by Mark Allen
“Doesn’t look taken to me,” Kane said, giving the man a challenging stare. He set his tray down on the table with slow deliberateness.
The inmate—the name tag on his shirt read H. Jackson—lowered his eyes to Kane’s tray, then slowly raised his gaze back up to meet Kane’s challenge. “You’re gonna want to pick that tray up and move along, dipshit,” he growled.
“Or what?” Kane retorted.
Jackson set down his plastic fork and bunched his hands into fists. “Or I’m gonna have to hurt you.”
Pedro jerked his head toward another table. “C’mon, amigo. We can sit over here.”
“Negative,” Kane said. “I like this table better.” He slid into the seat directly across from Jackson.
The rest of the chow hall had started to take notice of the drama playing out. When Kane sat down, catcalls cut through the din.
“Oh, no, he din’t!”
“Damn! Honky got a death wish!”
“Look at the balls on dat sumbitch!”
For his part, Kane smiled coldly across the table and said, “I’m gonna sit here, mind my own business, and eat my breakfast. You so much as twitch wrong, and I’ll punch you in the mouth so hard you’ll be shitting out your teeth by nightfall. You clear, Jack?”
“I’m clear that you’re a dead man.” Jackson swept his arm across the table and knocked Kane’s tray to the floor. “Right after I make you lick your food off the floor like a goddamned dog.”
Kane reacted immediately, backing up his tough talk with even tougher action. Faster than Jackson could react, he pounced across the table and hammered a fist into the man’s mouth. He felt his knuckles getting cut up, but he also felt at least two of Jackson’s teeth rupture out of the gums and sluice down his throat on a river of blood.
Choking, Jackson staggered out of his seat and reeled against a concrete support pillar. His gagging noises sounded like a retching cat trying to cough up a nasty hairball.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kane saw the prison guards just leaning against the wall, watching with amused smirks on their faces, happy to have some morning entertainment.
He stalked over to Jackson and said, “Warned you.” He slammed the edge of his palm across the inmate’s throat. Not hard enough to rupture anything, but hard enough to make Jackson cough and sputter even worse.
Kane moved forward. He planned on grabbing Jackson’s head and pounding it against the pillar until his lights went out, but a bellowing roar from behind him stopped him in his tracks.
“FIGHT ME, YOU BASTARD!”
Kane spun and found himself facing the biggest Mexican he had ever seen, and he had seen plenty of them. The man’s jet-black eyes glared dark fire at him.
“Fuck off,” Kane rasped. “I’ve got no beef with you.”
“Well, I’ve got a beef with you, cabron. You took my brother’s eye last night.” He pulled a long icepick-style shank from a homemade sheath hidden inside his waistband. “Now I’m going to take both of yours.”
Now that the guy mentioned it, Kane could see the resemblance to Tattoo from the night before. This guy—M. Santos, according to the name tag embroidered on his shirt—was much bigger, but the facial structure was similar. No doubt the guy was a piece of trash, but Kane could at least respect a man for trying to avenge his brother. Hell, he would have done the same thing.
Of course, that wouldn’t stop Kane from putting him down.
He took out the survival knife he had taken from Santos’ brother the night before. Another glance at the guards showed them still rooted in place, content to let the games play out and mop up the blood later.
He leveled his hard-eyed stare at Santos. “Sure you want to do this? Your brother danced with me last night and got carved up like a damn turkey.”
“I’m not mi hermano.”
“You’ll bleed like him.”
“Only thing gonna be bleeding is your ass when I stab the shit out of it.”
Kane held his blade low. He missed his Ka-Bar, but this knife was good enough to get the job done. “Nazareno approve this hit?” He figured it couldn’t hurt to throw the man’s name out there.
“Nothing around here happens without Nazareno’s approval,” Santos growled. “Even a new fish like you knows that.”
“Pretty sure I didn’t ask his permission to fuck up your asshole brother last night.”
