by Don Prichard
“Hate to tell you this, Jake, but you’re his target.”
Jake groaned. “I figured I’d be in for it after Emilio’s arrest.”
Sure enough, the groups were barely out of their arches before Emilio strolled up to the new prisoner. They exchanged what looked like two words before Emilio marched away with the little guy trailing him.
Jake grunted. “Doesn’t look like much of a challenge.”
“He’s known as Pamukpok. Translated from Tagalog, it means Mallet, if that gives you any idea of what you’re facing.”
“Can’t be anywhere as bad as Scar.”
“Worse. Far worse. I’ll tell you about him after our inspection with the warden.”
There had been no more sabotage on the furniture and construction sites since Emilio’s arrest in January. Every morning, skilled workers transported from Manila arrived at the prison and worked until dusk. Still, as Lee said, progress seemed as slow as the Palawan Forest Turtle. They were a month behind schedule. “But then,” Lee asked, “what’s the hurry anyway?”
Plenty. Jake had told Lee nothing about Dana’s request. Nor Puno. Certainly not the warden. But more and more, the idea was elbowing its way into Jake’s heart. He’d give it a month, let it simmer on the back burner of his mind.
Since Emilio’s arrest, the warden no longer frowned on Jake. “Looks like you won the competition for Mendoza’s favor,” Puno said. “Or perhaps Emilio simply lost it with his arrest.”
Jake smiled. “Or maybe it’s simply the Just Judge prevailing.” The turn of events gave him renewed hope that eventually God would extend that justice to him.
When he and Lee were free after the site inspections to sit in the detective’s car, Lee updated Jake on his new opponent. “Are you familiar with Eskrima?”
Jake shrugged. “Only that it’s a Filipino martial art that uses weapons instead of bare hands and feet.”
“Correct. Mallet is best known for using bastons, sticks made from rattan. Two of them.”
“Sounds defensible enough.”
Lee’s eyebrows lifted. “He uses them ambidextrously at different angles at the same time. One to strike your head, for example, while at the same moment smashing your arm with the other stick. Defend yourself against one move, and you still get hurt by the other. Not just hurt. Damaged. Pulverized. Thus the name Mallet.”
Weariness sucked the juice out of Jake. “Why did you let him in here?”
“I’m sorry, Jake. I have no choice. The best I can do is forewarn you.”
“I know.” Jake shortened his sigh to a huff. “I appreciate it. You’re a good and faithful friend, Lee. I thank God for the day our paths crossed.”
“You aren’t going to try to hug me again, are you?”
Jake grinned. “Not until I get out of this place and have had a long, hot shower, I promise.”
Scar had worked on Jake’s nerves by delaying his attack. Every day for Jake had meant looking over his shoulder for stalkers, peering around corners for ambush, questioning his defense tactics for weak points. This time he didn’t want to wait. Instead, he’d make himself available for Mallet’s assault. The sooner, the better.
“He couldn’t bring his bastons inside the prison with him, so probably someone hid them where Mallet could best get at me. That has to be the construction site,” Jake mused.
Puno agreed. “Your morning inspection, before the construction crew arrives. There is a new guard. If he accompanies you, he is most likely Mallet’s accomplice.”
The next morning, a cloudless sky already shimmering with heat greeted Jake at the front gate. Standing on the other side, rifle hefted, was the new guard.
Chapter 61
At the construction site, the new guard trailed Jake at a distance. How would the guard admit Mallet to the site, and at what point would Jake be confronted? Shadows clung to the concrete walls on the west but bounced back the bright light of the morning sun on the east. Doors and windows hadn’t been installed yet, and although each of the four prison pods consisted of a simple circular space, the large, central office pod offered a maze of rooms. Plenty of options for an ambush.
Jake carried no weapons. Only a clipboard and pen on which to jot notes. Nor did he spy anything he could use to defend himself. All tools were carefully stored away and accounted for before the working crew left in the evening.
February was the driest month of the year, yet Jake found himself sweating profusely. In contrast, his tongue was a cotton ball in an oven set to broil. His stomach was all teeth, gnawing on tangled guts. Never in his life had he felt so vulnerable.
