Synbat

Prologue

The luminous minute hand slid one digit as the second hand rounded the twelve. Two more minutes. As beads of sweat formed on his brow, Chico Lopez's eyes and mind were totally absorbed by the march of time on his wrist. For the hundredth time he shifted uncomfortably on the state-issue mattress, careful not to dislodge the three hacksaw blades carefully hidden inside the back of his belt.

A flash of lightning flickered through the tall barred windows that lined the outside walls of Cell Block C, illuminating the building's Gothic architecture. Chico's cell was on the first level of the six-tier stack of eight-by-eight cubicles. Eddyville State Prison had been built at the turn of the century, when attractive surroundings for inmates had been an incomprehensible concept. The prison looked its task both inside and out: high gray stone walls with block turrets at all corners, perched on a hill overlooking the northern end of Lake Barkley. With the darkness of the thunderstorm adding to the blackness of night, only the occasional flares of lightning displayed the entire edifice. The searchlights from the guard towers fought a losing battle against the sheets of rain that pounded the Kentucky grassland outside the walls and the red dirt inside.

Another minute ticked off. Time. Chico quietly slid out of bed, taking his sheet with him, and stole over to the cell door. He'd been cutting the locking bolt now for a week, millimeter by millimeter. The last remaining fragment of bolt gave under his tug and he was out in the hallway. Chico's cellmate continued to snore, unaware that the first and easiest door to freedom was open.

As Chico turned the corner where the long tiers of cells met a cross corridor, two figures loomed out of the shadows. He pushed his accomplices into a dark recess in the outside wall where the main pipe for the fire sprinkler system rose to the ceiling eighty feet above. By crowding in, the three were out of sight unless someone walked directly in front of them and peered in.

"You're late," the larger of the two men hissed nervously, his eyes glinting in the dark.

"Fuck you, Parson," Chico replied as he took the bed sheets from the two men and tied them to his. "I'm on time. Give me your blades."

The other two convicts, Parson and Hill, handed over one hacksaw blade each. Chico tucked them under his belt with his own three blades. "When you see me go out, you climb up."

He looped the three sheets over his shoulder and grabbed the sprinkler pipe. Wedging himself between it and the wall, he crabbed up. He didn't look down as the dirty concrete floor receded. Thirty feet up he reached the base of an old window, aligned with the third tier of cells fifteen feet away.

Vertical iron bars eight inches apart ran from the masonry at the bottom of the window, all the way up to the top, twenty feet above. Chico tied off the end of the sheets to the closest bar and locked his right leg over one of the stanchions holding the sprinkler pipe to the wall, so that his hands were free. Then he slipped one of the hacksaw blades out from under his belt and began cutting. The blades had cost Parson a hundred dollars each in a covert deal with one of the contract workers building the new cell block. Half a grand for five pieces of steel was the cost of freedom for Chico and his partners.

After ten minutes and two dulled blades, a foot-and-a-half section of the first bar finally came free. Chico had planned to take out three sections across, but it looked as though they might be a hundred bucks short. He used longer strokes on the next bar, utilizing every part of the blade, his fingers tearing as he tried to hold onto the sweaty metal. He cut through the second bar in seven minutes, with some good teeth remaining on the fourth blade.

Above the usual coughing and snoring that resounded through the block at night, Chico could hear nervous rustling down below. It was more than twenty minutes since they'd left their cells; they had less than fifteen before a guard would make his rounds. If they were out by then, they might stay undetected until morning. If they weren't out, with Hill and Parson standing at the bottom of the pipe and Chico illuminated against the window, they would be spotted immediately. Chico cut faster, ignoring the blood that was now flowing from his slashed fingers.

Chico made the bottom cut on the last bar using the final good blade. He cut more than three-quarters of the way through the top of the bar before the blade was completely dull. Holding onto the remaining bars, Chico pressed both feet against the third bar and pushed with all his might. The bar bent ever so slightly, but that was all he needed. Wrapping part of the string of sheets around his fist, he punched out the bottom of the window; then he threw the cloth out into the pouring rain to hang down onto the slick outer wall of the cell block.

