Savage Truth

by Jack Hardin

  “He’ll talk,” Ellie said. “Men like him always do. He’s in the snare, and he knows that this time, there’s no way out. He’ll talk, if for no other reason than he’ll want to put it to those who still have what he can no longer gain.”

  “Well, whatever he does,” I said. “I’m finished with him.”

  We spent the next half-hour working down the plate of fritters and talking about work, boats, and fishing. At some point, Brad looked behind me, his eyes seeming to fall on something as though he had just recognized it for the first time. The feet of his chair squealed against the stained concrete as he stood up. He moved past the table and stopped somewhere behind me.

  I didn’t feel like turning around. “What is he doing?” I asked Kathleen.

  “Oh no.” She muttered. “Brad—Brad, don’t...”

  Ellie pivoted in her seat and turned back, wearing a fresh smirk.

  Brad reappeared and sat back down. “What?” he said glibly.

  “You’re ridiculous,” I grinned. “Completely ridiculous.” A few weeks back, Roscoe had brought in a fake parrot, set it on a perch, and hung it from the rafters.

  “Too soon,” Kathleen said, shaking her head.

  Brad had plucked the eyepatch off the parrot and slid it over an eye.

  “I can’t decide if I want to laugh at you or punch you,” I said.

  Ellie's phone rang, and she set it to her ear. “Hey, Tyler.” She stood up and stepped outside where it wasn’t as noisy. She returned a minute later. “I’d better go,” she said. “I have to get back. I have a date tonight.”

  I stood up and extended my hand. She took it. “I hope we get the chance to work another case together,” I said. “You did good rescuing that kid. It was a real pleasure working beside you.”

  “You too, Ryan. Come on up to Pine Island sometime, and we’ll toss a couple lines in the water.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  She said goodbye to Brad and Kathleen, and as we watched her disappear out the front door, Rich Wilson appeared and clapped me on the shoulder. I hadn’t seen him since the night of the shooting on our marina.

  “Did you drive here?” he asked.

  “No. I rode over with Brad.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  I said goodbye to Brad and Kathleen and followed Rich out the back. Walking down the short dock, he stopped at Roscoe’s Mako 21 LTS and boarded. Anticipating my question, he said, “Roscoe gave me the keys for the afternoon. One of these days, I’ll have to break down and buy myself a runabout.”

  The Mako had a shiny turquoise hull, and its Rapid Planing System transom vented the running surface aft with lateral and longitudinal steps to reduce bow rise when coming onto plane. The boat was complete with standard fishing fare: a 30-gallon livewell in the aft casting deck, a pair of aft flush-mount rod holders, console rod racks, a forward console cooler seat, a leaning post that housed a 94-quart cooler, and araw water washdown. Roscoe had recently updated the prior 150-horsepower engine for a Mercury 225. You’ll always find me in Tim the Toolman Taylor’s corner: more power.

  We cast off and headed south down the coast, and several minutes later, he pulled into an empty slip beside my Whaler. I tied off before he killed the engine. We got off, and he led the way to my houseboat. I hadn’t seen it in days, but I was glad to see that it was no longer wrapped in yellow crime scene tape. The dock boards stained by Tony Fry’s blood had been replaced.

  Rich stopped in front of The MacGyver. “Well, what do you think?”

  “Rich, who did this?”

  “Several people. They took it over to the boatyard for a few days and made her right as rain.”

  “That quickly? It hasn’t even been a week.”

  “There are a lot of people around here, Ryan, who appreciate you and the work that you do. It’s their way of saying thanks. I took care of the supplies, and they volunteered the labor.”

  “Rich, I’ve got the money.”

  “It’s not about that. You young people are always thinking about money. You, Ryan, are family to Edith and me. We want you to know that. And this is what family does. So no more talking about compensating for the repairs. Got it?”

  “Thanks, Rich. This means a lot.”

  “Permission to board?”

  “After you.”

  We climbed aboard, and Rich gave me the grand tour. Repairing a boat isn’t easy; there is a lot of work that goes into it. Layers of epoxy, bedding compound, varnish, and paint, just for starters. Except for a few areas on the deck where the texture was slightly different, it looked like a brand new boat.

  Best of all, there were no bullet holes anywhere.

  We stepped inside. The forward and aft sliding glass doors had been replaced, as had the flooring and the paneling on the bulkheads. I had new countertops in the galley, as well as brand new appliances and light fixtures. Everything had been updated. I hardly recognized the place. It smelled like fresh paint.

  “What do you think?” Rich asked. “Edith finished painting the paneling yesterday.” A gleam was in his eye.

  “This is great, Rich.”

  I walked through the galley and into the salon. I even had new furniture. The couches, coffee table, and floor lamps were all new, too.

  “We went ahead and took out the propulsion system,” Rich said. “She wasn’t looking pretty, to say the least. If you ever do need to move it, then we can outfit it quickly enough with an outboard and a high-thrust prop.”

  Most houseboats have inboard/outboard setups, which is really a terrible idea. The outdrive unit lives permanently in the water and accumulates rust and barnacles. As old as The MacGyver was, there was always the concern that one day the propulsion system would fail to crank up properly.

