Bolan made a show of stiffening.
“You know, I’m not going to raise any objection. I suggest you and your lovely wife have a lovely time, and then I suggest you have a long hard talk about how you want the rest of your lives to go down.”
She nodded at Linder. “We’re done here for the moment. I thank you for your patience and the Justice Department thanks you for your cooperation.”
Linder just shrugged.
Bolan kept the smile off his face. Price had a career in undercover work if she wanted it.
Schoenaur led her out. Bolan looked at Linder. He knew the warden would want to have a sit down about this little meeting in the very near future, and it wasn’t likely to be a pleasant conversation. The only good news was that Bolan was willing to bet the interrogation was most likely going to wait until after the fight.
The warden jerked his head at the door. “Get the fuck out of my office, Cooper.”
* * *
PATRICK LIFTED HIS pants cuff, pulled down his sock, and a train of energy bars clattered to the cell floor. He lifted up his other cuff and pulled out a Snickers and a Mars bar, then stepped out onto the tier. Bolan and Rudy followed. Patrick rolled his eyes. “The Mars bar was from Bobbie, personally. I think he likes you.”
Bolan scooped up his loot and slid all of it save one under his mattress. Bobbie-John was a young gay man in prison with a long stretch ahead of him. After the initial assaults he would have most likely found a lover or even a prison husband. After having been thrown to the Todd he was damaged goods. Prison had its own very hard, cold set of rules. The only way to ever stop being a man’s bitch was to become another man’s, or to kill the man who had made you one. However, with the Todd out of sight and out of mind on permanent medical disability, some of the stigma, like some of Bobbie-John’s scars, would fade with time.
Bolan nodded. “I have redeeming characteristics.”
Patrick raised his hands beseechingly. “Yeah? Well, dude, you know people saw me talking to him, and now they’re all whistling and shit. What’s that going to do to my rep in here?”
“If I live long enough, that won’t matter,” Bolan replied.
“And what the hell does that mean?”
“It means don’t pick up the soap, and keep your nose clean. You already screwed up in the yard.”
“Yeah.” Patrick grinned. “But that was awesome!”
“It was. Where’s my energy drink?”
“I couldn’t walk away from Bobbie-J with that down the front of my pants. It would have been the icing on the cake.”
Bolan had to give it to him. “I can see that.”
“You’ll have it Friday afternoon.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you.”
Bolan peeled his energy bar and bit into it. It tasted like nutraloaf with a wispy swathe of peanut butter running down the middle, and a few forlorn chocolate chips acting as outriders. “Good work.” Bolan looked to Rudy. “How’s the library looking?”
“The librarian is an old lifer, Lincoln Whitmore. He was a little afraid when I showed up and upgraded the computers. He thought I was out to steal his job, but now we’re tight. I haven’t approached him yet, but I think he’ll help when the time comes.”
Bolan choked down the last of his energy bar. “You Rudys do good work.”
“If we were that good we wouldn’t be here, but you’re welcome. What now?”
“I need a nap. I got a conjugal tomorrow and a fight Friday.”
“You know they say that weakens a fighter’s legs.”
The younger Rudolpho smirked. “Of course, if you’re a cup half-full kind of guy, you could think of it as the condemned’s last meal.”
Rudy shook his head at his son. They were Mafia and they believed in fate and jinxing things.
Bolan waggled his eyebrows at the lad. “Son, you’ve never eaten better.”
* * *
“CHRIST COOP...” OFFICER Fatty Barnes stared at Bolan’s wife in awe as she emerged out of Duivelstad’s west gate into the outer fenced areas. You could hear the whistles still following her from within the walls.
A female corrections officer led her out. Bolan had never seen Renzo before, but of the three women who worked at Duivelstad she had the reputation as the hottest, and she would have been hot anywhere. She was short, dark and Italian, with bright green eyes. The word was that Renzos had been guards at Duivelstad for a hundred years. She was the first female corrections officer of the family and apparently the last of her line. Officer Renzo led Bolan’s beloved spouse toward the conjugal area known in D-Town as Jungle Park.
Barnes sighed in unrequited admiration. “You are one lucky SOB.”
