The Thunderous Enemy

Chapter 3

RAIN dashed against the window as Rogan peered into the darkness . After a while, he went to tire door and stood listening, and from below the steel gate clanged hollowly as the Duty Officer closed it after him .

He turned and grinned tightly , his face shadowed in the dim light . “A hell of a night for it .”

Martin was lying on his bed reading a book , and he pushed himself up on one elbow . “For what ?”

Rogan hunched next to him and said tranquilly , “I am crashing out , Jigger . Whose side are you on ?”

“Why , yours, Irish, you do not need to ask.” The old man’s face was grey with a feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness and he swung his legs to the floo r. “What do you want me to do ? ”

“ Open the door ,” Rogan said . “Just that. When I’ve gone, you leave it unlocked, get back on your bed and stay there till they turn out the cells at seven .”

Martin licked his lips nervously. “What happens when they bring me up in front of the Governor ?”

“Tell him you got the shock of your life when I opened the door, that you lay there and minded your own business .” Rogan grinned coldly. “After all, that’s just what he’d expect you to do. Any con who did anything else under similar circumstances wouldn’t last twenty-four hours before the boys got to him. The Governor knows that as well as you do .”

The threat was implicit and Martin got to his feet hastily. “Hell, Irish, I would not do anything to ball things up , you know that .”

Rogan turned over his mattress, slid his hand through the seam at one side and pulled out a coil of nylon rope and a sling with snap links at the end, of the type used by climbers .

“Where in the hell did you get those ?” Martin asked .

“They use them up at the quarry when they are placing charges in the cliff face .” Rogan took out a narrow handled screwdriver and a pair of nine inch wire cutters which he tucked into his belt .

“These came by way of the machine shop .” He nodded towards the door . “Okay , Jigger , let’s get moving . I am on a tight schedule .”

Martin took out the spoon and knelt in front of the door , his hands shaking a little . For a moment he seemed to be having some difficulty and then there was a slight click . He turned , his face very pale shade in the dim light, and nodded . . .

Rogan quickly arranged his pillow and some spare clothing from his locker into some outward appearance of a human form under the blankets on his bed. He moved to the door . . .

“I just thought of something ,” Martin said . “You know how the duty screw pussyfoots around in carpet slippers ?”

“He will have a look through the spyhole , that’s all ,” Rogan said , “and if he can tell that it isn’t me in that bed in this light, he is got better eyes than I have .”

Suddenly , Martin seemed to undergo a change . It was as if ten years had slipped from his worn shoulders and he laughed softly . “I can not wait to see the expression on that screw’s face in the morning.” He clapped Rogan on the shoulder . “Go on , son, get to hell out of it and keep on running .”

The landing was dimly lit and the wing was wrapped in quiet . Rogan stood in the shadow of the wall for a moment , then moved quickly to the stairs at the far end .

The great central hall was lit with bright lights by a single light , and above him its roof and the dome were shrouded in darkness . He climbed on to the rail and scrambled up the steel mesh curtain to the roof of the cell block. He hooked the snap links of his sling into the wire , securing himself in place and took out the wire cutters .

It didn’t take him long, cutting in a straight line against the wall, to make an aperture perhaps three feet long through which he pulled himself. Once on the other side, he again hooked himself into place and carefully closed up the links one by one so that only a close inspection could reveal his passage . His previous escape had been made from B block on the opposite side of the hall and in three years no one had discovered his route out from there .

Steel supporting beams lifted into the darkness , each one supported on a block of masonry which jutted from ‘ the main fabric of the wall. He reached the first one with ease and wedged himself against the wall , judging the five foot gap to the next carefully . A quick breath , a leap into darkness and he was across . He repeated the performance three times until he had completed the necessary half circle which brought him to the beam close to B block . . .

A door clanged and he glanced down and saw the Duty Officer and the Chief walk through the pool of light below to the desk . They were talking together in low tones , the voices drifting up as the Duty Officer made an entry in the night book . There was a burst of laughter and they crossed the hall , unlocked the door leading to the guardroom and disappeared . . .

