In a few minutes Lambert was there carrying a large plastic bottle made for laundry detergent. He set it down and fitted a metal trough over the door handle so its end was held against the door lock, and then poured a generous portion of the dark powdery substance from the plastic bottle into the trough so it slid down to gather around the lock and bolt.

The substance was a mixture of aluminum powder filed from the under parts of a folding chair and common rust from an iron dumbbell rack in the exercise area that had its paint chipped off a few months ago so the rain would corrode it, the undersides of several iron benches bolted down in the yard, and a few other rust-production areas. The final ingredient was magnesium in the form of thin strips that had reached the prison inside the bindings of several books.

Lambert produced a flint-and-steel spark lighter, stolen from the welding kit in the maintenance shop, and lit the magnesium. It took a few seconds to get the sparks to start the magnesium, but then he succeeded and the thermite caught.

The tray sent out bright flying bits of metal, as though that part of the door had been transformed into a big sparkler. The uniformed inmates stepped backward, with their hands up to protect their eyes, but the reaction intensified, heating the steel door and the hardware attached to it higher and higher.

“How long?”

“Until the color is right.”

Ortega, the man with the stripes, stood eye to eye with Lambert. “This is going to work, right?”

“Yes. The hard part is getting the reaction to start, and we’ve done that. Metal burns at incredibly high temperatures. We could melt the whole door if we had enough thermite.”

In five more minutes, the door was so hot it radiated like a furnace, and it was hard to stand near it. Lambert stared at it some more, then quickly stepped up and gave the door a stomp-kick beside the door handle. The door swung inward into the room. They could see that the lock had stayed where it was, with the bolt still stuck in its receptacle and the hinges still attached to the jamb, but the thinner steel of the door had softened and melted away from them.

The uniformed inmates formed a single file and stepped around the door into the arsenal. There were dozens of rifles in racks along the walls, olive drab steel cans of ammunition, and twenty-round magazines. On one whole wall was a display of identical semiautomatic pistols. The men armed themselves as heavily as possible, most with a rifle and two pistols, and then they were joined by some of the other uniformed inmates, who took extra arms and ammunition for others who were occupied in different sectors.

* * *