Lockdown

Fifty-eight

The food tray lay empty by the door, Mareta next to it, curled up in a fetal position. Knees hugged to the chest, eyes closed. Her right hand tucked under her body to conceal the knife.

Lock lay next to her, similarly stricken. His legs were stretched out so that one of them was almost touching the door. That way, even if he did doze off, he’d know when someone walked in.

It had been deathly quiet for the past hour. Then there were footsteps in the corridor directly outside. A single person, moving slowly, betrayed only by the acoustics, which seemed designed to betray the slightest sound.

The footsteps stopped. A dribble of saliva trailed from the corner of Lock’s mouth to the floor.

The door slammed into Lock’s leg. He stirred, but kept his eyes closed.

‘OK,’ he heard Brand whisper.

Two more sets of boots double-timed it down the corridor. Lock opened both eyes a fraction. Out of his left he could see Brand’s boot as he went to step over him.

Lock darted out a hand to grab Brand’s ankle. Brand struggled to keep his balance but timbered to the floor. He landed on top of Lock, his knee smashing into Lock’s left eye socket.

The knife came down in an arc, slipping down the inside of Brand’s helmet and slicing into his ear. He screamed, and wrenched at the helmet. His ear lobe flapped from the side of his head like a decked fish.

Brand drew his arm forward, towards Lock. Lock tried to grasp it at the wrist but wasn’t fast enough. Brand accelerated his arm backwards into Mareta’s face, the rear elbow strike sending her spinning back on to the bed. The shift of Brand’s weight allowed Lock to squirm out from under the heavier man.

The other two guards were almost at the door now. In a second they’d be coming through it. Then it would be a lottery as to who lived and who died. And someone was definitely going to die.

Lock pushed past Brand and threw himself at the door. Mareta lunged at Brand, the knife embedding itself in his groin protector. Mareta pulled it back out but not before catching another elbow strike to the face. One of Mareta’s front teeth flew out of her mouth, and landed on the floor.

Brand’s body armour was throwing her off. His head was covered by a Kevlar reinforced helmet. Neck and throat protector panels transitioned to the main vest. Armoured sleeves transitioned to anti-slash gloves. Below the waist, the protection was similarly complete. All the way down.

Brand swung at her again. She ducked the blow and dived for his feet. His knee caught her on the side of the face, cracking her cheekbone. She jabbed the knife as hard as she could through the tongue of his right boot, piercing the soft leather and wedging the blade down and into his foot. It was Brand’s turn to scream.

The noise from the other cells was reaching critical mass. What Lock guessed were exhortations to victory, and Godly praise, made for a surreal background.

Mareta skittered around Brand’s back, her hand twisting as she kept a firm grip on the handle of the knife protruding from Brand’s foot. Then she let go and put her forearm around his neck, choking him out. This time she was too close in for his elbows to reach her.

Brand flailed as Lock struggled to be heard above the noise. The door was being forced open and his strength was draining by the second. ‘You come in, he’s dead!’ he yelled.

The pushing stopped.

Lock glanced back to where Brand stood, Mareta behind him, right forearm tourniqueting his neck, left hand up at the chin end of his helmet. Lock knew she was ready to swivel his head past the point of no return for his top cervical vertebrae as soon as the door opened.

‘Hold your positions!’ Brand shouted, in a half-strangulated voice.

‘Tell them to withdraw.’

‘You heard him. Fall back.’

Lock stayed at the door. ‘If I see anyone, he’s dead.’ He counted to ten and opened the door. He took a quick peek. Clear. Empty corridor all the way to the security gate at the far end, which was closed.

He stepped back inside the cell and stripped Brand of his baton, radio, taser and the pepper spray he’d never had a chance to deploy. The problem with just about every single non-fatal weapon was that cramped spaces rendered them useless. No room to swing a baton, pepper spray was non-selective, only the taser was an option, but once that was in hand it was easily taken.

