Read Online The Prisoner by Carlos J. Cortes - Free Book Online Page B

deepened. To form the tiny furrows in the hard steel, the brushes must be powered with awesome force. The machine would have turned them to mincemeat in a heartbeat.
    “Hurry up!” Lukas looked paler than ever.
    Laurel was already running, her painful legs forgotten. The thumping and splashing resumed behind her.
    “Whoever sent the pig down knows how far out we couldhave traveled. Once they’re sure we couldn’t have gone any farther, they’ll put the pig in reverse.”
    “Great,” Raul grunted.
    After leaving two more access holes behind, Laurel’s legs lightened. Four hundred yards to go.
    “Do we climb the next utility shaft?” She couldn’t wait to get out of the damn tube.
    “You’ve got to be kidding,” Lukas said. “These shafts are capped by covers. You can see them at intervals in the aisle between the lanes, when driving on the ring road around the cube. The covers are high security and computer-controlled. By now there will be hundreds of DHS Special Forces out there. In fewer than ten minutes, operators will overrule the computer program, the hatches will pop open, and the heat will pour down.”
    “Cut the crap,” Raul growled. “How do we get out?”
    “Through a side door.”
    “I thought you said the utility holes were the only means of access.” Laurel strained her ears. It could be tinnitus or her imagination, but she could have sworn the tunnel was filling with the grating sound again.
    “I did.”
    They reached the final access hole and the sound increased. It wasn’t in her mind; it was coming toward them.
    “Run!”
    “Where to?” she screamed. “It’s coming at us!”
    “Ahead!”
    “Ahead? Where? We’ll never make the next one!”
    Twenty yards farther down the tube, a powerful yellowish light flared through a square opening.
    The grinding sound filled the tube. Blindly, the rags propelling her legs at odd angles, Laurel reached the opening and dove in.
    In quick succession, like late commuters piling into a speeding bus, Raul, with Russo over his shoulder, and Lukas flew after her, landing in a mushy quagmire. The roar grew, expanded by the void of a huge concrete tunnel.
    Laurel opened her eyes in time to see a blur of sparks flashby the entrance, and her nose filled with a waft of rabid stench.
    “Shit!”
    A rueful chuckle issued from the entrance, half drowned by the receding sound of the brushing machine. “Precisely.”
    Laurel turned toward the voice. At either side of the opening, an old man in yellow oil clothes and tall waders hefted a curved section of steel into place. A third man fired a high-powered gas lance to weld it back.
    Before sliding black goggles over his eyes, the welder gave her a quick once-over.
    “Nice color.”

chapter 10
     

     
    18:33
    Senator Jerome Palmer darted a quick glance over his reading glasses toward the door of his study. He remembered leaving it ajar a while ago when he went to the kitchen for a drink, but now the gap was widening by inches. Hiking his glasses up the bridge of his nose, Palmer turned a page of the thick, legal-bound document he had been reading and lowered his head, keeping tabs on the door out of the corner of his eye.
    When the gap was a foot wide, the prowler scurried in, wielding a large revolver. He flattened his back to the far corner of the bookcases lining the room and closed in, moving with measured steps.
    Palmer waited until the intruder was almost upon him before letting go of the document and raising both hands above his head.
    “I surrender.”
    Choking with delighted giggles, his grandson, Timmy, returned his plastic .45 to a holster that almost reached the floor and rushed to wrap tiny arms around Palmer’s legs.
    “Yup, you got me this time, Timmy. I didn’t have a chance. You’re getting good.” Palmer ruffled the child’s hair. “What are you today?”
    “The law.” Timmy pointed to a shiny plastic star clipped to his T-shirt.
    “I see. But only yesterday you were a Comanche