Charges (22 page)

Rob looked momentarily stricken. “Yeah... yeah, let’s do this. Come on, babe. Let’s break out the stuff and repack.”

The pair went through their backpacks, pulling out gear and resorting it. While they worked, Vincenzo stood watch, scanning the airfield and the neighborhood beyond. He saw no activity. Either the Cub’s brief run hadn’t been that interesting, or the community was still asleep. He walked around the airplane, trying to get three hundred and sixty degrees of coverage. So far, everything was good.

Rob loaded Jody in the front of the Cub then tossed her smaller bag in the back. He carried his larger pack away from the plane and set it down on the tarmac. “This is yours,” he told Vincenzo. “We took only what we can carry—water, some perishables, and sleeping gear in case we come up short and need to spend some more time on the road. You have everything else. Got to tell you, it’s going to be heavy.”

“I’ll take care of that over time,” Vincenzo said, smiling even though he didn’t feel like it.

“I’ll try to come back for you,” Rob said. “You can spare a couple of days, right? Hang out and wait.”

Vincenzo shook his head. “No. I’m good. You guys had better get out of here. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. Maybe I’ll get lucky down the road. Who knows? But you guys need to get going. Last thing you need is to deal with a thunderstorm or something as you start flying across the Midwest.”

Rob nodded. “Okay. One last thing—the Glock.”

“I don’t need it. You keep it.” Vincenzo bent over his own pack and pulled out the extra magazines he’d taken off the Rastafarian. “Here. You might need these.”

Rob grinned as he accepted the magazines. “Dude, that’s fantastic. You ever make it to Cincinnati, you have to stop by Forty-One Mohawk Street. That’s where we’ll be.”

“Maybe one day.”

Rob shook his hand then pulled him in for a man hug. Vincenzo wrinkled his nose at the stink, even though he probably smelled just as bad.

Rob slapped his back. “Bro, you’re the best. Thanks for everything. The food, the gun, the ammo... damn, it sucks having to leave you here.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Vincenzo said, backing away so he could take in some fresh air. “You guys have a safe trip. Can you make it all the way, do you think?”

“Not a chance. We’ll have to land and refuel, but that shouldn’t be a big problem. I don’t think Avgas is going to be very tough to find right now. No one’s using it. We’ll be fine, plenty of airports on the way. I used to fly a lot west of here, so I know where to go.” Rob nodded toward the plane. “Help me start it again, bro?”

“You got it.”

Vincenzo got on the mag switch as Rob hand-propped the plane again. It started on the first spin. Rob climbed into the back of the plane to sit in the rear seat.

Vincenzo leaned in the front and gave Jody a peck on the cheek. He yelled, “Good luck!” over the roar of the engine. He then shot Rob a thumbs-up as he backpedaled away from the plane, to where the two backpacks sat.

Rob returned the gesture then advanced the throttle. The little yellow plane taxied away and turned left, angling toward the runway. As it rolled along, Vincenzo picked up Rob’s hiking pack. The big guy hadn’t been kidding; the thing was definitely heavy. He swung into it, then picked up his own pack and held it by one of the straps as he started walking back toward the airport exit.

At the end of the parking lot, he turned and watched the little Piper Cub roar down the runway. It hopped up into the air and climbed out, its engine buzzing. As it passed over him, its wings rocked in a final farewell before banking away and heading for the west.

Adios, muchachos.
Faced with no alternative, Vincenzo resumed his journey.

16

Today was the day.

Roth could feel the expectation in the air as he set about going through the daily routine. Without power, the routine was pretty simple: wake up, try not to choke to death on the stench until the guards popped the cells, then go to work, have a meal, yard time, then back to the sweltering cell. He certainly did miss hot showers, and he was growing to hate the feel of his prison uniform scraping across his sticky, sweaty skin. He itched all over, but he didn’t scratch himself. The last thing he wanted to do was invoke a skin infection or do something that might give rise to a case of hives.

He had briefed the rest of the boys on Rollo’s dream of a jailbreak. They had pretty much accepted it at face value, though big Chester didn’t want to have anything to do with the blacks. Roth didn’t know the huge man very well, but given the plethora of tattoos of iron crosses and swastikas Chester sported, he suspected Chester was a plank holder in organizations like Stormfront and the Aryan Brotherhood. But that didn’t matter. All Roth needed was a firearm and then targets to shoot. He didn’t necessarily need to kill every guard in the prison. He just needed to kill enough to make his escape.

