They didn’t bother with the cuffs and chains again, and I wondered if I should make my move now. In the end, I decided against it; they were positioned so that there was a good possibility I would be shot if I tried anything; on a long, wide corridor like this, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, they couldn’t miss.
No, I told myself, the crowd was the key.
Win the fight, win the crowd, and then make your move.
Five minutes later, I was stood once more at the barbed wire fencing that was strung between the four huge columns that made up the fighting arena.
Only the arena had changed. What had once been a bare concrete floor now sparkled under the lights.
What the hell . . .?
Glass.
The whole damn floor was covered in broken glass.
What was wrong with these sick sons of bitches? They wanted us to fight on broken glass? Was the barbed wire not enough for them?
I supposed it was good of them not to put it down for the opening rounds, but to save it for the final; if we’d been grappling on that shit, none of us might have made it this far.
At least they’d not told me to take my sneakers off, I told myself. Now that would be unpleasant.
“In the grand final,” Bush announced, “fighting out of San Quentin State Prison, is . . . Mitchel ‘Dangerous’ Delaney!”
I wondered how long Bush had been working on that nickname, and decided it can’t have been longer than five seconds; but then as the crowd erupted, I waved at them despite my misgivings about this whole event, and they cheered and yelled back at me.
And then I mounted the ladder, and – ignoring the lancing pain in my side – I jumped over the fence, landing in the broken glass on the other side, hearing it splinter and crush under my feet.
I raised my arms to the crowd again, going to all four sides.
It was important that they loved me.
I let the noise of the crowd rush over me, then turned to the doorway that led to the cellblocks as they quieted down. “And his opponent,” Bush shouted loudly, over the last few whoops and yells, “fighting out of Pelican Bay State Prison by way of Guatemala, is the ‘Angel of Death’ himself, the top executioner for MS13, one of the world’s most feared street gangs . . . Miguel Ángel Gonzales!”
The Angel of Death? It was a hell of a lot better than ‘Dangerous’, that was for sure; and – if it was accurate – then it was a moniker that didn’t bode well.
A moment later I saw the man leave the cells and start his approach to the arena, and I could see that he was probably well named.
A Guatemalan, he was six feet tall and looked just as wide, a powerful man but athletic too; he had long black hair swept back in a ponytail and a goatee beard, and his muscular body was adorned with a huge array of prison tattoos, mainly Christian symbols such as crosses, crucifixes and . . . yes, angels.
As he got closer, I saw his chest was one large angel, wrapped around a cross; an olive branch was in one hand, a blood-soaked machete in the other.
I looked up, saw the eyes, and felt nervous for the first time that evening.
If Marks’s eyes had been lifeless, those of Gonzales were anything but; they were full of life, fiery, aggressive, monstrous.
He grinned at me, and I knew that here we had a man who enjoyed his work.
Before Bush could instruct me to move away, Gonzales started running for the ladder, bounding up it and stepping onto the top line of barbed wire, legs bending as it bowed under his weight.
And then, smile still plastered across his face, he pushed hard off the fence and launched himself down toward me.
Chapter Five
He slammed into my chest with his arms outstretched like a damn Superman, knocking me down to the glass-covered floor.
I felt my back tear up as it hit the deck, bits of broken glass embedding themselves into my skin. I rolled out of the way as Gonzales landed and stamped his foot down toward me, kicking out at his knee at the same time, my body absorbing more glass as I went.
My kick only grazed him, but it managed to unbalance him enough that it gave me time to jump to my feet. Blood was running down my back, filling my pants, but I had to ignore it and concentrate on the guy in front of me.
Gonzales was good – even flying through the air, he’d managed to target the taped side of my chest, obviously realizing in that split second where I was weak. That sort of attention to detail was what separated a good fighter from a great one.
He launched a huge thrusting front kick toward me, but I managed to dodge out of the way in time; I tried to counter with a round kick to his leg as I went, but he pulled it back out of the way too quickly and l lost balance. Gonzales, seeing an opening, fired a heavy overhand right my way, which I only just avoided. But he adjusted quickly and pulled the same arm backward, smashing into the side of my neck with the edge of his forearm, and then followed it up with a body shot that I took straight in the gut.
It doubled me over, the pain shooting through those ribs again, but I took the opportunity and grabbed his leg as I went down. He tried to pull it back but my grip was secure, and I pulled it in tight and drove forward, forcing him down to the glassy floor and giving him a taste of his own medicine.
He grunted as the glass shards lacerated his back, and I clambered on top of him as fast as I could, pinning him to the ground and sending my fists crashing down into his upturned face. He was trying to shift me off him, but his movement just ground that glass further into his back; and every time I punched him, the back of his head got cut open too.
Then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, too fast for me to react to it, and then I felt a searing pain on the side of my face, as if my cheek was being torn off.
To a certain extent, I realized, it was – Gonzales had filled his hand with bits of broken glass and rammed them up into my face, grinding them into the flesh. He’d probably ruined that hand now, but the effect was worth it – I gave up my hold as I reacted to the pain and shock, and he pulled me over, getting a knee up into my ribs as I went.
