by Wilbur Smith
Johnny Congo was placed in the back of an unmarked, white minivan belonging to the Offender Transportation Office and ordered to sit on one of the two gray, upholstered benches that ran along either side of what would normally be the passenger compartment. Then his ankles were chained to the floor.
There were steel grilles on the windows and a more substantial one separating the passenger compartment from the driver’s seat. An armed guard sat opposite Johnny, dressed in tan slacks, a white shirt and a black protective vest. The guard didn’t say anything. He looked alert but at the same time relaxed, like a man who was good at his job, and trusted the other warders around him to do theirs, even in the presence of a known multiple killer. Johnny Congo didn’t say anything either, just looked at the guard, staring him down, determined to establish himself as the alpha male, even on the day he was to die.
The details of Johnny Congo’s execution had been discussed all the way to the top of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. They fully realized that he was an extremely dangerous criminal who had already proved that he could escape from a maximum-security unit. His case had received a lot of media coverage and the closer the time came to his execution, the larger that would grow. Even as he left the Polunsky Unit there were a couple of TV news crews by each gate and a chopper was buzzing overhead. Another, much bigger media pack was clustered around the back gate of the Walls Unit, through which execution convoys were always admitted.
The one thing they all wanted was a picture—any picture at all, no matter how blurred or grainy—of Congo as he looked now. The only portraits anyone had of him were the official mug shots taken when he’d got off the plane from Abu Zara, looking like someone had run a truck over his face, or old archive photographs from his first burst of notoriety, way back when. The great American public wanted and needed to see the man their legal system was killing on their behalf on his very last day on earth. But the authorities weren’t making it easy for anyone, including the media, to get anywhere near the condemned man.
Bearing in mind both the wickedness of Johnny Congo and the very public embarrassment that the entire Texas criminal justice establishment would suffer if he should get away from them a second time, there had been a change in the standard convoy format. There were, as always, three vehicles. But on this occasion the third in line was not another patrol car, as it would normally be, but a Lenco BearCat armored personnel carrier, loaded with a heavily armed, ten-man SWAT team. The BearCat was a big, black, menacing war-machine and the men inside it were the police equivalent of Special Forces. Against their firepower nothing short of a full-scale military assault would stand a chance of succeeding.
On the day of Johnny Congo’s execution, everyone who saw D’Shonn Brown reported that he seemed withdrawn, subdued and, in a quiet, understated way, very obviously distressed. The execution was set for six o’clock in the evening. Huntsville is only about seventy miles north of Houston, right up Highway 45, and doesn’t take much above an hour if the traffic is light. But D’Shonn wanted to be sure of missing the rush hour, and so, at the same time as the convoy taking Johnny Congo to his execution left the Polunsky Unit, D’Shonn’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Phantom purred out of the underground garage beneath his downtown Houston HQ. D’Shonn was sitting in the back. Clint Harding was up front next to the driver. A black Suburban followed the Rolls out of the garage. In it were another four of Harding’s men, whose job would be to get D’Shonn through the mob outside the prison gates on his way to the viewing room that looked on to the execution chamber.
D’Shonn was watching the TV on his iPad. “They got Johnny live on TV, following him from the sky like he’s another OJ.”
“I hate the way they are making this into a circus,” said Harding, tilting his head back toward D’Shonn. “Look, I know he was your brother’s buddy, or whatever, but Johnny Congo was a dangerous man. Now he’s getting the most dire punishment our society can deliver. It shouldn’t be turned into a TV reality show.”
D’Shonn’s phone rang. He took the call, listened for a moment and then said, “Yo, Rashad, my man . . . Yeah, I’m watching it too. I guess I knew this might happen, but still . . . Crazy to think, the next time I’m due to see Johnny is when they wheel him into the chamber. I’m not looking forward to that, don’t mind admitting.”
Harding had turned his head back to the front and was staring right out the windscreen, down Interstate 45, so as to respect his boss’s privacy. He didn’t see D’Shonn pick up a second phone and flash a Snapchat message: “Perfect. Go ahead. Get the chopper and the jet ready to roll.”
Ten seconds after it was received, the message vanished into thin air, leaving no trace that it had ever existed.
For two weeks Rashad Trevain had been trying to figure out ways of tracking Johnny Congo’s prison convoy without attracting any attention from the cops. The obvious answer was just to tail it on the road, but if one car stayed right behind the convoy all the way, it was bound to be spotted and forced to stop. They could have a relay system, handing over from one car to another, but with three routes of up to fifty-five miles to cover, that would mean three long chains of drivers, waiting to take up the surveillance if the convoy happened to come their way, which was more manpower than he wanted to use. The more guys there were on the job, the less likely he was to know them all well and, it followed, the less he could trust them to keep their mouths shut.
Rashad’s next idea was to buy a spotter drone of the kind police forces use for crowd control: a couple of feet across, with three miniature helicopter-style horizontal rotors and a camera that can send back images in real time to a base-station. But that would require skilled technicians to operate, plus there were range limitations for both the drone itself and the signal it was sending. So then Rashad went back to basics. He decided to scatter half-a-dozen spotters at key turning points along the first few miles of road: places where the convoy would be forced to make a choice that would determine its route.
