O’LEARY TURNED TO THE warden and spread his hands.
“Warden,” he said, “don’t you see how this thing is building up? Let’s not just wait for the place to explode in our faces! Let me take a squad into Block O before it’s too late.”
The warden pursed his lips thoughtfully and c****d his head, as though he were trying to find some trace of merit in an unreasonable request.
He said at last: “No.”
O’Leary made a passionate sound that was trying to be bad language, but he was too raging mad to articulate it. He walked stiffly away from the limp, silent warden and stared out the window.
At least, he told himself, he hadn’t gone to pieces. It was his doing, not the warden’s, that all the off-duty guards had been dragged double-time back to the prison, his doing that they were now ringed aroun