Santos scowled. “He’ll probably have your tongue cut out for that, but me, I just want your fucking eyes.”
He charged.
Like a lot of big men, he moved with a distinct lack of grace. Bull in a china shop, all pounding thunder and grunting fury.
Kane stood his ground until the last possible second, then slid to the side with fluid speed, letting the human locomotive barrel right on by. As Santos’ momentum carried him past, Kane reached out and let his blade carve a channel across the man’s ribcage, slicing through his shirt to part the flesh beneath.
Santos lumbered around, wincing at the stinging pain in his side. Behind him, Jackson had finally coughed up his busted teeth. Holding his bloody mouth, he retreated into the crowd, wanting no part in the current battle. Probably going to visit the dentist.
“Walk away,” Kane said to Santos. “You’re too slow.”
Santos roared an obscenity and performed his charging rhino routine again.
Kane sidestepped and ducked, dodging the wild, stabbing strike that Santos launched at him. The survival knife lanced out like a serpent’s tongue and slashed open the man’s muscular thigh.
Santos stumbled and slowed. He swung backward desperately and got lucky. His cinder block-sized fist snuck through Kane’s blind spot and caught him upside the head like a heavy club. Bright lights starburst through Kane’s brain as the back-fisted punch knocked him sideways into the mob that had gathered to watch the mano a mano deathmatch.
Despite his wounded leg, Santos crashed toward him like a rabid brontosaurus, lifting his boots to stomp the crap out of Kane, who was still crouched as he shook off the dizzying blow to the skull.
As Santos’ boot came up, Kane drove his knife right through the rubber sole and out the top, impaling the convict’s foot.
Santos howled in pain and tried to hobble away, but Kane had him trapped like a hooked fish. As the convict fell, Kane jerked the knife backward. The serrated spine ripped through Santos’ foot, splitting it in half between the second and third toes.
The big man toppled like an axed tree as Kane powered to his feet. He drove the tip of his boot between Santos’ legs with rupturing force. The convict’s eyes started to roll back in their sockets as Kane leaped into the air and came down on the man’s sternum with a savage knee-strike.
The thick bone cracked with a sharp snap like breaking ice.
Kane stood up, feet planted on each side of his opponent’s damaged chest. The smashed balls and crushed sternum had jacked Santos’ system full of pain, too much for him to handle. The convict was out cold. When he woke up, he wouldn’t be happy.
If he woke up.
Kane stared at the pulsing artery on the side of Santos’ neck. Maybe he should just finish the job. One quick slit and Santos’ darkness would become permanent.
As if sensing the primal urges burning through his adrenalized bloodstream like a narcotic, the mob began urging him toward lethality.
“Kill him!”
“Ice the fucker, man!”
“Take him out!”
“No mercy!”
“Finish it!”
The murderous chants intensified into a deafening roar as the inmates stomped their feet and shook their fists and pounded their trays on the tables like makeshift tribal drums. Bloodlust scorched the air, a sharp electrical tang you could almost taste, like the aftermath of a lightning strike.
And then, as if someone had flipped a switch, the mob silenced itself. The seething mass of people parted, and a Hispanic man wearing white robes, sandals, and a crown of thorns tattooed on his shaved scalp stepp
ed forward. He stared at Kane with the cold eyes of a cobra.
Kane stared right back. “Let me guess: you’re Nazareno.”
“In the flesh.”
Kane gestured at Santos. “He one of yours?”
“One of my best.”
“If that’s what you call the best, you should really up your standards.”
“So it would seem.” A little smile played across Nazareno’s lips. “Of course, I could try out a quantity over quality option. You might be able to handle my best fighters one on one or even two on one, but I’m curious what would happen if I ordered a dozen men to attack you at the same time.”
“You keep throwing bodies at me,” Kane said, “and I’ll keep sending them to the hospital. If that doesn’t get the point across that you really should just leave me the fuck alone, then I’ll start sending some to the morgue.”