The fences worried him, though. Even if Rollo was somehow magically able to get him a pistol, getting past the rows of fences would be difficult. While they could be climbed over, even Roth wasn’t good enough to shoot people dead while trying to scale a twenty-foot fence topped with razor wire. He would be sniper bait in a second.

Deal with that when it comes
.
You have a lot to get through before you have to worry about the fence.

During the meal, there were only two guards in the room. They looked nervous and didn’t stand over the tables but near the door. Both had shotguns, which Roth thought was a remarkable rarity. He also thought that if anything was going to happen, it needed to happen soon. From the expressions on the guards’ faces, the prisoners wouldn’t be allowed out of their cages ever again.

After the meal, Blackie approached him in the greenhouse. His pale skin was covered with sweat, his light-colored hair lank and greasy with accumulated perspiration. “Got something for you,” he said as he drew close.

Roth was alert. He didn’t like people getting near him, even those who were nominal allies. So the second he saw the shiv in Blackie’s hand, he took a step back and raised his hands into a defensive posture. Roth had been involved in two knife fights before, and he had avoided being cut both times due to his speed, training, and outright ferocity. It wouldn’t take much to break one of Blackie’s thin wrists and gain control of the shiv.

“Take it easy,” Blackie said, stopping short. “This is for you.” He turned the shiv around and handed the weapon to Roth handle first.

Roth took it and turned away from the greenhouse’s open door so he could inspect the weapon quickly. It was a simple sharpened blade covered by a liberal patina of rust, with a black duct tape handle. Roth touched the blade and found it sharp enough to part skin and tissue easily. He tore a piece of cardboard from an opened case of motor oil and wrapped it around the shiv then dropped the blade into his pocket.
Not exactly a pistol
but better than nothing.

###

It was another warm day out on the yard. Roth hung with the rest of the guys, feeling uncharacteristic butterflies in his stomach as he waited for something to happen. Rollo had looked at him only once and favored him with a curt nod so subtle that Roth wondered if he had imagined it.

Roth took a quick count of the guards keeping watch. Both towers were occupied, and four other guards were inside the pen, watching the convicts through the wire mesh. If something were to go down, they would establish control over the situation, first with tear gas and nonlethal rounds, then with warning shots from the guard towers. If those failed to invoke compliance, then the next rounds would be fatal ones.

“Feels like things’re gonna get hot,” Harley said.

“Well, yeah, it’s gotta be in the eighties at least, with high humidity,” Toombs said.

Harley glared at the skinny man. “I wasn’t talkin’ about the
weather
, you idiot.”

Toombs shrugged. “Oh.”

“Harley’s right,” Roth said. “Everyone needs to stay on their toes.”

“How do you think it’s going to go down?” Harley asked.

“Only way is to start a fight,” Roth said, “unless Rollo has something else planned.”

“The niggers gonna start a fight with us?” Chester asked. He cracked his knuckles loudly. Sweat made his tattooed skin glisten despite the breeze.

“If they do, try not to kill any of them,” Roth said. “Fight defensively. Wait for the guards to respond. They’ll have to come in, and when they do, we’ll go after them.”

“They have
guns
, boss,” Blackie said.

Roth fingered the shiv in his pocket. “And if everything goes well, so will I.”

Harley grunted. “Well, if they’re going to do something, they’d better start it soon. We’re runnin’ out of opportunities.”

A flock of crows descended and alighted on the strands of razor wire stretching across the tops of the tall fences. Roth gazed up at them. The black birds regarded the prisoners below with emotionless, obsidian eyes.

As if on cue, a peculiar energy resonated through the yard. Not far away from Roth and his group, a crew of Latinos converged on the blacks. The blacks met them with a charge of their own. The crows cawed as if urging the combatants on.

“Shit’s going down!” Chester said.

“Let’s get in there,” Roth said. “Not too close. Watch out for the tear gas.” He hurried across the yard, the others close behind.

The guards were already responding, blowing whistles and giving voice commands to stop. All were ignored.

As they drew closer, Roth could see some of the combatants were really going at it, throwing real punches that drew real blood. Several blacks clustered around one Latino man who was clearly in the process of dying. Apparently, Rollo was interested in getting a little payback in the middle of the escape attempt. The reedy black man sank a shiv into the Latino again and again, his eyes wide, his lips pulled back in a feral grin.

Canisters bounced across the yard, but the breeze carried the tear gas away. None of the prisoners paid any attention to it. When the nonlethal projectiles starting whizzing through the crowds, Roth stepped closer to the rest of the guys. It was preferable that one of
them
take a beanbag round to the back. And sure enough, a white guy yelped and crashed to the ground, clutching his shoulder. Nonlethal rounds weren’t designed to kill, but they sure hurt a hell of a lot, and they could even break bones in certain circumstances.