“If I was lucky, I wouldn’t be in here, Officer.”
“Man, if I had that coming to visit me for conjugal, I’d knock over a bank tomorrow.”
Bolan nodded. Carmen Delahunt was something to see. She was former FBI and one of the hottest things to ever come through Quantico. The bloom was slightly off the rose, but Delahunt could still hold her own against women ten years younger. She had dressed down to the white-trash max in tight jeans, a tube top she was just about falling out of, and a jeans jacket. If there wasn’t a hole in the ozone layer over Pennsylvania it wasn’t through the lack of hair spray Delahunt had used to pile her scarlet hair up high. She popped her gum and squealed at the sight of Bolan. “Hey, baby!”
Delahunt broke into a tottering, jiggling run in her four-inch, cork-heeled sandals, and flung herself into Bolan’s arms. She shoved her tongue down his throat and spent long moments trying to suck out his lungs. Barnes and Renzo shot each other amused looks. Delahunt leaned back and began poking Bolan’s ribs and pinching him. “Oh, baby! You’ve lost so much weight!”
Bolan grinned. “Did you miss me?”
Delahunt reattached herself to Bolan’s face like a limpet.
Barnes cleared his throat. “You have until five o’clock, Cooper. You haven’t earned an overnight yet.”
Delahunt turned goo-goo eyes on Barnes. “Who’s he, baby?”
“That’s Officer Barnes,” Bolan replied. “He’s one of the good ones.”
Barnes’s cheeks colored against his will.
“He’s cute as a button!” Delahunt planted a big wet one on Barnes’s cheek before he could react. The guard flushed beet-red. Delahunt had painted a perfect Kewpie doll kiss on Barnes’s face in red lipstick. Bolan didn’t want to imagine what his own face looked like right now. Barnes tried to regain some composure as he unlocked the gate to the conjugal area. Jungle Park consisted of six dilapidated, beige, 1970s-vintage Winnebago camper trailers mounted on blocks and surrounded by their own ring of fencing topped with razor wire.
Barnes gave his memorized spiel. “You’re in Unit 2. First trailer on the right. Once you’re inside you will not come out for any reason. If you have a problem or either one of you want to leave before five, just pick up the white phone by the door. It’s connected directly to the guard station.”
Bolan nodded. “Got it.”
Barnes unlocked the door to Unit 2 and stepped back to allow the happy couple to enter. Bolan followed Delahunt inside. Unit 2 smelled of disinfectant and pine-scented air freshener. A small stack of clean sheets and towels lay folded on top of the fold-away table.
“You two have a good’n,” Barnes said. The door clicked shut behind him.
Bolan pulled back a curtain. Barnes and Renzo were walking to the main facility. Renzo had neither wiped Barnes’s face nor made him aware of that fact that Delahunt had branded him. Bolan smiled. Renzo had decided to let Barnes have a little street cred.
The soldier gave the unit a quick once-over. The shower worked. So did the lights. The sink worked, but the gas stove had been ripped out and covered with a sagging plywood counter. Th
e microwave worked. The mini-fridge worked, and it contained two frozen dinners and a six-pack of bottled water.
Delahunt scratched behind her right ear and under her right eye in question about prying sound and vision devices.
Bolan shook his head and held up a finger. He conducted a thorough search. “I had it on good authority we are currently off the radar, and my guy was right.”
Delahunt draped herself across the little square dining booth and waggled her eyebrows. “So, how’s it hanging, bright eyes? Inquiring minds want to know.”
“To the left. As always.”
Delahunt laughed. She ran her eyes over the bridal suite. “Well, now, I’ll admit this is a first. But I’ve been in worse. Just a sec. I have to go powder my nose.” She rose and closed the door to the tiny bathroom behind her. A moment later the sound of a wolverine gargling bleach in the snow shook the camper. Bolan listened as the toilet flushed and the sink ran for a few moments. Delahunt came out looking a little pale and shaky, yet proud. “Here you go, sunshine!”
Delahunt tossed a small, snake-shaped plastic package onto the table.
