Air Force One is Down. John Denis
back up the steps. ‘Show me,’ he commanded, propelling the little Swiss doctor through the entry doors.
As a high-ranking and, by definition, high-risk criminal, Smith was customarily fed in his cell, keeping him away from contact with other prisoners. So when his evening meal-tray was removed, and the others in his block (Smith subconsciously counted them, identifying the cells solely by the sounds of their doors closing and the number of steps it took to reach them), he knew that it would be half an hour to the guard’s final round of the day, a further twenty minutes to complete the tour, and an additional fifteen minutes to ‘lights out’. The regimen never varied. Smith would have been distressed if it had.
That evening, while Doctor Richard Stein was entertaining Axel Karilian in the Edelweiss Clinic’s penthouse, Mister Smith ate his dinner in the prison’s isolation wing with more than usual relish.
He was aware that it would be the last meal he would ever take there. He lay back on his bunk and considered the immediate and more distant future, while his mind automatically catalogued the jail’s grinding routine, cell by cell, tray by tray, door by door, step by squeaky-booted step (a squeaking boot! Not two, but one! A pleasing paradox to take out with him).
Smith chuckled his delight, and in his brain the nagging metronome that kept time for him ticked remorselessly on. He fell asleep, but even as he awoke hours later his first conscious impression was of the metronome taking over again, so that he knew for an indisputable fact that the hour was drawing near.
The prison ‘trusty’ bribed to be the prime mover in springing Smith from jail licked his lips and tried to stop his eyes from darting repeatedly to the wall clock in the maintenance block. The second hand clicked over from 0359 to 0400, and the convict jammed the flat of his hand down on the plunger-key of the detonator device that had been smuggled in to him.
In the isolation wing, two hundred yards away, an electric spark leapt out from a junction box to join a trail of black powder. The powder spluttered into flame, and eleven seconds later a can of gasoline exploded in a bedding store at the end of Smith’s corridor. Soon the store and its adjoining rooms were well alight, and the prison staff, squeaky-boot among them, rushed to the scene. That was when Smith’s cell light came on.
The alarm from the prison to the local fire-station was automatic on the location of any uncontrolled outbreak, but still the fire-officers tended to wait for a confirmatory phone call. When it came, six fire appliances – two turntable ladder-wagons, a control vehicle and three water/foam-tenders – roared out at a reckless speed into the night.
The fire spread quickly, yet the prison governor, and the deputy governor and the chief warder, all had to be roused and mobilised before the order to evacuate the threatened areas could be given. The guards drew rifles and riot guns from the armoury, and a nervous police commissioner turned out a cadre of the local CRS detachment, the riot police.
Arc-lamps and sweep-lights illuminated every cranny of the gaunt building, and Smith sat up and then leaned back on his elbows when his cell door burst open.
‘Out!’ the armed guard ordered. ‘There’s a fire. We’re clearing the block. Out!’
‘Where to?’ Smith asked, putting on a show of sudden panic.
‘The main yard. Join the queue. Hurry!’
Mister Smith left the place which had been his home for more than three years without so much as a backward glance.
The fire-engine convoy wailed and clanged its way through the dark streets, to be joined at an intersection by police cars and outriders, adding still more manic noise to the already insane cacophony. At the prison, shouting guards urged streams of convicts from five different directions into the large central yard, herding them into resentful chains to feed water and sand to the flames. The keening of sirens and screeching of tyres announced the arrival of the police, who did little apart from get in each other’s way until the firemen came.
The fire had now spread to the stretch of buildings nearest the high perimeter-wall, and the two big turntable appliances straight away hoisted up their ladders above the wall. Firemen scrambled along them like mountain goats, and trained their hoses on the flames.
Unnoticed by the firemen, but ushered smartly to the wall by the police, a third turntable engine coming from the opposite direction from the main force, also shot its ladder up over the wall. The chief fire-officer in overall charge of operations in the control vehicle screamed directions at the crew for concentrating their water and foam.
The message was passed up the ladder to the man at the top, Leading Fireman Siegfried Dunkels, who acknowledged with a capable wave. Then he waved again, using both arms and trapping his hose between his knees. This time Smith saw him.
The yard was filled with smoke, clamour and confusion, and it was easy for Smith to clutch at his throat, retch noisily, and stumble out of the crocodile, which automatically closed ranks to fill his place.
Smith fell to his knees, apparently choking, then got up and lurched towards a patch of clearer air. It was covered by the harsh white glare of a searchlight, so the prison officer he bumped into en route did not trouble to turn him away from an area that would normally be strictly out-of-bounds to convicts: the foot of the wall.
Dunkels’ ladder, and the hoses of his men, were pointed at the heart of the fire, but gradually the ladder began swinging away from the blaze and towards the yard until it centred over the crumpled figure of Mister Smith. Dunkels dropped a weighted nylon rope-ladder smack into his lap. Smith grasped it and started to scale the wall.
A guard – primed, like his colleagues, to watch for signs of a break-out – caught the unnatural movement of the human fly in the corner of his vision, and shouted a warning. As he charged over to the gyrating figure he saw the rope-ladder, and leapt for its trailing end. But Dunkels had already jerked his hose away from the flames and was swivelling it downwards. Carefully avoiding Smith, he aimed the hose, and the high-pressure jet of water took the guard full in the chest, slamming him to the ground and pinning him there like a butterfly in a specimen case.
Smith reached the top of the wall and clutched the turntable ladder, which retracted, dropped its angle, and deposited him on the ground by the fire-engine. The hard-pressed fire chief also had the bad luck to notice Smith’s escape. He ran in the direction of the third appliance, the presence of which had been bothering him for some little while.
Dunkels, in the still-retracting ladder, gave him the full treatment, bowling him over like a ninepin and then worrying him until he crawled back to his control wagon, where sympathetic hands hauled him inside.
Smith jumped into the cab, and the driver gunned the motor and moved the appliance away at top speed, sirens blaring. Dunkels, perched on the end of the now horizontal ladder, used his hose like a tail-gunner to deadly effect, scattering startled firemen and CRS toughies who tried vainly to stop them.
The madly racing fire-engine left the city limits at an impossible speed five minutes later. In a quiet country road, the appliance stopped. The crew got out, peeled off their uniforms, and six of them piled into a neutral-coloured van which matched the name on their early-shift construction workers’ overalls.
Smith, Dunkels and the remaining three boarded a pair of Citroën cars, where changes of clothing were waiting for them. The limousines moved off together, and Smith heaved a sigh of profound relief.
‘Excellent, Dunkels,’ he said, ‘truly excellent. Now – get me a safe-house and a woman, in that order.’
Dunkels grinned. ‘Should you wish to reverse the order, sir,’ he said, ‘there’s a woman in the back of the other car.’
Karilian had reluctantly allowed Stein to take the lead when the surgeon ordered him to be gloved, masked and gowned, then demonstrated beyond doubt that Jagger was no longer in the operating theatre.
They reached Jagger’s off-limits suite, and Stein kept the bad news from him until they had tiptoed across to Jagger’s bedside. ‘What the hell’s this?’ Karilian burst out, jabbing a stubby finger at the bandaged head. ‘I want