To The Lions - 02

by Chuck Driskell

  “We’ve been learning how much we have in common,” Justina said to Gage.

  Señora Moreno gave Justina’s hand a final squeeze. “Perhaps we’ll have time to get to know one another better.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Justina walked to Gage, leaning close. “Well, what do you think?”

  “It’s not what I think…it’s up to you.” Justina’s radiant smile, and a deft squeeze of his butt, provided his answer. He looked at Señora Moreno. “How much is the rent?”

  The businessperson emerged from sweet little Señora Moreno in a flash. Her mirthful face turned serious as she clasped her hands in front of her. “Being on the lake, in this popular region, it’s not inexpensive.” Eyeing Gage levelly, she said, “Twelve-hundred euro per month.”

  “Is that negotiable if we choose to extend the term?”

  “No,” she responded with a firm shake of her head. “This is a prime vacation cabin in a desirable area. Long leases do me no good. Come July and August, I can rent this cabin for three times the monthly number I gave you.”

  “True,” Gage responded, admiring the little lady’s spunk, “but in December, January, February and probably March, you’ll be lucky to even get a showing. Furthermore, judging by the plumbing and the dust, this house could use a renter to get it back into shape.”

  “Be that as it may,” Señora Moreno said, obviously unaffected by Gage’s negotiation tactics, “if I were to want to rent it, I could rent it.” She turned to Justina and smiled. “And until today, I had no desire.”

  Expertly stonewalled, Gage smiled humorlessly back at the older lady. He turned to Justina. “Well?”

  “Can we afford it?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  She pecked him on the cheek.

  Gage walked to the Audi to retrieve a month’s rent. As he stood outside, a light rain falling on him, he felt as if he were wearing a leaden suit, the realization thudding down on him that this time two days from now he would be inside the four walls of Berga Prison. And here, all alone, would be the beautiful Polish lady he’d so quickly grown to love.

  He tilted his head skyward, blinking the mist away, trying to imagine exactly what he would be doing on his first day of incarceration. He tried and tried, but he had no idea.

  It’s a good thing he didn’t.

  Chapter Twelve

  The van was without any rear windows, equipped instead with a steel cage inside its cargo area. And in the midst of that steel cage sat Gage Hartline. There was no seat or bench. He sat on the hard steel floor, his backside already aching a mere twenty minutes into the ride.

  It was mid-morning and he knew, from Barcelona, the drive to Berga would take about an hour-and-a-half. He knew this because he’d left the cabin at four in the morning to drive to Barcelona, idly wondering how many men had ever voluntarily driven themselves to the place where they would be arrested. Next to him was a brown paper sack containing a bruised apple and a hard piece of bread. There was a bottle of water loose on the floor, rolling between two bars each time the vehicle turned. Gage had eyed it earlier—the seal had been broken by someone else, leaving him without much thirst.

  He’d purposefully hydrated himself over the last two days and, though he knew he should eat, he had no appetite.

  Gage closed his eyes and thought about last night. Justina had surprised him with a small cake and wonderful meal, which they ate early, before sitting by the fire pit down by the lake. After ten minutes of discussion over how they should communicate while Gage was in Berga, Justina stood from her Adirondack-style chair and sat in Gage’s lap. He ran his hands up and down her long, smooth legs, the feel of her skin making his hands tingle. They kissed for what seemed an hour, a small fire crackling before them.

  When the blissful moment had passed, Gage had eyed Justina in the dusk. “You forgot your cigarettes,” he said. Justina always had a smoke after a meal.

  “No,” she replied with a shake of her head.

  “Are you out? You could have gotten some when we went to the store.”

  “I am out. But I didn’t want to buy any.”

  Gage had stared at her.

  “I quit, Gage. I quit for you.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “You’ve never complained, but I can tell you don’t like them. It’s okay,” she smiled, playing with his hair. “I only smoked as a way to pass the time. Now, I have something better to think about.”

  “You’re gonna want a cigarette when I’m gone. It’ll be boring out here.”