Bolan looked at his present with admiration. Delahunt had disgorged eight inches of high-explosive flexible charge with a detonator pin in each end. “You rule.”
“I’ll deny that I said it, but I’ve swallowed bigger.”
Bolan laughed aloud.
“Laugh all you want.” Delahunt gave the package a rueful look. “Those pins hurt, and I’ve had more practice than you.”
Bolan had swallowed evidence before. This would be his first length of explosive. “I can’t imagine.”
Delahunt tossed a ballpoint pen onto the table. “That’s for you, too. Compliments of the Cowboy.”
“Where did you hide that?”
“Where do you think?”
“I can think of two possibilities....”
“Get your mind out of the gutter. The Cowboy drove it into my shoe and sealed it. We’ll pound it into the sole of your shoe to get it out of the trailer.”
“What’s it do?”
Delahunt took up the pen. “Cowboy special.” She snapped her wrist as if the pen body was a collapsible baton. Three inches of a surgical steel, ice-pick spike clicked out.
Bolan felt some relief. He would have had to expend a great deal of the little cred he had to get a shank. “Inner city defense pencil.”
“With a twist,” Delahunt cautioned. She screwed the pen apart and the inner barrel and a very small bullet fell out. “The Cowboy couldn’t figure out a way to put a .22 Long Rifle or a .25 into it, so he put in a .22 short. You have one shot out of the back end. You twist the pocket clip to cock it, and depress it to fire. You will have almost no velocity. Kissinger says stick your arm out straight if you have the time, and aim over your thumb knuckle. Go straight for the face.”
“You tell him I said thanks.”
Delahunt hawked and spit a .22 short onto the table. “You have one reload.”
“I think I’m in love.”
Delahunt winked.
Bolan gazed back toward the trailer’s over-cab bunk. “So...nothing?”
Delahunt held up her right thumb, simulated an act of oral outrage and then popped her cheek with it. “Dream about it.”
“That’s all I get?”
“You get a TV dinner and my charming company.” Delahunt cracked her knuckles. “Plus I give excellent back rubs.”
Delahunt watched with appreciation as Bolan stripped off his shirt. He kicked off his shoes, eased himself up into the bunk and sprawled out on his stomach. “I’ve been in lockup for eighty-six hours, and I am a little tense.”
Delahunt snorted and rose. “That’s the best you can do?”
Bolan turned his eye toward the mini-fridge. “You can have the Salisbury steak dinner, plus the mini-tacos from my tray.”
Delahunt clambered into the bunk and threw a leg over Bolan. “You romantic schemer you.”
The soldier groaned as Delahunt’s fingers stopped short of actually piercing his flesh. For a data analyst she had very strong hands.
* * *
“FIVE O’CLOCK IN the p.m., Cooper!” Barnes knocked on the door. “Back to population!”
Bolan awoke from the best sleep he’d had in four days. Prison had messed with him more than he wanted to admit. Delahunt had crushed every knot of tension out of his back, and spooning with her and dropping into dreamless sleep for six hours was neck and neck with the pen weapon and the flexible charge as the best thing that had happened to him in Duivelstad. They had driven the pen into the sole of his shoe with the heel of hers, and Bolan gave it fifty-fifty he’d make it past inspection. Delahunt had demanded he eat both dinners, and after one mild protest Bolan had licked the aluminum clean on both trays.
He had briefed her on every aspect of the goings-on at Duivelstad. Delahunt was appalled at the idea of the Hunger Games, and Bolan didn’t want to think about Kurtzman’s and Price’s reactions.
The soldier unspooned himself from Delahunt. He rolled off the bunk and landed lightly on the floor. Officer Barnes stepped back slightly at the sight of Bolan’s bullet, blade and shrapnel scarred frame in prison-issue boxer shorts. Renzo took it in with appreciation.
Bolan stretched, yawned and grinned at Barnes. “How are you this fine afternoon, Officer?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“No, I’m a dick. I have it on good authority.”
“I’m sure you do.” Barnes raised his voice. “Mrs. Cooper?”
“Coming!” Delahunt called.
“You probably already know this, Cooper. But you both have to be searched.”
