Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,36

he'd got the word out and it had quickly spread. His reasoning was that the prisoners had absolutely nothing in their favour except one thing. Weight of numbers. If the other inmates did as they were told, together the mob could overrule the guards and have a chance at freedom. For too long every man in there had been looking out for himself, trying to escape alone or in a small group. There was strength in numbers.

If they all worked together, it was possible.

And it had worked. There were no showers in Ferri, so once a week, twenty prisoners at a time were walked out of their cells and taken to a dry wall where they were given one piece of soap between five of them and hosed down for just over a minute by a guard, two other guards standing there with sub-machine guns. It should have been eight prisoners at a time, but the guards had become lazy, eager to get it over with so they could head back to the comfort of their mess room. They were complacent, figuring the prisoners were too physically weak and demoralised to be a threat.

But the leader and one of his men, Spider, had taken the guards by surprise as they led them from their cells. Mustering all their strength, the two men killed them both with their bare hands as two of the others worked the mechanisms to open all the other cells. A mass riot had followed, the remaining guards beaten to death or hanged by the baying mob as the place was set on fire.

Leaving the other prisoners to wreak havoc in the prison, tearing it apart, the leader had gathered his men and headed straight to the guards hut, raiding their clothing stores and stocking up on food and water. The prison was a five day walk from anywhere, and it would be freezing cold at night. If they didn't prepare, they would die out there on the plains, and every day they had survived inside that prison would have been for nothing.

And so, almost fifteen years after they had arrived, the eight men had escaped.

They made their way across the biting cold of the valleys and plains towards Belgrade. The leader of the group had planned ahead. It was the main reason why he was still alive. Before they had all been imprisoned he had accumulated a significant amount of money, which he had stored in a secure bank account no one knew about. After they got to the capital, the leader worked out a deal with a hotel owner on the outskirts of town, paying the man a handsome bonus on the condition that he tell no one, not even his own family, that the eight men were staying there. The leader and his men had spent the first month eating and slowly regaining their strength as best they could and living like human beings again. They had recovered fast, the benefits of good nutrition, plentiful water and soft sheets to sleep on, and before long all of them were at a level of fitness which was sufficient for what would come next, all of them fuelled by a burning desire and appetite for revenge.

Once they’d eaten and slept enough, their bodies nourished and cleansed of the evils of Ferri, the leader had gathered his men and told them of his intentions. He still had a small fortune saved in that anonymous bank account, untouched in over fifteen years. It was enough to supply them with everything they could need to execute his plan. Food, clothing, weapons, fake documentation, plane tickets. He outlined what he was going to do personally, and had asked them if they were willing to follow him on the path he was taking, giving them the opportunity to leave and move on and enjoy a second chance at life. But it was a redundant question. Every man in the room had instantly said yes. They had entered that prison as comrades, but the fifteen years of hardship and ill treatment in Ferri had forged them into brothers.

The next step was acquiring information about the men who had ruined their lives, which had actually been relatively simple. Once they had fake passports and eight plane tickets, they had flown to Washington DC and from there taken a bus out to a town called McLean in Virginia. Laying low and scouting out an information source, a few weeks after they had arrived they