  “Every time I crave a cigarette, I will write to you.”

  “Remember what I said.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I will use the fake address. I will never write people’s actual names or use real places. I will only mail the letters from far away.”

  “That’s my girl.” The firelight had danced on Justina’s face, somehow making her more beautiful than she already was. “Thank you, Justina.”

  She kissed him.

  Gage had carried her back to the cabin where they made love well into the night. The last time, Justina insisted it be slow and simple, holding Gage to her the entire time, his face next to hers. When they had finished, as Gage brushed his lips over hers, he tasted the saltiness of her tears. She had silently cried the entire time.

  Remembering the beauty of last night, Gage tapped his head against the bars of the van’s cage, trying to stifle his anxiety over where he was headed. While he was anxious about Berga, the thought of being without Justina for two years made his stomach churn.

  Gage shut his eyes, banging his head again.

  “Knock it off!” one of the guards yelled. They had talked sporadically throughout the trip. Their Catalan was beyond Gage’s grasp other than a snippet here or there. The one in the passenger seat turned and glanced at Gage on occasion, usually curling his lip as if he were observing a mangy dog.

  Stretching out as far as he could, Gage rested on his back, using the bottle of water as a makeshift pillow. He lifted his cuffed hands in front of his face, viewing the tempered steel’s numerous dings and gouges that dug into his wrists with every subtle movement.

  “Be glad we didn’t hogtie you, pajillero,” the morose-looking passenger guard sneered, switching to Spanish. “We were told to treat you nicely, and that’s why you’ve got food and water. Be thankful.”

  Yeah, Gage thought, everything’s just peachy back here.

  The two men spoke more Catalan, both of them suddenly braying laughter. Again the passenger turned, rattling his coffee thermos on the cage just as Gage had shut his eyes.

  “Hey, Pajillero, do you know about Berga?”

  “What about it?” Gage asked, keeping his eyes shut.

  “Do you know about it? I shouldn’t have to say more.” More laughter.

  “I know it’s a prison for murderers.”

  “You brave man, eh?” When Gage didn’t open his eyes the guard clanged the thermos again. “Look at me when I talk to you, puta!”

  Gage opened his eyes, taking a calming breath. Two years of patience, buddy boy. Live it, breathe it, accept it, hour by hour.

  “The men in Berga are going to rip your ass apart. Literally.” The guard laughed so hard that his wheezing overpowered his words. When he recovered, he said, “They’re going to make you into a beautiful woman if they don’t kill you first.”

  Gage held the man’s eye.

  “Look at you, acting tough now, but just wait. I hope you packed plenty of petroleum jelly.” The guard translated this to the driver and they both roared with laughter.

  Closing his eyes again, spurred by the man’s mocking, Gage reviewed everything that had been in the notes provided with the money and satellite phone. There had been a layout of the prison and the yard. Gage used Google Earth’s satellite view to augment this information, spending two hours on a library computer memorizing every feature of the prison property. Also included was an estimate of how many gang
members existed in Berga—the estimate was nearly eighty percent of the prison population—and what each gang stood for. Such intel could be very useful to Gage in the coming days.

  As the van drove on, Gage thought through all he’d ever learned about hand to hand combat.

  Most earlobes will detach with a strong yank from pinched fingers.

  Eyeballs can be pressed in with thirteen pounds of thumb pressure.

  Pinkie fingers are the easiest digit to snap, with adult male pinkies typically cracking at their base with no more twenty-three pounds of pressure.

  The best bodily weak points for attack are at the temples, base of skull, larynx, kidneys, genitals, and the tibial nerve at the back of the foot.

  Feeling his pulse coming up, Gage reminded himself that he was going into a prison for violent murderers. There’s no reasoning. No talking. No fist fights. No ignoring. When you’re confronted, you attack. When you attack, you attack to kill. It’s them or you.

  Deep, steadying breaths.

  Them or you.