Bolan looked back at Delahunt as she showed up at the door in her jeans and her bra. “You okay with that, baby?”
Delahunt gave Barnes the goo-goo eyes again. “I want Barnesy to do it.”
Barnes went scarlet.
Renzo shook her head at her fellow officer and gave Delahunt a pointed look. “When you’re ready, Mrs. Cooper. And please, we need to speed this up.”
Delahunt spun and made a horrified noise. “My hair!”
Bolan left the door open as he turned. “Let me get some pants on.”
Chapter 8
BOLAN AWOKE TO the sound of a baton rattling across the bars of his cell. “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey, Cooper!” Zavala called. “It’s fight night!”
The cell block broke out in a storm of cheering and jeering.
Bolan arose. He took the energy drink from under his pillow and popped the top. Zavala scoffed at the infraction. “You’re going to need it.”
Bolan drank the flavored soda water in long slow gulps. He crushed the can and tossed it in the corner. Patrick gave him a thumbs-up. Patrick’s father had already left hours ago to set up the audiovisuals for the fight. Bolan stepped out on the tier, stripped off his shirt to catcalls, and tossed it back into his cell. He stood in his prison-issue wife-beater and nodded at Zavala. “Let’s do this.”
The soldier followed Zavala through the steel door and into the corridor that only guards used. They went downstairs and exited into a small yard Bolan had never seen save in satellite photos, and walked across it to a back door the soldier knew led into the gymnasium. They stopped in a small vestibule with rusted lockers that had been used when Duivelstad had a boxing team in the seventies. Zavala glanced at him. “You want to wear your shoes or not?”
Bolan kicked them off.
They walked down a short hallway, and Zavala kicked open the gymnasium door.
Bolan entered the Hunger Games.
Hoots, screams, whistles, cheers and catcalls met his arrival as he came through the door. The first thing of note was the boxing ring. It was gone. Four steel posts set in the floor marked the dimensions of a standard
ring, but the surface they demarcated was sweating, grimy concrete. Suspicious stains streaked the concrete in swathes and blotches. Storm fencing stretched between the posts at a five-foot height. The coils of razor wire topping it would discourage anyone from trying to vault it. As Bolan took in the unforgiving iron and concrete, he regretted losing his shirt and shoes.
The second thing he noticed was the crowd. It was small, and made up exclusively of lifers sitting in folding chairs. None of them would ever make parole and talk about what had happened this night. The following day the lifers would be courted, bribed and brown-nosed by the rest of the population for each one’s version of how the fight had gone down, and the stories would be endlessly debated.
Scott nodded out of a phalanx of hard-core Aryan Circle cons.
Of note were Duivelstad’s two current transgender inmates, Marilyn and Black Widow. Marilyn was, indeed, a striking facsimile of Marilyn Monroe from her last film, The Misfits, right down to the little cotton sundress. Black Widow bore a strikingly horrific resemblance to the boxing champion “Iron Mike” Tyson dressed and coifed like Pippi Longstocking. Bolan surmised both were part of the reward for winning.
Marilyn gave Bolan a winsome wink as he approached the ring. Black Widow grinned and showed Bolan her missing front teeth as she gave him the middle finger. “Sorry, baby! But your pink ass is going down tonight!”
Hoots and hollers met her judgment.
Bolan stripped off his wife-beater and winked as he tossed it to Marilyn, who clapped her hands and caught it. The crowd went berserk.
A trustee Bolan didn’t recognize opened the gate, and the soldier stepped onto the filthy concrete. Two trustees with steady cams took close-ups of Bolan. Schoenaur and four guards from other blocks stood out of camera range. Two held grenade launchers. The other two held stun guns. Schoenaur held a drawn, K-Frame .357 Magnum revolver with a bobbed hammer and custom grips. It was the weapon of a fast-draw artist.
Bolan focused on the task at hand. No one had explained the rules because there were none. He was pretty sure that at this point, involving an inmate the Feds had an interest in, the proceedings would stop short of a killing; but Bolan was very sure that Warden Linder wanted a bloody mess made for the fans, and made of his least favorite inmate.
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