by John Whitman
Jack grabbed the soap dispenser off the wall and smashed it against the tiles. The plastic didn’t shatter, but it split diagonally across the side of the bottle, and soap poured out onto his hand. Jack threw the bottle down, the motion flicking a thick stream of soap off his hand and onto the floor now running with water from the showers. The thin man with the shiv stepped over the bottle, grinning at Jack as he held up his weapon. The sharpened toothbrush was crude, but Jack knew it could kill him as easily as a bayonet if he let the man stab him. He reached up, caught the shower nozzle for balance, and kicked the thin man in the chest. The kick was awkward, but it made enough impact to make the attacker step back. He snarled and tried to come forward again, but slipped in the soapy water at his feet and hit the deck with a curse.
The stocky one lunged forward. Jack kicked his feet back, feeling his bare feet jam painfully against the tiled corner behind him, jamming his forearms against the man’s shoulders to hold him off. Jack just glimpsed the ornate tattoo on the side of the man’s neck that read “Emese” in gothic lettering. Jack pivoted sideways and used his arms to slam the man into the tiled wall. Jack was counting on a slow reaction from the fat man, and he was rewarded. He spun to find the third attacker only now bracing himself to punch. Jack stunned him with a left to the nose, then cracked his jaw with an overhand right that snapped his head back. He went down heavily and did not get up again.
The thin man was already on his feet, though, moving tentatively on the slippery surface. “You getting fucked up, ese,” he promised. He jabbed with the shiv and Jack slid back.
The muscled gang-banger came up faster than Jack expected, slamming into him with a bear hug that caught one of his arms and nearly took Jack off his feet. With his free hand, Jack grabbed one of the shower nozzles across the middle of the room. If he went down it was over. Bracing himself against the overhead pipe, Jack didn’t bother to regain his footing on the slippery tiles. Instead he wiggled his trapped hand down, grabbed the gang-banger’s groin, and twisted. The tattooed man let out a scream and a curse all in one and forgot about the bear hug. Jack kneed him in the stomach, then the face, then released the overhead pipe, and brought an elbow down on the back of the other man’s neck.
The thin man hesitated. He glanced at his shiv, which suddenly seemed smaller and less dangerous now that he was alone. Jack took a step toward him.
At the same time, whistles blew. The thin man threw the shiv into a watery corner as a squad of prison guards flooded into the shower room, grabbing them both, slamming them against the walls. Jack watched, and as they handcuffed the thin man, he saw an MS– 13 tattoo crawling up his forearm.
8:29 P.M. PST Beverly Hills Fight Camp, Los Angeles
Beverly Hills Fight Camp was nothing like its name implied. Far from being the “Beverly Hills” of martial arts schools, it was a cramped, one-room training gym with a weedy asphalt parking lot, patched-up mats that smelled of stale sweat, and a boxing ring with frayed ropes and a sagging floor.
It was, however, home to some of the greatest full-contact fighters in the world, champions of the growing sport of mixed martial arts that combined boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and other martial arts. The sport had migrated up ten years ago from Brazil, where it was known as vale tudo, or “anything goes.” During its first few years in the United States it had been called no-holds-barred fighting, but before long savvy businessmen got hold of it, realized that no-holds-barred was both untrue and unpalatable to an American audience, and started touting “mixed martial arts” fighting. The hard core of the fights remained, but some of the rough edges were smoothed over, and suddenly MMA was a multimillion-dollar business.
Those millions, truth be told, rarely trickled down to the fighters who bled in the ring. The best of the best made money, but like boxers, MMA fighters climbed a high, hard mountain to reach the pinnacle of success.
Beverly Hills Fight Camp felt miles away from that pinnacle at the moment. The gym was empty except for a lone fighter, himself a mountain of a man now compressed down to the size of a small hill, hunched over a thick training pad, smashing it with elbow strikes repeatedly, then checking his balance, then returning to pound the pad. Picture frames hung on the walls bearing photographs of former and current champions who had trained at the fight camp. He felt their eyes judging him and finding him wanting. His name was Mark Kendall, and seven years ago he had been the Extreme Fight heavyweight champion of the world. Only for three months before he lost the title, true, but he’d been there, and he was determined to get there again.
