No Man's Land (7 page)

“Mr. Asuega,” the governor called.

Asuega raised his heavy eyebrows. “Yes sir,” he said. He
looked too young to be a deputy director of anything more complicated
than mowing lawns. Blaine had reached that stage in life where
everyone looked too young and nothing was quite as good as he
remembered it to be. Asuega couldn’t be much past thirty.
Dark-complected with a thick head of wavy black hair, far too
“ethnic” to ever be considered “presidential.” Some kind of
South Sea Islander. A Samoan or maybe a Tongan. Something like that.
Either way, he was a smooth unit in a good suit. Kept his answers to
a minimum and his face as bland and unreadable as a cabochon.

“Have you seen the videotape? The one of this Driver fellow
taking over the control pod?”

“No sir.”

The governor turned to Elias Romero, who was at that moment trying
to extrude himself through the wallpaper into the next room. “Can
you cue that up again for us?” Blaine wanted to know.

Romero said he didn’t think it would be a problem and reached
for the phone.

“Iris. Could you please run the DVD again? We’d like to show
it to Mr. Asuega.” As Romero calculated the situation, Asuega’s
presence redistributed the blame somewhat, lightening his personal
load and spreading the enmity to the Randall Corporation, where it
rightly belonged. Meza Azul was, after all, their baby.

On the other end of the phone line, Iris mumbled a mouthful of
unintelligible syllables before dropping the receiver with a
clank
.

“Iris?” Romero frowned and looked at the phone receiver.

“Coming right up, Mr. Romero,” came the strained voice. They
stood for a long moment staring at the blank screen. And then another
long twitchy moment passed. Romero’s hand was creeping its way to
the phone when the screen came alive with the sight of a solitary
figure taking the last half dozen steps down the mezzanine before the
central elevator. “Can you stop it there?” the governor asked.

Romero annexed the receiver and relayed the request.

“Tell me again,” the governor began. “Tell me what it takes
for a prisoner to be taken out of his cell.”

Asuega deferred to Romero. “No prisoner ever leaves his cell
without being shackled hand and foot and without an escort. In the
case of most prisoners the escort consists of a supervisor and a
correctional officer. In Driver’s case, with his history of causing
injury to prison personnel, he never leaves his cell without a
three-guard escort. Two officers and a supervisor.”

“And you’re going to tell me this guy, shackled hand and foot,
somehow managed to subdue three correctional officers.” The
governor looked from Romero to Asuega and back. “What are we
talking about here? Houdini?”

“We don’t know,” Asuega said quickly. “All we know for
sure is his cell door would never have been unlocked unless the
officers felt certain he had successfully been shackled hand and
foot.”

“Sooo . . . explain it to me.” The governor showed the ceiling
his palms. “How could something like this happen in what is
supposed to be the securest of the maximum security prisons?”

Romero cleared his throat. Asuega bailed him out. “We have to
assume Driver somehow managed to slip his handcuffs. Nothing else
makes any sense.” A pair of nods indicated that all concerned were
willing to admit the impossibility of a manacled man subduing three
trained guards using only his feet. Before Blaine could ask another
question, Asuega went on. “We also have to assume that through one
ruse or another, Driver managed to lure all three of his jailers into
the cell with him. Otherwise, the pod operator would surely have seen
the commotion and taken emergency measures.”

“We won’t know until we get back inside and see the tape,”

Romero said.

“Inside the cell?” the governor looked confused.

“Mr. Driver was under video surveillance twenty-four hours a
day.”

Blaine paused and thought it over. “The lights never went out?”

“No,” said Romero. “Never.”

The governor stifled a shudder. “Really?”

“Yes sir.”

“What do you call that sort of thing?”

“Extreme Punishment.” Asuega said. “It’s reserved for
those who kill or injure prison personnel.” Asuega read the
revulsion on Blaine’s face. “I assure you, Governor, the policy
works as a serious deterrent. Compared to government-administered
facilities, ours have an overall thirty percent lower rate of
injuries to staff.”

