A song in the morning

19

He could hear nothing.

His ears were dulled by the explosion at the outer wall.

In silent ballet a deer that was no taller than his knee cavorted away from him. He saw between shadows the noiseless flight of a young warthog.

The piece of bent iron was in his hands, and the rope. It was his grappling hook and his climbing rope.

Jack came to the wall.

He arched the bent iron over the wall. He lost sight of its fall. He heard the first sound that infiltrated his senses. He heard the scrape of the bent iron on the metalwork of the grille above the exercise yard. New sounds now flooding his ears as he pulled on the rope, tested the strain. There was the sound of a siren, rising as if it were cranking itself awake.

There was a shout. He heaved on the rope. He slid back as the bent iron slipped, fastened again, slipped again, held.

Once more he tugged at the rope, using desperate strength.

The rope and the hook were steady. The iron was lodged as a hook into the grille. He tucked the shotgun, barrel up, under the shoulder strap, weighed in by the bag hanging across his stomach and his thighs, and he started to climb.

His feet stamped on the wall as he dragged himself upwards.

It was fifty-two seconds of time since the shaped charge had detonated against and through the outer wall. A life time of Jack's experience. All about speed, all about confusion, all about men staying rooted in their positions for precious seconds, all about officers who made decisions seconds after being asleep in their homes or dozing in the armchairs of their mess. Speed from Jack, confusion from the prison staff, his certain purpose, their being taken by surprise, on these his chance depended.

He tried to walk up, throw his body back from the wall.

The way the marines or the paratroopers did it. But the marines and the paratroopers weren't carrying a shotgun, and the marines and the paratroopers had proper combat packs and not a grip bag on a shoulder strap. And the marines and the paratroopers wouldn't be alone. Jack climbed the wall. His ears now were filled with the howl of the sirens.

He reached the top.

He was a darkened figure that swung first an arm and then a leg and then a shoulder and then a torso over the top of the wall, nursing his weight off the shotgun. He rolled from the top of the wall to crash onto the grille above the exercise yard. There was a moment when he was dazed, when he saw below him the dull colours of flowers in a small square of earth under the grille. If he let himself stop for more than a split second he was dead. He pushed himself away from the wall, out over the grille, the shotgun free in his hands, pressing back the safety catch.

He saw the spit of flame from the window to his right, from the window that gave air onto the catwalk above the corridor of C section 2. He was rolling, swivelling his hips to turn himself, to keep the momentum from his fall. Because he was rolling, moving, the rifle shot had missed him, and the second shot missed him. Sharp, granite chips of sound against the blanket wail of the siren. He aimed the shotgun at the window. There had been a pale face visible between the slats of the window. The pale face was scarlet, peppered, gone. A scream of pain, of fear, to merge with the siren.

Jack crouched.

Left hand in his bag. The charge with the detonator in his fingers. The moment when he had to stop. The moment when he had to put down the shotgun on the grille. He had the charge in his hand and the roll of adhesive tape. Fast movements as he pulled himself onto the sloping roof above the cell block, as he reached for the window in front of him, the window that led to the catwalk. The window was a set of vertical bars, four inches apart, concrete, with louvred glass slats. He slapped the charge against the central bar. His fingers were stripping adhesive tape from the roll. He was kicking with his feet to hold a grip on the metal of the sloping roof. He had the charge in place, he had the adhesive tape back in his bag, when he saw the man who lay on the catwalk and moaned and who held his hands across his face. He dropped the length of Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse back down the slope of the roof. He let his grip go, his feet slide, came to rest on the grille. The lighter was in his hand. He guarded the flame against the safety fuse. He ducked, reached for the shotgun, plucked out of his pocket more cartridges, reloaded.

The blast sang in his head. The explosion blotted out the siren sound, and the shouting, and the first rumble of booted feet on the catwalk.

Jack scrambled up the roof. A gaping hole for him to pitch himself through, left arm first with the shotgun, left elbow through, left shoulder, and his forehead caught against a shard of glass and was slashed. No stopping. He tumbled onto the catwalk and his fall was softened by the cringing body of the guard.

He stood.

He opened his lungs.

He shouted.

"Jeez."

He heard his voice boom back at him from the confines of the catwalk, from the short corridor below him, from through the cell windows around him that were flush into the catwalk.

"Jeez. Where are you?"

It was one minute and twenty-four seconds of time since the hollow charge had detonated.

He heard a gravel voice. He heard the reply.

"I'm here."

A babble of voices springing from the personal radios, concentrating around the controller in his glass-fronted booth beside the airlock main entrance.

"It's not in B section…"

"A section's fine. What's with B section and C section?"

"… over."

"I repeat, nothing in B section… "

"Is this a fire practice, Johan?"

"Are we to stay or are we to move…?"

"If you have nothing to report for Christ sake keep…"

"Who's giving orders…?"

"… several shots, rifle fire, I think, sounded like A section."

"Was that a bang on the outer wall…?"

"What has happened to the lights…?"

"Duty Officer, do you hear me?"

"Has the military been telephoned…?"

Chaos sweeping the ears of the controller.

•* •

The guard in the sentry box thought of the man he had seen with the gun and the length of circular metal, the man who had been talking with the wife of the deputy commissioner.

He felt the crimson of panic, that he would be blamed, surging up from his gut.

• •*

There were five prison staff locked into the main C section corridor. None of them had a weapon, they were in contact with prisoners. They cowered on their haunches in the corridor.

Locked into C section 2's corridor, Sergeant Oosthuizen shouted into the wall telephone, but he could find no one to listen…