The buildings and exercise areas were joined by walkways. The walls and roofs were made of wire mesh. Even from a distance Reacher could see it was thick. Substantial. Anyone would need serious tools to stand a chance of getting through it. Outside, around the buildings and between the walkways, there were some patches of grass. A surprising number, Reacher thought, for such a grim institution. There were squares. Rectangles. Ovals. And twenty feet from the base of each watchtower there was a brick-lined triangle.
The grass was well cared for. It was trimmed short. Edged neatly. And probably fed or fertilized, given the way its deep green stood out against the pale walls of the buildings and the gray blur of the wire mesh. The only other structure inside the fence was newer. It was V-shaped and shoehorned in behind the security building. It was styled like some kind of corporate headquarters and there was a three-dimensional Minerva logo on a plinth, rotating, out front. Reacher figured if any prisoners got loose that would be the first thing to get destroyed.
He said, “Did you read anything about riots happening here recently?”
Hannah said, “Nothing official. But on one of the message boards a woman was complaining about her husband getting hurt by a guard. It was during a brawl in the exercise yard. Thirty or forty guys were involved but her husband was the only one the guard laid into. She complained, and got told her husband had been trying to escape. They said they’d let it slide, but if she made trouble about his injuries he’d wind up getting his sentence extended.”
“Have there been any successful escapes?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t come across anything, anyway.”
Reacher was not surprised. The place looked well put together. According to what he read in the file he found in Angela St. Vrain’s purse, it had been built by the state. Those guys knew what they were doing when it came to locking people up. Reacher had some experience of prisons, himself. He had been a military cop. He had put plenty of people inside them. Visited suspects to take statements. Caught inmates who had broken out. Grilled them to find out how. He had even been locked up himself, a couple times.
The first precaution Reacher noticed was also the simplest. The perimeter was protected by a fence, not a wall. That meant the guards could see everyone who approached any part of the place. They could see if anyone was carrying equipment to break in with or items to throw over. And there were red triangles attached to the fences. They were spaced out at fifteen-foot intervals, and they ranged from two to six feet above the ground. Reacher was too far away to read the writing but the symbol of a stick figure flying backward after getting zapped carried a clear enough message. The fences were electrified. The outer ones would only be powerful enough to knock a person on their ass. That would serve as a warning. It would be the inner fence, all small and innocuous, sandwiched between the ones with the wire on top, that would carry the lethal voltage.
Reacher would bet there were vibration sensors in the ground that would trip if anyone got too close to the fence. Alarms that would trigger if the voltage in the fences dropped. Dogs that would be released if the power failed, or got sabotaged. The entrances would all be secured. The one for visitors and staff would be like an airport with X-ray machines and metal detectors. The vehicle gates would have an airlock arrangement so that the trucks and vans could be held between the layers of fence on their way in or out. Inside the buildings the service ducts would be too narrow for anyone to crawl in or climb up. They would have movement sensors and mesh screens, anyway. The doors and gates in the secure areas would all be centrally controlled, with no keypads for inmates to learn or guess the codes for, like you see in the movies. And if all else failed, there were the watchtowers. Two would be sufficient. The prison had four. A guard in each one with a rifle could cover the whole interior of the stockade plus five hundred feet beyond the perimeter, assuming an adequate level of equipment and training.
The area in front of the prison was laid out in a semicircle. There were swathes of grass and neat, colorful flower beds all following the same curve. They looked incongruous, like a bizarre attempt to copy the formal gardens of a European chateau. The only things missing were the fountains. But Reacher knew the real purpose was not aesthetic. It was to maintain a clear field of fire from the two central towers in the event of a breakout. Or an attempt to break in.
