10. ARIZONA
They cleared customs at a United States Air Force base in Wisconsin. The opportunity to stretch their legs at the side of the runway while the jet was refuelled turned into a snowball fight. By the time they touched down at another USAF base in Arizona three hours later, John and the kids were sick of being cooped up and desperate for some hot food.
The change in time zones meant it was 7:45 a.m., just twenty minutes after they’d set off from England. As they stepped off the plane, the sun was breaking and the air felt dry, on what looked like becoming a typical sunny day in the Arizona desert.
An Air Force man in a jumpsuit, mirrored sunglasses and ear protectors brusquely ordered them to follow the yellow line painted on the tarmac to the terminal – though terminal was a grand description for a metal hut with a chipboard floor, five seats and a coffee machine. The only person inside was a stocky black man wearing a powder-blue suit and cowboy hat. He stood up and shook John’s hand.
‘Marvin Teller, FBI special ops.’
‘Good finally to meet you in the flesh,’ John replied.
‘And these three must be the undercover team.’
Marvin crushed Dave and James’ hands as he shook them. James realised it was a test of character and didn’t wince. When Marvin got to Lauren, he pulled his hand away and broke into a smile.
‘How old is this little lady?’ Marvin asked. ‘Doesn’t look like she’s been out of diapers more than a couple of months.’
‘I’m ten,’ Lauren said defensively. ‘What’s a diaper?’
James smirked. ‘It’s what the Yanks call nappies.’
‘So, you all hungry?’ Marvin asked. ‘I know a diner a few miles down the way that’ll fill you up with a gut-busting breakfast at four bucks a head.’
*
After stuffing themselves with steaks, hash brown, eggs and toast, Marvin took John and the kids on a sixty-mile journey along the interstate in a black saloon car. Everyone craned their necks around when they passed the exit marked Arizona Maximum Security Penitentiary, but the prison was set in a desert basin two miles from the turnoff, so there was nothing to see except the Arizona state flag and a few hundred metres of sand-swept tarmac.
They finished up at a lonely wooden house, at the end of a secluded dirt track, twenty miles from the prison. The sun had cracked the paint off the wooden slats covering the outside, while the inside suggested that the previous inhabitants had been elderly. There were extra handrails on the stairs and two high-backed chairs in the living-room, pointing towards an ancient TV that made you get off your butt and twiddle a knob to change the channel.
‘We’ve found ourselves a friendly judge who’ll hear James and Dave’s guilty plea early on Thursday morning,’ Marvin explained. ‘That gives you the rest of today and all of tomorrow to settle in and rest up. There’s food in the fridge and two cars in the garage, both with blacked-out windows like you asked for.’
‘Was that a problem?’ John asked.
Marvin shook his head. ‘A lot of people have the windows darkened out here in the desert. It keeps the sun off.’
‘I want to get these kids some driving experience on American roads,’ John explained. ‘They’ll need it during the escape and we don’t want anyone seeing James or Lauren behind the wheel.’
‘I’ve got errands to run at my office over in Phoenix,’ Marvin said. ‘I’ll be coming back to drive you to the courthouse Thursday morning. I’ll also be sending our undercover officer inside Arizona Max up here to give the boys some pointers on keeping out of trouble on the inside.’
*
By noon, the temperature was up in the thirties and the antiquated air conditioning in the house seemed to be expending all its effort on making noise, rather than actually cooling anything down.
John was permanently on the phone, either to CHERUB campus or the FBI office in Phoenix, so James and Dave took it upon themselves to sweep out the bottom of the small outdoor swimming pool and try filling it up. They found pool chemicals in the garage, but the filter was blocked and all they got for their efforts was a little brown puddle and mucky fingers.
Lauren sat beside the pool on a plastic lounger, reading background material for the mission and watching the sweat patches on the boys’ shirts growing bigger. She’d have liked a swim herself, but the campus doctor had told her to keep her foot dry until the wound on her sole healed up.