Rogan slipped the sling around the beam and his waist , snapped the links together and started to climb , leaning well out.

The difficulty lay in the fact that the beam itself started to curve , following the line of the wall , leaving only an inch or two for the sling. It was now that his perfect physical condition and massive strength stood him in good stead . He gritted his teeth and heaved his way up in to the darkness almost inch by inch and the pool of light receded beneath him . A few moments later , he reached his objective, a large steel ventilation grille , perhaps two and a half feet square .

It was held in place by two large screws on either side and he braced him self against the wall , leaning back in the sling, took out the screwdriver and set to work . . .

The screws were brass and came out easily , but he left one partly in position so that the grille swung down , no longer obscuring the entrance , but still securely held . . .

He had now reached the most difficult moment . He carefully unhooked the spring links securing the sling and pushed it into the shaft quickly , then forcing his fingers behind the beam he walked up the wall and pushed himself feet first into the zinc lined ventilating shaft . Clouds of dry dust arose , filling his nostrils . He choked back a cough and reached out and swung the grille back into place . Very carefully he pushed his fingers through and replaced the screw he had removed, covering his tracks completely .

On his previous attempt he’d had an electric torch, something he had not managed to get hold of this time, and from now on he had to work in darkness , relying completely on memory . . .

He had worked out the route after a fast ten minutes with a map of the prison’s ventilation system carelessly left on a bench in the machine shop by a heating engineer , but that had been three years ago and there had been structural alterations since then . He could only pray that the section he was using had been left alone . . .

He moved backwards into darkness , the dust filling his eyes and throat , sweat trickling down his face , and after a while , came to another opening . He went into it head first and slid gently down a shallow slope , slowing his descent by bracing his hands against the sides . . . .

At the bottom , he paused . It was completely dark , no c***k of light any where .

He was boxed in as securely as if he had been in his own coffin . He pushed the idea away from him and inched forward again .

He came to a side shaft and then another and paused . Six or was it seven ? No , six before he roped down to the first level . He pushed forward again , counting until he reached the shaft on his left . . . He ran his hand along the right side and found at once the supporting bracket he had forced from the wall as a support on that other occasion . He pushed towards the front , then eased him self backward in to the hole . He supported himself with his arms , uncoiled the nylon rope , looped it into a running line around the bracket he had forced out from the wall, then lowered himself carefully down the shaft . Thirty feet below, it curved into a straight line and he moved into it backwards on his belly , pulling the rope down after him. He coiled it carefully and inched backwards .

Light showed through in several places and he paused at a grille and peered down into the main kitchens . There was a light on , but they were quite deserted and he moved on , emerging in to a slightly larger shaft . He twisted round and went towards front on his hands and knees . He was now at the far end of the central block and perhaps forty minutes had elapsed since he left his cell. He moved on quickly and came out into the bottom of a wide shaft that lifted vertically above his head , bands of yellow light cutting into it from grilles set at several levels .

The zinc lining of the shaft was held in place by a network of steel stays which provided excellent footholds and he started to climb quickly . His objective was a side shaft at the very top which ran through the roof and out across the courtyard to the hospital on the other side . . .

He became conscious of a strong current of air and a low , humming sound , and frowned . This was some thing new and the heart moved inside him . A few moments later he reached the top of the shaft and his worst fears were confirmed . Where there had previously been only the entrance to the link with the hospital , there was now a metal grille protecting an electric extractor fan . He

stayed there for a moment , tracing the edge of the grille with his free hand , knowing it was hopeless , then started down .

The first grille he came to was only a foot square and he moved on down to the next . This was perhaps two feet square , a tight squeeze certainly , but possible. He could see into a quiet corridor , dimly lit and remembered that these would be the bachelor quarters for unmarried officers . . .