  Brad’s place was nice enough, but it was good to be home.

  That night I sat on The MacGyver’s upper deck with the bimini pulled back, a pail of iced beer beside me, reading a dog-eared copy of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I looked up and stared out over the water. A pod of dolphins was slowly making its way to a mangrove island in the distance, and a gull uttered a long and lonely cry as it flew overhead.

  I smiled to myself, glad to have all the chaos of the last week behind me, and happy to know that Joel Fagan, and everything about him, was finally out of my life for good.

  Epilogue

  One hundred miles south of Denver, Colorado, on a 37-acre complex off Highway 67, sits ADX Florence, the most secure prison in the United States. The Supermax prison is colloquially referred to as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” and 377 prisoners spend 23 hours per day in single cells whose desks, stools, and beds are made entirely of poured concrete. Phones are banned, and the only connection they are allowed to the outside world is a small television showing only recreational, educational, and religious programming.

  Each cell is equipped with a 4 inch by 4 foot window that is mounted near the ceiling and designed to prevent inmates from knowing their exact location within the complex. All cells are sound-proofed to prevent prisoners from communicating with one another. Inmates exercise in a concrete pit that resembles an empty swimming pool, also designed to prevent them from knowing their location in the facility. The pit is only large enough for a prisoner to walk less than a dozen steps in a straight line or thirty steps in a circle. Correctional officers deliver food to the cells.

  The prison contains a multitude of motion detectors, cameras, and up to 1,500 remote-controlled steel doors. Officers in the prison's control center monitor inmates 24 hours a day and can activate a "panic button" which closes every door in the facility should an escape attempt be suspected. Pressure pads and 12-foot-tall razor wire fences wrap the perimeter, which is patrolled by heavily armed officers.

  Several years ago, when the Bureau of Prisons allowed the media to take a guided tour of ADX Florence, visiting reporters remarked on "an astonishing and eerie quiet" within the prison.

  No one has ever e
scaped.

  Most of the United States’ most notorious criminals live in ADX Florence.

  Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty to terrorism conspiracy charges in 2005 for playing a key role in planning the September 11th attacks, helping the hijackers obtain flight lessons, material, and money used in the attacks. Currently serving six life sentences.

  Umar Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national and Al-Qaeda operative, pleaded guilty in 2011 to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction for an attempt to detonate an explosive sewn into his underwear on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. He is popularly known as the “Underwear Bomber.” Serving four life terms plus fifty years without parole.

  Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, along with his brother Tamerlan, planted a pressure cooker bomb at the 2013 Boston Marathon finish line, killing three people and injuring over 250. Sentenced to death and awaiting execution.

  Robert Hanssen, former senior FBI agent, pleaded guilty in 2002 to espionage for passing classified information to the Soviet Union and later to Russia over a 20-year period. The treason was regarded as the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history at the time, betraying dozens of U.S. intelligence agents, several of whom were executed directly due to Hanssen's actions. Serving fifteen consecutive life sentences.

  Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh’s co-conspirator in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people. Serving 161 consecutive life sentences.

  In other words, he’s not getting out.

  And, most recently, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the Pablo Escobar of our time. Three years ago, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was extradited from Mexico to the United States to face charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and murder. His trial, often characterized as a trial of the century, lasted for over three months. The jury found him guilty on all counts: life imprisonment without parole.

  ADX Florence just happened to be the prison where Joel Fagan found himself while he awaited trial on charges of defection, treason, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, conspiracy, as well as multiple counts of murder and kidnapping.

  All the other inmates were serving out sentences that had already been handed down.

  But Fagan was still waiting for his trial.

  The Department of Justice, viewing him as a high-level threat to national security, denied him bail and tossed him into the most secure prison they had while the Attorney General's office gathered evidence and prepared to bring their case.

  In the five weeks that Fagan had been there, the only faces he had seen were those of six different guards, his lawyer, and several individuals from the Attorney General's office. The latter had come to see him nearly half a dozen times.

  He was about to strike a deal.

  Fagan wasn’t getting out of there, he knew that. The United States had been looking for their elusive runaway for over twenty years, and now that they had him and had thrown him into the darkest dungeon they had, they weren’t about to let him get off with anything less than dozens of life sentences. Maybe even the death penalty.

  But Fagan didn’t feel ready to get stuck with the needle quite yet. This place might be the pits, but spending his days watching National Geographic documentaries and those creepy big-haired ladies on Trinity Broadcasting Network was still better than going down early for the big sleep.

  To both his surprise and pleasure, the AG’s office was willing to cut him a deal; Fagan had a veritable well of information on criminal networks in the Caucasus, Northern Africa, and greater Europe, all of which in some way negatively affected the national security efforts of the United States.

  But of even more interest to the AG was what Fagan knew about Roman Baxter.