Hissing to let the other two know to come up, Chico forced his body in between the bars, his slight, five-and-a-half-foot frame making it through with little room to spare. He looked down at the wet mud forty feet below, then firmly grasped the sheets, which hardly covered a third of the distance. Hand over hand he lowered himself until he was hanging onto the very end. With a brief prayer, Chico let go and slammed into the ground, rolling over in the mud then onto his feet, all systems still functioning. He squinted up into the pouring rain and could see Parson's head pop out the window above.

Parson made it halfway out the window and then became stuck, the bar not bent far enough for his ponderous gut. Behind him, Hill put both feet squarely on Parson's rear and shoved. Parson let out a squeal of pain as the jagged edges of the cut pipe tore into his skin. Hill didn't hesitate and kicked again, popping Parson free. The fat man barely had time to grab the sheet rope before he was sliding down. The end of the sheets slid through his fingers and he was in free-fall for two seconds before landing with a loud plop in front of Chico.

"I broke my leg!"

"Shut the fuck up!" Chico warned, kneeling over him. He felt the indicated appendage. "It ain't broken. Get on your feet or I'll cut your fucking throat right here."

Hill hit on his feet and forward-rolled to absorb the impact of the fall. He popped up. "Let's go."

Together, Hill and Chico grabbed Parson and started dragging him toward the chain-link fence, the last physical obstacle between them and the outside. The searchlights from the guard towers, a hundred feet away on either side, were distant white spots against the blackness.

"To the left," Hill directed. The three men splashed to the low ground where the water poured under the fence in a rain-formed gully. Lying down, Hill went first, almost completely submerging as he slipped under the bottom links of the fence. Chico shoved Parson down and the fat man slithered through, the bottom of the fence tearing the shirt off his back and leaving long red gashes in his flesh. Chico easily followed and they were out.

The illuminated red numerals of the digital clock flickered to 2:00. Only four more hours. Stan Lowry had known when he'd applied for a security job this far out in the sticks that it would be relatively uneventful, but he hadn't suspected that it would be so thoroughly boring. Occasionally, when the empty nights got the better of him, Stan almost wished that a group of teenagers would come here to the hills and start hooting and hollering the parking lot. Anything would be better than the total lack of activity that Stan had experienced five nights a week, every week, for the last eight months.

He didn't even have to make rounds of the compact one-story building that was his nightly domain. Everything to be surveilled was displayed on the small TV screens stacked on the semicircular desk that was Stan's post in the building's front foyer. He listlessly scanned the twelve screens. Nothing on the three outside cameras other than the heavy spatter of rain sprinkling the darkened Tennessee countryside. The arc lights on the roof of the building barely penetrated the wet night, straining to reach the wood line on three sides of the building.

The parking lot out front was dimly lit by several light poles. The only present occupant of that lot was Stan's beat-up, old pickup truck, its drooping fenders a stark contrast to the clean lines of the modern building he guarded.

Stan shifted his gaze back to the internal cameras. Six screens showed empty offices. Two showed larger rooms that reminded Stan of the chemistry lab many years ago in high school. The last screen portrayed the main corridor that stretched the length of the building, accessed by double doors to his rear. That corridor ended in another double door with a boldly lettered restricted access warning painted on it.

Stan didn't know what was beyond those end doors, but he did know that everything the people in this building worked on was highly classified by the government. Whatever was behind those doors was something more highly classified than his secret clearance. Stan understood that, and asked no questions. One of the things that his twenty-four years as a noncommissioned officer in the army had taught him was the importance of security. If the feds said he didn't have a need to know what was back there, then that was fine with Stan. The name on the front of the building, and on Stan's paychecks — Biotech Engineering — meant nothing to him. Quite frankly, Stan wasn't overly curious about what happened here during the day. As long as they paid him on time, they could do any damn thing they pleased.

