Undersea Prison (30 page)

‘You OK?’ Stratton asked sympathetically.

Hamlin did not acknowledge him and seemed to be focusing all his mental resources on simply keeping breathing. He eventually raised his head and opened his red-rimmed eyes to look at his cellmate. ‘I don’t have the constitution for this place,’ he said, sounding strained. ‘I can’t survive here much longer.’

Stratton could not help wanting to give Hamlin some kind of psychological support. The man was a jailbird and would remain so for the rest of his natural life but Stratton had seen his ‘normal’ side and had to admit to liking that aspect of him. Perhaps it went deeper than that. Stratton was, after all, stuck inside a maximum-security prison in a grotty cell surrounded by a host of dangers, most of them unknown. It was only natural under such circumstances to seek out friends and allies, particularly when you had none to start with. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do?’ he asked.

Hamlin looked slightly amused by a thought that came to him. ‘After my conviction, the FBI showed me a letter they found in my files that I wrote some years before. It was to the President of the United States, letting him know how I felt about some of his foreign and domestic policies. I suggested he should quit or go the way of JFK. I never sent it but the feds decided it was a serious threat because it came from me. I never meant it as a direct threat. It was just a suggestion, you know? . . . They told me I’d never make parole. The only way I was leaving jail was in a body bag.’ His expression changed to one of determination.‘I’m gonna prove those sons of bitches wrong,’ he said, glancing at Stratton for any reaction to his comment.

Stratton took it as bravado.

‘You’re an odd fish, fellah, ain’t yer?’ Hamlin enquired.

Stratton wasn’t sure how he was intended to take this comment.

‘Somethin’ about you. Can’t point to it but . . . I don’t know. Somethin’.’

‘I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’

‘Ain’t nothin’ like that. More like the opposite . . . Maximum-security cons have one thing in common. They ain’t ever goin’ anywhere, other than another prison. They don’t kid themselves about it, either . . . least, not deep in their souls they don’t . . . We’re all partly dead because of it.You can see it in the way we move, walk, talk. Part-dead people can’t hide it . . . You ain’t part-dead.’

Hamlin continued to search Stratton’s eyes in case he was wrong. ‘Maybe it’s because you just don’t
know
you’re part-dead,’ he eventually decided, looking away.

He remembered something else he wanted to say to Stratton and, putting a finger to his lips, reached across to his desk and switched on a tape recording of some classical music. He increased the volume and leaned towards Stratton in a conspiratorial manner. ‘You know Gann’s got a problem with you, don’t yer?’ he said in a gruff whisper.

Stratton shrugged, going along with the intrigue. ‘Why?’

‘There ain’t a lotta secrets in a prison. If the guards know somethin’ the cons’ll soon learn about it . . . I don’t know why he wants you, though. That never came down the vine . . . Gann don’t need a reason to hate someone, anyhow. He’s just a mean son of a bitch.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s much I can do about that.’

‘I guess not,’ Hamlin agreed.

‘Unless I got to him first.’

‘Fat chance of that.’

Stratton studied Hamlin, weighing him up, trying to decide if he could use him in a plan he had been hatching. The trick would be to make it of benefit to the older man too. It was something Hamlin had said that had triggered the idea. He had expressed a desire to get out of Styx - not that any such yearning was exactly surprising. But it had been more than a simple wish. Hamlin had implied that he really could escape and Stratton had to take this seriously, no matter how much of a long shot it was. Escaping from Styx would take some brilliant planning and knowledge of the prison if it was to be done without help from the outside. Hamlin had the credentials and, in his role as prison engineer, had perhaps also had the opportunity to come up with something.The more obstacles Stratton could break down the better chance he had of finding a way to Durrani.

Nothing was impossible and Stratton felt confident that if he had the time he could at least devise a plan. Successfully carrying it out would be another matter, of course. The point was that escape wasn’t impossible. You just had to be smart enough to work it out. There was a risk in involving Hamlin but since Stratton had nothing else to go on but the few hours he had spent in the man’s company he decided to rely on his instincts.

Stratton turned his attention to the heavy steel door with its thick rubber seam surrounding it. ‘You know these doors are sensitive to external pressure?’ he asked.