Last night, Puno had further enlightened him on the sport of stick fighting. Eskrima was a long-standing martial art of the Philippines. Bastons, in addition to being wielded ambidextrously, could also be used to pommel an opponent with multiple blows per second like a jackhammer. Repeated blows to the same area of the body resulted in either broken bones or muscle tissue damaged beyond repair.
Even if Jake disarmed Mallet of one of the bastons, he could still be harmed by Mallet’s empty hand. The live hand, Puno told him, was a distinctive feature of eskrima. There’d be no fencing, baston against baston with the off-hand safely tucked behind the fighter’s back. Instead, the live hand would be used as a weapon for trapping, blocking, and striking the opponent.
Odds were that if Jake tried to deflect blows with his arms, they’d be broken. Then, defenseless, he’d simply be beaten to death.
Fight or flight. If he couldn’t fight, was that his only recourse, to flee?
He kept to the perimeter outside the office pod. Once Mallet showed himself, Jake could use the labyrinth of the interior to his advantage. He was familiar with the rooms and the passageways between them. Even if Mallet had scouted the layout beforehand, he wouldn’t have them memorized as Jake did.
Where was the man? Jake all but tiptoed, subduing the slap of his sandals on concrete. Silence stormed his ears. No bird calls. No buzz of insects. No distant murmur of guards at the front gate. Only his heart, pumping.
Pumping ice. Frosting corpuscles in arteries. Chilling oxygen molecules in his lungs.
A footstep rang out like a gong, and Jake’s nerves zapped to life. Flames consumed the ice, flared muscles to full alert.
Mallet stepped from the shadowed entryway of the office pod. He halted, sticks raised, face grim.
Adrenalin shot through Jake’s body. He snapped to his combat readiness stance, legs apart, knees slightly bent, arms wide. Nostrils flared, he breathed deeply, steeping brain and muscles in oxygen.
Slowly, Mallet stooped and laid one of the bastons on the ground. He retreated several feet. Nodded at Jake in apparent invitation to pick it up.
Jake’s heart skipped a beat. Was Mallet evening the odds by giving Jake a weapon? Or luring Jake into false hope?
Fight or flight? Hairs on the back of his neck prickling, Jake advanced, grabbed the stick, stepped away. The baston was lightweight, about two feet in length. Made of rattan, colored a candy-cane stripe of light and dark browns, highly polished. He tested it with a smack to his open palm and winced. Unlike the bamboo cane that had lashed his back at his prison beating, the baston was inflexible. Solid. Meant to break, not be broken.
Fight or flight? He had a weapon, muscles strengthened by hard labor to wield it, and towered over his opponent. Surely that gave him the advantage.
So thought Goliath with David.
Jake blinked. Okay, flight it was.
He pivoted to his right and dashed through the entryway. Behind him, Mallet screeched a howl that followed him in his pursuit of Jake. Outrunning the little demon wasn’t a problem, but neither was it a solution. At some point there had to be a confrontation. And what if the new guard stepped in to help, blocking Jake’s path? Then he’d have two opponents to contend with instead of one.
To keep track of Mallet, Jake made sure his pursuer observed his path of flight—every corner he turned, every passageway he ducked into. Twice
he stopped as if to confront Mallet, but fled before his adversary closed in on him. Little by little, he led him pounding the concrete floors to the only destination that held out any hope for him.
The large dining area offered several doorways. Jake sped across the empty room to the kitchen. The stainless steel serving counter stretched to his right, with access to the kitchen straight ahead. A backward glance made sure he was in Mallet’s line of sight. Mallet had to see him enter the kitchen. That was important.
Huffing to slow his breathing, he turned to a food service door set at a right angle to the serving counter. From the dining room, the exit was invisible. He dropped to his knees and crawled alongside the serving counter to its end where he had entered the kitchen. Where Mallet also would enter the kitchen.
Heavy panting punctuated the slaps of Mallet’s running footsteps like the dots and dashes of a Morse code message. Good. The labyrinth chase was sapping the Minotaur. Hopefully his aim and the power of his strikes would be thrown off.