Combined with the pain of my cheek being half scraped off, the shot to the ribs made me see double and nearly pass out then and there. But I was still conscious when he rolled me hard onto my front, the glass cutting into my chest and stomach now, ripping me open as he mounted me from behind, hands pushing down hard on my head, forcing my face down toward the glass.
The crowd screamed its approval at the violence, but I ignored it, trapped in a world of my own – a world where my eyes were so close to the glass, I could see that some of it was from beer bottles. Hell, I was so close I could even identify the different brands.
My hands and forearms were on fire as they tried to support me, to keep my face away from the glass, and I could feel the shards dig deep into my skin, the weight of Gonzales making the glass cut through my torso too. I felt Gonzales’ hot breath on the back of my neck as he used all of his strength to force my head down, and I was suddenly terrified that he might succeed, that my face would be pushed straight into those razor-sharp shards.
And then – through the fog of consciousness that was rapidly slipping away – I asked myself if I could live with disfigurement, if I could survive the pain.
I knew I could.
In that moment, I relaxed, trusting my body, giving myself over to instinct, all fear gone now.
I stopped resisting and let my face drop suddenly toward the glass; the sudden give in my body took Gonzales by surprise, and he pulled away reflexively, just for a fraction of a second.
But it was all I needed, and I reared up backwards, pushing Gonzales off me and jumping back to my feet, spinning round to smash a scything round kick right into his head.
The blow struck hard, my shin smashing into his jaw, but the guy didn’t go down, just staggered slightly and then repositioned himself, guard back up, ready for more.
He raced toward me, growling savagely, going for a wrestling takedown of his own; but he was
rushing it, face low, and I sent a thundering knee crashing up into his jaw, snapping his head back. Still the guy didn’t go down though, and instead seemed only energized by the pain.
He scooped his foot into the glass beneath us and then kicked up, shards of glass flying toward me; it was like the bully kicking sand into the little kid’s face, only a lot worse.
I managed to get my arms up to protect my eyes, but Gonzales had banked on this and rushed forward, slamming a huge round kick right into my side. It was the wrong side, he must still have been fooled by the tape, but it still rocked me, made me want to throw up, and he used his chance to swing an uppercut under my chin.
It connected hard and my head rocked back; but instead of recovering forward, I used the lean backwards to send a kick up, aiming the toes of my sneakers toward his throat. It missed the target but still hit him in the chest, knocking him back, and I used the few moments it took him to recover his balance to shake my head loose, to try and recover from that huge uppercut.
My vision finally cleared, and I saw Gonzales stalking around the arena again, looking for openings. Almost without realizing, I saw that I was doing the same thing.
Our mutual concentration was broken just moments later by the clang of metal and the crash of broken glass, and we both looked around instinctively.
Gonzales grinned in perverse pleasure, but I could barely believe it – Bush had thrown a couple of two-foot-long machetes into the fighting pit, one for each of us, and the crowd roared its approval, their excitement feverish.
The machetes had landed right next to one another, right in the middle of the arena.
We paused and looked at one another, as if daring the other to move first; and then, as one, we ran for the machetes, knowing that whoever got there last, would probably be the first to die.
Chapter Six
We got there at the same time, both of us having the same idea and trying to grab both machetes, determined not to let the other have one, neither of us wanting a fair fight if we could possibly help it.
In the end, our hands got in the way of each other and we ended up playing patty cake for the first few seconds, one bloody hand slipping over the other as we struggled to get at the blades below us.
I pulled one hand away and grabbed his wrist, jerking him off-balance; and when he put out his other hand to stop his fall, I made a grab for one of the weapons, securing my hold on the handle and swiping it immediately toward his neck.
But his balance was better than I thought, and he managed to keep from falling over without having to use that second hand; instead, realizing the danger he was in, he shot that hand in with the speed of a rattlesnake and snatched the second machete off the floor, bringing it up to block the blow from my blade.
I used the same trick he had earlier, and scooped some of the glass up into the palm of my other hand, throwing it up into his face as a distraction as I swung the machete again, coming around from the opposite angle. I knew he’d block the first strike, but I was hoping he would throw his arm across his face to protect his eyes, like I’d done, so I could launch a secondary attack which he couldn’t defend.
But he was too smart for that and just took the glass in the face, allowing himself to parry my second strike.
And then we were suddenly up, regaining our feet and separating at the same time, as if we were somehow linked psychically, acting as one.
We went back to stalking each other now, both of us wary, respecting the skills of the other, knowing that one false move could lose us the game.
And losing this game would inevitably mean being hacked to death with a two-foot machete.
As we circled one another, I made a note of the way Gonzales held the machete, how he moved with it.
I was comfortable with the weapon myself, having studied its use along with many others during my training in Escrima – first in the States with my friend Manuel Lapada, then with his family in the Philippines. We’d learned the single stick, double stick, baton, staff and a wide variety of knives and bladed weapons. And the Philippines was somewhere you learned quickly. Challenge matches were a way of life over there; the masters never backed down from one, and students were expected to follow their example.