Hamlin looked at him oddly. ‘I know just about everything there is to know about this place, including these doors. I service the machinery that maintains the pressure tanks, remember?’

Stratton looked at him soberly. ‘So I’m right.’

‘It don’t take a genius to figure that out, considering there ain’t any locks. Day one I calculated the difference between the inside and outside pressure and at its lowest there’s over eight tons keeping that door closed. It would take you, me and a herd of Percherons to shift it, and only if there was a handle strong enough to tie them to which there ain’t.’

‘Unless the pressure was equalised.’

Hamlin smirked. ‘That’s what everyone spends day two trying to figure out. The pressure in every corner of this entire rabbit warren is controlled from the OCR and even the operators couldn’t override the system without tripping a whole bunch of safety devices, procedures, airlocks, alarms and what-you-gots.’

Stratton didn’t seem perturbed by Hamlin’s negativity. ‘Way I understand it is there are a pair of sensors that monitor the different pressures either side. Those sensors are inside the actual door.’

Hamlin scrutinised Stratton more closely. ‘It took me till near the end of day three to figure that out.’

‘If the sensors detect the pressure on one side equalising with that on the inside they’ll automatically compensate,’ Stratton continued.

‘Unless they’re overridden by the OCR which is what happens every time the door is opened . . . I know what you’re thinking. Same thing everyone else does eventually. How to manipulate the sensors? There’s only one problem, though—’

‘And that’s the reason you’ve never been able to figure out how to do it,’ Stratton interrupted.‘You don’t know precisely where the sensors are.’

Hamlin was growing fascinated with Stratton’s line of speculation and he moved closer, his gravelly voice low. ‘That’s right,’ he said, staring into Stratton’s eyes. ‘If you did, and if you had the right tools, you might be able to isolate the “inside” sensor and make the “outside” one think the pressure inside was higher than what it actually is.’

‘And if that could be achieved the system would compensate by decreasing the inside pressure.’

‘And when it drops below that of the outside, the door’ll pop open . . . Nice theory, ain’t it? . . . So far that brings you up to date with me.’

‘Unless I knew precisely where the sensor was,’ Stratton said.

Hamlin leaned back to look at Stratton from a broader perspective, his expression a mixture of surprise and suspicion.

‘You got a pen?’ Stratton asked. ‘Better still, the tip of a small blade?’

Hamlin continued to study Stratton, trying to make up his mind about him. The guy was either full of shit or he had something very interesting to offer. There was only one way to find out.

Hamlin got to his feet, went to his desk, felt the back of one of the legs and opened a compartment that had been cleverly carved into it. He pulled out a thin strip of metal that had been fashioned into a blade the length of a pen, with string wrapped around one end to form a haft. He handed it to Stratton who got to his feet, faced the door and rubbed the pads of his fingers gently along the seal. Hamlin moved to his side, studying the seal as if he might have missed something the hundred or more times he had meticulously examined it in the past.

‘You’ve noticed these small flaps in the seal?’ Stratton said, poking the tip of the blade into one of the creases and prising it open. ‘They go all the way around.’

‘Sure. They’re breathers. Otherwise the seals could blow up like balloons if there was a pressure spike. It’s where the hiss comes from when the door opens.’

‘And you know there’s another seal inside this one.’

‘The operating seals, one either side. I’ve seen these doors stripped down.’

‘Did you notice that the operating seals don’t have any of these breathers?’

‘That’s because the sensors are inside them. That’s obvious. But it wouldn’t have to be no bigger than a pinhead. And if you didn’t know exactly where it was you’d never be able to isolate it without ripping out the entire seal - by which time it would no longer operate and you’d be stuck until a team of engineers came down to get you out.’

‘The engineers know where the sensors are because they have to service them on occasion.’

‘Sure.They just never let me in on that secret,’ Hamlin said, starting to get irritated.

‘What if I said I knew exactly where the inside sensor was?’

‘How the hell would you know that?’