Mark pounded the pad. Fight magazines had asked him why he was making a comeback.
“You’re getting older,” they said, which was as unfair as it was true. No man should be “older” at thirty-six, but fighting was a young man’s sport.
“The game’s grown past you,” others implied. Equally unfair and equally true. He’d earned the heavyweight belt back in the days when size, strength, and some college wrestling were enough to make a champion. The game had become tougher, with fighters cross-training and become adept with their hands, their feet, and their groundwork as well. He admitted that, but it didn’t faze him. Those skills weren’t secrets. They were out there for anyone to possess, if he put in the work. And Mark Kendall was a hard worker.
“Why would anyone so battered and beaten choose to go back into it?” everyone asked.
That one was easy, Mark thought. There was no choice involved. There were the medical bills piling up, the doctors always saying there were more tests to be done, and there was that three-year-old’s face looking up at him asking him to make it all better. There were all those things, but there was no choice.
Mark Kendall hit the pad again.
8:42 P.M. PST Federal Holding Facility, Los Angeles
“Why were you causing trouble, Bauer?” the broken-nosed guard said as they led Jack, handcuffed, back to his cell.
“Bored,” Jack quipped. “So when those three gangbangers walked into the shower with all their clothes on for no reason, I jumped them.”
The broken-nosed guard’s laugh was a wheeze, like a car engine failing to turn over. “They say that shiv’s yours. You pulled it outta your ass, huh?”
“That’s what I do with everything,” Jack replied. The guard wheezed again.
They reached his cell. The guard opened the barred door and he stepped inside. Knowing the routine, Jack waited for the cell door to close, then stuck his cuffed hands backward through the rectangular opening on the bars. The guard freed his hands.
“Serious,” the guard said, glancing around and dropping his voice a little. “You know those boys are—”
“MS–13.”
“You watch yourself.” He nodded and walked away, keys jangling down the hall.
“MS–13? What about them?”
Jack’s cellmate sat up on his bunk, a suddenly worried expression on his face. His skin was light brown under his jumpsuit, and he wore a pencil-thin mustache that he’d managed to keep neatly trimmed even in jail.
“What’s this about MS?” he asked again.
“A couple of their guys jumped me in the shower,” Jack said simply, and sat down on his bunk. With both of them sitting on the edge of their bunks, their knees were scant inches apart, and they could walk the depth of their cell from door to back wall in four short steps.
His cellmate, whose name was Emil Ramirez, blinked. “Three? And you, you’re—”
“I’m good,” Bauer said, lying back on his bunk.
“You gotta watch your back. You mess with them, maybe?”
Jack shrugged. The MS stood for Mara Salvatruchas and the 13 was a number associated with California gangs. The gang was started by immigrant Salvadorans in the streets of Los Angeles, and had grown into one of the most dangerous gangs in the country. Bauer had had one or two run-ins with them, mostly by accident. He’d be surprised if they remembered him, and he certainly hadn’t done enough to trigger some jailhouse vendetta.
“You know about MS–13, too,” he stated. “Have you worked with them? Is that why you’re in here?”
Ramirez hesitated, as though he hadn’t heard Jack at first. Then he shifted his eyes and his trance was broken. “Me? No! I didn’t grow up in the barrio. I wouldn’t mess with those guys. But I know a guy who does. He used to be one of them. Now they work for him sometimes.”
He stopped, clipping off the end of his last sentence and focusing on Jack. He was clearly afraid that he had just said too much, but Jack didn’t show much interest. “What are you in for?” he asked.
Ramirez had been tight-lipped since Jack had moved into the cell a couple of weeks earlier, and Jack hadn’t pushed it. Asking people for information was often the surest way of making them shut up.
