Devil’s Road

corridor. The cell block’s main doors weren’t centrally controlled, and the other prisoners had started applying themselves to the problem of opening them with considerable vigour. Most, like Yara and Dutch, had little or nothing to lose.
It occurred to Dutch whoever had shut down the power must also have disabled the backup generators designed for such an eventuality. Clearly someone had thought this through.
Dutch looked around, trying to figure out her next move. A dark mass on the floor of a neighbouring cell resolved into a body, outlined by a growing pool of blood. When you put nearly fifteen hundred extraordinarily dangerous people together in the same confined space for a number of years, she had soon discovered following her incarceration, certain enmities tended to develop. There would be more such reckonings before daylight arrived. Survival meant putting as much distance between her and anyone else who might feel the same way towards her.
Making her way down the corridor away from the main entrance, she found a steel conduit bolted to a wall and rising to the ceiling. One of the skylights looked like it might be within reach, were she to shimmy up the pipe.
It took some effort, but Dutch managed to grip the pipe around its circumference with her hands and knees. After several minutes of steady work, she’d managed to climb all the way up to the ceiling. She rested there for a moment, her skin slick and her leg and arm muscles burning. On any other day the guards would have beaten her unconscious and thrown her into solitary confinement by now.
Gripping the conduit tight with both knees, Dutch reached out with one hand and managed to snag a catch on the skylight. It consisted of about a half dozen panes of strengthened glass, each of which swung upwards independent of the others. Dutch pushed it open with fumbling fingers and gripped the metal edge of the frame.
A roar came from the far end of the corridor, and Dutch guessed the main cell block door had been forced open. She resisted the urge to climb back down and join them. She’d made too many enemies over the last five years for it to be worth the risk.
Dutch grabbed hold of the frame with her other hand as well before unlocking her knees from around the conduit. She hung loose for a moment, then pulled herself up, all the while employing some of the more colourful Russian expletives Yara had taught her. At last she emerged into the night air, straining to pull the rest of her body onto the roof.
She lay there panting for a while, then stood and looked across a flat roof coated in asphalt. A flash of light came from the direction of the main gates, followed by the echoing sound of gunfire. At a guess, the guards were fighting to restore order. From further off came the distant wail of more sirens, this time belonging to police cars.
Dutch searched around and soon located a gutter pipe bolted to the block’s outer wall. She worked her way down to the ground before running across an expanse of concrete towards the three-metre high wall surrounding the prison. She crouched in the shadows and listened until she felt sure none of the other prisoners had come this way.
She looked up at the top of the wall and realised, with a rush of despair, that she hadn’t thought through how she’d get over it. Could be with all the prisoners milling about at the front gates, or making a run for it, her chances of escaping that way weren’t so bad…
Before she could do anything more, Dutch heard an indrawn breath from behind her shoulder.
She started to twist around, the shank gripped hard in one hand, and felt a boot connect with her ribs. She fell backwards, and a fist soon followed, sending her sprawling. The shank went skittering into the shadows and out of sight.
Dutch coughed and grunted, then tried to get up. Her assailant shoved her back down with a boot.
Dutch looked up to see a small, almost grandmotherly woman in late middle-age. She had large white teeth that gleamed from beneath blond hair cut close to the scalp. Anna Dubayev, the Cannibal of the Steppes. She grinned at Dutch, a meat-cleaver clutched in one hand.
Dutch stared at the cleaver and wondered how the hell she’d kept it hidden from the guards all these years.
‘Oh, bublik,’ said Anna, ‘were you going to leave without saying goodbye to your old friend?’
‘I thought I’d wait until we were all a long way away from here, Anna,’ Dutch grunted, her eyes mesmerised by the cleaver. ‘Wouldn’t want to get myself locked up all over again, now, would I?’
Anna laughed. ‘They’ll catch us all soon enough.’ She shifted the cleaver into her other hand, her smile growing wider. ‘This might be the only chance I get to give you the farewell you deserve.’
Dutch glanced past Dubayev’s shoulder. ‘It’s too late, Anna. They’ve caught us already.’
‘Is that the best you can do? How very sad.’ Dubayev raised the cleaver above her head. ‘You know, I always wondered what you’d look like without any—’
The side of Anna Dubayev’s head sprayed outward in a fine red mist before she could finish her sentence. The lid of her remaining eye fluttered for a moment before her body went tumbling to the ground, her thin, greasy lips still twisted up in a snarl.
At first, Dutch had been sure the figure creeping up behind Anna must be a prison guard, but on closer observation changed her mind. He held an assault rifle, and had dressed for concealment, in all-black clothing and a balaclava that hid everything but his eyes.
‘Dai-Hsi McGuire?’ asked the man. To Dutch’s surprise, he had an English, not Russian, accent.
‘I prefer Dutch,’ she growled.
‘Whatever,’ he said in English. ‘You’re coming with me.’
She blinked at him. ‘Why?’
The Englishman stared at her. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’
‘It’s just that—’
A helicopter