  * * *

  Gage’s first experience in Berga Prison was nothing like he imagined. Expecting to see an arena of unpainted concrete and rows and rows of iron bars, instead, the inside walls of Berga were painted a soft yellow. The floors were linoleum, their color an extremely faint blue and buffed to a high shine that reminded him of his Army days. He’d not been treated to an outside view, though he’d seen it the day before during a reconnaissance drive.

  Today, when they’d approached the prison, the guard in the passenger seat, Gage’s heckler, dropped a black shroud down over the front of the cage, shutting off all of Gage’s vision. Several times the van stopped and voices outside the van could be heard, speaking Spanish. Eventually the tires thumped over a ridge and the sound of a garage door shutting could be heard. Once stopped, the rear doors were opened and Gage was led from the van by two new guards, both with a hand on his upper arm. Once situated, his cuffed wrists were unlocked and re-cuffed behind his back.

  Glancing around, happy to stand up, Gage surveyed the details. He was facing the garage door the van had just driven through. It was electric. Sliding his eyes upward, Gage looked at the door’s motor. He then followed the heavy-duty stainless steel conduit’s path to the switch housing. It was inside a raised guard shack with mirrored windows on the outer wall. His eyes moved down to the garage door itself. He noticed, on both sides, clamp-style electromagnetic locks that probably disengaged when the door switch was flipped. Though he had no plans of trying to escape, perhaps such a reconnaissance was in Gage’s blood, and he felt somewhat silly over his crestfallenness that Berga’s security measures seemed, at least initially, quite good.

  The rest of the warehouse-like room was unremarkable. With a high ceiling of horizontal steel supports under a corrugated, slightly canted roof, there was little else to see. Painted the faint yellow, the walls were standard cinderblock, probably one layer thick and likely bolstered by internal rebar. To the left of the garage door were a number of cardboard boxes of various supplies. Beyond that, where the wall made its ninety-degree turn, Gage could only see empty shelving. When he dared look beyond his left shoulder, he was viciously pinched in his left upper arm, followed by a growl from the guard telling him to stare straight ahead.

  Then they waited. And waited. No one talked and Gage assumed the two guards in the van were still sitting there. After what must have been fifteen minutes of numbing silence, Gage heard a door click followed by one person’s footsteps approaching from the rear. They were exactly what he expected, coming quickly and marked by their distinct tapping. The room must have been quite lengthy because there were a total of 62 clicking steps and they didn’t change pace, meaning she was almost certainly walking in a straight line. He did the math…Calculating those clicks at an average 27-inch female pace count, added to the thirty or so feet in front of me to the garage door, I’m going to make the room as about 160 to 170 feet long.

  Gage’s primary assumption was confirmed as a woman emerged. She moved well around him, circling and standing a good ten feet in front of him. This would be the warden—la capitana, actually. He’d learned a little about her but he hadn’t envisioned her looking this way.

  She was of average height for a woman, her long brown hair held up in a tight bun behind her head. Wearing a powder blue lab coat like that of a doctor or a scientist, she held a clipboard in her right hand, rounding out her erudite appearance. Gage guessed her age as somewhere in her mid-forties and, while she was still certainly quite attractive, he assumed she had once been striking. Her face, due to the heavy makeup she wore, now seemed somewhat severe. But her full, smiling lips and large brown eyes softened her appearance. She was trim with a proud bust-line and, from below her knee-length skirt, what appeared to be well-toned runner’s legs. As he surveyed her, she surveyed him, finally asking him, “Habla Espanol?”

  “Sí, un poco.”

  Despite his answer, she spoke excellent English as she viewed her clipboard. “Gregory Harris, United States Citizen, convicted of second-degree murder in Melilla, our crime-riddled province next to Morocco.” She looked up, viewing him behind her large glasses. “And whom did you kill, Gregory?”

  “A fisherman,” Gage replied, having memorized the cover story.

  “You admit this?”

  “I do.”

  She beamed, showing very large and white teeth with a distinctive gap in their center. “Well, Gregory, kudos to your honesty.”

