by Rob Sinclair
‘You what?’
‘I can still help, I–’
‘Enough. You’re going to go back to that prison and you will do everything in your power to bring me some answers. I don’t need problems, I have more than enough of those every damn day. This is your last chance, Nava. The next time we meet, if you don’t have something that I want to hear...’
By now, Nava was quivering. Vasquez thought about finishing his sentence, saying exactly what he’d do to Nava and his wife and children. But sometimes less was more. Nava understood the warning fine, and Vasquez wanted the man out of his sight.
‘Just go,’ Vasquez said.
For a couple of seconds, he watched a shaking Nava retracing his steps away from the park bench, and he felt a sliver of his anger dissipating. He relished the power that he held over men. He wondered if this was how Roman Emperors felt thousands of years earlier, when the fate of men’s lives depended on whether the Emperor’s thumb pointed up or down. Vasquez would have made a good emperor, he believed. He had all the right attributes.
Enjoyable as thoughts of power and greed were, Vasquez shook himself back to reality. Who was in control now at Santa Martha, Vasquez didn't know, but whatever was happening, James Ryker was becoming a far bigger problem than Vasquez had ever imagined.
And, in Vasquez’s experience, sometimes the most efficient way to deal with a problem was to bury it, quickly and quietly, and remove all traces of its existence.
23
The guards escorted Ryker away from the meeting with Powell and back along the by now familiar route to the cell block ruled by the Santos cartel. It seemed his brief time in solitary confinement was already at an end. Ryker wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Was this – being put back in with the wolves – his punishment for having turned down Powell’s request? If so, did that mean Powell was working with the Santos cartel, or that he knew their agenda and what they were capable of?
When the guards thrust Ryker back into the Royal Palace cell with Benito, one of the key questions dominating his mind was whether to reveal that he knew Benito’s secret. Assuming, that was, that Powell’s words about Benito being the cartel boss – the queen hornet, so to speak – were true in the first place. Ryker had to at least entertain the possibility that they were.
The strange thing was, Ryker had warmed to Benito in their brief time together in the cell. Benito was articulate and often engaging and was the only prisoner who – so far at least – hadn’t seen Ryker as a piece of fresh meat in need of a good pounding. But, according to Powell, Benito was a Mexican drug cartel boss. The real deal.
Whatever the truth, Ryker wasn’t quite sure how to behave around him now.
Benito was sat on his bunk, quietly embroidering a skull design onto a leather handbag, a pair of thin glasses on the tip of his nose.
‘Ah, Inglés!’ Benito said. He looked up and beamed, and put down the needle and thread. The bag stayed on his lap. ‘You’re back.’
‘Looks that way.’ Ryker sat next to Benito on the bed.
Ryker studied the old man. He still looked scrawny and wrinkly and quite insignificant, and his manner remained accommodating and almost carefree. Yet now, when Ryker looked into his eyes, he saw a glimpse of what might lie beneath – a certain knowing, a coldness that Ryker hadn’t noticed before.
Or was it all in his mind?
Even if Benito was a merciless and violent cartel leader, Ryker wasn’t scared of him. Not of Benito on his own. But he was wary of what Benito could be capable of.
‘Where have you been?’ Benito asked. ‘I was worried about you, thought maybe you were gone for good.’
‘Solitary confinement. Or something like that. Certainly not a patch on this place.’
‘I’m glad you think so. What did I tell you? But they let you out of there. You’re lucky.’
‘Lucky? I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it.’
‘They beat you bad the other day,’ Benito said, looking first at Ryker’s still swollen face, then at the white bandage on his forearm.
‘You should have seen the other guys.’
‘I did. And I don’t think they are happy. I don’t know why, but El Jefe has a big problem with you.’
‘He does, doesn’t he.’
‘And you will make it worse if you try to fight back. They are too many. They have too much influence. You have seen that already.’
‘So I’m just expected to stand there and let them smash the crap out of me?’
Benito shook his head and gave Ryker a look as though he was being a dunce. ‘Do you remember what I said the first day you were here?’
‘You told me not to fight them. But I had no choice. You saw that out in the yard my first day. I had to do something. Everything else has just flowed from there.’
‘No. You don’t understand,’ Benito said. ‘I’m not talking about fighting in the yard, proving who’s the toughest guy. That’s one thing – but to fight back against the Santos cartel when they come to ask questions? They are too many, and too powerful.’
