Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [50]
I didn’t say anything.
They fed me a bologna sandwich and a cup of vegetable soup, after which the same guard led me back to the yard, and I walked around the perimeter of the fence for about half an hour, scoping out the barbed wire and not seeing any way through it. There was not much to like about the situation I was in. Williams was still on the loose and no doubt looking for Vivian and her brother, if indeed he hadn’t already found them. Why he was after them, I didn’t know. Then there was the question of the other fifty grand the Colonel owed me. If Williams had been telling the truth and he had ordered me killed, then the Colonel and I were overdue for a little chat.
I was involved in some kind of scam, and I needed answers, none of which I was going to find at Krome. The smart thing to do was to wait it out for a few days and hope for low bail. That’s what I would have recommended to anyone else. The problem was, it required the kind of patience I didn’t have in my DNA. There had to be another option.
Suddenly there were the sounds of sirens coming from beyond the fence. I turned and saw a crowd beginning to gather around a man lying on the ground over near the Quonset hut where I’d been sitting. It was the crazy German. He was on his back, his long, angular body possessed, it seemed, by spasms that were causing his legs to jerk and twitch every which way. The guards were blowing their whistles and trying to force the inmates away. Other guards were trying to hold the twitching man down.
The gates on the other side of the yard swung open, and a red-and-white ambulance, its lights flashing, its sirens wailing, came rushing through. I glanced around. The guards and the other inmates were all distracted. I knew I was looking at the best chance of getting out of that place I was likely to get. There would be trouble later, but later could wait. I began to walk as nonchalantly as I could toward the ambulance, just another curious man in a pale orange jumpsuit.
The paramedics were very good, very fast. People don’t give them enough credit. They had the German on a gurney within a minute of jumping out of the van. No one paid any attention to me as I edged ever so slowly toward the far side of the ambulance. All eyes were focused on the mad German. They were having a hard time strapping him down. He was screaming in his native tongue and thrashing around like a lunatic.
I took a quick look around, then dropped to my knees, flattened myself out straight on the hot pavement, and rolled as quickly as I could under the ambulance.
As I said, the paramedics were very good, very fast. The van bounced as they lifted and slid the gurney up and into the ambulance. I held on to the underside of the van and kept myself off the ground as much as possible by wedging my feet alongside the transmission and by using my arms to lift my back. Otherwise someone standing a bit away from the van might see me if they happened to look down. But luckily for me the van rode rather low to the ground and cast a considerable shadow.
It was a hundred yards of hard, hot asphalt and potholes to the gate, and I knew I was going to lose some skin. If they hit a bump the wrong way, I might shake loose, but there was nothing else to do except try. I heard the driver’s-side door open and close, then the same thing on the passenger side. The van sank a bit and bounced. I got ready. I reached up and got hold of a piece of the chassis and hoisted my back off the ground. The damned thing burned my hands, but I held on. The van shifted into gear and surged forward.
We were moving fast now. My forearms were starting to ache from the strain of holding myself up, and I was beginning to sag at the middle. For the briefest of moments, my shoulders touched the ground, and if I hadn’t found the strength to pull myself up again, my back would have been scraped down clean to the spine.
Then we were through the gate. The muscles in my arms and legs were all used up, and I was going to have to let go whether