‘Level access will become emergency access, not security. They’ll all go green.’
‘The ferry dock?’
‘Uh-uh. External access is safety so they’ll stay secure. I don’t know about cell doors and internal security such as that one,’ Hamlin said, indicating the door to the scrubber room. ‘That’s why we have to open it manually before we blow the fuses, otherwise we’d have no power to do it after. You see what I’m tellin’ you?’
Stratton did. His mind raced at the possibilities. He could get back up to the other levels. But he still wouldn’t be able to get to Durrani unless he knew precisely where the Afghan was. His only chance was to get to Gann first. If he could then he might be able to resume his original plan, having neutralised the main threat to his life. It looked like that plan still amounted to nothing more than lying in wait. But if the entire facility was in turmoil there was a good chance Gann would turn up and an equally good chance Stratton could find a dark, unobserved place from which to jump out at him. The overall plan was sketchy at best but it opened up possibilities. Suddenly he reckoned that once he was through the door he didn’t need Hamlin after all. That was a relief in itself. ‘OK,’ he said.
‘You go right. I turn left,’ Hamlin said, wanting assurance.
Stratton could not imagine why Hamlin would want to head deeper into the complex. Left was essentially down. As far as he could remember there was nothing in that direction but the mine and some more caverns. ‘You go where you want. I’m heading up.’
‘Good.’ Hamlin grinned. ‘To make the most of it we should open the door at the same time the circuit- breakers snap. That way, when the alarm triggers in OCR they’ll think it’s part of the electrical fault.They’ll have too much else to worry about than a door opening down at this level anyway.’
Stratton began to prepare himself mentally for the push. Like a runner approaching the starting line, he was thinking ahead to the first curve in the track. Charging up the corridor would be no different from crashing into a house and not knowing where the enemy was.
‘Let’s do it,’ Hamlin said as he left the room and headed along the gantry and down the steps. ‘A drill saw and something to isolate the sensor,’ he called out as he hurried down the steps.
Doctor Mani stood over Durrani who was lying on the operating table in a near-unconscious state. As usual, the medic was not expecting to find much in the way of outward signs of injury after an over-zealous pressure interrogation but he did a cursory check as always. Durrani moaned as Mani pushed open his eyelids to inspect his pupils with a light, looking for any sign of brain damage.
The door opened and Gann walked in. ‘How is he?’ he asked, towering over Mani.
‘They might’ve gone too far with this one. How many times have I warned those idiots?’ Mani said, pulling open Durrani’s shirt. He plugged the two earpieces of his stethoscope into his ears and moved the other end from one place to another around the Afghan’s chest while listening to the man’s erratic breathing. ‘God knows how many of his bronchial sacs are ruptured.’ Mani felt along the sides of Durrani’s ribcage. ‘I think he’s dislocated several ribs.’
‘Is he gonna live?’ Gann asked, not particularly interested from any humane point of view. He collected knowledge of the human body’s endurance to violence like a stunt-car racer took an interest in car wrecks.
‘He’ll live. Question is how comfortably. Unless he’s suffered brain damage in which case it won’t matter, I suppose.’
‘I heard the tech say they took him equal to almost halfway to the surface. His lungs must’ve been tryin’ to push outta his backside.’ Gann grinned at his description.
‘Charming,’ Mani said dryly as he wheeled a scanner over to the table and positioned it above Durrani’s throat. ‘Would you move aside, please?’ he said to Gann who was blocking the doctor’s view of a monitor on a nearby counter.
Gann obliged just enough, craning to look down at Durrani. ‘He’s gotta bit of red froth comin’ out the side of his mouth.’
‘Thank you. Now, please, give me room.’ Mani slowly moved the scanner down Durrani’s torso, his eyes glued to the monitor that showed the Afghan’s chest cavity in a variety of colours indicating bone, air spaces, flesh and fluids. ‘This man cannot go back into that chamber - ever. He won’t survive another massive decompression.’
‘They’ve got other methods,’ Gann said matter-of-factly.
Mani glanced sideways at Gann who was now concentrating on the monitor. He had known the man since arriving at the prison a year and a half ago to relieve the original doctor and had never ceased to be amazed at the depths of human depravity Gann was capable of reaching. Mani had never come across such an animal before. He more or less understood the need for such types in a high-security guard system of this nature and accepted it was a small community and that contact was unavoidable. But he wished he did not have to communicate face to face with him and his kind quite so much as he did. Preferably he wouldn’t have had anything at all to do with them. What irritated Mani most was how Gann treated him as some kind of colleague or, worse, accomplice. Mani accepted that he was a part of the Styx corruption but he never saw himself as anywhere near Gann’s sordid level.
‘You can speak their language, can’t you?’ Gann asked.
‘A little. I’m not fluent.’
‘When he comes around I want you to ask him some questions.’
‘Fine. Come back next week sometime.’
Gann looked at the side of Mani’s head as he suppressed an urge to punch it. He regarded the doctor as a subordinate and was not used to being talked to by him in that way. He wondered if it was perhaps time to remind the man of his position in the prison hierarchy. ‘I wanna know what Charon was doing with him in the galley,’ he said.
Mani sensed the irritation in Gann’s voice and realised his last comment had not gone down very well. ‘Sure. I’ll ask him . . . Anything else?’
Gann sensed the new patronising tone. ‘Maybe I’ll just wait until he comes around.’
Mani was always careful not to upset Gann, having experienced his venom on his first day on the job. Styx’s original doctor had also been an Asian - a coincidence, although that fellow was a Sikh. He had arrived wearing his turban, which did not go down very well among the guards, particularly with Gann. It was too similar to the traditional black headdress of the Taliban and as far as Gann was concerned the doctor had to be more or less the same as them. Mani never met the man and did not know how he had come to be employed as the prison doctor but when he’d refused to remove his turban he’d had to go.
When Gann found out that Mani was Hindu he confronted him right away, telling him he didn’t trust anyone who was religious, especially on this job, and a religious Asian was off the chart. Gann didn’t think there was any difference between Hinduism and Islam and therefore Mani was considered to be doubly untrustworthy. It took a long and patient conversation to persuade Gann that Hinduism was not a religion but a way of life, a philosophy. It was far older than Christianity, which in turn was hundreds of years older than Islam. Mani did not worship a god or single out any prophet and he had no set rituals or performances - like praying on a mat, for instance.
Gann only began to accept Mani when the Indian assured him that he had no time for Muslims. Hinduism, he explained, did not get in the way of making money even by dubious means as long as there was a sound philosophy behind it. Mani pitched himself as simply a healer. The philosophy was flawed but not sufficiently so to keep Mani from turning up to work. Besides, there was also the small matter of him being unable to practise his profession anywhere else in America.
Mani had been struck off the medical register after a patient he was treating had died. He was running a detoxification clinic at the time and was accused of serious malpractice after giving a heroin addict an experimental cocktail of opiate antagonists that led to a fatal seizure.
Mani might have avoided the subsequent litigation had it not come to light that he also happened to be a director of a company that was concentrating on commercialising an ultra-rapid detoxification treatment that had not been officially approved. In addition, he recruited heroin addicts as guinea pigs for experiments without informing them of the extreme risks. Mani was lucky not to have been incarcerated when it also transpired that the dead patient was not his first failure. No others had died but many were found to be suffering from a variety of debilitating physical and mental conditions. Fortunately for him the evidence that his treatment had been directly responsible was inconclusive. But the court case cost Mani every penny he had and, unable to practise, he found himself in a desperate situation.
Mani was an Indian immigrant who had moved to America with his parents when he was five years old and,
