“Won’t there be guards?”
“There’s only one supervisor on duty during the graveyard shift. Leave him to me.”
“Why are you doing all this?” Jamie asked.
Joe looked up from the telephone and allowed himself a brief smile. “I already told you. You’re one of the Five.”
“Yes. But one of the five what? What does it mean?”
Without any warning, the lights blinked out.
“Move!” Joe commanded.
He had a torch and flicked it on. Jamie followed him down the corridor and waited as he unlocked the door at the end with a key of his own. Everything was pitch black but the beam of the torch picked up a few details as Joe swung it from side to side: a unit almost identical to his own; a corridor lined with cell doors; a table bolted into the floor; a bank of monitors; a supervisor already rising to his feet, reaching for the canister of CS gas attached to his belt.
“What—?” the man began.
Joe hit him with his torch. The light beam threw crazy shadows across the far wall. Jamie heard the supervisor grunt. He folded forward and collapsed.
“Go!” Joe was already dragging the unconscious man back into his seat. There was a paperback book on the desk in front of him and Joe was arranging him so that when the lights came back on, it would look as if he was leaning forward, reading a page. Jamie looked around him, trying to find his way. Joe threw him the torch. He caught it and ran forward.
The cell numbers were clearly printed beside each door. He had to move quickly. As soon as the emergency generator kicked in, he would be seen and – worse – the doors would be sealed electronically. He could hear shouting. It was coming from behind the locked doors. Some of the kids must have been awake and now found themselves in total darkness … a new experience for them. They were pounding their fists against the doors. He wondered if the same thing was happening in the units on the other side of the wall.
He reached number fourteen and, using the torchlight, eased the key into the lock and turned it. With a sense of relief, he felt the lock open. He slid the door aside and stepped inside.
There was an eleven-year-old black boy lying on a bunk, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. He was small for his age but strong and wiry. He had short, curly hair and round, white eyes. There was a plaster on his wrist, just over the vein, and he was very thin. But otherwise he seemed unhurt. He was already awake and staring at the figure who had burst into his room. Jamie slid the door shut again – but not quite the whole way. He turned the torch on himself.
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “I’m a friend.”
“Scott?” The boy on the bunk thought he’d recognized him and for a moment Jamie was thrown. But, of course, he wasn’t wearing the glasses. And in the half-light it would have been easy to mistake him for his brother, even with his short hair.
“I’m not Scott. I’m his brother.”
“Jamie!”
“Yes.” Jamie felt a whirl of emotions. Scott had been here. This boy had met him. Perhaps he might know where he had gone. “You’re Daniel … is that right?” he asked.
“I’m Danny.”
“I met your mother. She’s been looking for you. She sent me to find you.”
“You saw my mum?”
The lights came back on. Danny gasped, seeing the red stains all over Jamie’s face. “You’re hurt!” he said.
“No. Don’t worry. It’s fake…”
Jamie wasn’t sure what was meant to happen next. He was inside the cell with Daniel McGuire, inside the Block. The other prisoners were still hammering at their doors, shouting for attention. The lights were back on. The security cameras were in operation. The entire prison was in a state of maximum alert. What exactly had they achieved?
Colton Banes had seen the lights come on too.
He was in a jeep, being driven from the airstrip where he had landed in the four-seater Cessna that had carried him from Las Vegas. Max Koring was behind the wheel. He had known at once that something was wrong. Silent Creek could usually be seen for miles around, and darkness in this part of the desert was simply impossible – it was like some sort of enormous magic trick. As the two of them drove along the track, the lights flickered on and the prison reappeared.
Koring turned to him. “A power failure,” he muttered. “It happens. Sometimes the generator cuts out.”
“An accident?” Banes shook his head slowly. “Not tonight, I think…” He reached under his jacket and took out a gun. “Put your foot down,” he snapped. “We need to raise the alarm.”
But he was too late. The jeep was still a hundred metres from the main gates when the first shots were fired.
EAGLE CRY
They had come from nowhere, riding out of the desert in dusty pick-up trucks, open-top cars and jeeps. If this had been an old Western, Silent Creek would have been a fort and they would have been wearing war paint and feathers – for they were all American Indians, at least thirty of them from different tribes, firing with guns and rifles as they approached the perimeter fence.
They were aiming at the arc lamps. One after another the lamps shattered and darkness took hold once again. But more lights had come on inside the buildings. The supervisors knew they were under attack and they had weapons too. The alarm had been raised in the outlying houses and more guards were pouring out, some of them halfdressed, roused from their sleep.
One of the jeeps hurtled towards the fence then swerved away at the last minute. There was a man standing in the back, clinging onto the side bars, and as he drew near, he threw something: a home-made grenade. It landed on the sand, bounced, then exploded – a ball of flame that tore a gaping hole in the perimeter fence. At once, a siren went off, howling uselessly into the darkness. On the other side of the prison there was a second explosion as another part of the fence was ripped open. Now one of the cars roared into the inner compound, the last strands of razor wire ripping apart as it burst through. Four men, almost invisible in the shadows, tumbled out and took up positions around the football pitch. Another explosion. This time it was one of the satellite dishes behind the teaching wing. The attackers had made sure there would be no more communications tonight.