“You can start with the one at your feet.”
“Say what?”
Nazareno pointed at Santos. “Kill him.”
Kane glanced down at the unconscious inmate, then back up at the drug lord. “Why?”
“Because I did not sanction this hit,” Nazareno replied. “Santos knows better. Nothing happens in here without my permission. His actions cannot go unpunished, and I say that his punishment is death.” He dragged a demonstrative finger across his neck. “Cut his throat and be done with him.”
Just moments ago, Kane had considered doing that very thing, but now rebellion rose up within him. Even in a shithole prison like Black Bog, it would be a cold day in hell before he took orders from a sadistic drug lord.
With a look of disgust, as if Nazareno was somewhere lower than dog shit on the spectrum of things you didn’t want to be near, Kane tossed the knife. It skidded across the waxed floor tiles and bounced off the man’s sandals. “I ain’t your bitch,” Kane rasped. “You want blood, do it yourself.”
A collective gasp ran through the crowd. Kane had no doubt that it had been a long time since anyone challenged Nazareno this way.
For his part, the cartel king seemed unfazed. He idly kicked the blade back across the floor. It came to rest next to Santos’ head. “You would be doing him a favor,” Nazareno said. “No matter how this plays out, in the end, Santos will die today. If I have to do it myself, he will be tortured first, an example made to show what happens to those who act without my permission. But if you do it, it will be quick.” Nazareno smiled with all the mirth of a shark. “Consider it an act of mercy.”
“Consider this my final answer.” Kane kicked the knife back to him. “No.”
The shark-smile vanished. “It is not wise to cross me, cabron.”
“We’ll see.”
“I could have your cajones put in a blender while I set your eyes on fire.”
“Where I come from, we call that date night.”
“Keep cracking jokes,” Nazareno said. “You’ll be dead by dawn.”
“That’s what your shithead sheriff kept telling me yesterday,” Kane replied. “And yet here I am, still standing.”
“Enjoy your day,” Nazareno said with exaggerated graciousness. “We’ll talk later, after I’ve made some arrangements.”
“Can’t wait.”
Nazareno snapped his fingers. Two men came forward and grabbed Santos’ wrists as Kane backed away. They dragged him out of the chow hall with all the callousness and lack of dignity a butcher bestows upon a slab of beef. With one final, baleful, cold-eyed glance at Kane, Nazareno followed them out.
The noise level shot back through the roof as soon as the drug lord disappeared. Kane retrieved the survival knife. This time when he went to sit down at a table, nobody told him it was taken.
Pedro got him another tray of food and joined him. “You got brass balls, hombre, but you ain’t much in the brains department.”
They ate their breakfasts in silence. As they were finishing up, two correctional officers approached. One took out a pair of handcuffs while the other motioned to Kane. “On your feet, convict. Warden wants to see you.”
Kane rose to his feet, his imposing six-foot-four frame towering over the average-sized guards. “No need for the cuffs, guys.”
“Nobody sees the warden without cuffs. Do we look stupid to you?”
“Do you want me to answer that?” Kane asked sarcastically.
In hindsight, not his smartest move. The pissed-off guards cranked the handcuffs down so hard the metal bit deep into his skin, bruised the bone, and strangled circulation. His hands went numb in almost no time, but he didn’t say a word or give any sign of discomfort. He just sucked up the pain. With any luck, the steel bracelets would be off in short order.
Each gripping his arm just above the elbow, the two officers escorted him out of the chow hall, over to the administrative building, and up a flight of stairs to a suite of executive offices. They led him over to a wooden door with a metal gold-on-black nameplate that read Kumi Ghastin, Warden. One of the officers knocked.
“Come in.”
They opened the door and pushed him inside. “Here’s the new guy you asked to see, ma’am.”
“Thank you, officers. Please wait outside.”
They stepped out, closing the door behind them.
Kane nodded at the beautiful but haunted Japanese woman. “We meet again.”