The boys eventually gave up and went inside to shower and change clothes. When they re-emerged, they stood on either side of Lauren’s sun lounger with mischievous expressions on their faces.
‘What?’ Lauren asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing,’ James grinned. ‘It’s just, the escape plan recommends that you get some elementary driving experience, in case you end up behind the wheel when we’re on the run from the cops. John wants us to give you your first driving lesson.’
Dave jangled a set of car keys. It wasn’t true that John had wanted the boys to take her driving. They’d begged John and he’d reluctantly agreed, because he was having trouble concentrating on the mission preparations with three bored, jet-lagged kids lurking around the house.
They got into a beat-up Toyota station wagon with blacked-out windows. Dave took it out of the garage, before switching seats with Lauren. She had to prop herself on a cushion, and even then the only way she could see over the dashboard and put her feet on the pedals at the same time was by sitting at the edge of the seat and practically hugging the steering wheel.
James adopted a crash position in the back and started giggling. ‘We’re all gonna die.’
Once Dave had explained the controls, he let Lauren take off the handbrake and slide the automatic gearbox into drive. She rolled forward a few metres before stamping clumsily on the brake and sending James sprawling out of his seat in the back.
Dave looked around at him. ‘Put your seatbelt on, dummy.’
Driving an automatic car when there’s no other traffic around is pretty easy. Once Lauren had mastered the driveway and made some easy three-point turns to get used to steering and reversing, Dave let her out on the dirt road leading up to the interstate.
Half an hour in, Lauren started complaining that her foot was hurting. James hadn’t driven a car in three months and after sitting in the back watching Lauren, he was busting to give the car a thrashing on the dirt road. After he switched places with Lauren and belted up, he turned around to Dave.
‘You got any American dollars on you?’
Dave nodded. ‘Why?’
‘Remember that donut place we passed on the interstate? How about I drive out there and pick a box up?’
Dave checked out the money in his shorts. ‘I’ve got enough. Have you driven in America before?’
‘Heaps,’ James lied. ‘I was on a mission in Miami last year.’
James had only managed one brief high-speed getaway in Miami, but the CHERUB intermediate driving course he’d been on a few months earlier covered skills for fast roads as well as a few high-speed manoeuvres, so he was a reasonably competent driver.
He floored the gas pedal, setting the rear wheels into a spin. As he got faster, the car started rocking and pebbles were clattering against the bottom of the car.
‘Slow down,’ Dave said firmly.
James ignored him and kept his foot on the gas as the car approached the crest of a small hill. Dave put his hand on James’ shoulder and spoke louder.
‘Cut it out now, James. You’re going way too fast.’
James broke into a smile. ‘Who stuck a rod up your arse, Dave? I thought you were cool.’
The front wheels lifted up as the car skimmed the top of the hillock. James spotted a pickup coming through the glare in the opposite direction, less than a hundred metres away. The road was wide enough for the vehicles to pass, but James hadn’t anticipated any other traffic and was driving near the middle.
He felt a shot of adrenalin as he swung hard to the right and stamped the brake pedal. He
avoided the pickup, which had swerved the other way, but now James was heading for the drainage ditch at the roadside. He desperately twirled the steering back to the left. The nose turned in, but the violent manoeuvre made the back end swing out and the rear wheels dropped into the ditch.
The steering wheel juddered violently as airbags exploded in James and Dave’s faces. The car lurched on crabwise, with two wheels up off the ground and half a mind to roll over.
When it stopped moving and crashed down on to the baked ground, James was too stunned to move. All he could do was breathe petrol fumes and grit, while staring dumbly at the half inflated airbag. His hands were shaking out of control.
Dave stumbled out of the passenger door, before opening up the rear and helping Lauren step out over the ditch. She was breathing hard, but didn’t seem hurt.
James finally got his head together enough to realise there was a risk of leaking fuel causing a fire. He undid his seatbelt and stepped out into a cloud of dust. A figure emerged from the glaring sunlight and bundled him against the car.