  Prior to expatriating from the U.S. ten years ago, Baxter had spent a lucrative career as an agricultural lobbyist, spending his time courting and smooching up to senior senators and representatives. But Baxter finally grew tired of it all, choosing instead to hang up his cleats and surrender his citizenship. He moved to Madrid, where he consulted with the Spanish government on environmental threats coming from synthetic fertilizers and herbicides. He did this until he, much like Fagan, decided that there was far more money on the other side of the law. Baxter now spent most of his time financing criminal endeavors as far-ranging as human trafficking, high-value art heists, espionage, and small arms transfers. He had quickly risen to become one of the most diversified and feared crime bosses in Europe.

  But what especially held the interest of the United States government was Roman Baxter’s involvement in the

  Baxter was an expert at keeping his hands clean. He Not even the hint of a phone call record or the trace of an email. Only the pictures provided by deeply entrenched spies provided the social links that the United States needed to complicity.

  And not a single national government had definitive proof of his complicity.

  But Joel Fagan could change all that.

  His dealings with Baxter over the last several years were such that he was one of the privileged few who knew where the ex-pat kept his

  And he had the proof.

  Safely tucked away in a safe deposit box in Copenhagen.

  Fagan, given his current predicament, was more than happy to dangle juicy bits of information on Baxter in front of the AG. Baxter may have gotten him out of a third world prison a few months ago, but that had come at a price, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Baxter could get him out of this concrete prison.

  The Feds were anxious—eager, even—to get anything they could on Roman Baxter. He was slowly growing into a greater threat, no longer a mere political nuisance, and catching him would go a long way to advance more than a few people’s careers.

  Fagan lay on his bed—a thin mattress atop a solid concrete pedestal—and laced his fingers behind his head. His brown hair was still long and stringy; the Bureau of Prison was waiting for his conviction before they cut it to prison standards. He fixed his attention on the television monitor in the corner of the ceiling. The Discovery Channel was showing a classic documentary on the Serengeti, vast ecosystem in east-central Africa.

  A famished pack of hyenas was eagerly working over a wildebeest.

  Fagan had spent most of his life feeling like a hyena. But now he was fairly certain that he had just become the wildebeest. He frowned and absently rubbed gently at the top of his chest. The bullet wound had healed nicely. The area was still red and tender, but after eight days in the hospital he had come out in proper working order.

  A loud rap came on the heavy steel door of his cell. From the other side, a guard ordered him to approach, turn around, and place his hands through the narrow slot in the door.

  Fagan rose slowly and set his feet on the floor.

  The timestamp on the bottom corner of the television told him it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening. He’d already fulfilled his allotted hour of exercise in the pit.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  The guard didn’t answer.

  Fagan mumbled as he stepped to the door and turned around. “So now they’re hiring deaf-mutes around here?” He felt the coolness of the cuffs wrap around his wrists, the ridginess of the metal as it tightened around his skin.

  He stepped forward and turned around. The guard unlocked the door and escorted him into the silent corridor. Above them, bright halogens reflected off the glossy paint of the floor. The If he didn’t know better, Fagan might have thought that he was in an underground safety bunker.

  He was led through a series of interconnected passageways, stepping through a doorway and waiting for it to seal behind him before the next one was opened. Then the guard did something Fagan did not expect. He placed a black hood over Fagan’s head.

  “Is this necessary? I’ve only got one eye.”

  He was grabbed around his upper arm and led forward. They walked for another five minutes, working their way through more locked down corrid
ors before entering a hallway that felt and smelled uniquely different. This one was made of sheetrock, not concrete, and now there was carpet on the floors. It smelled like it had been freshly painted.

  Something wasn’t right. Fagan suddenly felt a knot tighten in his stomach. The secure room where he had met with his lawyer and the AG was much closer to his cell. He had never been in that area of the prison.

  “You takin’ me to dinner? There better be candles.”

  “Shut up.”

  They stopped once again, and Fagan heard the guard punch in several buttons on a keyboard. They walked through a final doorway, and Fagan was immediately hit with the smell of a spiced candle.

  A voice boomed several feet in front of him. “Thank you, Jerry. If you’ll remove the hood and the cuffs as well.”

  “Sir, the cuffs?”

  “Please.”

  To both his surprise and joy, Fagan felt the guard fiddle with his cuffs. Moments later, they were pulled off his skin. The hood was removed to reveal Fagan standing in a comfortable office. The carpet was a dark brown, and built in bookcases lined one wall, the shelves filled with four- and five-inch binders, each of them ostensibly dedicated to a prisoner at the complex. There were no windows, but two floor lamps and a lamp on the desk provided a comfortable yellow glow.

  A man sat behind the wide desk. He was slender. His elbows were propped on the desk, his skeletal fingers steepled. Wire rimmed glasses were perched on the top of a narrow nose. His eyes were tiny, a cold blue that seemed to pierce whatever they fell on like an x-ray.

  “Thank you, Jerry,” the man said. “You can return to your post. I’ll send for Carver when we’re done here.”

  Jerry frowned as though this entire ordeal was outside of his practiced routine. But he simply said, “Yes, sir,” and left without another word.

  The man in the wire rimmed glasses extended a hand to a leather armchair in front of the desk. “Have a seat.”

  Fagan did as he was asked. He sat upright and placed each hand on the end of the armrests. He looked confidently into the eyes of the man that he deduced was the prison’s warden.