“Terrific,” Ben called back. “Let’s check the radios.”
Andy fished in her backpack until she found the walkie-talkie that Charlie had encrypted weeks before.
Ben glanced at his watch. It was time. The sky was dark but not too dark. Any later and they would risk trying to slip past the guards using night vision goggles. He looked over at Andy. “You ready?”
She pursed her lips together and nodded.
Ben smiled thinly before turning to the others. “Jim?”
“Yeah, I’m coming.”
Both he and Charlie stepped out of their car. Jim slipped into the backseat behind Andy while Charlie got behind the wheel of the other vehicle.
“I’ll radio you just before I fire it off,” Charlie called out to Ben.
“Okay.”
“Good luck.” Charlie drove off in one direction while Ben, Jim, and Andy went another.
Once they got to the airport, Ben parked inside one of the hangars. Andy got out of the car first and opened the back of the truck. She retrieved three dark raincoats and two loaded rifles, followed by Jim and Ben who took out their large rucksacks. They slung the rucksacks over their coats, and Andy handed each of them a weapon.
“Here we go,” Jim said, trying to sound upbeat.
Together, they marched about half a mile from the hangar to the forest, crossing the runway along the way. As they descended underneath the canopy, Andy remarked favorably about the path they had cleared days earlier. “Where’s the rock?” she asked.
“Just up there,” Ben said pointing straight ahead.
Andy followed as he stepped off the main path to a narrower path on the left, around the rock. She looked down at it and saw the “X” marked with red duct tape. “Just don’t miss it,” she said.
“We won’t,” Jim promised.
They arrived at the opposite edge of the forest and knelt down behind some trees. All three withdrew their binoculars from their bags and scanned the area.
“Still three,” Ben muttered, referring to the guards, each in his own tower along the perimeter wall. “Damn, I was hoping they all wouldn’t be there.”
“And I bet they’re all miserable,” Andy grumbled. “I don’t know why they put up with it.”
“Three words,” he whispered. “Food, drugs, sex.”
Andy smirked. “I get the food, but drugs and sex? Come on…how much of that do people really need?”
“Well, you’re not an eighteen-year-old boy.”
“No, thankfully,” she said as Jim chuckled quietly at the exchange, welcoming the break in the tension.
Andy put down her binoculars and picked up the radio. She ensured the volume was on the lowest setting.
Meanwhile, Ben and Jim grabbed opposite ends of a large ladder they had hidden near the path during their last visit and awaited word from Charlie.
Moments later, a crackle was heard coming from the other end of the radio. “I’m here,” Charlie’s voice called out. “You all ready
?
”
Andy looked at the others; both nodded in reply. “Ready,” she whispered back.
A loud bang was heard in the distance seconds later, followed by the bright, red glow of a flare soaring vertically against dark, grey skies.
Through her binoculars, Andy watched as two guards scurried down from their towers and disappeared from view behind the prison wall. “There’s still one left,” she radioed Charlie. “Do it again.”
“Roger…”
Half a minute later, another shot erupted in the distance, followed by another flare. Through the lenses, she saw the remaining guard look around as though wondering what to do.
“Once more?” Charlie asked.
Andy and Ben looked at each other. She said, “Once more.”
A third flare went off, and the remaining guard finally descended the tower.
“All gone,” Andy said into the radio.
“Let’s go,” said Ben.
They scrambled to the perimeter wall of the prison between the third and fourth observation tower. When they reached the wall, Ben raised the ladder and skillfully adjusted its height until it reached the top while Andy pulled out a rope from Jim’s rucksack. It was thick with knots tied every two feet and had a large metal hook on the end. Then she grabbed a wire cutter and passed it to Ben. He climbed the ladder to the top. Keeping his head low, he cut away at the spiraling loops of barbed wire and created a space large enough to pass unhindered. Once finished, he descended the ladder.
At the same time, Jim made two trips back to the edge of the forest to retrieve two hidden fifty-pound weights. Using smaller pieces of rope, he and Andy tied both weights to the first rung of the ladder to weigh it down. When they finished, he and Ben grabbed their rucksacks and weapons. Jim went up the ladder and hooked the longer rope to the top rung and dropped it over the other side of the wall. Then he climbed over and landed safely inside the prison compound.
Before following his cousin, Ben gave Andy one last look as she handed him the radio. Without thinking, he hugged her fiercely and said, “I’ll see you soon.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she told him.
“I won’t.” Then he climbed the ladder and gave her a smile before disappearing over the wall.
Alone, Andy ran back to the airport beneath the fading daylight. She approached the rock with the red X and swerved around it to the right off the main path. Fifty or so meters later, she emerged from the forest and picked up speed. By the time she reached the hangar, she was out of breath. Charlie arrived moments later.
***
“So you can scan them in and compare them to every print on file?” Sean held out the paper containing the ten fingerprints to Danny. He had ripped off the top of the paper where Ben’s name had been labeled, however.
“Yeah, no problem.” Danny took the paper from Sean. “Give me a few minutes,” he added as he fired up the scanner.
“Be quick.”
Danny ignored the remark and did his best to appear bored. Sean stood impatiently as Danny scanned the paper into softcopy. He then separated each individual print and stored them as “Unknown 1” through “Unknown 10” before instructing the software to compare each unknown print to the more than one million prints on file, beginning with the left pinky and ending with the right. If the prints belonged to either Ben or Jim, this would allow him as much time to stall as possible. Since neither had scanned a print from their left hand, Danny started with those.
“Anything yet?” Sean demanded.