He lifted his feet off the desk and eased them to the floor. His knees constantly ached, the result of too many years carrying a rucksack in the infantry. Pouring a cup of coffee from his thermos, Stan glanced at the computer screen that was centered among the telemonitors. In all his time on the job, Stan had never seen anything come across the screen — just the cursor in the upper left-hand corner blinking like an eye that never slept.

Stan had been briefed that all the building's alarms were linked into the computer. If the warning light on top of the desk indicated an alarm going off, the location would be displayed on the computer screen along with instructions. If any alarm warnings came up on the screen, Stan was to call the staffer on the alert roster before doing anything. According to the instruction binder, under no circumstances were local law enforcement personnel to be allowed inside the building. The staff doctor whom Stan was supposed to alert would take care of anything occurring inside.

If Stan had been an imaginative man, he might have thought that was a little odd. Why were they more worried about internal alarms than external? Why the difference in response? And how could an internal alarm be tripped without an external one going off first? However, Stan wasn't very imaginative, which may well have been why he was hired for this job in the first place.

One thing Stan had noticed, though, was that if he mentally pictured the location of the restricted double doors against the dimensions of the building, there wasn't much room behind those doors. Stan suspected that they led to a staircase or an elevator and that there might be hidden, lower levels to this complex. The keys on the master ring on his belt were labeled, some of them for doors that were not on this floor. He had found that out during his first week on the job, when he had gone through the building. His curiosity had not led him to open the restricted double doors, though. Stan enjoyed getting paid to sit on his ass. In Stan's book, cold cash outweighed idle questioning every time. Curiosity had gone by the wayside on his first tour in Vietnam and had remained an unnecessary character trait throughout the rest of his time in the army.

Kicking his feet back and sipping his coffee, Stan returned to his favorite pastime of watching the numbers on the digital clock wind their way down to the end of his shift.

"Where is that fucking bitch!" Hill exclaimed as the mud-soaked trio of escaped convicts struggled to the top of a grassy knoll overlooking the interstate.

"Watch your mouth," Chico muttered halfheartedly as he peered at the highway. "That's my sister you're talking about." He could see the ramp for Exit 40 illuminated as the occasional vehicle went by, so he knew that they were in the right place, but where was Leslie?

Hill had come up with the plan and prepared the way under the fence when on a work party; Parson had been the one with the money for the blades; and now Chico's contribution wasn't materializing.

"There!" he cried out as two headlights slid to a stop on the near side of the highway, just past the end of the ramp. A jag of lightning showed that it was a van. "That's her."

"Let's go." Hill was already running down the small hill and Parson and Chico struggled after him, their feet sliding out from under them on the slick grass. Parson's limp was gone in the excitement of the final piece falling into place.

The side door of the panel van slid open and the three tumbled in, Chico closing the door behind him.

"You all look like shit," the driver remarked nervously as she looked at her catch. The slender dark-complected woman anxiously sucked on the dying stalk of a cigarette as the three men caught their breath. Leslie "worked" Murfreesboro Road down in Nashville selling herself, and she was none too pleased to be involved in this operation. She'd had little choice, though, since Chico had made her an offer she couldn't refuse: Show up with the van or he'd track her down in Nashville and kill her. She knew that he was quite capable of the latter, since he'd already killed four men, and sibling love was an unknown entity in the Lopez family. "The alarm out yet?"

Chico shook his head, water flying out of his soaked hair. "We didn't hear no siren, so we're still good to go. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Leslie slid back behind the wheel. Chico climbed into the passenger seat next to her while Hill and Parson remained on the floor in the back.

"Take the ramp and head back south," Chico ordered. "You got the clothes?"

"In the bag back there."

Chico waited until they crossed over the cloverleaf and were heading southeast on I-24. "Take Exit 56 when we get to it and head south on 139 toward Cadiz. The first thing they'll do is seal up the interstate when the alarm goes out. We need to get out in the back country and head on down to Dover."

Stan sipped his coffee slowly. His thoughts centered on tomorrow's activities, or more accurately, as he again noted the digits on the wall clock, what he would be doing later today. He figured to catch a few hours of sleep after being relieved at six, and then head over to the Land Between the Lakes (LBL) and do some fishing. Lake Barkley, which marked the eastern boundary of the large LBL recreation area, was less than three miles west of Stan's present location. With the weather as wet and chilly as it was, he knew he'd have the lake to himself. He hoped the storm would have passed over by dawn and the fish would be biting.

