down.

Harper then pulled Fernández’s arms down behind his back and Lupa secured him with a pair of handcuffs that had been liberated from the warden’s own men. They pushed him back into the office, collected his pistol from the desk and then left him standing while the three of them settled themselves in his chairs, with Lupa trying his desk-chair for size and Harper and Ricardo lounging on the greasy sofa, pushed against the wall facing the TV screen, still tuned to Fernández’s favourite sports channel.

‘What do you want from me?’ Fernández said.

Harper shrugged and spread his hands wide. ‘I’m not sure you have anything we want.’

‘There is one thing,’ Lupa said.

Harper raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, what’s that?’

She was staring at the warden. ‘I’ll be taking over your job, Señor Fernández .’

Harper started to laugh, but was silenced by Lupa’s ferocious glare. ‘Neither I nor Ricardo are going back to the streets, Lex, and having to live hand to mouth. We want to be part of all this now, and in fact more than that, we want to run it. Ricardo will replace Don Lorenzo and take care of the cocaine trade and I’ll be sitting at this desk and running the prison.’

Harper couldn’t hide a smile. ‘I admire your spunk, Lupa, but face it, this isn’t a café or a travel agent, it’s a prison full of desperate men.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Lex. I know that and I can run this place as well as any man. Probably better.’

His smile broadened. ‘No you can’t. I’ve only known you a short while, so you may have hidden depths I don’t know about, but from what I’ve seen of you, you’re not ruthless enough.’

‘Am I not?’ She fixed him with a look, then picked up the nightstick from the desk and smashed the chief warden full in the mouth with it. He collapsed to the floor, spitting blood and broken teeth. Lupa stood over him, spat in his face and said. ‘That’s what you did to Scouse, bastardo, how do you like it? And you know what else? Now that Scouse has gone, those developers will be looking for a new human sacrifice to bury in the foundations of that hotel they’re building. So we’ll get rid of a problem for us and solve one for them. You’re not a gringo , but you are - or at least you were until a few minutes ago - a man of some status. So I think you’ll do nicely.’

She turned to Ricardo. ‘While we’re waiting to make the arrangements, why don’t you take the warden down to the punishment cells? There are still a couple available and from the amount of time he spent down there, beating prisoners, Fernández must really like it there.’

As Ricardo pulled the warden to his feet, kicked him in the backside and pushed him towards the door, Lupa turned to look at Harper. ‘That ruthless enough for you?’

Harper bowed. ‘I take it back, you’re plenty ruthless enough, just as long as you can persuade the other guys to support you.’

They walked back down to the courtyard and she called all the former prisoners together, still looking a little uncomfortable in their new uniforms, let alone their new roles. ‘ Oye hombres , any of you object to me taking control of the prison and giving you orders?’

They took in the nightstick she was holding and the glint in her eye and, as one, began to shake their heads. ‘Whatever you say, Boss Lupa,’ one said, and there was a rumble of assent from the others.

‘ Bueno, ’ she said. ‘So, first job: Four of you lock the gates and mount guard on them. The rest of you get down to the cell we were using, get the gunpowder that’s still there, take it into the yard and set fire to it - it’ll only burn and not blow up provided you don’t compress it first. And now we’ve got the guards’ pistols, we don’t need those single-shot weapons. Gather them all up, take them to the blacksmith and tell him to melt them down. If there are any spare gas cylinders - we used the ones in the cell as flame-throwers - connect them back up to the stove and get a couple of people to clean the cell up, mend the window and repaint the walls; someone will want to make use of it soon enough. Lastly, we need to dispose of the bodies in the piscina . Drain it, get them out, cut them up, bag them and mix them with the garbage. That way they won’t be noticed till the garbage truck reaches the dump and even if they are found when it gets there, enough bodies have already turned up there from the cocaine wars between the gangs, to make another couple not even worth bothering about.’

As they dispersed to carry out their tasks, Harper gave a low whistle. ‘I’m going to have to eat my words, Lupa, you look like you really do have what it takes. But it’s early days yet, are you sure you can keep those guys in line?’

‘Why not Lex? They’ve been lower than the cockroaches all the time they’ve been in here, but now they’re in control of their own destinies. If they’ve got food in their stomachs and money in their pockets - and there’s plenty of that to be made for all of us - why would they risk that just because there’s a woman in charge?’

Harper gave a rueful smile. ‘Okay I’m convinced. You were right and I was wrong. And you know what? Why stop here? Give it a few years and I can even see you as Bolivia’s first woman President.’

She grinned. ‘I don’t think so Lex, even I’m not ruthless enough for that, but this will work just fine for me and Ricardo. I’ll have Fernández’s quarters and Ricardo can move into Don Lorenzo’s very spacious cell and take over as prison boss and, with the help of his Colombian friends on the outside, he’ll have no trouble running San Pedro’s cocaine trade.’ She gave him a sweet smile. ‘You see? Everybody wins.’

‘Well, everybody but Don Lorenzo, Fernández and his guards anyway, and I’m quite relaxed about all of them getting what was coming to them.’ He paused. ‘So, I still owe you both the fee for all your help.’

Lupa held up a hand. ‘ Olvídalo - forget it, Lex, you owe us nothing. If it hadn’t have been for you, I’d still be scratching around for translation work in Santa Cruz, and Ricardo would have been street dealing waiting for the next arrest. Now we’re on easy street, so gracias but please, keep your money.’

‘Okay, if you’re sure? Then while you’re settling in to Fernández’s kingdom, I’m going to head back to the hotel, bring Scouse up to date, take off these filthy, stinking rags of his that I’ve been wearing, and have a very long and hot shower. Then I’m going to have some food and a couple of very big drinks - and if you’re confident about leaving your posts unattended, you’re very welcome to come and join me for that - and then tomorrow we’ll be flying out.’

Harper found Ricardo already supervising cocaine production in the prison factory. He broke off from what he was doing to give Harper a hug. ‘What can I say, Lex, we owe everything to you. We couldn’t even have dreamed about doing this, without you.’