Mike completed remarkable physical feats. He heard the prison doctors assert full credit for Juan’s miracle. They were full of crap.
His progress didn’t belay his concern for Juan. He knew Juan hid something. He seemed disoriented and appeared tired often. The man was a boulder, but cracks had formed, and Mike didn’t understand why.
Both Juan and Mike were seated in a meditative posture.
Juan commenced the lesson. “Karate is Estilo De Vida, a way of life, hermano, brother. My little hermano, you make remarkable progress physically. Now you must heal inside.”
“Do we have to do this again?”
“The revenge in your heart consumes you.” He looked at Mike, demanding attention. “Let it go.”
The dark flame that still smolder in Mike’s heart ignited. “Juan, you are the last person to speak of forgiveness. Like you, how can I have honor if I don’t avenge a great wrong? Doesn’t one need to defend his honor to set his soul free?”
“No. Your resentment binds you stronger than steel chains. Forgiveness sets you free.”
Mike saw the pain in Juan’s eyes. “I’m listening.”
“Don’t make the same mistake I did.”
The hell with it! Mike could not stem a tear. “You and Kim constantly say the same thing. How do I forgive them? They took my legs and destroyed my life.” His upper body shook. “Don’t you understand? Doesn’t anybody understand?”
“I do. Better than you can ever imagine. I couldn’t forgive, so I killed three men with my bare hands. Their deaths brought me no pleasure, only grief.”
Juan’s knuckles were twice normal size. “These only brought more pain and sadness. They brought nightmares, not solace.” Juan bowed his face to the floor. “Now I can’t forgive myself.”
Mike peered into Juan’s eyes, he saw the man underneath. I could never get that calm. “I’ll try to forgive, Master.”
“We will see. Let’s return to training. Breathing’s important. I’ll show you the next Kubodo Kata.”
Mike yelled, tensing his diaphragm. “Hai, Sensei!”
Juan handed Mike a hanbo. “Bringing weapons into a prison is apparently not difficult. I spoke to the warden about it and told him you needed a walking stick to help with your recovery. Señor Wallbanger let me bring it in, no questions asked.” Juan’s face lit up. “I guess he didn’t know that Samurai had to master the hanbo before touching a sword. I neglected to inform him.”
Mike grasped the hanbo, feeling its weight. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
“I carved that hanbo from a Cocobolo tree. It’s a rare and super-strong wood and not easy to obtain. It weighs as much as a full bo.”
“It’s heavy, too, not like pine.”
“Try not to kill a guard with it.”
Mike swung it. “Shit. Hurt my back doing that.”
“Then do it again.” Juan lifted his own hanbo, made of bloodwood, and demonstrated the Kata in slow motion. “Move. Flow. Breathe.”
Mike mimicked the motion. “I need my pain pills.”
“No. You didn’t leave your wheelchair to demand pain pills. Swing again. Smoother this time.”
Mike tried to mimic the new kata moves, a complex sweeping pattern of blocks, jabs, and thrusts, several times.
“My bisabuela, great-grandmother, did better than that. Again.”
Mike strained, trying to concentrate on the form and movements. Jesus. “Something just popped.”
Juan settled onto the floor, his hanbo across his lap. “Show me the kata.”
“I just did!”
“Do it again. No cursing. No clenching teeth. Breathe.”
“I was breathing, damn it!”
“Argue with me again and today’s lesson ends. Send your pain into the stick. Let it flow into the hanbo. It is your weapon. It is your release.”
“Pain into the weapon. Right.” More like in my left shoulder. Mike shifted gears to full speed, hoping his movements proved precise and deadly. He knew he made a few technical mistakes but kept on. Mike stole a glance at the Puerto Rican. Good, he smiled. I did good.
Juan tilted his hand. “A little sloppy. Your breathing is better, and you only said shit twice.”
“Ha. Thought I hadn’t said anything.” Mike voiced trembled. “Sensei, my arms are getting tired.” He felt a shock of pain. His right arm muscles twitched in confirmation.