“How long has this Driver character been living under these
conditions?”

“Four and a half years,” Asuega said.

Again, the look of disgust on the governor’s face gave his
feelings away.

“Run it up to the elevator part,” he said.

Romero relayed the request into the phone; on the screen Driver
looked like a Keystone Kop moving up the cellblock at triple speed.

“There,” said the governor. Driver’s image had just inserted
the electronic card into the elevator control panel and punched in
that day’s code. “Wait a minute now,” Blaine prompted.

“Stop,” he said as Driver turned his back to the camera and
hunched over.

“What’s he doing there?” Blaine wanted to know.

“He’s circumventing the fingerprint recognition system,”

Romero said.

“Not possible,” Asuega said quickly. “Disabling it . . .
maybe. Getting around the system . . . not a chance.” Before Blaine
could bombard him with more questions, Asuega went on. “Any damage
to the hardware simply shuts the system down. Nobody goes up or down
until the pod operator rearms the software.”

“Then what in hell is he doing?”

“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he’s probably using the
system in the manner in which it was intended.”

“I thought you said—” The governor stopped. A mixture of
confusion and horror plowed furrows in his forehead. “Are you
suggesting . . . you mean like . . .”

Asuega jumped in. “The only explanation that makes any sense is
that Mr. Driver is in possession of the security foreman’s right
index finger.” He pointed at the screen. “Could we go on here?”

Romero said, “Let it run, Iris,” and the picture once again
began to move.

“Can you slow it down and back it up a little?” Asuega asked.

“Stop,” he said after a moment. “Notice how carefully he’s
moving. As if he’s folding something up, then putting it in his
pocket.” They watched in silence as the elevator arrived and Driver
stepped inside. They watched the last forty seconds. Romero and
Blaine looked away for the last fifteen seconds or so. Asuega kept
his dark eyes locked on the screen until the picture lapsed to
static.

“For ease of training, the control pod was designed to be as
intuitive as possible,” Asuega said. “To someone like Driver . .
. trained in state-of-the-art electronics and control mechanisms,
figuring out how to operate the prison’s systems was no great
problem. I’d be willing to bet he’s already reprogrammed the
software to recognize his own fingerprint.”

As if he had the answer to an unasked question, a U.S. Army
colonel threw back the door and strode inside. “My people will be
ready in an hour.”

“They’ve taken over the armory,” said the governor. The
colonel sneered at him. “They got armor-piercing shells?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. “Any depleted uranium?
Artillery? Air support?”

“Of course not,” Romero answered nervously.

“Then they’re in deep shit,” announced the colonel. “I’ve
got four hundred men who just spent the past nineteen months in
Baghdad. They’ve been back with their families for less than a
week, so it’s safe to assume they don’t appreciate this little
exercise they’re getting thrown into this evening.” He stopped
for effect. “I don’t care what kind of peashooters those convicts
have. We go through those gates”—he cut the air with the side of
his hand—“they damn well better be ready for hellfire and
damnation, ’cause that’s what they’re gonna get.”

“Another day or so,” Melanie Harris spoke into the receiver.

The silence at the other end of the line spoke volumes. She tried
another tack. “Maybe we could take a little time off. Go back to
Michigan . . . visit your parents . . .” She stopped. The silence
went on for some time before Brian’s voice broke the spell.

“You’re not hearing me.”

“Of course I am.”

“You know, Mel . . . you have the most amazing ability to hear
only what you want to hear. It’s like you’ve got some kind of
built-in filter or something. Some device that doesn’t allow
anything negative to get in the way of the grand plan.”

She sucked in a breath of air. Used the power to keep her voice
modulated. “It’s called focus, Brian. The ability to stay locked
on something until it’s finished.”

“Unlike me, of course.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t need to. It comes up every time.”

“Not from me,” she insisted “You know . . . I think you
attend too many of those group think meetings where everybody sits on
their well-heeled asses nodding at stupid things. You forget what’s
it’s like to just come out and say whatever you’re thinking.”
Before she could speak, he went on. “You ought to try it now and
again. It’s a breath of fresh air. Listen . . . I’ll show you.
Ready?” He took a deep breath. “I’m sick to death of Hollywood
and I’m going home to Michigan.”