But when he put the problem to D’Shonn Brown as they were looking across the water to the eighth green at the Golf Club of Houston’s Member Course, D’Shonn Brown had straightened up from the chip he was about to play, looked at Rashad and asked, “You reckon they’ll have a helicopter following that convoy?”
“You mean a police chopper, like an eye in the sky?” Rashad replied.
“That or a TV station, taking a break from following traffic to check out the badass nigger murderer taking his final ride. Give it the OJ treatment.”
“Guess so. It’s possible. Why?”
“Well, if someone was tracking the motorcade that would sure make our lives easier . . .”
D’Shonn interrupted himself for a few seconds to hit the ball about ten yards beyond the hole, only for it to halve the distance as the backspin kicked in and rolled it back toward the pin.
“Whoa, lucky bounce, bro!” Rashad laughed.
“Luck didn’t come into it, I played for the spin,” said D’Shonn coldly. He turned to replace his club in his bag, which was mounted on a trolley since they’d decided to play without caddies: no need for anyone else to hear what they were discussing. “But anyway, about that chopper, it would sure be handy if there was one up there,” he went on. “Only problem is, we’d have to get rid of it afterward. Some things we don’t want getting caught on camera.”
“Yeah, I follow you, man.”
“So you’d better see to that. If we want to get this job done, we’d best think of every eventuality.”
All Johnny Congo’s roads led to Huntsville. So that was where the ambush crew were waiting. The three heavily laden dumper trucks and the five stolen SUVs were all parked up on the cracked and dusty ribbon of road that led from Martin Luther King Drive up to the Northside Cemetery. There were no funerals planned for that day, no passers-by to look at the line of vehicles. The Maalik Angel in charge of the crew was a scrawny, light-skinned brother with a goatee beard called Janoris Hall. Like all the men who would
be working under him today, Janoris was wearing a hooded white Tyvek disposable boiler suit, with fine latex gloves and flimsy polypropylene overshoes covering his Nike sneakers. Plenty of crime scene investigators dress in virtually identical work-gear. They don’t want to contaminate a crime scene they’re investigating. The Angels didn’t want to contaminate a crime scene they were about to create. They also didn’t want to be identified, which was why each of the Angels had already been issued with a hockey goalkeeper’s face mask.
Janoris didn’t have his mask on right now. He was watching the TV news on his iPad and the moment the prison convoy turned left off Farm to Market Road 350, on to Route 190, he turned to his second-in-command Donny Razak and said, “They headed north.”
Razak had a shaven head, a thick, bushy beard and deep, gravelly voice that came from somewhere down in his barrel chest. “You want us to get going, meet ’em on the one-ninety?”
Janoris thought for a moment. It was tempting to head right out there now and get in position early. The less they were rushed, the smaller the chance of making a dumbass mistake somewhere along the line. But what if the convoy took the scenic route, up around the top of the lake and on into Huntsville on Texas 19? He didn’t want to be waiting in the wrong place with his dick in his hand while Johnny Congo was being taken to the Death House on another route.
“No, man, we are going to wait a while. See what happens when they get to the bridge. Soon as we know if they’s gonna cross it or not, that’s when we make our move.”
At the Walls Unit, one of the administrative offices had been taken over for use as a command post for the Congo operation. Now the only question was, who was in command? There were three possible candidates for the job: Hiram B. Johnson III, the prison governor, who was responsible for everything that would happen from the moment Johnny Congo entered the Walls Unit alive, to the time his body was taken from it, stone dead; Tad Bridgeman, the head of the Offender Transportation Office, whose own HQ was at the James “Jay” H. Byrd Jr Unit, a mile north of Downtown Huntsville and who was himself responsible for getting Johnny Congo from one prison unit to the other; and finally, this being Texas, there was a man in a white Stetson hat.
This last man also wore a pair of plain tan cowboy boots, stone-colored denim jeans, a crisply laundered white shirt and a dark tie. His gun was holstered high on his hip, making it easy to draw if he were on horseback, and there was a Star of Texas badge on his chest, stamped from fifty-peso Mexican coins. Officially, in recognition of their roughneck, cowboy origins, the officers of the Texas Rangers Division have no uniform other than their badge and their hat. Unofficially, however, jeans and a white shirt are expected, and the man wearing these was Major Robert “Bobby” Malinga, commander of the Rangers’ Company A.
He was the one who had co-ordinated the security precautions for the transport with the other two officials and would be responsible for reapprehending Johnny Congo if, by some terrible misfortune, he happened to escape captivity somewhere between West Livingston and Huntsville. The situation was further complicated by the addition of a fourth person, Chantelle Dixon Pomeroy. An immaculately groomed, impeccably mannered but laser-eyed redhead, Chantelle was Deputy Chief of Staff to the Governor of Texas. Her role was to observe and advise on the various political and public relations aspects of the execution and all the events and tasks surrounding it. She had no right to give direct orders to any of the various representatives of the state’s criminal justice system. But she was the eyes, ears and voice of the Governor. And he certainly could give orders.
