bus at the front gate of the Cassatt Federal Penitentiary.
The first line of guards checked the driver’s ID and did an EM scan of the vehicle, then finally passed it through the outer, thirty-foot-tall fence. Once the bus was trapped between the first and second fences, more guards arrived with dogs to sniff for explosives or narcotics before the transport rolled through the inner, electric fence and finally onto a featureless parking lot. There were no concrete bumpers or ornamental bushes for anyone to take cover behind. Just a flat expanse of bare asphalt studded with tiny reflecting squares set into the tar and gravel, range finders to assist the sharpshooters in the watchtowers.
In an ocean of bright lights, there came the sound of pumping hydraulic, and the huge ferruled doors on the Cassatt Federal Penitentiary began to ponderously cycle open.
With the close of Alcatraz so many years ago, there had been an urgent need for new prisons to hold the worst of the worst, the mad-dog killers and terrorists that the courts had condemned to death. With nothing to lose, the prisoners would use any opportunity to escape, and since a person could be executed only once, taking another human life meant less than nothing to the cold-blooded psychopaths. Hence the creation of the Bureau of Prisons’ supermax facilities.
Cassatt had been the first supermaximum prison created in the country, level six, absolute security. Yet there had proved to be men that even this ultralockdown couldn’t contain, and so there was forged the prison within a prison, the violent-control ward. Boxcar-style doors permitted no communication to other prisoners, video surveillance was twenty-four hours and there were no windows. Each prisoner had his own private cell. There was no mixing with other prisoners for his entire stay. Guards in the lotus-style control room could electronically open the cell door, and the unescorted prisoner would walk down empty corridors for his shower three times a week. There was no human contact with these violent repeat offenders. Ever.
Yet the ingenuity of the criminals was incredible. Staples were attached to the tips of Q-Tips and blown through tubes made of rolled paper to strike passing guards. Dozens of makeshift weapons were created out of seemingly innocuous items, and more than one guard lost an eye, or worse, to the ingenious prisoners until full-coverage body armor and goggles became standard dress uniform.
Cassatt supermax, and its fellow penitentiaries, weren’t ICCs, correctional institutes trying to correct the career of the professional criminal. The supermax was the end of the line, the edge of the world, and damn few who ever went in ever came out again, except in a black body bag.
Security was tighter here to keep the prisoners in than it was at Cheyenne Mountain, where the purpose was to keep invading enemy armies out. The land beyond the perimeter of the second fence was barren and dead, a former uranium milling dumpsite that the EPA was still trying to clean after forty years. There was no grass to hide in, no weeds in the muddy creek, no trees whose branches could be used as a club. Additional sentry posts stood between the deadlands around the penitentiary and the city of Cassatt, forcing any escapee into the slag heaps of the toxic waste dump. A hundred men had tried to escape from Cassatt supermax over the years. Ten made it to the gate alive.
Six got over the first fence, and two got over the second fence only to be blown apart by the radio-controlled land mines.
The infamous Ossing of New York and Leavenworth of Kansas were considered luxurious country clubs compared to Cassatt supermax. But there were even more secure facilities now: Pelican, Logan and the infamous Florence in Colorado. Many of the inmates were insane, but no asylum ever built could hold the killers, and the violent-control ward of a supermax was the only chance of containing these enemies of civilization.
Many people believed it would be much more humane to simply kill the prisoners than send them to the steel-caged hell of Cassatt. Every prisoner and guard of the supermax penitentiary agreed, except for four special inmates.
As the final lock on the armored front gate was released with a hydraulic hiss, additional lights glowed into blinding brilliance, illuminating the parking lot and the grounds beyond for more than a mile. On the stone walls, searchlights swept the sky looking for small planes or helicopters. It was unknown who would want these four men free, but the list of people who wanted them dead at any cost was a mile long. Although they would be executed some day by the state, that wasn’t the right of any individual, and as much as they hated the idea the Cassatt guards were ready to die in order to protect the criminals from any vigilante justice, no more how much it was deserved.
Ten guards in full combat gear stepped from the armored bus and waited while twenty men in full riot gear walked four prisoners through the doorway of the penitentiary. The inmates were dressed in bright orange prison jumpsuits, heavy shackles on their legs, handcuffs on their wrists, and a black box encased their hands and forearms to forestall any attempt to pick the lock on the cuffs. The cadre of guards was fully armed, and carried military-grade stun guns and bulletproof plastic shields studded with electric probes. One touch and a bull gorilla would drop unconscious from the terrible pain.
“Hold it right there,” an amplified voice called from above, and everybody waited a few moments for the wall guards to decide that the area was safe for everybody to continue.
“Okay, move along,” the voice commanded.
Circling widely past the four men, a guard lifted his face mask and passed over a sheaf of papers to the colonel from the waiting bus. Blue smoke puffed from the double tailpipes under the chassis and the two additional exhaust vents on the roof, every opening covered with a steel grille to prevent the insertion of an item to clog the exhaust and choke the engine. The windows were double sheets of Plexiglas separated by a lattice of steel bars, and the only door was three inches thick.
“Here are their papers,” the lieutenant said, offering a file folder. “Transport orders for prisoners 49724, 97841 and 66782.”
The USP colonel holding a clipboard scowled at the four men standing quietly in the evening chill. The cool night wind was ruffling the thin cloth of their loose jumpsuits. In the clear overhead lights, the four were haggard and thin faced. Heavy scarring marred their faces from constant fighting in the yard of their previous prison. Their long hair was slicked down, their pointy beards oily with liquid soap. The bright lights seemed to be bothering their eyes, but then they may not have seen sunlight for months.
Then one of them looked the colonel in the face and he felt a chill run down his spine. If the rumors were even half-true, these guys were actually too dangerous to let loose in the general population of even a level-five-security penitentiary. The transfer papers on his clipboard said that in their previous place of incarceration they had beaten another prisoner to death and eaten parts of the corpse before the guards could get into their cell. They had jimmied the lock somehow to give them enough time. Some bleeding-heart liberal lawyers wanted them sent to an insane asylum for treatment, which was exactly what they’d been hoping for. But these men would blow out of any hospital in about an hour, leaving a trail of dead doctors and nurses behind. Thank God somebody in the Justice Department was paying attention for once and was moving these psychopaths to the new supermax in Florence, Colorado, the brand-new level-seven facility. A prisoner escaping from that underground facility would face a fifty-mile trek through scored earth and bare rock with helicopter gunships on him every step of the way. It was as close to being thrown off the planet as anybody would ever get. The new Devil’s Island, and these bastards would be the reigning devils once they arrived.
“So this is them, huh?” he said in disdain. “So this is the last remaining members of the terrible Black Vipers. Big deal.”
The Cassatt lieutenant stared at the shivering men in frank hatred. “Don’t be fooled, pal. Give them an inch and you die. It’s that fucking simple. You know that movie about the cannibal guy who escapes wearing a guard’s face as a mask?”
