by Steve Alten
The schematics eventually found their way to the Navy’s Warfare Division in Keyport, Washington.
After nearly a year away from Special Ops, Gunnar returned to active duty. When the Gulf War broke out a few weeks later, Detachment Commander Wolfe found himself on board a transport plane with the rest of his twelveman infiltration unit, bound for Kuwait.
The next seven years would be a blur. Mission after covert mission, his muscles twitching with adrenaline, his gut tightening in fear as he unleashed a calculated highly trained fury upon the enemies of his country.
Military dictatorships. Guerrilla forces. Cause-intoxicated rebels.
Gunnar was the consummate Army fighting machine, a trigger man for the long arm of the law—the United States military.
Join the Army. See the world. Protect democracy.
And Gunnar saw everything. Violence and hatred. Greed and corruption. Famine and pestilence. Bloody conflicts entangled with so much history, so much death, that right and wrong, good and evil no longer existed, only greed and hatred commanded the politics of the moment.
Gunnar might have been a well-trained fighting machine, but he was still an American soldier, and American soldiers live by a creed.
Soldiers fight to make a difference.
Soldiers kill bad guys.
Soldiers do not kill children.
After seven years of violence, the Army’s most capable stallion finally bucked his riders.
You do not shoot a champion racehorse after it tires of winning, especially one with an engineering background who understands the intricacies of combat. The Bear, now commander in Chief of the United States Special Operations Command, arranged for Gunnar’s transfer to the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Keyport, knowing full well he was not just salvaging the career of a superior soldier, he was playing the role of matchmaker.
At first, the change of scene had worked. Gunnar was assigned to head the team constructing the SEAL Hammerhead minisub based on his own designs, and even the challenge of converting the two-man submersible to a computer-operated vehicle did not seem to faze him.
Or maybe he was just trying to impress his new CO, a fiery woman who made his blood boil and his groin melt. When their unbridled passion turned to love, Gunnar thought he was in heaven.
And then he was called to the Pentagon—to a private meeting to discuss the true purpose of his remotely operated minisubs.
His new identity shattered like glass.
What is it like to wake up, look in the mirror, and realize your life has been one big lie, that everything you were taught to believe in is wrong, that your existence has been corrupted to the point that you suddenly realize you are not the cure for the infection, but the disease itself.
Something snapped inside him. And in that single moment of clarity, he realized what he had to do.
Readying the computer virus had been the easy part—the decision whether to actually go through with the treasonous act had been the challenge.
“Wolfe, you can’t coast through life-and-death decisions! Shit or get off the pot! Is that understood?”
“Roger, Sergeant Gardner!”
A Special Ops warrior knows better than to hesitate. Gunnar had hesitated. In the delay, someone else had acted, someone close. They had not only stolen $2 billion dollars worth of biochemical computer ware, but had set him up as the fall guy, using a false money trail to paint him a traitor to his family and friends.
Gunnar had a strong suspicion who the real traitor was, but he had refused to turn the man in. And so the judge had come down hard upon the former Special Ops commando.
“Gunnar Wolfe, this court has found you guilty. Although you have served your country bravely in the past, your refusal to cooperate in our investigation leaves me no choice than to sentence you to the maximum penalty for your crimes …”
Ten years. Gunnar felt as if he was falling from a precipice. He turned to face Rocky, shocked at her expression. His fiancée actually seemed … relieved.
As they led him away in restraints, only the Bear had the stomach to look him in the eye.
When it comes to assigning the guilty to a correctional facility, the Bureau of Prisons has its own hierarchy. Nonviolent and white-collar offenders are sent to level-one camps—dormitory-style prisons often dubbed “Club Feds.” Medium-security prisons fall into categories two, three, and four, the level of security increasing progressively. Vocational training is emphasized in these institutions, where inmates get their first real “education” about life in prison.
Level-five institutions house the most violent criminals. These are society’s outlaws, the unreformable—career criminals with violent pasts. Sociopaths. Murderers.