‘I got friends,’ Stratton said, keeping his voice low. ‘I used to be into sat diving. When certain old buddies learned I was heading for Styx they made sure I got a few details they happened to have on this place in case I could use them. I don’t know how much use it is,’ he added, stepping back to look at the door and then at Hamlin. ‘What would you do if you could get the other side of this door?’ he asked, tossing out a little bait.

Hamlin remained very much unsure of his new cellmate. ‘I want nothin’ to do with puttin’ the hits on Gann.’

‘So you’re saying that even if we could open this door without anyone knowing, it wouldn’t be of interest to you?’

Hamlin sniffed the bait and found his mouth watering a little.

Stratton read Hamlin’s silence to suggest he would be very interested.

‘The inside or high-pressure sensor is dead centre on the door-hinge side,’ Stratton said, rubbing the spot. ‘If we could cut the outer seal just here, then cut into the operating seal, isolate the sensor with a cup of some kind, increase the pressure inside the cup . . . bingo!’

Hamlin was with him every step of the way. ‘We could do that easily with a small electric pump.’

‘You can get a pump?’

‘We’re at the bottom of the ocean. Pumps we got.’ But Hamlin was still very unsure about a lot of other things. He leaned forward to whisper over the music. ‘You open this door, you just got more doors.You got cameras too. Anyone in OCR, the warden’s office or the guardroom sees you and that’s it. They’ll seal you off wherever you are and do what they did in the galley.’

‘Then I suppose I’d need to know where Gann was when I opened the door.’

As the notion took root Hamlin’s thoughts turned to his own purposes rather than Stratton’s. He was hooked on the idea but tried not to show it. If he could get through the door he didn’t give a damn what Stratton wanted to do. He knew exactly where
he
would head for.

Stratton sighed dramatically as part of his charade. ‘I guess the theory is fine but the practical side would be pretty impossible,’ he said, backing off and sitting on his bed.

Hamlin sat down opposite, watching his room-mate and still trying to figure him out. ‘But if you could? You beat Gann to death and then walk back into your cell? You ain’t gettin’ any further.’

‘Maybe you’re not the only one with an escape plan.’

‘Who said I had a plan?’

‘You did.’

‘I said I’d like to prove ’em wrong. That could mean a lotta different things.’

Stratton looked away as if he’d grown tired of Hamlin’s games.

‘So you’ve been here five minutes and you’ve got an escape plan,’ Hamlin scoffed.

‘Like I said . . .’

‘Yeah, you got friends.’

‘Let’s just forget it.’

Hamlin didn’t want to. He enjoyed nothing more than talking through new technical matters. But this one was of much greater personal interest to him. ‘Supposin’ we could get through that door. I’m into the whole mutual support thing but only so far. I’d wanna do my own thing. I wouldn’t want anything to do with your problems - or your plans.’

‘I would neither expect nor want you to. No disrespect but you’re no spring chicken any more.’

Hamlin rested back against the wall, still eyeing Stratton suspiciously. ‘I don’t know about you, my friend . . . It’s still the missing part-death side of you that bugs me.’

‘Maybe you haven’t been around a true optimist for a while.’

Hamlin was not sure why, but he was beginning to trust Stratton.

‘Tusker?’ a voice boomed over a speaker in a grille beside the air duct.

Hamlin got to his feet and turned down the tape player. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘How you feelin’, Tusker?’

‘Not too bad. I’m still gonna sue, though.’

‘You know I’d be a witness for yer if I could, Tusker.’

‘Generous of you to consider it, anyhow.’

‘You feel up to doing some work? We got a torn filter on number two scrubber.’

‘I warned you about that one a week ago.’

‘Yeah, well, now it’s torn. You wanna take a look at it?’

‘Where’s the engineer?’

‘He’s not feeling too good.’

‘And if I don’t?’ Hamlin said, winking at Stratton. A short silence followed. ‘He’d have to get his drunken ass off his mattress, wouldn’t he?’

‘You gonna do it or not, Tusker?’

‘I’ll do it for a cup o’ one of them fine clarets the warden always has for dinner.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Come on, Busby. You can do better’n that.’

‘OK,’ the operations officer agreed.‘I’ll send someone down to escort you in five minutes.’