Not that they needed to have bothered. Colton Banes was watching the attack with amazement and already he had realized something that the attackers must have known from the start. Silent Creek was a maximum-security youth correctional centre: it had been built to remove the slightest chance of anyone breaking out. But nobody had considered the possibility of a well-armed force trying to break in. Worse than that, its position, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, had become its Achilles’ heel. There was nobody for miles around. By the time anyone arrived to help, it would be far too late.
Banes’s car drew level with one of the trucks, and for a moment he had one of the attackers in his sights … another man with black hair and eyes that were alight with excitement. The man was wearing jeans and a tattered T-shirt and he’d painted streaks of red and white down the sides of his face. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Banes took careful aim and fired. But at the last minute, Koring jerked the wheel, avoiding a pot-hole in the track. The shot went wild. The car swerved off the track. Banes swore. The truck raced ahead.
“Who are they?” Koring rasped. His eyes were wide and he was sweating. Perspiration dripped from his moustache. It wasn’t just the heat of the night: Colton Banes scared him. This situation was out of control. And that scared him more. “What do they want?”
“They’re here for the boy!” Banes snarled. “Jamie Tyler. There can be no other reason.”
“What do we do?”
“Kill him! Kill Tyler! It doesn’t matter what else happens. He mustn’t leave here alive.”
Inside the Block, Jamie had heard the gunfire and the explosions. There was a loud bang and the lights failed again. His torch was still on and he swept it around him. All the other prisoners were awake now. He could hear them shouting and cheering in th
eir cells. Daniel McGuire had already got dressed. Jamie had to admire him. He had been locked up for seven months and suddenly he had been woken in the middle of the night and in total darkness by a stranger who seemed to be covered in blood. A pitched battle was going on outside. But he was completely calm, waiting to be told what to do.
Joe approached, hurrying down the corridor behind the beam of a second torch. “My friends are here,” he shouted. He no longer cared if the cameras saw him. It didn’t take a great deal of imagination for Jamie to see that the Intake Officer wouldn’t be coming back. “Now we go!”
“What about the others?” Jamie asked.
There were twenty cells in the corridor, ten on each side. Flashing his own torch over them, he saw faces through the glass windows set in the doors. Not just boys – girls too. He remembered what Alicia had once told him. The kidnappers had been interested in both sexes, girls and boys, provided they had some sort of paranormal ability. He had no doubt that this was where they had all ended up. It was incredible. A prison within a prison. And he still had no idea why they had been brought here.
Joe Feather was waiting for him to go. But Jamie wasn’t moving. “We can’t leave them,” he said.
“We have to!” Joe exclaimed. “My friends came for you. Only for you. It’s too dangerous to take them outside…”
“But they’ve done nothing wrong!” It was Daniel who was speaking. He had a high voice; obviously it hadn’t broken yet. “They’re like me. They were all snatched and brought here.”
Joe shifted from one foot to the other as if he were standing on burning coals. “When you are out of here, then you can help them. You can speak with the authorities. But if we don’t go now, we will never leave.”
Jamie knew that he was right. It would take them too long to open all twenty doors – and what about his friends back in the unit? He couldn’t get them out either. Scott wasn’t here. His first job was to get Daniel back to his mother. Then Alicia would be able to go to John Trelawny. And the senator would see to the rest of it.
“Joe’s right. We have to go.” He turned to Daniel. “I promise you, we’ll come back and help the others.”
Daniel nodded, and just for a second Jamie had the weird sensation of being, for the first time in his life, the older brother. For so many years he had looked up to Scott – even though they were the same age. But Scott hadn’t been around for a while and maybe in that time Jamie had changed. He’d had to start to think for himself.
There was another explosion and more shooting. The gunfire had intensified and Jamie guessed that the supervisors must be shooting back. Following Joe, they ran along the corridor into the medicine wing. As soon as they were there and could look out of the windows, they saw the truth. A fierce battle was taking place in the prison grounds. There were gaping holes in three different parts of the fence and the cage holding the generator had been blown apart. The generator itself was on fire. That explained the second power failure, and for some reason the emergency generator hadn’t yet kicked in. Half a dozen different vehicles had come to a halt in front of the four units, the dining hall, the gymnasium. He saw figures, little more than silhouettes, popping up to take a shot at the prison windows. There were brief flashes of white as the supervisors returned fire.
The three of them pushed the door open and slipped out into the warmth of the night, crouching down in case anyone saw them. Daniel was next to Jamie, who put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him close. Joe Feather rose up and called out in a language that neither of the boys understood. It was almost a high-pitched war cry, his voice echoing across the compound above the noise of the shooting. A moment later, someone answered back. There was the sound of an engine starting and renewed firing as a pick-up truck came hurtling over the sand, making towards them.
“Now we go!” Joe said.
