Refugee Prison Break

Chapter 19

By the next morning, I was on a flight to California via Japan. All the cash I needed was spread between my check-in bag and the rucksack I squeezed between my legs. Going through the airport scanners was my first real test of nerves. Caught with so much money on me, I could have been pulled aside and questioned. To calm myself, I thought of Bas—I pictured him in an overcrowded cell facing years of imprisonment. I had to smile and look relaxed for his sake.

During my two-hour lay-over, I looked in detail at my tunnel alignment options. There were three, each with their merits and issues, like access, length, and risk of being caught. It was a task I had been saving for later, but with the accelerator pedal of my jailbreak stuck to the floor, and because it affected so many other variables, I needed a decision immediately.

In a waiting lounge struggling with the free wifi, I came to the awkward conclusion that the longest tunnel, the one a quarter of a mile longer than the others, was the best option. The reason—it started inside a large sewer.

Getting rid of the earth and water excavated by the boring machine was always going to be a challenge. At the entry point I originally favored, in a ditch, all the spoil would have to be lifted out of the ditch into a parallel channel in which there was flowing water. The standard fittings that came with the Schattig Aardworm, I estimated, were not powerful enough to do this without additional labor. For now, I only had myself for such manual jobs; the fewer additional people the better, I had long established, for security and ease; I expected Bas's boyfriend Ernesto to participate, but I hadn't even consulted him—I had no idea how many others he could help recruit.

The sewer not only meant we started our tunnelunderground and out of sight, it was a convenient channel into which we coulddeposit waste into and have it washed away. In that sense it was perfect. Butit meant three days instead of two for tunnel boring.