Juan motioned him away from the cell door so he could shoot the lock open. Ndebele had to hop to keep his damaged foot from touching the ground. “I’ve got a friend named Max who pulls the same thing on me.” Juan glanced up to catch Ndebele’s eye. “And more often than not he’s right about which ones to disregard.”

He popped two rounds into the old iron lock and gave the door a heave. It slid open on protesting hinges. Ndebele made to hobble out of the cell but Juan held up a hand.

“We’re going out another way.”

When researching the Devil’s Oasis, Linda Ross had come across the account of a prisoner who tried to widen the six-inch sewer holes inside the lower-tier cells. A prison trustee checked them every other day and when he found that the man had used a spoon or other implement to scrape away at the foot-thick stone in order to make the hole big enough to escape through he immediately reported it to the guards. They systematically crammed the prisoner down the small opening, breaking whatever bones necessary until only his head remained inside the cell.

No one else ever tried to escape that way again.

Juan handed the MP-5 to Ndebele asking him to cover them and sat next to the hole. He hurriedly took off his boot and retrieved the remainder of his cache of plastic explosives. He molded the plastique into a long strand that he affixed in a ring at the bottom of the hole. He plucked the detonator from behind his leg’s ankle joint and set the timer for one minute, enough time to lead Ndebele safely away.

With his boot in hand he stuck the timer into the soft explosive and left the cell with Moses draped over his shoulder in order to protect the man’s foot. The bomb went off like a volcano, sending a geyser of flame, smoke, and chunks of stone high enough to ricochet off the ceiling. Cabrillo had his boot back on, but didn’t bother to lace it when he returned to the cell. As he’d anticipated, the charge had been more than enough for the job. The hole was now five feet wide, its jagged edges blackened by the blast.

He dropped through the opening, and helped Ndebele descend. The man sucked air through his teeth when his broken foot brushed against the ground under the prison.

“You okay?”

“I think maybe when the time comes I will ask you where you got your artificial leg. I don’t think I will have this foot much longer.”

“Don’t worry, I know a pretty good doctor.”

“He can’t be that good if you lost your leg.”

“Believe me, she is — she only started working for me after my original was blown off.”