Positioning himself in a tight crouch, Jake gripped the end of his baston. Tensed his muscles. Prayed to God for perfect timing.
Mallet strode into range, and Jake slammed the stick with all his might into Mallet’s shins. The chunk of man fell screaming onto his face, and Jake pounced on him. Mallet twisted and landed a blow with his baston onto Jake’s arm. The angle was awkward, though, and the blow lacked Mallet’s full strength. Jake grabbed Mallet’s hand and bent it back until he felt the wrist snap. Mallet’s baston clunked to the floor, and Jake swept it out of reach.
Jake tossed aside his own baston to better deal with his writhing opponent. With his one good hand, Mallet tore at Jake’s clothing, clubbed his face, and jabbed his ribs. Trying to pin the little man was like riding a bucking bull. Mallet’s teeth sank into Jake’s forearm, and Jake slugged the swarthy face as hard as he could. Mallet’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his mouth went slack. A low, guttural sound wheezed from his throat. His body went limp.
Jake staggered to his feet. When he leaned over to make sure Mallet had a pulse, his head reeled. He sat down at a safe distance until the faintness dissipated. With each breath that heaved from his lungs, he rasped a humble thanks heavenward. Then he gathered the two bastons and left the defeated Minotaur for someone else to help.
When Jake emerged, victor of the labyrinth, the new guard dropped his cigarette and clutched his rifle. “Get Mallet”—Jake jabbed the bastons at the office pod—“but first open the gate. I’m taking these to the warden.”
The voices of construction workers arriving from Manila wafted from the parking lot. The guard opened the gate for them to file through, followed Jake outside, and locked the gate. Pointing his rifle at Jake at a distance safe from the bastons’ reach, he escorted Jake to the steps of the prison offices, then turned and sped, not in the direction of the construction site, but away from the prison complex. As far away as possible, Jake figured, from the warden.
The guard hopped into the passenger side of a pickup truck parked at the far end of the lot. The door barely closed before the truck took off, back tires spurting dirt and dried vegetation into the air. A well-executed getaway. Was Mallet expected to be with them?
Jake gazed after the disappearing vehicle. How could he even think of letting Dana get married at the prison? Safety was too big a factor. Perhaps, with Detective Lee escorting Jake, the warden would permit Jake to attend the wedding in Manila.
Yes, that was the way to go. He’d ask the warden on that basis.
Still, the idea tugged at him to stick with having the wedding at the prison. More than tugged. Yanked. Practically hog-tied him.
Almost as if he were being commanded to do it.
Chapter 62
April
Eve’s hands shook. She didn’t know which envelope to open first, the one from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, or the one addressed to her—not Crystal—from Jake Chalmers. With Crystal tucked next to her on their living room couch, reading her own letter from Jake in the fading evening light, Eve opted for her letter from him. He had never written to her before.
A bitter taste settled onto her tongue as she used a letter opener to slice through the envelope. It was bad enough he manipulated Crystal. Was he going to try his wiles on her now?
Dear Ms. Eriksson, he wrote. What, he wasn’t going to address his “fiancé” by her given name? Eve snorted. I would wish to call you Eve, but I suspect the familiarity would not be respectful between a prisoner and a magistrate. Eve sniffed in disdain that he’d anticipated her response.
My hope with this letter is to invite Crystal and you as her guardian to attend a special occasion. My daughter, Dana, will be graduating from the United States Military Academy in May, along with her twin brother, Brett. In June, she will marry Cadet Bentley Hampton here in the Philippines so that I can walk her down the aisle. My request is that you and Crystal join us as my guests, at my cost for your transportation and lodgings.
I won’t say anything to Crystal about this invitation but will wait on you for an answer. Before you make a decision against coming, however, please, will you meet Dana and Brett, who will be in Chicago in two weeks? Through getting to know my children, you may feel more comfortable about their father. Dana will call to set a time and place if you agree.
He signed the letter, In humility, Jacob Chalmers.
“Is that from Jake?” Crystal, voice peaking in excitement, leaned across Eve’s arm.
