No Way to Die by Tony Kent

Author:Tony Kent [Kent, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FORTY-FOUR

11.12 p.m. CDT

Colonel Miles Walker slowed as he approached the front gate and lowered the driver’s window on his white Tesla Model X. His military ID was hanging from the rear-view mirror but he knew it would be unnecessary; as unusual as it was for him to drive himself – or to be returning to the Facility four hours after heading home for the night – entry would require no more than a glimpse of his face.

‘Colonel. Welcome back, sir.’

The guard ripped off a crisp salute as he pressed the entry button that opened the first barrier. The man gave no suggestion of surprise at Walker’s irregular reappearance; the Facility’s team had been told to expect him.

He drove passed the gatehouse and the open access point with a salute and a nod, but without a word. The business on which he had been called back was serious and it was secretive, which meant that even now Walker had very little knowledge of why he had been dragged out of bed. It had left him in no mood for small talk.

The next point of entry was one hundred yards beyond the first. Like the previous gate, it was the only route through an electrified wire fence that stood thirty feet high, the last five feet of which were laced with shredding razor-wire. Between them the two boundaries created a featureless open space that no escaping inmate could hope to survive; the gun turrets that were dotted every one hundred and fifty feet along the inside perimeter guaranteed that.

For Walker, that same one-hundred-yard no man’s land was as risk-free as any freeway or residential road, easily passed as the front gate closed and the second opened. For a prisoner, it was the final insurmountable barrier to a free world they would never see again.

The rest of the journey inside took just a few more minutes. First through another gate in another fence, both identical to the first two. Then through the walls of the Facility themselves, via their single point of physical entry: double-height iron doors that could only open with the simultaneous turn of three individual keys, each one held by a different member of the institution’s staff. And then finally through another internal security gate, behind which was a small parking lot reserved for Walker and just four other members of the Facility’s military personnel.

It was one of those four who was there now, awaiting the commanding officer’s arrival: Captain Wes Bickle.

The fact that Walker had expected to see him made Bickle’s appearance no more welcome. Walker’s natural dislike for the intelligence officer did not help his mood, any more than the late-night twenty-mile journey or the unusually intense exterior heat that now hit him as he climbed out of the driver’s seat.

‘What the hell is this all about, Bickle?’

‘It’s about Peyton Travis, Colonel.’

‘I know that, captain. It’s everything else I don’t know. How about you change that?’

‘I don’t know a whole lot more myself, sir. Just that we’ve had a message from the Department of Justice telling us to prepare Peyton to be moved.

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