‘I told you,’ Dave shouted furiously. ‘You could have got us killed, you stupid little prick.’
James realised that Dave was about to slap him, but he got pulled off by the driver of the pickup.
‘Calm it down there,’ the driver shouted.
James’ legs felt like jelly as he staggered away from the car. Lauren was standing a few metres away, but the thunderbolts coming out of her eyes made it clear she was in no mood to help out.
When the pickup driver had calmed Dave down, he stepped back and let out a wry laugh. The blond-haired man was wearing black trousers and a shirt with a crest and the initials ADOP embroidered on the sleeve. James realised it stood for Arizona Department Of Prisons.
‘Name’s Scott Warren,’ the man said. ‘I just finished my shift and I headed down here to see three British kids and a man named John Jones. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but I guess I’ve found them …’
11. REGRET
James knew he was an idiot. He felt like running off into the desert and never coming back as he sulked in a stiff-backed armchair. The skin was peeling off the back of his neck where Dave had shoved him against the baking hot roof of the car.
John had dished out a twenty-minute lecture: how totally irresponsible he was, how he could have ruined the mission before it had started, how a two-hundred-horsepower car is not a toy, and how he was going to spend all the time between now and his court appearance grounded at the house studying the background materials for the mission.
James kept seeing the crash in his head; imagining what might have happened if the car had rolled, or Lauren hadn’t put her seatbelt on. He’d never have been able to live with himself if she’d been hurt.
While James sat with the curtains drawn feeling seriously sorry for himself, the others were cleaning up his mess. Dave found a tow rope and Scott Warren used his undamaged pickup to pull the back end of the Toyota out of the ditch and tow it back to the house.
The sideways slide had torn off the exhaust, buckled the front suspension and damaged the chassis on the driver’s side. The car didn’t look a wreck, but Scott said it wouldn’t be economical to do much repair work on an elderly car that was only worth a few thousand dollars.
Meanwhile, John drove out to a restaurant on the interstate and picked up fried chicken. When he got back, he told James to wash his face and come to the dining table.
James dragged his chair up to the big Formica table in the kitchen. Lauren and Dave both looked pissed at him. He considered saying sorry, but an apology didn’t seem to properly reflect the gravity of what he’d done. He avoided eye contact as he grabbed a box of fries and a couple of drumsticks.
John put a bottle of Coke on the table and handed Scott a cold beer, before sitting down.
‘I’ve spoken to James and he’s been punished,’ John said firmly, addressing everyone at the table. ‘We’re all aware of how lucky it was that nobody got hurt. Now, whatever your personal feelings are, we have to draw a line under what happened and get on with preparing for our mission as a team. This mission is too dangerous for us to have people holding grudges and not speaking to one another. Is that understood?’
Dave and Lauren nodded unenthusiastically.
‘Good,’ John said. ‘James, shake Dave and Lauren’s hands.’
James reached across the table. Shaking hands seemed like the kind of thing you’d ask a couple of six-year-olds to do, but he understood the point John was trying to get across.
‘I’m really sorry,’ James said, as he let go of Lauren.
‘You should be,’ she replied tersely.
‘I shouldn’t have shoved you,’ Dave said, as James grasped his chicken-grease-smeared hand. ‘I just freaked out after the crash.’
James smiled uneasily. ‘Maybe you scared a bit of sense into me.’
‘Anyway,’ John said, ‘as you know, Scott is an FBI special agent. He’s spent the last three months working undercover as a correctional officer inside the boys’ wing at Arizona Max. He’s just finished a twelve-hour shift and I expect he’s tired, so I want you to listen carefully and we’ll try not to waste any more of his time.’
Scott had to chew up a mouthful of fries before he began speaking.
‘Nothing I say or do can totally prepare you boys for what you’re gonna face inside Arizona Max, but I’ll give it my best shot. I guess the best way to start is by trying to give you an impression of the kind of kids who end up there.
