Take the Reason Prisoner, John Joseph McGuire [ebook reader with highlight function txt] 📗

till the boys are in The Cage, sir," the corporal said.

"Thanks. Start unloading."

Corporal Forester saluted again and turned to face the vans. He waved his arm and another trooper unlocked the door of the trailer to the general's left. A group of men slowly jumped out and stood blinking in the sun.

A trooper opened a large compartment beneath the van and yanked out several large bags, all locked, all bulging, all the type Bennington had known too well since the Second War.

The prisoners' personal effects, Bennington decided, and lifted his megaphone.

"Form a single line facing the gate," he commanded.

There was an excess of shuffling movement, but at last a line was formed.

Corporal Forester waved his hand again. The doors of the trailer were locked and it started across the bridge.

Then the second trailer was unloaded and sent away. When its cargo had added themselves to the line, the corporal again approached Bennington.

"Want a roll call, sir?"

"The count is correct, but a roll call will help get them in order, in the right frame of mind." Bennington raised his megaphone to his lips. "Now get this! When your name is called, sound out HERE and run for that gate. Then walk up the path and through the open door.

"John Musto."

A stockily-built, dark-faced man stepped from the line and with an exaggerated slowness dawdled toward the gate. His pose lasted only a moment. One of the Duncannon guards stepped forward and smacked his rifle barrel across Musto's kidneys. The bank robber and murderer pitched headlong to his knees, got up slowly with a snarl. But when the guard gestured again with his rifle, Musto broke into a shambling run.

Bennington waited until the first of the brothers stood panting at the gate, then called, "Pietro Musto."

One example had been enough. Pietro took off on the double. In five minutes the last man had vanished into The Cage.

"You get these, too, sir." Corporal Forester, with a bundle of papers.

"Right. And thanks for staying, corporal. By the way, isn't there something I sign?"

The trooper produced a form and a pen. Bennington signed and they saluted each other. The corporal grinned, then his expression sobered. "That's a real bunch there, sir."

"We're conditioning them immediately, corporal."

"Good idea, sir. The sooner, the better!"

With another salute, the corporal turned to his car and Bennington started toward The Cage.

Inside The Cage, Bennington went into the corridor that led behind the mirrors. He wanted to watch the weapons-check and the conditioning; he found Thornberry waiting for him.

Bennington looked through the mirrors at the men standing as he and his party had stood yesterday. Room One of The Cage was marked off into numbered squares. Each man stood on a number, separated from his brother cons by about ten square feet. They knew they were being watched, although the men behind the mirrors were invisible to the prisoners. They stirred restlessly, standing first on one foot, then on the other, looking uneasily in all directions and seeing nothing but their own reflections.

"Dalton is on Ten," Thornberry said.

Bennington looked and saw an exceedingly average-looking man. Wouldn't notice him in a crowd, the general thought and realized that he had learned one reason for Dalton's success.

"Start the random sequence with him," he said. The system was set up so that no prisoner knew when he would be summoned.

"I told them to do that," Thornberry said.

"Number Ten", the loud-speaker boomed.

The general moved down the corridor until he was looking into the hallway between Room One and Room Two. Until yesterday, the prisoners had simply walked down the corridor while detectors checked them for the presence of metals. They had then been held at the end of the hallway until they had stripped themselves of everything that had registered on the screens.

Today was different. Inside the door Dalton was being thoroughly and completely searched. Nothing was found, but Bennington could sense Thornberry's grim disapproval of the procedure.

Dalton was then shoved around the first of the hastily-erected screens and ordered into a chair. A doctor beside the chair was ready with an injection so smoothly and quickly that Dalton was under mild sedation almost before he was aware of the needle's sting.

Across from Dalton, seated at a small table behind a spin-dizzy wheel of flickering lights and ever-centering spiral, one of Thornberry's psych-staff waited for a nod from the doctor. Then he started the wheel spinning and Bennington could see his lips move.

After a moment, the psychologist turned his head to the doctor and Bennington lip-read the word, "hypno." The doctor slowly put down one of the biggest hypodermic needles Bennington had ever seen.

Less roughly, the guard led Dalton around the second screen.

At the end of the corridor Judkins was ready. He adjusted the big hood over Dalton's head.

And Bennington turned away.

He had seen too much of the conditioning process, beginning in its early days when the Army had realized its value in reducing the manpower needed to watch the refuse of the cold war.

The POWS from the battle of the little undeclared wars; the refugee camps, with their possible and probable subversives; the Army disciplinary stations....

He waited farther down the corridor where he could look into Room Two. In a few minutes Dalton entered. His face was subtly changed. A guard gestured toward the piles of cots and blankets.

Dalton took one of the cots and two of the blankets, moved to Square Number Ten on this side of the building and began making up his bed. When the job was completed he sat down.

His back was toward the general and Bennington found himself wishing he could see the prisoner's face. In the other room, Dalton had been carefully, thoughtfully staring around.

His posture now spoke of a total lack of interest in his present surroundings.

