Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [10]
“He cheated me, Sergeant Wilkinson,” Doc said, trying to kick a still unconscious Mick. The guards pulled him away. He began cursing and kicking, trying to get free to continue his assault on a man three times his weight and half again his height. As the guards took him away, Doc craned around, stared squarely at Slocum, and winked broadly.
“You old fool,” Slocum muttered under his breath. But he wasn’t going to pass up the chance Doc had given him.
Only he was in almost as big a mess as if he had been dragged off to solitary. Valenzuela had told him that Doc would help get him free that night so the four of them could escape. That there were three now wasn’t the problem. Doc’s knowledge of how to get free of the cell when the time came was.
Four guards picked up Mick and lugged him to solitary. Slocum heaved a sigh of relief at that. The ornery hunk of gristle would be out of his hair for a spell. With any kind of luck, Slocum would be on the other side of the towering prison walls by the time Mick got free.
He felt a touch of admiration for Doc, then knew the old geezer’s life would be shortened. Mick wasn’t the kind to let a sneak attack go unanswered.
The bell rang, warning him that exercise time was over. He walked deliberately toward the cell block, his mind racing. There had to be something he could do to get free that night. What skills did Doc have that he didn’t? What knowledge of the prison and its system? As he pushed through a door, scraping against another inmate whose sleeve had caught on a nail head protruding from the doorjamb, an idea came to him. He wasn’t sure that this was what Doc would have done, but it was all he could think of.
Every step of the way to his cell, Slocum worried at the cuff of his canvas uniform, pulling a thread free and rolling it up into a ball. Part of the canvas had come away. He added this to the ball and smeared dirt and grease from his fingers on the thread.
“Inside, Jarvis,” a guard said, shoving him forward when he hesitated.
“I can’t go in again. I can’t!”
The guard shoved again. Slocum caught himself against the edge of the door and jammed the ball of thread into the latch, hiding what he did with his body. Before the guard could use his truncheon to move him inside, Slocum swung around and stepped into the cell on his own. The door slammed shut, iron ringing from the force used by the guard to close it.
Slocum grabbed the bars and held on to keep the door from swinging back out. He had listened hard and knew what the guard didn’t. The thread had prevented the door from latching properly. The guard grunted and moved on to Valenzuela’s cell to be sure the door was secured. Slocum wrapped his arms around the bars and used his weight to hold the iron-barred door shut until the guards had left.
Carefully releasing his death grip, fearing he might have caused the door to lock in spite of the way he had jammed it, Slocum watched the door swing open a few inches. He caught it but held tight until a dark form moved in front of his cell.
“You are free?” Valenzuela pressed close. “I cannot open the door for you.”
Slocum let the cell door swing wide.
“Bueno,” Valenzuela said. “We are to meet Murrieta in the garden.”
“You sure the pickax is still there?”
Valenzuela shrugged eloquently.
“If it is not, we use our fingernails to claw through.”
“Can we do this with only three?”
“We must dig faster, perhaps not be so stealthy.” Valenzuela moved like a ghost past the cells. Slocum worried that a prisoner might see them and shout out an alarm. Two guards played cards at a table near the door leading out to the exercise yard. The guttering candle on the table between them hardly lit the table, much less the area where they slipped through shadows.
Slocum grabbed Valenzuela by the arm and pointed. Valenzuela shook his head and pointed to a doorway some distance from the card-playing guards.