Gunnar Wolfe had been accused and convicted of a crime that had given the Defense Department a public black eye. There would be hell to pay, and the former Special Ops guru was going to pick up the tab.
Despite his service to his country, the Bureau of Prisons assigned him to Leavenworth—the oldest, toughest level-five correctional facility in the nation.
First-timers are rarely sent to Leavenworth. Most of the twelve hundred inmates imprisoned there have spent half their lives in other prisons, finally earning their way into the “Hot House.”
As he rode to Leavenworth in the prison van, his last glimpses of the outside world obscured by bars, Gunnar Wolfe realized his life was over. He had lost his country, his comrades, his commanding officer, and the woman he loved; and now, somehow, he had to bury his emotions and toughen up, or be eaten alive.
Gunnar and the other “fish” passed through the yellowed limestone administration building in leg irons and tether chains, the “black box” severely limiting their movements. When entering a maximum-security prison, an inmate has an immediate decision to make. Will he allow himself to be used and abused? Is he willing to fight? Every move, every expression, every action or reaction is scrutinized.
As the electronic gate closed behind him, the farm boy from Pennsylvania didn’t care if he lived or died.
Leavenworth is composed of four cellblocks and a center hall that connect to a main rotunda like spokes on a wheel. The hellhole prison sits on twenty-two acres, and is surrounded by a four-foot-thick brick wall, which rises thirty-five feet above the yard and descends thirty-five feet below it. Strategically placed atop the wall are six gun towers.
Within the yard are basketball courts, tennis courts, a weight-lifting pit, and other recreational fields. The prison hospital and disciplinary unit (hole), as well as the four-story UNICOR building (housing a textile shop, furniture factory, and printing plant) can also be found there.
Seventy percent of the inmates at Leavenworth are assigned to two-man cells. Pulling a few strings of his own, the Bear artfully arranged to get Gunnar into a single cell, a status usually reserved for protective custody, medical reasons, or inmates too violent to have a cellmate. It would be the last break Gunnar would get for years to come.
Like most maximum-security prisons, Leavenworth is a concrete jungle. Prisoners have a wolf-pack mentality, body language often determining the difference between predator and prey. Cons, like beasts, herd themselves along racial and ethnic lines.
At the top of the food chain are the gangs, classified by law-enforcement personnel as Security Risk Groups. Latin Kings, Muslims, Crypts, Bloods, Aryan Brotherhood, La Cuestra Nuestra Familia (the Mexican Maha)—all well-organized groups, motivated by the desire to survive and the spoils of illegal prison activities.
Then there are the “wanna-bes,” individuals in the protracted process of seeking formal gang membership. Those convicts are often linked to the most violent prison yard episodes as they attempt to impress their recruiters.
Drifting through the jungle like solitary rabid animals are the sociopaths and psychos. You never knew when one of these lifers might slip out of his twilight zone and attack. Look at one of them the wrong way during breakfast, and you could find a shiv in your belly before lunch.
<
br /> Like the jungle, prison has an unwritten code for survival. Leave your cell in the morning and you enter a world where it is take or be taken, kill or be killed, never knowing for sure if you will return to the relative safety of each night’s lockdown.
Every movement watched. Every weakness probed. Society’s worst predators, always evaluating, instinctively separating the strong from the weak, the focused from the distracted.
Though an elite physical specimen and highly trained fighter with a hundred different killing reflexes, Gunnar entered Leavenworth Prison an emotional wreck, his self-identity gone, the injustice of his situation, combined with years of guilt from his actions in the field robbing him of his will to survive. Severely depressed, he drifted through his first hours of hell like a zombie.
He might as well have been a bleeding fish tossed into a swimming pool full of sharks.
