Free The Prisoner by Carlos J. Cortes Page A

holding a number of inmates. The distribution and identity of the prisoners was housed in a secure database shared by Hypnos and the DHS and was available to the Senate committee overseeing the hibernation system. It occurred to Palmer there would be a relatively simple—though probably expensive—way to ascertain if the inmates in any given tank matched the records. Each prisoner’s DNA markers were stored in the database, and the hibernation fluid was a chemical soup laced with biologic wastes. A sample of fluid from a given tank could be cross-matched with those supposed to be there. Unidentified genetic material would stand out. His mind made up, Palmer set out to obtain hibernation fluid. When Nadia Shubin, a mousy-looking laboratory technician at the Washington, D.C., hibernation facility, demanded five million for the samples, Palmer had almost fainted. But no amount of bargaining could convince Mrs. Shubin to lower her fees. Six months later, almost to the date, the wily technician delivered.
    Palmer had expected a handful of jars, never a van loaded with three large polymer cases—each holding one hundred carefully labeled test tubes: one from every tank at the Washington, D.C., facility.
    To cross-match every tube would have cost a fortune, and Palmer wouldn’t think of it. Instead, he used a statistical-probability program to choose a reasonable sample. Fortytanks. Only one test tube from the original sampling yielded an unknown signature. It belonged to a man whose DNA wasn’t registered in any American database. After the find, Palmer couldn’t stop. He made the owners of a small Mexican testing lab very happy when he ordered tests on the remaining tubes, only to find another eight abnormalities. Seven tubes produced eleven unknown markers. The eighth contained the DNA of a man who had haunted Palmer’s dreams since his youth, a man who had been dead five years: Eliot Russo.
    Mercenaries, even good ones, could be had for a fraction of what he’d already spent on tests. But, in the feverish months that followed his discovery, Palmer discarded adventurers. Instead, he reached for two people for whom Russo held a meaning that transcended money or ideals: Laurel and Shepherd.
    When their plan started to take shape, Shepherd had insisted on three men of similar build to attempt springing Russo, and he drew up a list of candidates. But Laurel had her own ideas. She drafted Raul and Bastien and announced she would complete the team.
    Naturally, Shepherd went ballistic and threatened to quit. Over the secure phone, Palmer pleaded and tried every trick he knew to change Laurel’s mind. Later—when Russo returned to the land of the living—she would be irreplaceable, but the breakout needed muscle. Still, Laurel wouldn’t budge. She proved obstinate as a mule, and Palmer, after soberly reviewing her ancestry, surrendered.
    A staccato of taps, like a bird pecking seeds from a dish, brought Palmer out of his reverie. He looked toward the sliding patio door where Timmy waited, his eyes expectant.
    In a daze, he followed his trotting grandson across the lawn and into the clump of old oaks.
    “We’re almost there, Grandpa.”
    Palmer bowed his head to avoid a large branch.
Onuris
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    Timmy climbed a stout wooden ladder with commendable speed for his short legs, and Palmer followed, maneuvering his bulk with difficulty to a fenced platform, perhaps ten feetfrom the ground, one of its corners occupied by a square construction with a small door and a window.
    “I don’t think I’ll fit through there.”
    “You can try on your knees.”
    Palmer obliged and crawled inside the small house, leaving his rump sticking outside the door. On a miniature table, he spotted several jars with water—one of them murky and with something alive inside—bottle corks, a pot full of glass marbles, and a forbidden item: a box of matches.
    “Timmy, you shouldn’t play with matches. They’re dangerous. Please, give them to