As Stan was trying to decide on a fishing spot, the lights inside the building flickered briefly and then went out, replaced by the dim glow of the battery-powered backup lighting system. The video screens were dead, but the computer display still glowed. Stan leaned forward in the chair and stared at the words etched there in eerie black letters against the green background:

What the hell did that mean? Stan wondered. He couldn't remember anything about a containment life support system in the instruction binder. The system had to be somewhere behind that locked double door, on the lower level that he suspected existed.

Stan frowned as he pondered the problem. He knew that he was supposed to call the top name on the alert roster. He looked at the list. Doctor Merrit's name was first. During Stan's numerous stints in the army as staff duty NCO, he had received more than his share of butt chewings from irate duty officers he had called up in the middle of the night, as per instructions. He knew the perils that such interruptions incurred for the caller.

Stan didn't like the idea of waking one of those doctors at two in the morning over a power outage. Especially Merrit. He'd met her several times when she had been working late, as she often did, and she seemed very odd. Cumberland Electric ought to have the lines back up soon, he figured. Maybe if he just followed the instructions on the screen, he could cover everything until that happened.

Stan glanced at the screen again. The time was down to 0:21. As he watched, the numbers changed to 0:20. Stan focused on the last line. He didn't know much about computers, but he could connect the F1 prompt with the key on the top of the keyboard. Stan punched the plastic button. The screen briefly cleared and then a new message appeared.

When a job paid minimum wage, it got talent commensurate with the price. It didn't occur to Stan to ask himself exactly what "life" the life support system was supporting. It also didn't occur to him to question the computer's instructions. Stan automatically reached out a stubby finger and pressed F5.

Stan's forefinger hunted over the keyboard and slowly answered the glowing question with three letters: YES.

Stan answered again: YES.

The screen briefly cleared and a new message appeared.

Stan looked at the screen in concern. He didn't like the sound of "cube containment system breached." Made it sound as though he had screwed up somehow. Still, whatever he had done had extended the time to battery depletion and system failure. That had to be good. Curious to see if there was anything else he was supposed to do, Stan pressed F5 again.

Stan looked at the prompt and shook his head. It didn't say anything about opening the inner containment door to extend the life support system. Plus, even though he didn't know what a level four security clearance was, he was damn sure of one thing: Since no one had told him he had one, he assumed he didn't. He certainly didn't have a level four code word, which obviously meant that he wasn't supposed to open the inner containment door. Satisfied that he had done what he was supposed to do, Stan picked up his thermos to pour himself another cup of coffee and wait for the power company to get its act together.

Parson pointed over his shoulder. "There's got to be a place open in Cadiz. We need to go back."

Chico shook his head, pivoting in his seat to look at the other two men crouched in the back. "Yeah, right. Use your fucking brains, asshole. We go to some Minit Mart there at four in the morning and you can be damn sure the state troopers are going to be there right after us asking if anyone seen anything. And then them guys are going to be right on our ass. We got some people we got to see down in Dover before we can head for Mexico. We got to get that money, and we can't have the law thinking we're still in the area."

Hill slammed a fist into the back of Chico's seat, his eyes glaring in the dim light of the dashboard. "Then your fucking sister should have put some goddamn gas in the motherfucking gas tank."

Chico glared back as the van rolled down Route 139 at a steady forty-five miles an hour. "We steal us a car."

Hill snorted. "Oh, yeah. That's fucking great, man. We'd be better off going back to Cadiz."

"Naw, man," Chico argued. "They won't be able to make the connection with the van and a stolen car. We'll be all right."

Hill pointed out the window at the dark countryside. "Where the hell we gonna steal a car out in this place?"

"There!" Leslie spoke for the first time, anxious to try to contribute something positive. If they stole a car then they could get out of her life and she could go back to Nashville. She'd been silent ever since Hill had noted the gas needle flirting with empty, less than five minutes after they'd passed through the deserted streets of Cadiz.