What could she say except yes?
“Can I read it while you read mine?” Crystal thrust her letter from Jake at Eve.
There was no avoiding an exchange; she might as well tell Crystal what he’d said. “He wants us to go to the Philippines for his daughter’s wedding.”
Crystal shrieked. “Tubular, dude! My dream come true, and I get to meet his kids too!”
“No, Crystal.”
Silence. Then the sound of air sweeping into Crystal’s lungs and stopping, caught in her throat. Her eyes bulged wide open in a stare of disbelief at Eve.
Eve squirmed at the magnitude of Crystal’s reaction. She hated denying Crystal. Hated hurting her. Hated Jake for setting up the conflict.
“I’m sorry, honey. He’s a—” She broke off before the words murderer and manipulator left her tongue. “—a prisoner. He’s off-limits.”
Crystal exhaled slowly through her mouth, then nodded and rose to her feet. Dropping her letter onto Eve’s lap, she executed a numb exit up the stairs to her bedroom.
Eve sat, arms wrapped over her chest, and rocked back and forth, releasing herself to a hug from God. Help me, help me, please, God. I just want to be a good mother.
She closed her eyes and sank into the despair of her prayer. When she opened them again, she was curled up against the couch cushions. Her wristwatch showed an hour had passed. Guilt for neglecting Crystal’s sorrow knifed her stomach. She didn’t know what to say to Crystal, but she knew she needed to put her arms around the child and hold her tight. For both their sakes.
Her heart thumped in accompaniment to her heavy footsteps on the two flights of stairs to Crystal’s bedroom. The dormer room, which included a bathroom, took up the entire third floor, a teenager’s dream of privacy, with the additional wow-factor of space for entertaining friends.
Crystal lay asleep across her bed where she must have flung herself in tears onto her pillow. Her hair was in disarray across her face. Dried tear-tracks ran from her eyes, alongside her nose, and down to a jumping-off point at her chin. A thicker track of drool from her open mouth joined the tear-track.
Should she wake her up? Betty’s old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table pointed its hands to 9:20. No, they’d both be better off with a good night’s sleep. She draped the bedspread as best she could over Crystal. The movement disturbed a photo inches from Crystal’s right hand, and it fluttered to the floor.
Eve picked it up.
And gasped.
&
nbsp; It was her warrior.
A headshot, close up and personal. Grinning at her. Same shaggy hair, same shambled beard. Same steel blue eyes crinkled at the corners by the grin. The only thing missing was his sword.
She stumbled to a chair, turned on a lamp, and sat, mesmerized by the picture. How could this be? A deep joy welled in her heart and flowed to every part of her body. She felt her face brighten with a sweet radiance, felt the touch of strong fingers caress her cheeks.
She closed her eyes and basked in the love.
***
“Mom?”
A hand clasped Eve’s shoulder and shook it. Startled, she opened her eyes to find herself still in the chair, with Crystal leaning over her.
“Are you okay?”
Eve blinked, sat up straight. “I must have fallen asleep. I …” Her drowsiness whisked away as she remembered her warrior, the love, the lightness of her heart. She looked for the photo. She could ask Crystal now who he was.
“What are you doing here?” Worry edged Crystal’s question.
“I came to give you a hug. I figured we both needed it.” The corners of Crystal’s mouth curved downward, pulling a sad face with it. Eve stood and embraced her, held her a long time.
She spied the photo to the side of the chair and broke the hug to retrieve it. “Crystal, who is this?”
Crystal’s face flushed. “It’s, uh, Jake, before he shaved his beard when we came home from the island.”
Eve sat down hard on the chair. “Jake? Jacob Chalmers?”
Crystal sucked in her bottom lip and nodded.
Betrayal grabbed Eve’s neck in iron fists. Choking, she shot her hand to her throat to break the hold. Her face bloated with pressure. Her scalp prickled in flames.
“Mom?” The blur of Crystal’s panicked face came into focus. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought he—” The words released the grip on Eve’s throat. I thought he was from God. That he was my protector. Renewed rage burned like coals. He’d fooled her! Or God had.