A few seconds later, the first image appeared on the Greylock monitor. It was the digitized signal from the video cameras in Utopia, showing, when each signal was decoded, various views of the main prisoner compound, the prisoners asleep in a pale, blue light…. “Guardian Angel, a perfect signal,” Sergeant Jones transmitted.
On the helicopter, Workman relayed this information to Guerdon. “Stokowski,” he ordered in response, “let them know downstairs that we’re punching it through.”
Below, in the cold, twilight air, Chin stood just outside the armored front door to the main building, the microwave transmitter—tripod legs extended, dish facing the sky—beside him. Chin blew briefly onto his hands and rubbed them together. Suddenly, three pinpoint flashes appeared above him. Blowing on his hands one last time, Chin returned inside. 224
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It was 6:23.
The monitor guards, themselves monitored, even now sat facing inactive screens as Elliot and Lorimer, quite active in the OD’s rear office, prepared two hundred breakfasts: plastic trays filled with farina, scrambled eggs with bacon strips, a sweet roll, and a sealed container with non-melting straw that held coffee. It was a frozen breakfast sold—when in stock—at any supermarket.
Chin popped into the office, gave his two allies a thumbsup, then grabbed the laser torch and his attaché case, returning to the vestibule. Twenty-five at a time, Lorimer removed trays from the deep freeze with the OD’s gloves, inserted them into the processor, and set a two-minute heating cycle. At the other end of the cycle, Elliot removed trays bearable to the touch—but just—
with naked hands, quickly stacking them onto a wheeled breakfast cart with multileveled shelves. At 6:30, when Elliot and Lorimer rolled the breakfast cart into the front office, Chin was at work on the door from the vestibule to the monitor booth, using the torch to etch a pattern on one section of the door, and molding plastic explosive into it. Elliot and Lorimer began stacking breakfast trays into the transfer chute, delivering them to the dining area where they would be available—still warm, for the next forty-five minutes—to prisoners who chose to rise for breakfast. Suddenly, the door to the monitor booth opened, knocking Chin sprawling forward. Elliot and Lorimer froze behind the door. “Hey, Sid,” a voice called out. “How about letting Mike and me get a couple of those breakfast—” And one of the guards stuck his head out of the door, spotting Chin and his handiwork. “Oh, shit,” he said. Though both men were startled, each started reaching for his gun. Chin did not quite make it. The FBI man drew his pistol first and fired twice at Chin, hitting him in the abdomen Alongside Night
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and right arm.
Chin went down. The guard slammed the armored door shut.
Elliot and Lorimer rushed over to Chin. The interoffice telephone began buzzing in the OD’s office. “Try to stall them,”
Chin told Elliot hoarsely. “I need just five more minutes. Lorimer, I’ll need your hands.”
“What about your—” Elliot started.
“Don’t argue,” Chin rasped. “Move. Move! ”
Elliot ran off to the office. Unknown to him, Chin quickly lapsed into unconsciousness.
Nervously, Elliot picked up the telephone, watching his antagonists on the Alpha monitor. The other monitors still showed the entire complex—including the vestibule—inactive. They had not seen Lorimer or him. The monitor still showed them motionless in their cell. Elliot decided to try a desperate gambit. “Yeah?” he said hoarsely.
“Sid?” the guard asked. “What the hell is going on out there?
Are you all right? Who is that I shot?”
“Eh? I’m fine,” Elliot said. “It must be your imagination. The entire board’s quiet. Go back to sleep.”
“But I shot someone out there. He started drawing a gun.”
“You opened up the door? Asleep or not, that’s strictly against orders.”
This last, being of course the guards’ first standing order, was true, but Elliot’s heart sank, as he saw from expressions the two guards exchanged, that they knew something was wrong. “All right, who the hell is this?” the guard asked. Elliot tried to bluff it through. “This is Westbrook. What is this? If you think you can try pushing this off on me—”
But the gambit had failed. Queen takes pawn, Mate …only this time he was the pawn. Elliot looked to the repeater monitors and saw himself, standing with the telephone, in the OD’s office. The guards could see him now. “I asked who this is,”
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the guard asked once more.