Lock pressed the taser into the small of Brand’s back, finding the crack between his vest and his groin protector. Mareta released her hold, then Lock pressed the button.

Brand’s body jolted. ‘Shit. What was that for?’

‘My own personal satisfaction, asshole.’

Lock popped out the earpiece and microphone connector from Brand’s radio. ‘OK, so what’s your back-up channel?’

‘Three,’ Brand grunted.

Lock knew that there was always an alternative broadcast channel for comms in case the original was compromised. It was something agreed beforehand. Sometimes it went down in predetermined increments, twos or threes. Usually the patterns were easy to crack, as they had to be kept as simple as the simplest guy out there.

‘I’d better hear some chatter or I’m going to strip off that armour and let Mareta have at it with that Gerber,’ Lock said as he surfed down to three.

Sure enough, a full-blown Chinese parliament was in effect. Transmissions cut across each other, punctuated by bursts of static. Lock turned the volume down.

‘There’s no way you’re walking out of here, Lock.’

Lock buzzed Brand with the taser again. He yelped.

‘When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you,’ Lock told him.

‘Can’t you at least get that freakin’ knife out of my foot?’ Brand gasped.

‘Sure thing.’

Lock knelt down and pulled it from Brand’s boot. It came out with a sucking noise and a pulse of blood. He wiped down the blade and kept it in his hand.

There were a number of questions that had been nagging away at Lock. Not just about Josh — he’d figured most of those out for himself — but about the presence of Mareta and her colleagues.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Lock asked Brand with a jerk of his head.

‘Test subject. They need to try it out on human beings and she was the closest we could get.’

The smartass answer earned Brand another high-voltage pulse from the taser.

‘That why she’s still alive?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘And you took Hulme’s son to make him think it was the animal rights people? Scare him back on board.’

‘Not my idea.’

‘What about Stokes?’

‘He got wind of the human trials. Some upstanding citizen in the company must have leaked it. He used it as leverage to broker the deal, but you know how much the company likes loose ends.’

‘Hulme know any of this?’ asked Lock.

‘Doubt it. He seemed pretty shocked when he figured who was replacing the monkeys.’ Brand glanced at Mareta, who was standing with her head tilted back, pinching her nose to staunch the bleeding.

‘So why a Chechen?’

‘Search me. Probably got scooped up in the Middle East. I thought we’d be getting mostly ragheads or Guantanamo Bay’s leavings, but the bleeding hearts have most of them accounted for.’

‘OK, Brand. How do we get out?’

‘I told you, Lock, you don’t. Right now, this place is locked down tighter than a gnat’s asshole. You get past our guys, there’ll be army on the perimeter.’

‘We have you.’

‘Big whoop. I’m as dispensable as you are. Soon as they get a look, they’ll light you up like a Christmas tree.’

‘Better take off that body armour then.’

Mareta and Lock watched Brand closely as he stripped off. Lock, feeling slightly ungallant, took the extra padding of Brand’s clothes and put them over his own before slipping on the body armour, leaving the helmet off for now. He comforted himself with the fact that Mareta was the safest person among the three of them. Her status as a trial subject ensured that.

The radio chatter had fallen away. Lock turned up the volume and waited. Just as he was wondering if there’d been another change of channels there was a burst of static and Stafford’s voice crackled over the speaker. ‘Lock? You there?’

Lock raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. ‘I’m here.’

‘Is Brand alive?’

‘Everyone’s alive. For now.’

‘In five minutes the military will be here.’

‘The military?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Don’t drag them into this, Stafford. If anyone in the military knew what you’ve been doing, they’d drop you out of a helicopter over Tehran with a signed photo of Dick Cheney pinned to your shorts.’

‘Five minutes, Lock. I’ll kill everyone in that cell if I have to.’

‘Bullshit. You need the woman to make up the numbers.’

Stafford didn’t reply, which said a whole lot.

Lock turned to Mareta. ‘You’re the escape expert. What do we do now?’

‘We do this,’ said Mareta, slashing Brand’s throat.