Even now, I carried collapsible batons and folding knives on me at all times when I was hiking across the States, and was about as comfortable using them as it was possible to be.
But Gonzales looked pretty comfortable too, and I knew that the machete was a common working tool in Guatemala; he’d probably grown up knowing how to wield one, and it was only a short step from hacking crops to hacking people. He might not know all the clever techniques, but it looked as if he was more than capable of chopping through arms and legs if he had to.
As if to test my theory, he came rushing forward, machete raised high, ready to cleave right through me; but the attack was clumsy, leaving him open, and I ducked low and swept my blade horizontally toward his gut.
But incredibly, his other hand intercepted my attack, stopping it at the wrist, and I knew the first attack had just been to get me to commit to my own counter-attack. He was more sophisticated than I thought, and I hoped I would live to learn from my mistake.
His hand clenched hard over my wrist, and I could feel the glass that was embedded in his palm cutting into my lower arm as he whipped the machete back toward me in a short arc, leaving me little time to defend myself.
My body reacted more quickly than my mind could process what was happening, and I pulled my weapon-arm free of his grip and jammed the hilt of my machete into the biceps of his attacking arm with a hard Puño strike. In an ideal world, the technique would have hit a nerve and made him drop the weapon, but I had no such luck. It did distract him while I whipped my own machete in toward his face though, and – unable to use the arm holding his weapon for a few vital moments – he was forced to block the blow with his forearm, and I could see the whites of his eyes show as my blade sunk deep into muscle and bone, the machete cutting deep.
The audience screamed at the sight of the two-foot blade sticking out of Gonzales’ arm, but he recovered more quickly than they did and – recovering the feeling in his arm – he swung it in toward me. I tried to yank the blade out of his ulna, but he moved the arm with it and the machete didn’t come free; and so then I was forced to block his blade with my forearm, and – when it made contact – it was all I could do not to scream out in agony. The machete bit deep, passing through the skin, the muscle, even part of the bone, until – like my own blade in Gonzales – it came to rest embedded in the arm.
And there we were, locked together in the middle of the fight-pit, one of our hands holding the hilt of a machete, while the other arm was attached to the blade of our opponent’s weapon, tied up like a couple of spawning octopi.
The crowd was in uproar as we stood there, evenly matched, eyeing each other up, searching each other’s soul for the first sign of weakness.
And then we started to move, each of us trying to dislodge our machete from the other man’s arm, while at the same time trying not to let them; pull-push, pull-push went the game, and I was beyond pain now, the agony so intense it had become pure, not linked to my own sensations anymore but something to be observed from afar, as if it was all happening to someone else. I knew it was the adrenaline that my system was pumping through my body that masked the pain, and I was glad of it.
But we couldn’t keep this stalemate forever, I knew that much; something had to give soon, or else – with all the tugging back and forth – our forearms were liable to get completely severed.
And so I clenched my teeth and let go of my weapon; and with one hand free, I punched Gonzales straight in his unprotected throat, using the point of my extended thumb, bunched tight against my curled fingers. He jerked, choked and gagged, and I used the same thumb-fist to punch hard into the inside of the wrist that held his machete, knocking his grip free of his hilt. I jerked a foot hard up into his groin to give him something else to thi
nk about, then reached for his weapon, which was still embedded in my arm, gripped it tight, and wrenched it loose. And then, as fast as I could, knowing that every fraction of a second counted, I swept the blade right at Gonzales’ face.
He managed to get up the arm with my machete sticking out of it, but it wasn’t high enough, and the blade of my weapon sliced off four fingers from his extended hand before smashing into Gonzales’ face; the wide, sharp blade buried itself through his nose and cheekbone, coming to rest halfway through his skull.
I watched as his eyes regarded me with surprise, with shock, and finally with rage; and then carried on watching as he collapsed slowly to the floor.
Dead.
I breathed out slowly, even as the crowd came to its collective feet and started to cheer its approval.
I’d done it.
I’d won.
And now the real work would begin.
Chapter Seven
It was good that I still had a reason to keep the adrenaline pumping through my veins; if killing Gonzales had been the end of it, I might well have collapsed from my wounds. My ribs were slicing into me so badly I feared they’d pierced something inside me, half of my skin was cut to ribbons, one of my cheeks had been all but grated off, and the huge wound in my forearm went right down to the bone.
But I wasn’t finished yet, and my system knew that, and kept the adrenaline flowing. I helped it out by raising my arms in savage victory, getting the crowds hyped up, encouraging them to cheer and applaud, whoop and holler; and their energy fed me in turn, helping to keep my arousal levels high.
“Ladies and gentleman,” Bush announced, “after what I’m sure you will agree was a battle unlike anything we’ve seen before, I give you our Ultimate Prison Fighting Champion, killer of the Angel of Death himself . . . Mitchel ‘Dangerous’ Delaney!”
I wasn’t any happier with the nickname, but the crowd went wild and I stood in the center of that evil, blood-soaked arena and raised my arms in victory once more.
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR BREAKOUT: Colt Ryder Uncovers A Deadly Fight Club At San Quentin State Prison . . . Will He Escape With His Life? Page 13