  Gage said nothing.

  “And why did you kill this fisherman?”

  “We had a business disagreement. Things got out of hand.”

  “Hmmm,” she purred. “Weren’t you and the so-called fisherman exporting narcotics to Europe, and the disagreement revolved around that?”

  “I wasn’t convicted for that, ma’am. The reason was simply a business disagreement.”

  “Where in the U.S. are you from?”

  “All over, really. I grew up in the north.”

  “Not that it’s pertinent here, but I adore the United States. I go every year. My preference is Manhattan, but I also love San Diego and even the heartland of Nebraska, where I’ve a good friend whose husband is an airline pilot.”

  Unsure of what to say, Gage said, “That’s good to know.”

  “Did you attempt to have the United States intervene in your case?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “They did nothing to help me.”

  “No shock there,” she said. Then she reset her countenance. “I’m the administrator here, Gregory. My name is Capitana de la Mancha. I’ve been charged with Berga for thirteen years now…” again the dazzling smile, “…thirteen successful years, and I take my responsibilities very seriously.”

  She narrowed her eyes as the mirth slid away from her expression. “Gregory, you have an intelligence about you, I can tell, so I will not patronize you by mincing words. Forget what you know about prisons. Berga is nothing like any penitentiary you might find in the United States, or Spain for that matter. We’re truly unique here.” Capitana de la Mancha began taking slow steps toward him as she spoke. “My job isn’t about rehabilitation or nurturing—not at all. Rather, it’s about shielding the Spanish citizenry, and our tourism which, as I’m sure you know, is a large portion of our economy and is responsible for putting food in the mouths of our beloved people.”

  She stepped directly in front of him and lowered her voice. “I’m assuming, since it was Africa, that you were exporting either opium or, with the burgeoning industry that I hear has popped up, poorly-produced africano cocaine. These drugs are quite important to our tourism here and I truly could care less if people choose to use them.”

  Had Gage been given a hundred chances to hypothesize what the warden’s welcome to Berga would be like, he’d have never come close to guessing anything such as this. Capitana de la Mancha was close enough that he could smell her perfume, which was quite strong.

&nb
sp; “But enough about me, Gregory. In short order, you will be inserted into the population and, according to our detailed statistics, there is a twenty-seven percent chance you will be in the prison hospital within one hour. That number rises to nearly fifty percent after twenty-four hours. Those who can survive the first twenty-four hours without a hospital trip typically fare quite well here.” She lifted her free hand, tipped with long red nails, starting with his left shoulder, running her hand downward over his chest and stomach, lingering at his belt as the corner of her mouth ticked upward.

  “You’ve a nice, hard body, Gregory. Most Spaniards aren’t as big as you and, while that could portend well for your future, my fellow Spaniards are also a proud people. Expect them to come at you with ferocity. They won’t like the fact that you’re a gabacho, and they won’t like the fact that you’re large, well-muscled and, I must say, quite handsome.” Her hand brushed downward, below his belt, before falling back to her side. Then, with surprising force, she knifed the plastic clipboard upward, striking Gage’s testicles and sending him lurching forward in agonizing pain.

  “I’d suggest you pick up your game because you’ll need faster reflexes than that, Gregory.” As he tried to catch his breath, her heels could be heard again as she said in Spanish, “Have him examined and then get him in-processed.”

  The two guards hoisted Gage to his feet and took him to the infirmary.

  * * *

  After inventorying his scant personal items, the supply worker told Gage that everything other than his toiletries would be kept in a locker until his release. That done, Gage was herded to another station where he was issued four pair of thin green pants and four lightweight shirts. The clothes were cousins to hospital scrubs, probably made flimsy for a multitude of reasons. His boots were taken and he was issued flat thong sandals, like a person might wear in a public shower. Gage’s sandals were a few sizes too small and, when he mentioned this, the attendant, a small prisoner with only one eye, mumbled something to Gage about stopping his bitching.