“Enough practice for now. Have you been doing your pull-ups and push-ups like I told you?”
Mike made a muscle. “Can’t you tell?”
Juan’s hanbo came down fast across Mike’s arm.
Mike fought back, bringing his hanbo across his chest just before he felt Juan strike again. “Damn it, stop already!”
Despite being much shorter, Juan leaned his face near enough where Mike got a whiff of his minty breath. “Your practice is nothing; your pain is nothing if you don’t endure. I could pay the rent selling that bo, but it is worthless in the hands of a man whose mind cannot or will not allow himself the freedom to use it.”
A long, itching line of sweat drained down Mike’s temple to tickle his jaw. He barely breathed his words. “I will get my freedom.”
“No. You are your freedom. Forget the walls. Ignore the guards. Close your eyes.”
“You’ll hit me again.”
“Do it. Be. Your. Freedom.”
Mike sealed his eyelids, visualizing a grassy hill surrounded by woods outside of the prison. He heard something click, and then the rehab cell door buzzed. Huh? He spun around.
Juan was gone.
After the training session, Mike pondered on what physical training regimen required him to be more bruised and battered than when he had begun.
Later that night, pain pills offered by the guards and refused, Mike worked on a paper bead necklace made from torn pieces of Kim’s letters and tiny colored stones. He shaped the stones utilizing the concrete floor and water. Mike drilled a hole in each rock by spinning a paper clip as a drill bit. He formed the paper beads shaping strips of paper and prison glue, gel toothpaste.
He formed each bead letter with care. The necklace spelled out a message of thanks. “I can no other answer make, but thanks and thanks.”
Satisfied, flat on his cell bunk and exhausted from Juan’s workout, Mike attempted to nudge his pain-frozen legs and failed. In a way, it was good; feeling his legs at all was an improvement. He sought sleep buried in pain. He laid the necklace across his chest and did his breathing exercises to exhale the pain. It helped.
He turned his head and looked at a picture of Kim hugging a healthy Lokai. That helped more. After a brief smile, he closed his eyes. She doesn’t even know how much I care. Mike dozed off.
In his small bedroom, Juan shut his eyes with care after taking a massive dose of morphine, instantly regretting both using the drug and falling short of his message of forgiveness for Mike, for himself. But, the pain insisted on an ending. Pero soy libre, but I am free.
A month later on the prison rooftop watching a group of prisoners’ play a rough game of street basketball. Mike glanced at a large billboard on the building across the street. It read “Escape to Wisconsin...”
Be my freedom. Yeah. He smiled, his first smile since Juan passed away. Mike knew his chance at freedom was coming soon. He needed to behave. He knew in his core that behaving would be a problem.
CHAPTER 13
Parole
Mike had a newly chiseled body and appreciated it, mostly; his clothes didn’t fit. His muscles strained the seams of the white t-shirt they forced him to wear. The Homer Simpson shirt he was arrested in would not do for a parole hearing. Eddie brought a shirt, but… Eddie was Eddie.
Not wearing handcuffs would have helped to ease his temper. He checked the room, spotting a rail-thin bailiff near a door. Jesus, either he’s right out of high school or everyone looks younger to me now.
The bailiff glanced at Mike and then away before gripping the butt of his gun and eyes locked straig
ht ahead.
Mike thought back to his fighting days, back when his physique was the second best he’d ever had. Man, I freaked the child out. So once again I’m the guy to beer up with but not meet in a dark alley.
The room’s thermostat registered a moderate seventy-five degrees. Mike sniffed a slight hint of antiseptic in the air, a blush of expensive perfume from a federal parole commissioner, and that was it.
Sitting immobile around the horseshoe-shaped table, the prison warden, the physician of the institution, a federal judge, and two high-ranking parole commissioners waited.
“This seat taken?”
Mike flinched and titled his head toward the voice. “Oh, hi, Kim.”
