He saw one of the roving riflemen coming along a catwalk that was perpendicular to his. He was coming from the west side of the prison. Scott adjusted his speed so they would meet at the intersection. The man had his rifle on its sling over his shoulder, and not in his hands. He obviously wasn’t aware of anything wrong.

Scott didn’t recognize the man. He hoped he would come up with the man’s name soon. This was one of the bad things about being isolated in Operations. He wasn’t close with the rest of the prison guards. He smiled broadly and waved his hand as he approached. The other man smiled and nodded, and when they were about eight feet apart, his hand came up too. By the time Scott saw and understood that it held a canister of CS and pepper spray, it was already propelling its pressurized stream of liquid into his face, blinding his eyes and making them burn.

“Stop it!” he shouted. “I’m a guard like you. Can’t you see I’m a guard?” He was bent over, his hands rubbing his eyes. “I’m the deputy commander.”

The uniformed man used the butt of his rifle to knock Scott senseless and prone on the catwalk. Then he put down his weapons, slipped his hands under Scott’s armpits, dragged and hoisted him up to the railing, draped him there, and then squatted and clasped his thighs and lifted him up and over.

He watched Scott’s unconscious body fall eighty feet toward the polished concrete pavement of Main Street. His body sprawled out full-length, his arms and legs out, like a gingerbread man. When he hit, his body bounced slightly before it settled. He was facing upward, and his head had a circular splash of blood around it like an aura. He was dead, and there had not been enough noise to be audible on the next cellblock. The uniformed man picked up his rifle and aerosol tear gas–and–pepper spray and walked on along the catwalk.

4

Humphry had a moment when his mind ran through the most alarming possibilities. What if the seven men of the trouble team had arrived at the Cellblock C hallway gate, gone in and closed it behind them, and then had the power go off? Judging from the blackouts on the monitors, there had been an outage. During a circuit failure and then the surge afterward, the gates could have shorted out or lost their programming and become inoperable. The seven men could be trapped between the outer gate and the gate to the inmate housing area. With the glitch in the radio system, they couldn’t even call for help.

There were certainly inmates in a population of 2,500 who had some training as electricians. Some could even have degrees in electrical engineering. One of them could have tinkered with the circuitry and stranded the seven men.