Free Escape by Paul Dowswell Page B

It’s only a blown fuse. Now calm down you lot, I’ll soon have it fixed.”
    The cries continued. Vermeulen wondered why the prisoners seemed so agitated tonight. He fixed the fuse quickly enough and the floor lights flickered back into life. Then he spent a good five minutes wandering up and down the corridor, banging on the steel cell doors of prisoners who were still shouting, and trying to settle everyone down.
    The plan was working perfectly. While Vermeulen bullied and barked at the first floor prisoners, Jenkin, Lee and Moumbaris had carefully slid from their hiding place and hurled through yet another door at the end of the stairwell, which Vermeulen had left open. Next stop was Vermeulen’s office. The three burst in, their eyes frantically searching for the button that would open the electrically operated door to the hallway of the prison. They found it soon enough and pressed. In the distance they heard a slight click.
    Another three doors lay between them and the electric door they had just unlocked. The first two were sandwiched right next to each other, and they were quickly opened with forged keys. Door number seven was more of a problem. This one, none of them had been able to test before, so they had brought three keys along which they thought might fit it. The three men gathered around, and Jenkin tried the lock. This was a hurdle which would make or break their escape, and all three felt a sickening anxiety as they fumbled with the keys.
    Jenkin cursed quietly as the first key refused to turn in the lock.
    â€œOne down, two to go.”
    The second key slotted in and turned all the way, and the bolt slid back with a quiet click. The escapers wanted to hoot in triumph, but by now Vermeulen would be back in his little office, so they waved clenched fists in the air instead, grinning wildly.
    Door number eight – the one operated by the electric switch, lay invitingly ajar down the corridor, and the three rushed through it into the outer hall of the prison.
    Two more locks to go…
    The escape route

    Door nine, leading to the final exit, was no problem. It was opened with a key already forged for a previous door. Now one lock lay between them and freedom.
    This final door was one that none of them had had the chance to test, and it was here their run of good luck finally deserted them. They found to their mounting horror that none of the keys worked. The fact that this door was a plain, ordinary wooden door, with a plain, ordinary household lock, seemed even more aggravating – all the other doors they had come through were huge, solid steel prison doors.
    Time was rapidly becoming a problem too. Over an hour had passed since the three had begun their escape, and soon it would be 6:00pm. Having a guard right outside the door was certainly going to make escaping a lot more difficult.
    With all the keys tried and failed, it was time to resort to brute force. Moumbaris asked for a chisel and began digging away at the door frame around the lock. Jenkin watched him with some disappointment. If everything had gone exactly to plan, it would have looked like the three men had vanished into thin air. They had locked all the doors behind them, so there would have been no indication of how they had escaped at all. Now, if they did get out, the prison authorities would be presented with an untidy pile of wood chippings and a big gouge in the door – quite a clue when it came to establishing how the three men had got out of the prison…
    After chipping away, Moumbaris would try to bend back the lock mechanism, but each time it refused to budge, making a terrible clank when the screwdriver he dug into it slipped. Every time this happened, the three were certain that Vermeulen would hear them. But he was obviously engrossed in his book, and they were able to continue, undisturbed.
    Finally, the mechanism gave way, and the three prepared to face the outside world. They took off their