At 8:00 p.m., everyone takes a deep breath. All’s quiet for the moment. They knock on the door and wheel in the last meal. For the occasion, Link has chosen a steak with fries and coconut pie for dessert, but he has no appetite. He takes two bites of the steak and offers me the fries. I say no thanks and shuffle the deck. There’s something about eating another man’s last meal that doesn’t seem right. At 8:15, my cell phone vibrates. Our petition has been denied at the Supreme Court. No surprise there. There’s nothing left. All Hail Marys have been thrown and dropped.
We go Live! outside the Supreme Court Building in Washington, where the CNN reporter is practically praying for some type of explosion. Dozens of cops loiter about, their trigger fingers just itching. A small crowd has gathered to watch the carnage, but there’s nothing. Link keeps one eye on the television as he deals the cards.
I suspect he’s not finished.
The prison has a food storage warehouse on the west side of its vast complex and a vehicle maintenance facility on the east side. The buildings are about three miles apart. At 8:30, both mysteriously catch on fire, and the prison goes berserk. Evidently, there are a couple of news helicopters in the area. They are not allowed to fly over Big Wheeler, so they’re hovering above farmland next door, and thanks to their long-range lenses we’re able to watch the excitement courtesy of CNN.
As Link toys with his coconut pie and plays gin rummy, the anchor wonders why the State doesn’t speed up his execution before he burns down the prison. A stuttering spokesperson with the governor’s office tries to explain that the rules and laws do not allow this. It’s 10:00 p.m., period, or as soon thereafter as possible. Link watches this as if it’s a movie about some other guy on death row.
At 8:45, a bomb goes off in the administration building, not far from the warden’s office.
Ten minutes later, the warden bursts into the Boom Boom Room and screams, “You gotta stop this!” Link ignores him as he shuffles the cards.
Two nervous guards grab Link, lift him up, search him, find his cell phone, then throw him back into his chair. His face does not change expression.
“You got a phone, Rudd?” the warden yells at me.
“Yes, but you can’t have it. Rule 36, section 2, paragraph 4. Your rule. Sorry.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“So you think I’m making phone calls to the bad guys? You think I’m a part of the conspiracy, with all my calls being traced? That right, Warden?”
He is too panic-stricken to respond. From behind the warden, a guard yells into the room, “There’s a riot in Unit Six!”
The riot started when an inmate, an old lifer with a history of heart problems, faked cardiac arrest. At first the guards decided to ignore him and let him go, but on second thought they got involved. His cell mate stabbed two guards with a shank, grabbed their Tasers, fried them, then beat them senseless. The inmates quickly put on the guards’ uniforms and managed to open the doors to about a hundred cells. With near flawless coordination, the inmates flooded other wings in the unit and soon several hundred extremely dangerous convicts were on the loose. They began burning mattresses, laundry, anything that could possibly be ignited. Eight guards were beaten; two would later die. Three guards with pistols hid in an office and called for help. Before long, the inmates found weapons and gunfire could be heard across the prison. In the melee, four snitches were hanged with electrical extension cords.
We wouldn’t know these details until later, so at the time Link and I casually play cards while Big Wheeler explodes around us. It takes CNN less than five minutes to pick up the riot story, and when we hear it we stop and watch the television. After a few minutes I say, “So, Link, are you in charge of prison riots, too?”
To my surprise he says, “Yes, at this moment anyway.”
“Oh really? Then tell me how this one started?”
“It all goes back to personnel,” he says like a polished CEO. “You gotta have the right people in the right place at the right time. You got three guys in Unit Six doing life with no parole, so they got nothing to lose. You set up an outside contact who promises all sorts of stuff, like a van and a driver waiting in the woods if the guys make it out. And lots of cash. You give them plenty of time to plan it all, and at exactly 9:00 on this night, when the warden and his goons are thinking of only one thing—giving me the needle—you launch your assault. Unit Four should blow up any minute.”
“I won’t tell a soul. And the bombs? Who rigged the bombs?”
“Can’t give you the names. You gotta understand prisons and how stupid the men are who run them. Everything here is designed to keep us in, with little thought to keeping bad stuff out. Those incendiary devices were planted two days ago, well hidden; they’ve got timers and all, really basic stuff. No one was looking, piece of cake.”
