Hostile Borders Read Free Page A

warm.”
    â€œWhat, and miss your sparkling company?”
    Munson didn’t bother answering Stevens’s comment as the elevator stopped at the top of the building. The elevator doors opened and Stevens and Pena stepped out into the holding pen leading to the exercise yard. The small building that housed the elevator machinery and guard shack was on the west side of the enclosure. When the elevator doors closed, Munsonused a key from his belt ring to turn a switch on the elevator control panel. That switch opened the doors on the back side of the elevator, doors that opened onto a small guard room.
    The guard room had a heavy Lexan window looking out onto the exercise yard. Below the window was a desk with a small control panel on it as well as a telephone and microphone setup. Through the window, a guard could watch the yard and be able to call for help or lock down the area without leaving his seat. At the back of the guard room was a set of stairs leading up to the top of the small structure. Those were the stairs Munson used to climb up to the open guard position on the roof of the structure.
    Pena and Stevens stepped out into what they called the cattle chute. The area was a short corridor of steel fencing that controlled the prisoner’s access to the elevator door. An electronically locked gate at the far end of the chute opened out into the exercise area proper. Punching a code into the numerical pad next to the gate, Stevens unlocked it.
    â€œGo on out and get some fresh air,” Stevens said. “It may be your last chance until Monday.”
    Pena walked out into the exercise yard. The area was well lit from the floodlights pointing down into it from around the raised wall. A line of eight-foot-high fencing surrounded the entire roof. Inside the outer fence line was a walkway the guards could use to patrol all around the exercise yard. Bordering the inside of the walkway was another eight-foot-high row of chain-link fencing completely surrounding the exercise yard.
    The ten-foot-high walls around the exercise yard kept any of the prisoners from being able to look down into the area surrounding the building—not that there would have been much for Pena to see at that time of year. At nearly 5:30 in the morning, the streets of downtown San Diego were completely deserted. Even the street people who normally camped around outside had moved indoors to seek shelter from the cold. For most of the rest of the country, the local fifty-four-degree weather would have been a balmy heat wave for late December. For the people who lived in Southern California, it was downright cold.
    As he walked out into the exercise yard, Pena turned and started trotting. There was a small running track that led around the basketball courts that took up the center of the area. At the north end of the machinery structure was the air-conditioning housing. Up against the wall, right in front of the air conditioner, was a workout area for the prisoners, complete with weights and benches. To the south of the structure, on the outside of the holding pen leading to the elevator, were several tables and chairs, all of them secured to the roof of the building.
    For Pena, his normal exercise routine would consist of a half hour of jogging followed by a forty-five-minute workout on the exercise machinery. In the world of the jail and prisons, being fit and hard kept you from becoming a target to the rest of the predators. Pena wasn’t worried about becoming a victim of jail-house life. He never intended to join the regular prison population. He kept in shape for his own reasons. Besides, in his orange prisoner’s jumpsuit, keeping moving was the only way he could keep warm in this weather.
    Up on top of the machinery structure, Munson stood watching Pena jogging around the basketball courts. He was standing next to the small guard shelter, a short, six-sided booth with windows on all sides where a guard could stand under