Gunnar’s first “mud check” happened during his second day. Inmates at Leavenworth are permitted to roam the yard relatively unchecked. Anthony Barnes was a lifer, a “J-Cat” (needing mental treatment) doing 104 years for kidnapping and murder. He had just been transferred to Leavenworth after spending eighteen years at the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut, where he had killed three inmates; two because they were black, one because the man had made the mistake of refusing him sexually. Barnes was being actively recruited by the Aryan Brotherhood, one of the most savage of the white prison gangs. Before gaining his lifetime membership to the AB, he was required to “make his bones”—killing another person targeted for death by the “Commission.”
The Commission had targeted Gunnar.
It is unusual for the Aryan Brotherhood to go after Whites, but tensions between the AB and the Muslims had been rising of late, and the outnumbered Aryan Brotherhood were not looking for a war, they just wanted to end “soldier boy’s” misery before their Black and Hispanic rivals could get to him—
—killing him out of “kindness.”
The eyes of the jungle watched as Gunnar walked the yard, his mind doing “hard time,” his psyche unable to come to grips with the sudden reality of a prison sentence too unfair to accept, too long to imagine. As Barnes approached, the other road dogs instinctively backed off, leaving the new inmate on his own.
The shank in Barnes’s hand was an eight-inch piece of metal, ingeniously taken with great patience from the back of a radio. One end, ground against cement, was as sharp as a razor. The other end was wrapped in cloth for a firm grip by hands that had crushed many a throat.
His mind preoccupied, Gunnar never saw the man coming. Only when the blade penetrated his lower back—millimeters from a classic kidney stab, did Gunnar’s commando instincts finally take over.
Ignoring pain that would paralyze a normal man, Gunnar pivoted to face his assailant. Looping his left arm over and around both of Barnes’s arms, he pinned them in a viselike grip while the heel of his free hand exploded into the convict’s face, shattering his occipital bone. Passing on the temptation to crush the larynx, Gunnar opted to slam his shoe sideways against the medial section of his attacker’s right knee, tearing the collateral and cruciate ligaments from the bone, crippling his would-be assassin.
From that day forward, the former Ranger was regarded as a convict, a prisoner who was to be respected. A week’s stay in the hospital was followed by the mandatory twenty days in the hole.
Naked and in the seclusion of darkness, he reflected on the hypocrisy of his life.
Who am I?
I am a son, scorned by his father. I am a man loathed by the woman I love. I am a fool, betrayed by his best friend. I’m an American, imprisoned by his country. I am a soldier, forced to kill children.
I am a piece of meat. am scum. I am a walking corpse waiting to be buried so that I may be judged by God.
I am an island.
I have not led a good life. I deserve to be punished. I have allowed myself to be used. I have betrayed my parents. I have betrayed myself.
I have betrayed God.
Guilt and self-loathing burned deep inside Gunnar’s being, consuming all other emotions. He thought about killing himself, but was afraid.
Gunnar held no fear of death; in fact, he welcomed an end to his anguish. What petrified the former farm boy from central Pennsylvania was the thought of having to stand naked before God, wearing only his sins.
And though he feared God, he was not a religious man. He had no belief in the power of absolution. He alone was responsible for his actions, and he alone could absolve himself from sin. Somehow he would find a way to cleanse himself, somehow he had to make amends for his crimes.
But first, he had to survive.
And so Gunnar Wolfe hardened himself on the inside, stuffing all his anger and fear and remorse into a mental lockbox, tossing away the key. He refused to receive visits from the Bear and would accept no mail. He spoke only when spoken to by the guards. When he wasn’t pumping iron, he was walking the yard, a constant scowl on his face.
Rumors about the former Special Ops officer spread quickly through the prison grapevine, fed by clerks who had read his file. It was said he could kill three men armed with shanks before the first drop of his own blood hit the floor. The legends only grew wilder over time.
Choo Choo Rodriguez was a Latin King disciple and one of the toughest cons in Leavenworth. He was serving three consecutive life sentences for hacking his girlfriend and her parents to death with a machete. Choo Choo announced to his peers that he would be the one to claim the “Ranger boy’s cherry.”
Hours later, the body of the six-foot-six, 282-pound Rodriguez was found in the laundry room—eviscerated—his intestines looped around his neck.