“Roth, what are we doin’?” Harley yelled.

“Wait for the guards to come in the yard,” Roth said.

A rifle cracked, and dirt exploded into the air as one of the guards in the tower fired the warning shot. The prisoners all heard it and knew the guards meant business. Playtime was over. The next rounds would be deadly, and no one wanted to wind up dead. The convicts fell to the ground amid the roiling clouds of tear gas, Roth and his crew among them. As he stretched out on the warm grass that he had cut not so very long ago, he reached into his pocket and shook the shiv out of its makeshift cardboard sheath.

Covered by the gunners in the towers, the officers stormed into the yard. There were only six of them, not enough to play patsy and wait for the prisoners to be compliant. They had weapons drawn and gas masks on. The weapons were a concern, because no matter what Rollo had promised about keeping the ground clear, Roth had no doubt that some people were going to die that day. He turned his head, looking away from the guards, and saw Rollo spread out on the ground thirty feet away. There was blood in his thinning afro, and his eyes were wide and bright.

“You up, Roth,” Rollo said. “You up.”

The guards didn’t move into the crowd but stayed along the edges, commanding the convicts to rise group by group and head back to the main building. When they ordered the whites to rise, Roth stayed on the ground.

Harley nudged his foot. “Dude, time to rise and shine.”

Roth didn’t move. He kept the shiv hidden under his body.

“Get up!” one of the guards yelled from behind his mask.

“Looks like he’s hurt, boss,” Blackie said helpfully.

The guard stepped toward Roth and kicked him in the leg. “I said
get up
!”

With a roar, the blacks hopped to their feet and charged, fifty or more in a single rush. The guards in the towers opened up, sending actual bullets through the sprinting bodies. The guard standing over Roth pivoted, bringing his pistol to bear on the tide of convicts streaming toward him.

Roth waited for him to fire his first shot then grabbed the man’s leg and yanked it out from under him. As the guard fell, he turned his pistol toward Roth, but Roth had been anticipating that. With his left hand, he slapped the firearm down, pressing it into the grass, while his right hand, clenching the shiv, arced over the guard. He buried the point in the back of the man’s neck and gave a brutal twist, rocking the rusty blade back and forth, severing bone and tissue and, most importantly, the top of the spinal cord. The guard made a hitching, mewling sound then went limp.

Roth spun away from the man, leaving the shiv where it was and picking up the pistol instead. The weapon’s weight felt right in his hand, a Glock 17 without any special adornments, just plain and functional. Roth rolled to his feet as the remaining blacks rushed into the fray, slamming into the guards, who fired back, sending bullets tearing through flesh and bone. Roth narrowly missed getting shot as a bullet snapped past his right ear, but he ignored it, turning his gaze to the nearest guard tower.

A guard stood at the railing, aiming his rifle into the writhing mass of prisoners and corrections officers below. Roth raised the pistol and fired twice, striking the tower guard in the face and neck. The man fell back against the wall and slumped to the metal deck.

Roth turned to the second tower, which was farther away and probably the bigger threat. The sniper there was mowing down the crowd, panning his Mini 14 rifle back and forth like some sort of magic wand, obviously looking for the shooter of his buddy. Roth hunched over, trying to make the task a little harder. At the same time, the wind changed, and a pall of tear gas moved toward his position. Roth cursed the luck. Not even he could shoot straight with a snoot full of tear gas, so he stepped out of the crowd and raised the pistol. The guard in the tower snapped his rifle around. It was a race to see who could shoot first.

Roth drilled the man three times. The third round hit the guard’s left hand and traveled through it, splintering the Ruger’s wooden forestock as the man slumped backward, blood pouring from his mouth.

“Shoot the others, you white fuck!” one of the black convicts screamed as a guard gunned him down.

Roth pivoted and began firing. He had intended for one shot to kill each guard, but the press of bodies was thick, so he just fired through anyone who got in his way. He wasn’t shocked or saddened when one of those was poor Blackie, his pale eyes wide with fright. Blackie died soundlessly as Roth fired right through his body, killing the guard on the other side in the process.

Seconds later, it was over. The guards were dead. So were several dozen convicts, but that didn’t matter to Roth. For the first time in years, he felt that surge of exultation, that soaring, prideful glee that murdering men and women in uniform created inside him. It felt as if his heart was four times too big for his chest, and he had trouble catching his breath. It was ten times the euphoria he’d felt even when basking at the apex of intense sexual pleasure.