In faded jeans and a white loose-knit sweater, Kim Maat sat down on the bench, plopping her purse between herself and Mike. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
His heart raced. “Sorry, just a bit surprised is all. You didn’t have to--” He appreciated the cuffs, they kept him from jumping up hugging her.
“There’s a lot I didn’t have to do this past year and a half. Look, before the parole board calls things to order and starts asking questions, I just want to say something.”
“You cut your hair. I like it.”
Kim pulled her hands through her new pixie cut. “Yeah, I did. Thanks. Didn’t put on my war paint this morning, but--”
“You look great without makeup.”
“Now I’m blushing. Thanks.”
“How’s Lokai?”
“Little on the heavy side, now. The dang dog knows how to swindle me for treats. He still has a little limp, but much better. Listen. This whole thing, why I’m here, isn’t about a guilt trip. I’ve already laid one on myself for that.”
“Is that why you kept visiting?”
Kim huffed. “Yeah, at first. I’ll admit it. I was doing it for me. I somehow thought, you know Kim, your psycho partner got the guy shot, and you didn’t say anything, now your perp is in a wheelchair and where are you, right? So yeah. It was all me. I can say that now.”
“Was.”
She clamped her hand on Mike’s leg for a moment. “You can walk again. That’s all the world for me to know that.”
“Thanks. And that’s the guilt trip talking.”
“Yep.” She locked eyes with Mike. “I don’t think it’s right for me to just hand over your dog and wave goodbye like you suddenly won’t matter to me anymore.”
“I’m listening.”
Kim crossed her arms and broke her stare. Her eyes fell to the floor. “It’s a bit harder for me to say.”
Nervous about the time, Mike glanced over at the people assembled at the table. One chair sat empty. They still waited for someone.
“I’m listening.”
“Mike, I can’t promise much, but if you need help or something down the road, call. I don’t like a lot of drama in my life, so I did the obvious thing and became an FBI agent and arrested drug traffickers and rescued kids from whorehouses and got some computer geek shot for no good reason. Take the offer for what it is, okay? I’m saying I’ll be there if you need anything.”
Mike took that in for a moment. He needed to take a deep breath before saying, “Appreciate it.”
“I dropped Lokai off at your foster brother’s house last night. I told Eddie you’d sail through your parole hearing. He’s coming to pick you up in a bit, he said.”
“Just had to go see where I’ll be staying, huh?”
“Yeah, guess I was curious. Take care, Mike. Be safe. And don’t worry about this hearing. You’re almost out the door, and that’s all I can say.” Kim stood up and gave Mike a quick kiss on his forehead. “Good luck.”
Mike watched her snatch up her purse and scramble away. “Bye.” He had her necklace in his pocket, one he would never give her.
A phone rang on the curved table. The physician, sitting closest to the phone, answered, and then handed it over to one of the parole officers.
Mike didn’t hear the conversation but observed the judge and commissioner exchange glances while the probation officer kept talking on the phone. One minute became five. The phone exchanged hands more than once. He felt like a ticking time bomb.
Before the bomb could explode, the federal judge put the receiver down and turned to Mike. “Mr. O’Connor. It is the unanimous decision of this parole board that you be released at once. Your behavior and recovery while incarcerated have both been remarkable, given your history. You must, of course, abide by the terms of your parole or risk immediate forfeiture of your probation status and be returned to prison. You are to remain off the Internet and computers. You are not to establish, or cause to be established, an online presence involving your name, bearing. As a convicted felon, you are not at any time to own, purchase, or carry firearms. The complete details of your parole terms will be discussed with you during out-processing. Do you have any questions for the board at this time?”
“I was told you would be asking me questions and things.”
The judge folded his hands on the table, barely glancing in either direction to the parole officers on either side of him. “We are done here. There are no questions.”
The scrawny bailiff approached Mike. “I’ll remove your handcuffs and escort you to the release unit.”
“Thanks.”