No one else would challenge the former Army Ranger during his stay in Leavenworth.
It was not Gunnar who had killed Rodriguez, but Jim Kennedy, a corrections officer hired by the Bear to look out for his boy.
Message delivered.
During the fifty-seventh month of his sentence, an uprising between the Muslims and the Aryan Brotherhood broke out in Gunnar’s cellblock, during the warden’s inspection. Two guards were stabbed and killed, the warden held at gunpoint by a deranged Anthony Barnes. Two Correctional Emergency Response Teams surrounded the cellblock, but were held at bay by the threat on the warden’s life. Just as it seemed like events were spinning out of control, a trained killer, a former Army Ranger, stepped out of the shadows and snapped Barnes’s neck, taking several bullets in the process. The warden was rescued, the threat ended.
Gunnar’s sentence was commuted a week later. On a clear Kansas day in November, he walked out the gates of Leavenworth a free man—his tortured mind still very much imprisoned.
The next year had been a blur. Gunnar had been an elite fighting machine, trained to take out his enemy, but now the enemy was inside his own skin. Self-loathing led to booze, the booze to painkillers.
There are only three places an addict ends up. Rehab, jail, or dead.
Having spent time in prison, Gunnar opted for death. Fortunately, the overdose landed him in rehab.
Two months later, he returned to Happy Valley, prepared to live out his life—one day at a time.
The Bell 206L-4 Longranger light utility helicopter soars over Beaver Stadium, then northeast beyond a dense woods before reaching farmland. Clouds of brown dust and flecks of hay kick up as the machine lands between the silo and the barn.
Seventy-two-year-old Harlan Wolfe hurries out from his kitchen toward the world-filling noise. He adjusts his suspenders with one hand, holding the Smith & Wesson 12-gauge with the other, his initial shouts of protest drowned out by the shrieking blades. Cursing under his breath, he sees a woman remove her headphones and hand them to the pilot before exiting from the opened passenger door.
Commander Rocky Jackson-Hatcher brushes debris from her naval dress uniform. Climbing down from the aircraft she turns—coming face-to-face with the barrel of a shotgun, and the man who, years earlier, had nea
rly become her father-in-law.
The pilot reaches for his sidearm.
Rocky waves, signaling him to take off. “Mr. Wolfe, it’s me—”
“I know who you are. I ain’t senile.”
“Would you mind lowering the gun?”
“What’re you doing here?”
“I need to speak to Gunnar.”
“Come to twist the knife?”
“This is official government business—”
“Piss off. Gunnar don’t want nothing to do with you and yours—and neither do I. Now get off my land ’fore I call the cops.”
“Call the cops. I’m not leaving until I speak to your son.” She pushes past him, entering the farmhouse. “Gunnar? Gunnar Wolfe—are you in here?” She heads into the kitchen, the aroma of roast beef and potatoes instantly setting her stomach to growling. Pulling back the sun-yellowed curtains, she looks out the window and sees the distant tractor.
Gunnar negotiates the last turn, the setting sun at his back turning the dried field a golden brown. He is halfway across the acreage when he spots the woman waiting by the fence.
Son of a bitch … Gunnar throttles up, then changes his mind and shuts off the engine. Screw it. Make her walk.
Rocky stares at the tractor, which has stopped moving less than a quarter mile away. Goddamn the man. She waits another few minutes, then, cursing under her breath, unbuttons her coat and climbs over the wooden fence, her black dress shoes sinking heel deep into grass, mud, and manure.
Gunnar watches, his heart pounding. The golden hair, shorter now, is pressed neatly beneath her hat. He feels his groin stir as she gets nearer.
She approaches the tractor, slipping and sliding in the moist earth, looking up at him through angry eyes. “We need to talk.”
Gunnar swallows the ball of bile burning its way up his throat.
“Don’t just sit there, say something.”
“Screw you, lady. Six years, and you think you can just waltz back in here and say we need to talk?”
