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solid to shoot out. His only hope was that one of the guards he’d felled had the right key on his person. Blaine rushed back to the center of the corridor. The man he had kicked in the groin was twisting on the floor, only semiconscious. A single key dangled from his belt. McCracken reached down and snatched it.
    Boom!…Boom!…Boom!
    The first explosions sounded just as he jammed the key into the lock on Johnny’s cell. The very structure of the building seemed to tremble, walls shedding dust. Blaine shoved the door open; Wareagle was standing in wait, his wrist and leg irons lying in pools on the floor behind him.
    “I always figured Houdini was an Indian,” McCracken said over the shrilling alarm bell.
    Boom! … Boom!…Boom!
    The next series in the parking lot sounded just as they started down the corridor.
    “The hellfire, Blainey.”
    “Literally tonight, Indian. Gonna be plenty of pissed-off cops when the time comes to drive home.”
    Between the explosions and alarm came the sounds of sporadic gunfire. A stand was being made by police against the scourge of escaping prisoners. Blaine signaled Johnny to stop when they reached the staircase. His eyes were glued to his watch.
    “More, Blainey?”
    “Just a little. Right about…now!”
    On cue there was a final Boom! that was muffled like distant thunder. The lights around them flickered and died.
    “Figured we could use a little bit of insurance,” Blaine explained, “so I wired the pole running the lines of juice into the building.”
    In the darkness he could feel Johnny smile. “Take their eyes and you take their guns.”
    “That’s the idea.”
    They sped down the staircase and then descended the last stretch of the way toward the main floor. A dull haze of emergency lighting shone through the black. The loss of power had cut the alarm, and the only sounds were the shouts and screams coming from police struggling to regain control.
    “Close your eyes, Indian.”
    “Blainey?”
    “One final surprise…”
    McCracken’s hand emerged from his pocket with a phosphorus flare he had constructed that afternoon, plastic pipe tubing filled with three separate kinds of powder. He touched his lighter to the rawhide strip fuse and tossed it ahead, near the midway point between them and the door. The tubing struck the floor and rolled briefly before igniting in hot, lingering flashbulb-bright intensity. Men rubbed their eyes, opened them again to sight echoes of dazzling white.
    Blaine and Johnny used the temporary freeze to rush through the main door. Outside, the parking lot was a shambles. Fragments of the cars Blaine had wired littered a pavement dominated by the flaming wrecks. The flames carved into the night and stole the cover of darkness away. Everywhere freed prisoners rushed for the fence.
    “Time to get ourselves a taxi,” Blaine said as they lunged down the stairs leading from the entryway.
    As if on cue, a series of police cars sped through the gate with sirens wailing. They slammed to a halt while Johnny and Blaine sought cover behind one of the vehicles untouched by the explosions. The idea occurred to them at the same time, and, without exchanging a single word or gesture, they moved for the car parked at the end of the new row once it was abandoned. By the time its previous occupants reached the jail, their car was screeching its way back out the gate.
    “Next stop the Amazon, Indian, “Blaine said.

Chapter 5
    PATTY HUNSECKER AWOKE with the wind. The vertical blinds drawn over her open windows flapped wildly, rattling together like change shaken inside a piggy bank. It was a hot wind, but throwing back the covers Patty found that she was freezing. Cold sweat matted her blouse to her flesh. The cuffs of her jeans had crept up her ankles and now cut tightly into her calves. She was shivering. The nightmare had come again, the bulk of it already lost to memory, with only the residue left behind:
    A dark sedan crashing through the guardrail