What I wouldn’t do for sunglasses right now. Mike shielded his eyes from the harsh glare of a bright winter’s day. And a decent coat. He raced walked, his release papers in his hand, from the prison entrance to a parking lot reserved for visitors. It was off hours, the lot mostly stood empty, so Mike paced up and down the sidewalk, waiting for Eddie.
A quarter of an hour later, a large black sedan pulled off the road onto the parking lot, driving around the drop-off area to where Mike stood. The window rolled down, and a man in dark glasses and a black suit pointed at Mike. “Mr. O’Connor?”
Mike didn’t flinch from the guy’s FBI uniform. He was over that. “What can I do for you?”
“Hop in.”
“I’m waiting for my ride.”
“Eddie’s been delayed. Hop in.”
“Delayed?”
“Hop in.”
Mike opened up the back door and slid into the car next to a woman sitting in the back seat. He expected the car to peel off as soon as he slammed the door, but the wheels remained immobile. “Okay, you have my attention. Now what?”
The woman put down a cell phone and looked at Mike. “Mr. O’Connor, I’m Del Kaufman, and I’m with the FBI. I’m a long way from my office, and I don’t appreciate making trips into the field anymore, it’s not my job. The head of FBI Counterintelligence made it my job.”
“That was you on the phone during my hearing.”
“Can’t put anything past you?”
“Oh, I say you can. Some fake agent got me in a lot of trouble almost two years ago. Plenty was put past me.”
“And that is why I flew all the way from Washington D.C. to talk to you. And by the way, we’re not having this conversation.”
“Of course not.”
“Let me have your release papers.”
“But I need these for my parole officer when he visits--”
“Mr. O’Connor. The papers.”
Relax lady. “Here.”
Kaufman handed the packet to the man in the front seat. “Mr. O’Connor, we are your parole officer now.”
“La dee da. So that’s why I’m out.”
“You’re out. That’s what counts.”
Mike stared out the dark-tinted window. He was actually surprised how much he could see through it. “What do you want?”
“At the time of your arrest, we didn’t know any more than you did. Either you remain a cleverer espionage operative than any of us suspect, and still possess the means to reveal to us how you broke in, or you were indeed set up. We are leaning toward you being setup.”
“You wouldn’t have let me out unless you thought so?”
Kaufman gestured to him. “Give me y
our wrist.”
“What the hell for?” His gaze met large, cold green eyes. They brokered no argument. “Fine.”
She reached over with a small device, shoved it into the back of his wrist, and pressed a tiny button. “This will sting.”
“Christ!” Mike retrieved his arm. “What the hell was that?”
“Just an identification device. It does not broadcast. Heads and hands are often missing from bodies when we find them. A chip is faster identifying you than waiting for a DNA result.”
Mike’s stomach flipped. “You’re going to get me killed?”
“Mr. O’Connor. I will say this once. Whoever played you for a fool will know or may already know that you have been released.” She paused as if considering her next words. “Homeland Security has been receiving a ton of chatter about the Russians. They have been aggressive militarily all over the world. Ukraine’s on the brink of war. Hell, they even hacked a political party, but we fear something much worse. A shit-storm.”
“And you think I was set up by the Russians?”
“It’s likely. We won’t know for sure until they find you.”
“Damn, now I understand. You got me healthy because a worm that wiggles on its hook catches more fish.”
“You are free to go. Stay out of trouble.”
Mike exited the car. He shot a bird at the rear of her car as they drove off. “Trouble is my middle name bitch.”
CHAPTER 14
Free At Last
He played back the conversation with the FBI in his head, it sent chills up his spine. Mike did not feel free. He rubbed his arm where the FBI lady stabbed him. The stank of the prison was gone and replaced by the smog of the city. He hated standing out in the parking lot exposed. He jumped at every sound and expected a group of crazed Russians to use him as target practice.
He needed to relax. He lifted his tongue to the roof of his mouth and took a long, continuous breath through his nose, and exhaled without pause for five full seconds. He repeated the Tai Chi breathing exercise until his muscles unwound and heart rate slowed.
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