The three convicts leaned forward as she braked the truck. The headlights came to a halt, illuminating the sign and the driveway that turned off beyond it.

Stan's attention was diverted from the glowing computer screen as a set of headlights carved into the darkness at the far end of the parking lot. About time the electric company got here, he thought as he hitched up his gun belt and strolled over to the front doors.

He frowned as the van pulled up next to his pickup truck and a man jumped out into the rain and started messing with his truck.

Stan unlocked the doors and stepped out under the front awning. "Hey! What are you doing?"

The voice startled Chico. The building had looked dark when they'd pulled in and he'd assumed that it was empty.

"Pull over to the building," he hissed at Leslie.

"Let's get out of here," she replied. Hill shoved her out of the driver's seat as Chico climbed in and picked up a tire iron.

"What'd you think you were doing?" Stan asked as they pulled up.

"Hey, man, I'm real sorry," Chico explained as he stepped out. "We're just about out of gas and, well, hey, there ain't no all-night stores on this road and I didn't want to run out before we got home."

Stan frowned, his eyes taking in the three disheveled men and the frightened woman. "You OK, miss?"

Leslie swallowed. "Yes, sir. I'm fine."

Stan stepped forward. "I got a can in the bed of my truck that I use for my boat. You can — "

The tire iron crushed the right side of Stan's skull and he sank to his knees, his hand reflexively trying to go for his gun. Chico swung again and again, the iron splattering bone and blood onto the wet pavement. After fifteen blows, Chico stopped, his arms covered with gore and his face beaming with a smile below two blazing eyes.

"What the fuck you do that for?" Parson was blubbering as Hill got out and unbuckled the holster and gun from the inert body.

"Help me put him in the van," Hill ordered. Parson reluctantly grabbed the guard's arms and helped Hill hoist the body into the van, dumping it on the floor.

"Let's see what we got in here," Hill said as he ripped the key ring off Stan's belt. He hopped out of the van and headed for the door of the building. As he stepped inside, the bright white overhead lights flashed back on. Startled, he almost dropped the gun, then realized what had happened. Chico, tire iron still gripped tightly in his hand, and Parson joined him. Leslie stayed in the van, scrunched up in the passenger seat, staring behind her at the body.

"You stay there, woman!" Chico yelled as the glass doors swung shut.

The flash of the red warning light on top of the console, compounded by the strident beep of an alarm, drew their attention to the desk where Stan's last cup of coffee sat, half-finished. A new message scrolled up on the screen as they gathered around.

With the message still appearing, Chico swung the tire iron, smashing it into the screen. He pounded until the noise of the alarm stopped and the computer terminal was in shambles.

"See if there's anything we can use," Hill ordered, hitching the gun belt up to his belly, the weight of the pistol as comforting to him as the steel of the tire iron was to Chico. They went through the double doors into the main corridor. The sign on the door didn't indicate what was beyond, but did strongly suggest that whatever was in there was significant: WARNING: RESTRICTED ACCESS AREA. LEVEL FOUR CLEARANCE REQUIRED.

"What you think they got down there?" Hill asked out loud.

Chico's eyes still had a glazed look. "Let's check it out, man. Must be important. Maybe something we can sell."

Hill flipped through the keys until he came to the one labeled seventeen, matching the number above the lock on the side of the doors. He slipped in the key and turned it. The doors slid open, revealing a large freight elevator. Entering the elevator with Chico, he looked at the control panel. There were only two buttons: 1 and B.

"You coming?" Hill looked at Parson, who was still standing in the hallway.

"No, man. I'll check out these offices."

Hill looked the fat man in the eye. "Listen, motherfucker. You got any ideas of splitting with Chico's sister, you just better forget it. We'll track your ass down and blow your fucking brains out. You're in with us now. You killed that guard just as much as Chico did. Murder one, motherfucker. You got me?"

Parson nodded weakly. "Yeah, man, I understand."