“Not yet. It might take ten minutes. Each print takes about a minute.” Danny leaned back in his chair and squeezed a rubber stress ball with one hand, deciding his disinterested demeanor would likely anger Sean but also deflect any suspicion.
“Can’t you make it work faster?”
Danny looked up. “It’s a computer. It only listens to ones and zeros.”
Seemingly humbled by this remark, Sean backed away toward the window with his arms crossed. It was getting dark outside.
The first three prints came up negative, so Danny entered commands to crosscheck the left index finger followed by the left thumb. After both came up negative, he started on the right hand. Jim had registered his right middle finger while Ben had registered his right index. If Danny’s suspicions were correct, Ben’s finger would pop up first.
“Six down, four to go,” he muttered as he reached for the mouse.
Sean huffed in agitation and turned back to the window when a distinctive beep emitted from the computer speakers, followed by a second and then a third. He whirled around on his heels. “What was that?”
Danny closed his eyes tightly. He was afraid to look at the screen. Meanwhile, Sean sprang toward the computer screen and read off the first name. “John Simmons…” And the second. “Michael Wilkins…” And finally the third. “Matthew Thompson. Wait, three names for one set of prints…what the…?”
As Sean stared at the screen, Danny finally opened his eyes and improvised an explanation. “It’s probably just a glitch. I mean, I’m sure the guards at the checkpoints messed up…”
“Son of a bitch.” Sean had figured it out.
Stepping away from the desk to allow Danny room to work, he spouted off additional commands. “I want to see every single checkpoint entry for those two girls…Katrina Wilson and Isabel Torres…along with these three names. I want to see them all side by side.”
Danny grudgingly obeyed and soon brought up five columns in a single Excel spreadsheet, one for each name. The lists were all short, no more than three time, date, and checkpoint location entries each.
“Move over,” Sean ordered as he practically pushed Danny out of his chair. He sat down and rolled the chair as close to the screen as possible.
Danny inched away. He desperately wanted to hit Sean upside the head to knock him unconscious and then chain him to the desk so that he could run off to warn his friends, but the guards were waiting just outside the door.
Oblivious to Danny’s futile scheming, Sean studied the screen. His eyes moved rapidly back and forth as they glazed over the spreadsheet. Whoever Katrina was, she had passed through a checkpoint three times, each time within a minute of at least one of the other four names: John Simmons twice and Michael Wilkins, Matthew Thompson, and Isabel Torres on her third and final entry on the fourth of August. All entries had occurred at the same checkpoint, the one near the Holland Tunnel. Sean slammed his hands on the desk. “No. Way.” He sprang to his feet. He ran toward the door and disappeared within seconds.
Alone, Danny quickly shut down his computer and left his office. Once outside, he rode back to Chinatown in the rain on his bike. By the time he reached his apartment, he was soaking wet. He moved through his place like a tornado as he packed his backpack for the long, wet bike ride to New Jersey. Before leaving, he left a note for Dez and Li explaining that he would be gone for a least a day but didn’t say where he was going.
Chapter XXV
A
fter the tiresomely long ride up the elevator to the seventy-ninth floor, Sean barged through the door of Luke’s office without knocking. Finding the office empty, he reached into his back pocket and grabbed his cell phone. He speed-dialed Luke’s phone, but the call refused to go through. Even when hovering against the window, the cell service was non-existent. “What the hell am I paying them for?” he shouted, referring to the nearly one hundred Fixers employed to maintain wireless service throughout Manhattan.
He went to check his office two floors above. There he found Luke sitting at his desk talking on the phone.
Upon seeing Sean, Luke pulled the receiver away from his mouth. “Sorry…my phone isn’t working.” He returned to his call as Sean impatiently waited for him to finish.
“Well?” Sean said the instant Luke hung up.
“They’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Sean frowned. “Fifteen minutes? I told you two hours ago to send them. It’s only an hour’s drive from here.”
Luke was quick to defend himself. “It’s longer than that, and you know it also takes at least an hour just to get out the door. They had to gear up and figure out where they’re going first. They’ve never been to the prison before and most of our maps don’t even have the prison marked on them.”
“Paper maps,” Sean muttered under his breath, then said, “You don’t need to remind me of that. I’m fully aware of the limitations of
your
men.”
“They’ll be there and back before seven, which is what you asked, Sean,” Luke replied quickly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you anything more than that.”
Sean didn’t respond. Instead, he took a seat on the leather couch adjacent to his desk. Luke stood up to give back the chair, but Sean waved him back down.
“So guess who your Katrina has been coming in and out of the city with since August?”
“Who?”
“Ben Kelly.”
Luke blinked.
“You don’t look surprised.”
Luke played it off with a shrug. “Who else would be so interested in the virus?”
“Your lack of concern is disturbing considering you were the one who told her…about Green Haven. And now I find out that she’s working with Ben.”
“But nothing’s happened at the prison since she found out.”
“You mean since you told her.”
Luke groaned. “Yes, since I screwed up and told her. But honestly, Sean, you’ve got the place covered.”
“Hardly.” A dozen guards for a huge prison compound was grossly inadequate, but he couldn’t spare any more men, especially for a job that was so boring. The ones assigned there hated it enough already, so much so that he’d had to double their salary.
“How’d you connect the girl to Ben anyway?” Luke asked.
“I had that guy Danny compare every one of her checkpoint entries with Ben’s. All the timestamps matched.”
“Ben’s registered?”
“No, you idiot, he’s using an alias…three, actually.”
“And how’d you figure that out?”
“I have his fingerprints. He recently registered one of his prints to all three names. How he managed to do that, I’d like to know. Might be time to talk to the guys working the checkpoints.”