He hesitated for only a moment , wedged there in the narrow shaft , then took out the screwdriver and pushed his hand as far between the bars of the grille as it would go , holding the screwdriver by the shaft . He felt for the head of the left hand screw and to his relief it started to move at once . A moment later , the screw fell to the floor and he forced the grille down with all his strength .

He went back up the shaft a little way so that he was able to lower himself through the grille feet first . There was not much room , and for a moment he seemed to stick and then went through in a rush , shirt tearing, landing six feet below in the corridor .

He picked himself up quickly , turned and forced the grille back into position , then moved along the corridor . He could hear a radio playing and there was a quick burst of laughter , strangely muted and far away. At the end of the corridor, he came to the stair head and looked over the banisters . Three floors below he could see the entrance hall quiet and still in the light from a single yellow bulb . He went down quickly , keeping to the wall . . .

At the bottom he paused in the shadows , then crossed quickly to the door, then opened it and hesitated in the porc h. A lamp jutted from the wall , casting a pool of light to the path below , and he went down the steps quickly and moved into the darkness at the front of the walls . . . .

The rain was falling heavily now , bouncing from the cobbled courtyard like steel rods and he glanced up at the ventilating shaft high above his head stretching across to the hospital . It had originally given him access to the hospital roof , now he had to find another route . .

He kept to the shadows of the wall , working his way round the courtyard until he reached the hospital and moved round to one side . It was then that he remembered the fire escape . He found it a moment later and started quickly , head lowered against the driving rain .

The final landing was outside a door directly under the eaves of the roof and he climbed on to the rail , reached up to the gutter and tested it quickly . It seemed reasonably secure and he took a quick breath and heaved himself up and over .

He scrambled up on to the ridge of the building and moved along it, a foot on either side , hands braced against the tiles . . It took him a good five minutes of careful work to reach the end of the building and the chimney stack of the incinerator . .

No more than fifty feet away from him through the darkness was the spiked edge of the outer wall of the prison , and beneath him an iron drainage pipe cut through space to meet it. Rogan uncoiled his nylon rope, flung one end round the chimney stack and went straight over the edge gripping the double strand tightly . .

His feet slipped on wet brick work and he swung wildly , skinning his knuckles and bruising his shoulder painfully and then his legs banged against the pipe . . .

He sat on it , legs astride , and pulled the rope down , coiling it again, then he started across . The narrow pipe cut into his crotch and he moved painfully on , pushing away the thought of the cobbles forty feet below, concentrating on the task in hand. Was it now , or was it three years previously ? There was no way of telling and life seemed a circle turning upon it self endlessly . His fingers touched stone and he looked up to see the darker line of the wall against the sky .

He carefully stood up , reached for the rusty spikes and pulled himself on top . With hardly a pause , he uncoiled the rope , looped it around a couple of spikes and went over the edge, using the same double strand technique as in descending from the hospital roof . . . A few moments later he dropped ten feet into wet grass at the foot of the wall , pulling the rope down after him . . .

He was soaked to the skin and for a moment he lay there, his face in the coolness of the wet grass and then he scrambled to his feet . . He coiled the nylon rope quickly , hooked it over his head, tinned and moved quickly away through the darkness .

Remembering his previous experience , he gave the married quarters a wide berth , striking up the hill side to the open moor and the quarry . . .

Darkness was his friend and five minutes later he reached the crest of the valley and paused to look back . Below in the hollow the prison lay like some primeval monster crouching in the darkness , shapeless , without form , a yellow light gleaming here and there and at its feet the houses crouched . . . .

Rogan was suddenly filled with a fierce exhilaration . He laughed out loud , turned and started to run across the moor . It took him fifteen minutes to reach the quarry and beyond it , the river , swollen by rain , tumbled over boulders in the darkness . .

Halfway across the hon footbridge , he paused and tossed the rope , screwdriver and wire cutters in to the foam. Some how there was a finality about the art . This time there would be no going back. He lan across the bridge and moved along the bank , and a few moments later the lights of the cottage gleamed through the dark trees of the wood . . . . .