Lockdown

Forty-nine

Sunrise was still a distant threat as Lock and Ty, dressed in full black-out gear, made a dash for the secondary perimeter fence of the Meditech complex.

Lock wet his finger and jabbed it at the fence to see if it was electrified.

‘I bet you shoved forks into power sockets when you were a kid just to see what would happen, didn’t you?’ Ty asked.

‘A blue flash and you get thrown halfway across the room.’

‘And you know not to do it again,’ Ty said.

‘Nope, did it again a year later. Wanted to make sure it hadn’t been a one-off.’

Lock stopped, took the entire inner area of the compound in with one sweeping look. His eyes settled on the accommodation block.

‘OK,’ Ty said, ‘so we’ve looked. Now let’s get the hell out of here.’

‘What’s that over there?’

‘I don’t know, man. This is as far as I’ve been.’

‘Then what does it look like?’

Ty scanned the same fence as Lock had, picked out the same razor wire, noted the way it curved back in on itself. The curve of the top of a fence could tell you a lot. Most crucially, was it there to keep someone out or keep someone in?

‘Looks like a brig,’ Ty said.

‘So what’s a scale model of Guantanamo Bay doing in the middle of a research complex?’

Ty looked skywards. ‘How should I know?’

‘You go back. I’m going to take more of a look around.’

‘OK, I’ll meet you out front,’ said Ty reluctantly.

Lock tossed him his keys and watched him disappear into the gloom. Then, putting down the black knapsack, he took out a pair of wire cutters and set to work in an area where the surveillance camera was directed across a broad sweep of open ground beyond the fence.

In less than two minutes there were two slits in the fence, far enough apart that he could slip through. Safely on the other side, he rolled the fence back down so that, at least from a distance, it looked intact. Then he quickly paced out the distance from the nearest metal fence pole to his ready-made escape hatch.

As Lock put the wire cutters back in his knapsack, he felt the barrel of an M-16 press into the small of his back.

‘You know, Lock, if you wanted the grand tour, you only had to ask.’