Right now, as the Congo convoy headed north up the 190 toward the lakeside developments at Cedar Point, the four key players in the command post were all doing the same as everyone else . . . watching the convoy’s progress on TV.
“I don’t like those pictures,” Bobby Malinga growled. “If we can see ’em so can every gangbanger in Texas. I don’t want anyone thinking they can pull some crazy stunt, make a name for themselves as the guy who freed Johnny Congo. Or the guy who killed Johnny Congo before the state could do the job. It’s just as bad either way. I want that bird grounded.”
“That’s not going to happen, Major,” Chantelle Dixon Pomeroy said softly. “This isn’t Russia. We have a First Amendment here. We can’t just go around telling TV stations they can’t film an event of genuine significance to the people of Texas.”
“You ever heard of homeland security? Johnny Congo is a notorious killer. He spent years as a fugitive in Africa, led a personal militia there from what I understand, may still do for all I know. He represents a clear and present danger to national security. You want to help our enemies, Ms. Pomeroy?”
“No, I don’t, Major,” the Deputy Chief of Staff said, sliding a spike of iced steel into her honeyed voice. “And if he was an Islamic terrorist, I’m sure the Governor would be as concerned as you are. But what we have here, when you get right down to it, is a garden-variety killer. Justice will be done and the Governor wants the people of Texas to see, with their own eyes, that we have the finest police officers and prison staff in the nation.”
“Can you at least call the Governor’s office to ask if he’ll approve a no-fly order?” Malinga wheedled.
“Sure I can, but I don’t need to. I have absolutely no doubt about the Governor’s wishes. Sorry, Major, but the helicopter stays.”
The Trinity River flows into the northern end of Lake Livingston by the small waterside community of Onalaska. The mouth of the river is almost three miles wide and it’s spanned by the Trinity Bridge. As the minivan containing Johnny Congo drove along Route 190, through what passed for the center of Onalaska, Congo turned his head to look out of the window behind him. He saw a low-slung shed that contained a barbershop, an insurance office and a store that sold carpets and floor tiles. Just beyond it there was a Subway.
“Man, what I’d give right now for a foot-long Italian B.M.T.,” the guard sitting opposite him said. “Italian herb’n’cheese bread, extra provolone, plenty of mayo, mmm . . . What’s your favorite sub?”
“Huh?” Johnny Congo stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Subway, man, what kinda sandwich do you like?”
“Dunno. Never been.”
“You’re kidding me! You never once ate at Subway?”
“Nope, never heard of the place.” Johnny Congo looked blankly at the guard, then sighed, as if abandoning the policy of being deliberately non-communicative. “I was in Iraq, in the service, killin’ ragheads. Then I came home, caught a multiple homicide beef and was in jail, too many years, nothing but prison food. Then I was in Africa. No frickin’ Subways in Africa. So no, I ain’t never had no subs.”
“Huh?” The guard looked nonplussed, as though this was genuinely new and unusual information. At a crossroads opposite a Shell gas station they stopped at traffic lights. Now they had a choice to make: carry straight on up the road, or go past the gas station on to Farm to Market 356.
Neither Johnny nor the guard knew it but there were eyes glued to an iPad screen in Huntsville, waiting to see if the convoy took that turn. If it did, then Congo was being taken on the scenic route, up to the junction with Highway 19, then taking 19 all the way south-west into Huntsville. But when the lights turned green the patrol car leading the convoy kept going on along Route 190 toward the Trinity Bridge until it was heading out on the earthworks that carried the highway most of the way across the lake, just a few feet above the water, toward the high, white concrete swoop of the bridge itself.
“Guess you’ll never get to have a Subway now,” the guard said. “No offense, but . . . you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Congo. “Question is: do you?”
Thirty miles away, on the northern edge of Hunstville, right by the cemetery, Janoris Hall pumped his fist. “Yeah!” he shouted. “We got you now!” He looked around at the other Maalik Angels who were waiting for the signal to start the operation. “We are in business. They have taken the 190, now we’re g
onna meet them along the way, have ourselves a rendezvous. All right, now, gather around . . .”
The Angels all clustered around Janoris Hall and Donny Razak like footballers in a pre-game huddle. Janoris paced around the tight little circle in the middle of the huddle, with Donny shadowing him like a boxer in the ring. “We got an opportunity right here, today!” Janoris shouted, throwing a punch at Razak as the other Angels cheered. There were more punches, more cheers as Janoris went on, “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! An opportunity to make history! We gonna do something ain’t never been done before. We gonna do it . . .”
“Do it!” the other Angels shouted back, getting into the tribal rhythm of call-and-response that had come over on the slave ships from the barracoons of West Africa to the cotton fields and gospel churches of the American South.
Janoris pumped his fist. “And again . . .”
“Do it!”
“And again . . .”
“Do it!”
“Gimme Congo on three . . . and a one!”
“One!”
“Two!”
“Two!”
“Three!”
“Congo!”
They all leaped as one into the air toward the center of the circle and slapped their outstretched hands together. Then Janoris Hall looked around at the faces that surrounded him and said, “Let’s go get this sucker.”
A minute later the road to the cemetery was deserted. The trucks and the SUVs were on the road, heading for the intersection with Interstate 190.