Ghastin cut right to the chase. “You said you can help me. Tell me how.”
“Can you take these cuffs off?”
“Of course, I can. But I’m not going to.”
Kane couldn’t blame her for not trusting him. As far as she knew, he was just a big, violent, predatory inmate trying to run a con game on her. So he took his cue from her and got right to the point.
He nodded at the phone on her desk. “Let me make a call, and all your problems will be over.”
“What do you know about my problems?”
“I know enough. I know you’re not really running this prison. Nazareno is, and if you don’t play ball, your family is dead.”
“That’s not exactly a secret around here,” she said. “Having that knowledge doesn’t make you anything special.”
Kane caught her eyes with his level gaze. “Trust me, Ghastin, I’m not who you think I am.”
“Warden,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Don’t call me Ghastin. Inmates are only allowed to call me ‘warden.’”
“I’m not a damn inmate,” Kane snapped. “Give me that phone, and I’ll prove it.”
“And who are you going to call?”
“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.” He gave her a little smile. “Or Hank, as I like to call him.”
“You mean General Hank Carter?”
“Yeah.”
Ghastin threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, that’s rich,” she said. “I’ve heard some whoppers from inmates before, but this takes the cake.”
“It’s the truth.”
Something in his voice made her stop laughing. She stared at him with eyes narrowed and quietly said, “You’ve got sixty seconds to tell me exactly who you are and what you’re doing in my prison. If I’m not satisfied with your answer, if I’m not convinced you’re not lying to me, I’ll have you thrown into Solitary so fast your head will spin.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Sixty seconds. Start talking.”
Kane realized his only chance was to tell her the whole truth. While glossing over the more secretive details, he quickly told her about Team Reaper and his leadership role on the strike force.
“So you see,” he finished, “you let me call my headquarters, and they’ll have General Jones on the phone in less than ten minutes. Once that happens, your problems disappear. This prison will be shut down by nightfall, and Nazareno will be buried in the deepest hole we can find.”
As he talked, he saw the hope spring into her eyes at the revelation of his true identity. But by the time he finished his pitch, her fatalism had returned.
She slowly shook her head. “I can’t risk it.”<
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“You don’t believe me?” Kane asked.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I believe you are who you say you are, but you underestimate Nazareno’s reach.”
“I guarantee you that Jones is not working for some cartel cocksucker.”
“I don’t think he is,” said Ghastin. “But if I let you make that phone call, Nazareno will know, and my husband and daughter will be dead long before you, your team, or the general can do anything about it.”
“I can have your family grabbed up by a SEAL team in less than two hours.”
She stared at him with pain in her eyes. “Nazareno has people watching my family at all times. I let you make that phone call, they’ll be dead in less than thirty minutes.”
“He’s not God,” Kane said. “He can’t be everywhere at once. You let me make that call, there’s no way he’ll know.”
“He’s tapped into the prison phone system,” she informed him. “And he’s got men monitoring it around the clock.”
Kane felt his frustration growing. “How about a cell phone?”
She shook her head. “All cell phone signals are jammed inside the prison.”
“Dammit!”
“Sorry.”
Desperation crawled around the edges of Kane’s mind. This had been his shot, his chance to get the hell out of here. Now Nazareno’s ruthless stranglehold combined with Ghastin’s risk-averse mentality worked to shut that play down.
“You’re really not going to let me make that call, are you?” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
Face stricken, she shook her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry, really I am…but I just can’t.”
“You know Nazareno is going to have me killed.”
“In order to keep my family safe, I have stood by and watched many people die,” Ghastin confessed. “I will regret your death, but I must do whatever it takes to keep my husband and daughter alive. I can’t help you.”
“Can’t?” Kane growled. “I think you mean ‘won’t.’”
“Sorry.” It was becoming a mantra with her. “I hope you can at least understand where I’m coming from.”
Kane sighed and softened his voice. “Yeah, I get it, lady.”