Lockdown

Sixty-nine

Lock and Hizzard inched their way out of the armoury. Bursts of small-arms fire punctuated the silence.

They rounded a corner, Lock wheeling wide in case the escapees were right there, Hizzard providing cover, the Glock extending from his right hand.

‘Clear,’ whispered Lock, a second before one of the detainees shuffled into view.

Lock started to raise his requisitioned M-16. But too late. The detainee already had Lock sighted. Time slowed for Lock. Hizzard spun round, but he was going to be too late.

Then, as the detainee offered a broken-toothed smile and his finger began the millimetre-by-millimetre journey on the trigger, a round smacked into the middle of his forehead. He slumped forward, his round catching dirt rather than Lock, as Ty stepped from cover to their left. ‘One down, eleven to go,’ he said, moving towards the detainee.

Lock stared across at his second-in-command. ‘You were standing there the whole time, weren’t you?’

Ty grinned. ‘Yup.’

‘You’re a big-timing asshole sometimes, Tyrone, you know that?’

‘What can I tell you, man? I learned from the best.’ He turned towards Hizzard, who still had his Glock trained on the dead detainee. ‘How you holding up there, Hizzard?’

Lock answered for him. ‘Bottle of Jack, tube of Anusol, and homeboy’ll be good to go.’

Ty turned the detainee over with his boot. ‘Yup. Very dead.’ He let the man slump back, face down, and gave Hizzard a playful punch on the shoulder. ‘In’t this fun?’

In the distance they could hear distant sirens, and some more small-arms fire from contact near the perimeter. They continued towards their goal, the control room, the entrance to which lay five hundred feet ahead of them.

The final approach to the doorway was over open ground. Lock couldn’t see any escapees, or guards for that matter. Presumably the escapees were at the edge of the complex engaged in contact, while Brand’s guards were hunkered down somewhere trying to figure out just what had gone so badly wrong, so fast.

Lock left Ty and Hizzard to lay down cover and readied himself to make the dash. Like stepping off a high board, he knew not to dwell on it. The secret, like most things in life, was to put one foot in front of the other. In this case, as quickly as possible.

Go. He took off towards the entrance, aware only of his own breathing and his feet jolting against the ground. The M-16 he held in both hands. He waited to hear covering fire from Hizzard and Ty but none came.

He made it to the door, stopped to suck air into his lungs in three big draughts, knelt down and levelled the M-16, sighting to a point in the middle of the nearest building. He signalled for the other two to make their dash.

Watching Ty run over was worse than doing it himself. He kept waiting for the fizz of tracers or crack of a single shot. None came.

Ty and Hizzard bumped fists, Death at their heels making for instant esprit de corps.

Inside, all was quiet. A sporadic trail of blood splashes marked the path to the ops room. Lock and Ty followed it all the way, leaving Hizzard to secure the entrance.

The control room was reinforced glass on three sides. Mareta barely acknowledged them as they approached. Lock could also see Richard. Josh was cradled in his arms, asleep.

He had a clear shot at Mareta. He doubted the first round would penetrate, but a second might, or a third. But she remained unperturbed. Then she got to her feet. Ty lowered his gun. As she turned to face them, Lock saw why. Around her chest was a hastily assembled explosives belt. Strips of C4 with what looked like nails all wrapped in gaffer tape and web-linked at one-inch intervals, a detonator clipped at waist level.

Lock had seen suicide belts before, but this one differed from the common-or-garden variety in one chilling respect. Explosive, especially something like C4, was hard to come by, and was therefore used as sparingly as possible. What did the damage was the packing material buffered around the charges — ball bearings, nails, screws, bolts. What made this device different was the amount of explosive. Easily four or five pounds. Mareta wouldn’t just explode, she’d evaporate into a fine mist. And so, most likely, would everyone else in the room.