Imperfect: Scene 08 - Plans

Imperfect

Plans

With breakfast out of the way we got down to planning how we were going to get Mark, Geoff and Charlie out of police custody. The first step was to find out on what basis they were being held. Once we knew that we could get some lawyers to work on getting them out. The cell had plenty of money for that sort of thing, and while we needed to co-ordinate it, it was by far the easiest way of getting someone out of a police cell.

That said we had some pretty wild back-up plans just in case bail was refused. We’d heard some pretty unsavoury things about where people like us went when we were detained indefinitely on public safety grounds. Those were all just rumours, because no-one had returned to deny them. That in itself was reason enough not to want to leave anyone in police custody if we could avoid it.

So far the organisation had avoided violence like the plague, and for good reason. Being known for non-violence kept the level of police response down. We got mainly unarmed officers in riot gear on the raids rather than the paramilitary responses that the armed gangs got. Some of those were more like military assaults on fortresses that often left corpses of the gang members and unfortunate bystanders alike.

Now we knew we’d been compromised, we had to leave. So we could afford to burn some bridges behind us. Cat’s favourite plan was to steal a mechanical digger and use it to cleave open the police station so that we could rescue the boys. Rosie vetoed that on the grounds that the armed police would swarm out after us and probably kill us all out of spite. Cat then modified it to attacking the prisoner transfer van that took them to prison on the route out, which mitigated against the armed response. This seemed acceptable to Rosie, so we parked it to see what else we could come up with.

Rosie’s idea was to bribe some police officers, along with the blackmail of a Superintendent that she was acquainted with. Cat brightened up at this as she remembered clearly the man concerned, and his wife. She still had footage stored safely on a satellite. The basis of the idea was that the police would simply release the boys without charge and we could then all disappear. It had its drawbacks though. It would confirm to the police that there was a link between the three. It could perhaps also mean that we were chased down more thoroughly if the Superintendent didn’t give in to the blackmail.

My idea, which was probably just as out-there as Cat’s, was that we should pretend to be the national police and request the transfer of the boys into our custody. The premise would be that we wanted them for further questioning down in London about terrorism charges. That way we could get them clean out with no further questions asked for a while. However, I had no idea how we could go about this. The other two liked it though, and thought that it might work, if we could pull in some favours and get some helpers. Apparently there was a contingency plan a bit like this one they’d already made some preparations for.

***

Continued in Imperfect: Scene 09 – Free

Can’t wait? Get a copy of Imperfect from smashwords (all ebook formats, pay what you want)