King of All I Survey
Chapter 102: A Prison Inside a Prison

Chapter 102: A Prison Inside a Prison

El Modelo prison has a number of courtyards, outdoor spaces that were designed for soccer or other recreational activities. They are paved. In the video from the drone I saw that the space was crowded with people. At either end, there were makeshift structures. Made from pallets, scrap wood, and roofed with corrugated sheet metal, these were the only cells some of the prisoners had. These were common criminals, not the high-profile cartel members who were housed in a maximum-security VIP building. High ranking members of both factions lived on the fourth floor of their respective wings and controlled their half of the prison from there.

Some were shirtless, some wore decent clothes that wouldn’t look out of place on any city street. Many were thin, but not to the point where it looked like they were starving. Some sat with dull eyes, unmoving or just watching the others in the yard. Others lay in their makeshift beds. The majority stood or sat together in groups, talking, playing cards, or doing whatever they could to pass the time. There were uniformed guards in watchtowers atop the walls with metal grates over the windows.

The drone flew through each courtyard, trying to get a view of all the faces so Joe could identify one as Maldonado by facial recognition. Some of the sleeping ones had their faces hidden and couldn’t be identified one way or the other.

"I don’t see him outside, but there were 13 whose faces I couldn’t get a look at to rule them out," Joe told us after almost two hours of searching. "I’ll send the drone inside to look there. Many of the inmates have sleeping platforms in the buildings."

"Start with the South Wing," Dad ordered, "I don’t think a CIA agent is going to put himself in the hands of the Marxist FARC faction or survive long if they find out who he is."

"Acknowledged. I’m using a small LITV to move the drone just inside the iron riot doors that separate the South Wing territory from the rest of the prison."

The video of the courtyard, was instantly replaced by an interior scene. A short hallway opened into an open room, like everywhere else in the prison, it was crowded. The drone spun in place to give us a full view. Massive solid steel doors were latched from the inside. A small viewing panel could be opened to see and speak with people on the other side without opening the full door. Two men wearing loose fitting jackets, leaned against the wall by the door.

"They’re standing guard," Dad said.

"Yes," Joe agreed, "From the information I’ve been able to gather, each faction controls access to their wing. The little glassed-in alcove in the wall to the right of the door is a prison guard station. Two uniformed guards are stationed there. This wing currently houses upwards of 1600 prisoners, and these are the only official prison staff in this wing. They are not allowed to carry firearms because of their close contact with prisoners. They do have wooden clubs. The two United Militias sentries, both have 9-millimeter handguns tucked into their waistbands under the jackets. As do several others in this room according to the x-ray scans from the drone."

"Can you overlay a visual indicator of anyone with a gun for us, Joe?" Dad asked.

Red arrows pointing downward from above the heads of the two sentries appeared, as the view swung around, we saw four more red arrows in the crowd and a number of blue arrows.

"What are the blue arrows?" I asked.

"Those inmates have knives or home-made blades on them," Joe answered.

I nodded and watched as the drone moved through the room to get a good view of everyone’s face. In this room as well, there were wooden partitions along one of the side walls, creating little defined areas containing the inmate-built sleeping platforms stacked two high. Most had a sack under or on them, likely containing all the worldly possessions of the inmate who called that platform home. There was at least one man present in each of the partitioned areas, likely standing guard over his and his ’room-mate’s possessions while the other man was off somewhere else. At the far end of the large room, was a large hallway. The doors there were like what I think of as jail cell doors: vertical steel bars with horizontal supports and a steel frame around it. It had a large, built-in lock. As the drone finished it’s sweep of the room and moved toward that door, I saw a well-dressed man with a prominent mustache walking toward the door from the other side. He greeted two more men wearing jackets standing by the door in the hallway. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a keychain with maybe half a dozen keys. He found the one he wanted and unlocked the steel door. He swung it open, walked through, closed and locked it behind him.

"I thought the two guards were the only prison staff in here," I said.

"They are," Joe replied, "That man is a prisoner. Apparently, he is a leader of some type within the United Militias faction, although I cannot guess how high up the ladder he is. Since he has keys and was not challenged by the sentries, I’d guess he’s fairly high up."

The drone, since it was a small one, was able to turn sideways and slip through the bars. This hallway ran perpendicular to the door opening in both directions. Along both sides of the hallway were the first signs of what might be considered regular prison cells. These were open doorways leading into small rooms, maybe ten feet by ten feet... or something close in metric. There were two wooden bunk beds on either side of the doors inside. At one end of the bunks were shelves for the inmates to place their possessions. On the back wall was a small ’room’ maybe three or four feet wide, separated from the bunks by makeshift wooden sidewalls with a curtain across the front. A partially open curtain in one of the cells revealed a toilet. Just as in the main room, each of the cells had at least one inmate inside to discourage anyone who didn’t live there from entering to try to steal someone else’s possessions. There were no doors.

The drone peered into each cell in turn, registering faces. There were a few blue arrows on our display, but none of the men in these cells had red arrows indicating guns. At both ends of the hallway were two more locked steel gates, These gates had only one sentry posted on the other side, each had a wooden chair in which to sit. One was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and watching the other inmates through the bars, the other sat reading a magazine. Past each sentry, were stairwells leading up and another hallway perhaps twenty feet long at a right angle to the main hallway. Each led to solid steel doors.

"Those lead to another courtyard," Joe informed us, "and there’s another building beyond that."

"What’s that opening?" I asked Joe. A little more than halfway down the hall, there appeared to be an opening or a doorway, but I didn’t have a good angle from where the drone was positioned.

"That’s called the cave. There’s a similar layout on all four floors." Joe said as he sent the drone over to show me. About five feet in there was what looked like an inmate-created locked metal door, with another sentry sitting inside the narrow hallway outside the door. Peering through the barred door, I saw that ’the cave’ stretched all the way to the other end of the building parallel to the main hallway. It was maybe four feet wide. Inmates lounged all along the hallway. There were blankets on the floor and some suspended from the ceiling arrayed as hammocks. Apparently, some inmates lived in this area as well. Most just lay there. Here and there a few men sat with their backs against the wall. They didn’t speak to each other and had a more morose air about them than the prisoners in the other sections. No arrows at all showed up as the drone looked down this hallway.

Again the drone slipped through the bars and floated down the length of the cave to look at each man’s face as it searched for Maldonado. At the far end, one of the men inside the cave was standing by the bars of the gate, talking to the sentry.

"Come on, man. I’ve been in the cave four weeks, I’ve got a visitation Sunday. I haven’t seen my wife in two months. I got to get out of here."

The sentry was standing, leaning against the wall facing the man at the gate from the other side. He shrugged his shoulders, "It’s up to the Venezuelan, you know."

"Just ask him. Tell him my wife is coming to visit me Sunday."

I looked at Dad, "Any idea what that’s about?"

He shrugged, "If I had to guess, the Venezuelan must be a leader in this wing and for whatever reason, he’s decided these men need to be punished by being locked up. It’s hard to believe that they’re any more dangerous than anyone else walking around in there, so maybe they just didn’t play by his rules, got caught stealing from the wrong person, maybe got in a fight, or whatever."

I shook my head, "That would suck. I mean the regular place is bad enough... All right, Joe, let’s go up to the next floor and see if we can find Mr. Maldonado."

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