Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child [87]
The guy shook his head. “Reduced dose. Calculated for a normal human.”
“Who did the calculation?”
“The manufacturer.”
“Knowing what it was for?”
“Of course.”
“With specifications and purchase orders and everything?”
“Yes.”
“And tests?”
“Down at Guantánamo.”
“Is this a great country, or what?”
The guy said nothing.
I asked him, “Are there side effects?”
“None.”
“You sure? You know why I’m asking, right?”
The guy nodded. He knew why I was asking. I was fresh out of computer cords, so I had to keep half an eye on him while I found the gun and loaded it. Loading it was a jigsaw puzzle. I wasn’t familiar with the technology. I had to proceed on common sense and logic alone. Clearly the trigger mechanism tripped the gas release. Clearly the gas propelled the dart. But guns are basically simple machines. They have fronts and backs. Cause and effect happens in a rational sequence. I got the thing charged up inside forty seconds.
I said, “You want to lie down on the floor?”
The guy didn’t answer.
I said, “You know, to save bumping your head.”
The guy got down on the floor.
I asked him, “Any preference as to where? Arm? Leg?”
He said, “It works best into muscle mass.”
“So roll over.”
He rolled over and I shot him in the ass.
I reloaded the thing twice more and put darts into the two agents that were liable to wake up. Which gave me at least an eight-hour margin, unless there were other unanticipated arrivals on the horizon. Or unless the agents were supposed to call in with status checks every hour. Or unless there was a car already on its way to take us back to D.C. Which conflicting thoughts made me feel half-relaxed and half-urgent. I carried the pry bar through to the cell block. Jacob Mark looked at me and said nothing. Theresa Lee looked at me and said, “They sell shoes like that on Eighth Street now?”
I didn’t answer. Just stepped around to the back of her cell and jammed the flat end of the pry bar under the bottom of the structure. Then I leaned my weight on the bar and felt the whole thing move, just a little. Just a fraction of an inch. Not much more than the natural flex of the metal.
“That’s stupid,” Lee said. “This thing is a self-contained freestanding cube. You might be able to tip it over, but I’ll still be inside.”
I said, “Actually it’s not freestanding.”
“It’s not bolted to the floor.”
“But it’s clamped down by the sewer connection. Under the toilet.”
“Will that help?”
“I hope so. If I tip it up and the sewer connection holds, then the floor will tear off, and you can crawl out.”
“Will it hold?”
“It’s a gamble. It’s a kind of competition.”
“Between what?”
“Nineteenth-century legislation and a sleazy twenty-first-century welding shop with a government contract. See how the floor isn’t welded all the way around? Just in some places?”
“That’s the nature of spot welding.”
“How strong is it?”
“Plenty strong. Stronger than the toilet pipe, probably.”
“Maybe not. There was cholera in New York in the nineteenth century. A big epidemic. It killed lots of people. Eventually the city fathers figured out what was causing it, which was cesspools mixing with the drinking water. So they built proper sewers. And they specified all kinds of standards for the pipes and the connectors. Those standards are still in the building code, all these years later. A pipe like this has a flange lapping over the floor. I’m betting it’s fixed stronger than the spot welds. Those nineteenth-century public works guys erred on the side of caution. More so than some modern corporation wanting Homeland Security money.”
Lee paused a beat. Then she smiled, briefly. “So either I get illegally busted out of a government jail cell, or the sewer pipe gets torn out of the floor. Either way I’m in the shit.”
“You got it.”
“Great choice.”
“Your call,” I said.
“Go for it.”
Two rooms away I heard a telephone start to ring.
I knelt down and eased the tip of the pry bar into the position it needed to be in, which was under the bottom horizontal rail of the cell, but not so far under that it also caught