She could feel his intensity over the phone line. “There. Did
you hear that or should I say it again?”

“I don’t need this right now.”

“Would the ‘right now’ part of that statement indicate that
there would be some other more convenient time to bandy this about?”

“I hate you when you’re like this.”

He laughed. “You don’t pay enough attention to me to work up
anything as strong as hate.”

Melanie began to sputter. “I . . . I mean . . . how can you . .
.”

The motor home’s door flew back with a bang. The springs
compressed as someone weighted the stair. Martin Wells bounced into
the room with the kind of glee usually reserved for furloughed
schoolchildren. In his right hand, he held a DVD in a plain white
jewel case. The carefully combed lock of hair that usually lay
plastered to his scalp had been blown straight up like a rooster’s
comb.

“We’ve got it,” he announced.

Melanie pulled a smile across her face and covered the mouthpiece
with her hand. “Could you give us a couple of minutes here, Marty?”
she said in a strained voice.

Wells was too agitated to be so easily deterred. He shook the DVD.
“Got the whole damn thing. Exclusive. Just us . . . nothing . . .”

Melanie raised her voice and cut him off. “A couple of minutes,
Marty . . . pleeease.”

When he failed to move, Melanie pointed at his head and made a
smoothing motion with her hand. Marty got the message, using both
hands to steer the shingle of hair back into place, before stepping
over and using the rearview mirror to check his efforts.

“For the time being, you can reach me at my parents’ house,”

Brian said. “I get something more permanent, I’ll let you
know.”

Unable to suppress it any longer, she heaved a massive sigh into
the mouthpiece. “Come on, Bri, let’s be reasonable here . . . I’m
in the middle of a prison riot . . . I’ll be home in a few days . .
. we’ll sit down and . . .”

Without warning the phone began to sing its solitary note into her
ear. She sat for a moment in disbelief, words still on her lips, the
phone still sweaty against the side of her head. She used her thumb
and forefinger to massage the bridge of her nose before heaving yet
another sigh and settling the receiver in its cradle.

“Everything okay?” Marty wanted to know.

She waved him off. He knew from long experience this was not one
of those times when it was safe to press. He watched as she gathered
herself.

“What is it you’ve got an exclusive on?” she asked.

“The takeover,” he said tentatively. “The moment when this
guy Driver takes over the prison.”

“And how did we come into possession of this exclusive piece of
media?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Melanie took him at his word and did not press the issue. She had
long since resigned herself to the reality of her profession. Their
job was to get the story and get it out to the public. Along the way,
they sold ads for the program. The more popular the program, the more
expensive the ads. What it took to get the story in the first place
was very nearly a moot point. As long as the means weren’t outright
illegal or the story wasn’t an outright fraud, they could skewer
any other charges on the lance of “the public’s right to know.”
Something in the way he stood his feet, however, caught her eye.

“No problem at all?”

He gave a semishrug and looked away. “The other end’s a little
dicey. Real need to know. Real small group of people who’ve been
privy to the info.”

“So?”

“So it’s not gonna take ’em long to figure out who’s wet
on their end.”

She eyed him closely and rolled a manicured hand around her wrist.
“And thus by extension who’s wet on our end.”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“I don’t like it,” she said quickly. “We’re not in a
position to weather a lot of heat. At this point—”

“We’re clean on it,” Marty insisted.

Her face was skeptical. “How’s that?”

“I had Jimmy make the connection,” he said, naming one of the
legion of assistant producers roaming the premises. “No other staff
person was involved in any way. The show was never mentioned. This
was strictly a cash-and-carry deal.”

“You’re sure the show wasn’t mentioned?”

“Positive.”

The way he’d described the situation, it wasn’t possible for
him to be sure beyond a doubt, but, in their business, factual leaps
of faith were often required. She let it go.

“And if anybody comes looking for Jimmy?”