“Embezzlement,” Ramirez said. “I’m an accountant.”
“No way,” Jack said. “You wouldn’t be in this place. Not a Federal facility for an embezzlement charge.”
Ramirez grinned boyishly. “Well, embezzlement is how it started,” he admitted. “But the guy caught me. We got into a fight, and then”—he winked—“this big glass trophy I got as an award, it fell off the shelf and landed on his head.”
“I hate when that happens,” Jack said dryly.
“And you? Why here?”
Jack shrugged. “A big glass trophy might have fallen on my guy’s head, too, except I shot him first.”
Ramirez laughed, impressed with Jack’s bravado. “Me, I hope the charges don’t stick, but the DA says the trophy fell on him nine times. They say that’s not possible.”
“I never took physics,” Jack replied, sounding bored with the conversation.
“Still, I gotta say it’s lucky. Even if that charge sticks, it’s lucky. They could get me on worse.”
More boredom. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ramirez leaned in, determined to impress Jack. “The guys I work for, they got something going. It’s . . . well, it’s pretty big shit.”
Jack sat up. “If you say so. What is it?”
“Uh-uh,” the other man said, smoothing his already smooth mustache into place. He leaned back coyly, the very picture of a tease who was satisfied now that he’d captured Jack’s interest. “I’m not telling. But you’ll hear about it soon enough. This time tomorrow, you’ll know exactly what it is.”
12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 P.M. AND 10 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
9:00 P.M. PST Federal Holding Facility, Los Angeles
The thin gang member was named Oscar Cisneros, and he was annoyed at losing his shiv. It took a long time to grind down the toothbrush to make a good weapon like that, and he hadn’t even stabbed one person with it. He would have liked to stick it in that blondie, partly because he was getting paid to do it, and partly because he just didn’t like white boys. Now, of course, he was determined to get blondie because the pendejo had broken Ricky’s jaw and smashed in Pedro’s teeth with his knee.
These were the thoughts going through Oscar’s mind. He wasn’t concerned at all about the trouble he’d get into for fighting in jail.
“Hey, Petey-boy,” he said, leaning against the bars of his cell. There was no one in the hallway as far as he could see, but after a minute he heard footsteps and a corrections officer appeared, a middle-aged white guy with a face like bread dough and a big lower lip that hung down like he was pouting. “Peteyboy, I need to make a phone call.”
The dough-faced guard frowned and shook his head. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
Oscar smiled. “I know it is going to happen, homeboy, just like last time. ’Cause all I want to do is make a phone call, and all you want to do is keep your little wifey and daughter over in Simi out of trouble.”
Pete’s face turned purple as he replied in a low, angry voice, “You’re going to push me too far, you little shit.”
“But I’m not,” the Mara Salvatrucha said with that same smile pasted on his face. “That’s why we get along, homes. I’m never gonna ask for too much, ’cause if I do it’s bad on me. And you’re always gonna do what I ask, ’cause if you don’t, it’s bad on you.”
Pete stood there silently turning a darker shade of purple. He hated this goddamned job. Most of the jailbirds were easy enough, and even the majority of the troublemakers were easy enough to handle if you were careful. But some of these gang-bangers were better organized than the Mob, and way more ruthless. Pete had worked up in Chino before moving to the Federal side, and he knew a guy there whose sister got raped when he wouldn’t help some Salvatrucha soldier on
the inside. Goddamn, he thought, it’s not worth it.
He opened the door and let Oscar out.
The gang-banger practically led the way down to
Broadway, the main thoroughfare through the prison. A few inmates in their cells watched them curiously. Oscar felt like waving at them or flipping them off, but that would be rubbing it in Petey’s face and he didn’t want to do that. Extorting the guards was a tricky game, and there was no point in pushing it when he’d already gotten what he wanted.
Pete led him through three levels of security and back to the phone room, then backed away as Oscar picked up the phone and made a call to the number he’d been given.
A voice picked up before the second ring. “Is it done?”