‘Pick up any newspaper, or switch on the TV news, and you’ll see items about crimes that turn your stomach. You’re going to be sharing that cell with the kind of people who committed those crimes. I’m talking about the meanest, nastiest kids on the face of the earth. Don’t underestimate what they’re capable of. Most of them have already killed someone and in a prison environment, violence and ruthless bullying only enhances their status.’
‘Don’t they get punished?’ Dave interrupted.
‘Like how?’ Scott said, shaking his head. ‘These guys have zero chance of ever being released from prison and there’s no threat of the death sentence because the Supreme Court says you can’t execute anyone under the age of eighteen. So, even if one of them kills you, the most we can do is move them into solitary confinement for a few months.
‘This hard-core of thugs makes up about a quarter of the population, and they make life thoroughly miserable for the remainder. The weaker inmates are mostly kids who went off the rails one time and got themselves in deep trouble: guys who stuck up convenience stores so they had money to splash out on their girlfriend, middle-class kids who thought they could make some easy cash dealing drugs, or who snapped and murdered relatives who beat them up. A lot of these guys didn’t get many breaks in life and they’re usually a bit underpowered in the brains department. To be honest, I feel sorry for them.’
‘So what’s the prison itself like?’ James asked.
‘Inexpensive,’ Scott answered abruptly.
The three kids all looked baffled, until Scott began to explain:
‘Twenty or thirty years ago, a maximum-security prison was made up of cells, with bars along the front and a sliding door, exactly like you see in the movies. Most of the time you’d be locked up alone, perhaps with one other cellmate. But the prison population in America is exploding and cells are expensive: everyone needs their own walls and doors; their own locks, and washbasins and toilets, etcetera, etcetera. Once you’ve built all those expensive cells, you need lots of guards to make sure there’s nothing naughty going on inside them.
‘To get around this, modern facilities like Arizona Max have dormitory cells. The cell you’ll be living in has two rows of eighteen single beds along the walls. Between each bed there’s a waist-height partition, a small locker and just about enough room to swing out your legs. At one end of the cell there’s a bathroom, with two toilets, three urinals and two shower stalls. A few metres above your heads is a metal g
antry, from where hacks like me can look down and keep an eye on you.
‘The good thing about this arrangement is that it gives you twenty-four-hour access to Curtis Oxford. The bad news is that if one of your cellmates takes a dislike to you, he’ll have twenty-four-hour access to you.’
‘How much violence is there?’ Dave asked.
‘In the three months I’ve been on that cellblock, I’ve only seen two stabbings, but there are regular fistfights and the weaker inmates get badly bullied. Young offenders’ units are often nicknamed gladiator schools, because you’ve got no option but to learn to fight. Teenage boys are the most impulsive and dangerous section of the prison population.’
John interrupted. ‘This is why we want you guys in and out of Arizona Max within two weeks.’
‘Don’t the guards do anything to stop the violence?’ Lauren asked.
Scott shook his head. ‘The guards – or hacks as everyone on the inside calls them – aren’t going to do you any favours. The prison is twenty per cent understaffed and pay isn’t far above minimum wage, so don’t expect them to risk their necks on your behalf.
‘In the daytime there’s about one hack for every forty inmates, at night it drops to one for every hundred. Those kind of staffing levels mean you’re on your own. If things get brutal, we might fire a couple of baton rounds down from the gantry to break up a fight and we’ll drag someone off to the prison hospital if there’s a lot of blood sloshing around. Apart from that, you’ve got to fend for yourself.’
‘So what’s the best way to deal with the violence?’ James asked.
‘You can’t show any weakness,’ Scott said. ‘The second you walk into that cell, there are gonna be thirty guys sizing you up. The bad guys will want to know if they can get their hands on your money and belongings. The weaker inmates need to know if you’re going to be trying to get your hands on their stuff, or if you’re one of the real psychopaths who’ll beat them up just for the fun of it.