Six Minutes To Freedom by Gilstrap John & Muse Kurt

Author:Gilstrap, John & Muse, Kurt [Gilstrap, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp
Published: 2007-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

24

Carcel Modelo—Modelo Prison—was as famous in Panama as Sing-Sing is in the United States as a place of misery and perpetual torment. Located in the Chorrillo section of the city, it loomed as the worst of the worst circle of hell. It was a place where people entered but never left. For the residents of Chorrillo, the dirty-beige walls and orange roof stood as grim reminders of the fate that awaited them if they stepped out of line.

High walls surrounded the sprawling compound, which itself was bordered by graveyards on two sides, and the Comandancia on a third—the headquarters for the PDF, and the site of Manuel Noriega’sexecutive offices. In the months to follow, Kurt Muse would come to see the proximity of the graves to the Comandancia as a fittingmetaphor to Noriega’s entire regime.

They drove Kurt in the back of a white pickup truck that had been fitted with a kind of paddy wagon. It was unspeakably hot, and as he drew closer to his final home, he felt a sense of defeat settling on him like a blanket. Two DENI guards accompanied him—one of them a woman, a sergeant—but they said nothing to him. He was not even shackled, and as they approached the roll-up metal door that served as the prison’s gate, he was vaguely aware that the next seconds would be his last for a decent shot at getting away. What were the chances, he wondered, of hitting these guys and bolting out of the truck? Even if he got away, what were the chances that he could run farther than a block before he was shot down with all the compassion of a picnicker smashing an ant?

The question would remain forever rhetorical. Just a few seconds after they stopped, the door rumbled up and they entered the compound.From the gate, it was a short drive to the front door of the prison itself. As they closed those last yards, Kurt looked up through the window of the paddy wagon and saw hundreds of desperate faces staring down at him. His stomach knotted as he observed the number of faces per window: six, seven, eight in some cases. How many peoplecould possibly be housed in a single cell? A physical giant by Panamanianstandards, and certainly no weakling, he still wondered if it was possible for one man to keep at bay the violence posed by so many against him?

Dignity, he told himself again. Dignity would be the last casualty, no matter what. That was his promise to himself. And to preserve it here in the opening moments of his incarceration meant sucking up the fear and being a man.

He could to this. He had to do this.

No more than ten seconds passed after the truck came to a stop when the back doors opened and his captors escorted him out of the daylight and into the darkness. If he’d known how long it would be before he would see the sun again, he’d have turned his face upward to absorb its rays.

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