Bennington glanced at his watch and estimated the time needed on Dalton. Hm-m-m, little better than five minutes. Of course, if a prisoner was given that second shot.... Well, the average would still be about five minutes.

Might as well go back to the office and work out how much each state owed the prison.

Thornberry's call came at 1915. "We've finished, general, and we're ready to feed them. Of course, we still have some things to put away over here—"

"Skip it," Bennington said. "We can have that done tomorrow morning."

"Judkins has asked permission to go to Harrisburg tonight. He wants to see his sister about an apartment there. Several of the permanent personnel do that. It's easy to get back and forth, and there's more to do—"

"Tell him to take off. And let's see, we'll need him in the morning, but maybe we can give him the afternoon off in return for his overtime work tonight."

"I like that, general, and I'll do it. Now, I'm going to see that the prisoners are fed, then I'd like to see you in your office."

"I want to see you, too, Dr. Thornberry. Tell Ferguson to arrange supper for two over here—I haven't eaten either."

"I'll be with you in about fifteen minutes."

Because the office was sound-conditioned, Bennington did not know that the riot had started until the door slammed open and three men jammed the doorway, all three trying to get in at once.

Acting by reflex, Bennington shot the man in the center. The other two, entangled with the dead man, also tumbled to the floor.

The general promptly shot twice more.

Then he paused to think.

One glance told him his instinctive action had been correct. The man in the center had been Pietro Musto, carrying a carving knife. The other two ... yes, they had been in the group that had arrived this afternoon.

But what was wrong? He had watched these men being conditioned....

A burst from a submachine gun echoed through the open door.

First thought: They've got the armory!

Second thought: This is no place for me!

He picked up his desk chair and smashed the picture window looking out over the moat on the west side. Then he smashed with the chair again to remove the fragments that stuck up like jagged knives.

A quick leap over the sill into the darkness, a twenty-foot sprint, and he was able to throw himself down on the steep slope that five feet farther on became the moat.

Just in time, he discovered. When he peered through the sparse grass, he could see two men in his office. One had a shotgun, the other a rifle. The man with the rifle lifted it to his shoulder and fired into the ceiling.

Most of the staff, all but six of the guards up there, Bennington thought.

Resting his right hand against his left arm, he took careful aim and fired. The man with the rifle staggered and fell. The one with the shotgun dropped completely out of sight.

Bennington heard someone shouting hoarsely about the lights.

The first floor blacked out.

He took a deep breath, held it, slowly released it. Then he was able to think.

How this had started was for the moment unimportant. First came the problem of regaining control.

To regain control, he needed help. To get help he had to reach the nearest visiphone.

Glass tinkled to his right. Almost too late Bennington remembered how his white hair could reflect the lights from the second-story windows. He rolled rapidly to his left and a little more down the slope.

The dew-wet grass chilled his face and hands. His long legs felt the water of the moat creep up past his knees.

A semiautomatic rifle with carefully timed shots searched the area where he had been. "Good man," he noted professionally and replied with a pistol shot. He rolled again back to where he had been, but still further down the slope.

The rifle spoke copper-coated syllables once more, with a sequence of shots that started where he had fired from. But this time the sequence hunted further to both right and left.

This could go on all night.

He had to get to a visiphone. Yet he couldn't leave here. The moment he did, the convicts has a wide-open road to freedom.

The man with the rifle was good, Bennington noted again. His shots were grass-clippers that could have substituted for a lawn mower.

Then a submachine gun chuckled crisply from Bennington's left. There was a howl of pain. The rifle stopped looking for the general.

Bennington began crawling along the edge of the moat. That submachine gun had spoken for his side of the argument and he had a big need for the author who had used its words so well. He stopped crawling. Someone was coming toward him.

"General?"

"Ferguson!"

"Yes, sir. You all right?"

"Yes. And you?"

"Fine, sir, but it was close for a minute."

"Tell me."

"I was coming in the door to Message Center, going to put my gun back in the armory, then get your supper from the kitchen. I heard someone screeching down the hall and then a couple of shots. The clerk on duty got up and started toward the hall door. But it banged open in his face and someone emptied a pistol into him. I let loose a burst and jumped back. The guy with the pistol came through the door, still hollering. I gave him a belly-full, then waited a moment to see if anyone was behind him. Nobody was. I remembered hearing a window smash, so I looked around this way for you."

"You've got how much ammo?"

"About half a clip, sir."

"We need help. I know they've got Message Centre, but—"

"The private line from the house, sir?"

"Right. And you'll stay here."

Ferguson understood. "No one will get out this way, sir, but I'll go with you part way so I can cover the door out of Message Center, too."

No more words. Not even a handshake.

These two had worked together, fought together, before. Speeches weren't needed.

Bennington's house was dark and, because it was still new to him, he barked his shins twice before he found the visiphone. To save time and avoid any lights, he first cut out the visual circuit and then he simply dialed "0".

"Operator," a lilting voice replied.

"Connect me with the nearest State Police Barracks, please. Warden