Hill pushed B and the doors glided shut in front of him. The men felt their body weight lighten briefly, then settle as the elevator came to a halt. The doors parted open and they were facing a short corridor, ending in another set of sliding doors. Going up to the door, Hill read the number off the keyhole to the right: 18.

Hill slid in the appropriate key and turned it. The powered doors slid open and he stepped in, Chico right behind him. The room was dark. Hill's hand fumbled along the wall on the left before hitting the light switches.

As the fluorescent lights flickered on, the two men could see that they were in some sort of medical room. Two large tables covered with white sheets, with high-powered lamps looming over them, dominated the center of the room. Carts of sophisticated-looking machines ringed the walls.

Several doors led off to the side. Directly across from them, another set of double doors loomed. Unlike the other doors, these were solidly built of stainless steel. Squinting, Hill read the message painted on them: DANGER: OUTER CONTAINMENT DOOR. ENSURE INNER CONTAINMENT SECURE BEFORE OPENING.

Hill was checking out the medical equipment and cabinets of pharmaceuticals, judging their marketability, when he heard a noise from behind the far doors. It sounded as if someone had dropped some equipment.

Hill froze and pulled out the gun. "Anybody here?"

His words faded into the walls. Hill rubbed his forehead and considered the situation. Both men jumped as someone pounded on the doors. Hill edged up, signaling for Chico to move to the other side.

"Who's there?" he yelled.

He was answered with silence. The number above the keyhole on the control box to the right of the doors read 26. Hill found the corresponding key and slipped it in. He paused before turning it. For the first time, he felt fear. Some primeval sixth sense sent small tendrils of uneasiness through his stomach and tickled the hair on the back of his neck.

Fuck, ain't nothing to be afraid of, Hill decided. Not with Mister .38 in my hand. And there's no way I'm gonna show fear in front of Chico. He's one loco dude. Might as well turn the key and check it out.

"What the hell!" he muttered as the doors slid smoothly open. A short corridor, five feet long, appeared before him. The room beyond was strewn with equipment and papers. He stepped over the threshold between the open doors, Chico behind him.

Hill noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned left, but much too slowly. Hill was still futilely trying to bring his gun to bear when he felt something ice-cold rip into his gut. As the tear spread up to his chest, the coldness was followed by searing hot pain.

Hill still couldn't make out what tore into him as he was propelled onto his back, gun forgotten. His hands clasped his belly, fingers encountering something soft and wet. His unbelieving eyes saw intestines bulging against his hands.

That tableau stayed frozen for the long heartbeat of a second. A shadow loomed over Hill's right side and he could hear Chico screaming, as if from a very long distance away. Hill's own scream died in his throat as his trachea and carotid arteries were severed. Lying in a pool of his own blood, his last breath wheezed out of his slashed flesh.

Upstairs, Parson heard nothing. He was sitting at the security console, his hands trembling as he tried to figure out what to do. He was in for it now, he knew. Murder one. The big chair. Those dumb motherfuckers, he wanted to scream. The two had been idiots from the start — Chico's sister not having enough gas and Chico wasting the old man even though he said he'd give them some fuel.

Parson heard the doors to the elevator open behind him and spun around. He blinked and stared for a fatally long second, not believing what he was seeing. Then he screamed and leapt to his feet. He raced for the front door, but the figure jumped onto him from behind, the impact slamming Parson against the thick glass.

At the sound of Parson's scream, Leslie looked up from the guard's body. She watched the chase across the lobby with detachment, as if it were being played out on a movie screen.

The blood pulsing from Parson's cut throat splattered against the inside of the glass door, marking it with a cascade of bright crimson. Leslie finally reacted, jumping into the driver's seat and cranking the engine. The doors to the building were being opened and they were coming out. She pressed down on the gas pedal and tore out of the parking lot, the wheels almost losing traction on the wet pavement.

One of them almost caught up with her as the van roared onto Route 139, but she lost it as she turned left and desperately stomped on the accelerator. Low gas and the body on the floor behind her were forgotten as her eyes locked on the road ahead.