The truck slid to a halt. Jamie caught sight of a driver and a passenger leaning out of the window with a rifle balanced over his arm. They were both young – only a few years older than him. Quickly, Jamie helped Daniel into the back, then climbed in himself.
“Hold onto the back!” Joe told them. He was the last in. No sooner had his feet left the ground than they were on the move again.
There was a bar running across the back of the driver’s cab. Jamie found himself standing up, clinging onto it for dear life. Daniel was lying down, being bounced around on the wooden floor as the truck lurched forward. The ground suddenly seemed to be pitted with holes – maybe it was a result of all the explosions. More bullets were fired. One of them smashed into the side of the cab, ricocheting off with a loud clang. Whether it was a lucky shot or deliberately aimed at them, Jamie couldn’t say. They were heading for the fence, a few metres away from the gate that had been opened, less than a week ago, to allow Jamie in. The gate was still there but the fence had been blown apart. He could see the track and the guards’ houses on the other side.
They drove through. Jamie ducked down, afraid of being gashed by a piece of dangling razor wire. The driver fired a shot through a window and a guard spun backwards in the sand, wounded. The other vehicles were also leaving the prison. Looking back, Jamie saw half a dozen of them following not far behind.
The wind – warm and welcoming – rushed over his shoulders and through his hair. He almost wanted to laugh. He still didn’t know who these people were but they were on his side and they were taking him and Daniel out. He would contact Alicia and the prison would be shut down. And surely someone there – one of the supervisors, a nurse or an administrator – would know what had happened to Scott. There would have to be a record somewhere in one of the files.
They passed a jeep parked next to the track. Jamie saw it and assumed it was empty. He didn’t see the man rise up next to it. Nor did he see the gun aimed at his back.
Colton Banes had been waiting for him. He had realized that there was no point entering the battle inside the prison. Everything there was dark and confused. It would be better to wait just outside the compound. If they were going to bring out the boy, they would have to come this way. And he was right. He could see Jamie, standing up, holding onto the driver’s cabin for support. He was a perfect target, almost like one of those paper cutouts Banes had used for practice at the range.
He fired.
Jamie heard the shot and felt the bullet smash into his back, high up, next to his shoulder. It was like being stabbed with a white-hot knife. All the strength went out of him. His legs folded under him and he fell, sprawling, on top of Daniel. He hadn’t closed his eyes, but suddenly everything was black. He heard Joe call out, but before the Indian had reached the end of the sentence the words had faded away. He couldn’t feel the floor of the truck. He couldn’t feel anything.
Colton Banes hadn’t finished yet. He had seen the boy go down but he still had time for a second shot. Although he was fairly sure that the first bullet would have done the job, this one would make certain. A smile spread across his lips as he brought the gun up, taking careful aim.
But he never pulled the trigger. He heard something come whistling out of the darkness and jerked back, wondering what had happened. He looked down and was surprised to see an arrow, complete with feathers, jutting out of his chest. Had it just been fired into him? Had one of these people really brought along one of their ancient weapons and used it against him? A car sped past. The young man with the war paint was leaning half out of the window, whooping. The bow was in his hands.
For a moment Banes stood there, unaware that his hand had dropped and that the gun was now pointing at the ground. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came. Hot blood flowed over his lower lip. His last thought was that he had never expected to die like this, and certainly not quite so soon. Then he fell onto his knees and crashed face down into the sand.
Max Koring stood up shakily. A few supervisors were still firing, but it was already over. The last of the vehicles had disappeared into the desert night.
Sunrise.
&
nbsp; Daniel McGuire woke up and found himself lying on a thick woollen rug in a tent that was completely circular, tapering to a point high above him. The walls were made of some sort of leather and were wrapped around a framework of wooden poles. There was a flap for the door and he could see the sunlight filtering through the cracks. It was still early in the morning. The air inside the tent was cool and the light was tinged with red.
He had slept fully dressed. He blinked and stretched and then crawled forward, pushing his way through the flap. He saw at once that he was in the mountains. There were great boulders all around and although the tent had been erected on a flat shelf, the ground rose up steeply behind him. And it wasn’t a tent. Looking round, Daniel saw that he had spent the night in an Indian tepee.
There was a figure sitting cross-legged in front of a small campfire, his eyes fixed on the smoke curling into the air. Daniel recognized the man who had helped rescue him the night before. What had Jamie called him? Joe. Now Daniel recalled what had happened. The sudden appearance of Jamie in his cell, the blackout, the gunshots, the race out of the prison. As he had awoken, he had thought it might all have been a dream – but with full wakefulness came the realization that it had actually happened. And Jamie…
“Where is he?” he asked.
Joe Feather turned. “You must have something to drink,” he said. “And eat…”
“Is he all right?”
Joe gestured. Daniel had noticed a number of bundles spread out over the ground. Now he saw that one of them was Jamie, completely wrapped in blankets with only his face showing. The face was very white. His eyes were closed and he didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Is he dead?” Daniel asked.