“No, ese,” Oscar said. “That cabron messed up my homeboys. I’m gonna stuff his—”
“I told you he would put up a fight!” the man on the other end of the phone snapped. “Go back and get it done.”
Oscar considered. “Okay, homes, but the price is going up. I want—”
“Shut up and listen,” the man said. “You’ll do it for what we agreed on, or I’ll make sure you and your friends go down in flames, you understand me? You’ll get buried so deep your own fucking mother will forget you.”
Oscar’s smile turned wistful. Yeah, that’s what it was like in the extortion business. Sometimes you just didn’t have the power, and then you had to bluff or back off. Oscar knew when to back off. “Okay, jefe. We’ll do it.”
“Do it now,” the man insisted. “I’ve got a backup plan already, but you do your goddamned job.” The line went dead.
9:13 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Tony Almeida was only a third of the way through his threat assessment when he thought, Jesus, Chappelle’s already bored. The Regional Director was staring off into space, his eyes glazed. At the far end of the table, Nina Myers looked bored, too, but he was accustomed to the sardonic look she sometimes wore. A few other CTU agents sat around the table, dutifully upright and attentive, but more out of respect than interest.
“In any case,” he continued his report, “the Governor’s meeting with the representatives from Southeast Asian countries started tonight with the reception, and the meetings start tomorrow. We’re considering that a primary target for any activity.”
Henderson walked back in, carrying two cups of coffee. He sipped one and put the other down in front of Chappelle. “You wanted more, right?”
“Hmm?” Chappelle said hazily. His eyes focused on the coffe and he said, “Oh, yeah. Thank you. Go on, Agent Almeida.”
Tony pressed a button and a large screen changed from a picture of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to a collection of three candid black-and-white photos, all of Arabic men in their late twenties. “I’m keeping these three on our watch list even though they’re probably not in our region. They still got released in connection with one of our cases, so I figure—”
“It wasn’t our fault,” Nina Myers said. “We were solving the case. We weren’t the ones who caved to terrorist demands.”
Tony nodded. It was an old case that had been wrapped up, but in a related incident, thre
e suspected terrorists had been released. All of CTU was irked that they’d gotten away. He moved on.
“Presidential candidates from both parties are making campaign stops in and around Los Angeles in the upcoming months, ramping up for the primaries. The advance teams know to contact us, and communication is good.” The agents nodded and scribbled notes.
Henderson spoke up. “But we don’t have any likely suspects? I’m asking, not telling. Is that right? We don’t have any hard evidence of any terrorists having infiltrated the country.”
Tony agreed. “Nothing to set off alarm bells, which
is a good thing.”
“Then why are we here so late?” Henderson asked.
“I wanted it,” Chapelle said as if no further expla
nation were necessary.
Tony continued. “Our data analysts”—he gave a nod to Jamey Farrell, who tipped her imaginary hat —“have pulled up some information on locals with possible connections to Jemaah Islamiyah. It’s thin, but I’m going to follow up.”
“Good,” Henderson said. “Well, that wraps it up, ladies and gentlemen, I—”
“Chappelle?” Tony said, looking past Henderson.
The Regional Director’s eyes hadn’t just glazed over. They were rolling back in his head, and his face had gone gray. A bit of drool seeped from the corner of his mouth, and by the time Henderson turned to check on him, Chappelle was falling out of his chair. Henderson caught him and laid him gently on the ground as the others crowded around.
“Chappelle!” Henderson said, tapping him lightly on the cheek. “Ryan! Call security, get medics,” Henderson said with authority, but the team around him was already on the move. “Get them here quick. He’s not breathing!”
9:19 P.M. PST Federal Holding Facility, Los Angeles
The broken-nosed guard was named Adam Cox, and Adam Cox was looking forward to getting the hell off work, slogging his way through traffic, and putting his feet up in front of SportsCenter. Viv would probably ride him for not finishing the weather stripping on the garage door, but hell, it wasn’t going to rain any time soon.