‘Maybe. But I will defend myself.’
Benito shook his head and looked back down to the bag he was still clutching. He picked up the needle and resumed his handiwork.
‘Okay,’ Benito said. ‘But next time they come, and I’m sure they will, maybe it’s best for you if you give them what they ask.’
‘That’s interesting advice, Benito. You must be quite clued up on the ways of the Santos cartel.’
Ryker glared at Benito, but he didn’t look up, just quietly carried on with his needle and thread. Was this guy really the boss? Ryker was having some serious doubts. Benito was just so ordinary and unassuming.
‘I’m only trying to help you,’ Benito said. ‘I know what they’re capable of.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
‘And I don’t like to see them hurt people when it can be stopped.’
‘Of course you don’t.’
Ryker continued to stare at Benito for a few seconds but the older man said nothing more. And that was the end of the conversation.
For the next few hours, nothing remarkable happened. Benito and Ryker barely spoke. All was quiet throughout the cell block, in fact.
Later that day, the inmates were taken out to the yard for an hour in the fierce afternoon sunshine. Ryker kept to himself, and, despite plenty of angry and suspicious glares, no one came his way.
The early evening too passed without incident. More than once Ryker drifted off to sleep on his bunk, partly through boredom, partly because his body was still recovering from his wounds and the drugs he’d been fed in solitary confinement. When he was awake though, Ryker’s mind remained busy, thinking about Powell and the Santos cartel and what Ryker could do to get out of the predicament he was in.
The actions of the Santos cartel, whether it was Benito or Lozano who was in charge, seemed driven by finding out exactly why Ryker had come to Mexico. It was simple threat assessment on their behalf. So what would the cartel do if Ryker told them the answer; that he’d come to their country to find two men he believed had kidnapped Lisa, two men who may or may not be connected to their gang? Would they torture and kill Ryker just for that? Or would they realise he wasn’t a threat to them and leave him alone?
Ryker didn’t see why the cartel should have a problem with him, unless they held a grudge because of Ryker’s former life, but then the Santos cartel hadn’t even existed back then.
Then there was Powell and his offer. For many years, Ryker had performed the dirty work of governments, including carrying out countless assassinations. It was something at which Ryker excelled. For many years, Ryker had carried out those orders with barely a second thought – he’d become a killing machine, a robot.
But Ryker wasn’t that man anymore – he didn’t want to be – which was the reason he’d run away from that life. He still didn’t have a problem with killing people who he felt truly deserved it, but he wasn’t about to take an order
from a guy like Powell and kill someone he’d never met, never even heard of, just like that.
That said, agreeing to help Powell might be the only way to get out of Santa Martha alive. Particularly with a drug cartel gunning for his blood.
And maybe the guy, Douglas Ashford, did deserve to die.
Those back and forth thoughts were still swimming in Ryker’s mind when the final round of slops for the day arrived on the squeaky trolleys, not long after darkness had descended in the outside world. Ryker ate the food, feeling himself becoming stronger from the energy it provided his muscles and his brain. He wasn’t yet at full strength, his injuries still causing some discomfort and loss of movement, but he was recovering from the fight in Lozano’s cell.
Ryker was given little time for recovery though, and no more for pondering. Before lights out, the cell door clicked unlocked without warning and swung open two inches. The block outside was quiet, there were no guards about. The door had been released automatically, out of sight. Ryker looked over at Benito.
‘After you,’ Benito said, indicating to the door.
Ryker stood up from the bunk and walked toward the partly open door. Through the bars, out in the corridor, he could see a few other inmates milling – some other cells had been unlocked too.
‘Go on,’ Benito said.
Ryker pushed the door open fully and stepped out into the corridor. There were six other inmates out of their cells. No guards. He looked over to the cell next door. Lozano’s. He was inside, barely paying any attention to what was happening. Lozano wasn’t the problem anymore, it seemed. The problem was much closer to home now.
The door at the far end of the corridor sprang open and four guards came through, immediately barking orders to Ryker and Benito and the other six prisoners to get into line.
‘What’s going on?’ Ryker asked Benito.
‘It’s shower time,’ Benito said nonchalantly.
Yeah, and I’m the Queen of England, Ryker thought.
It was at that moment that Ryker finally concluded that Powell was right about Benito. Ryker had presumed another attack would come his way, and he fully believed it was coming right now. This time Benito would show his true colours.
The only question remaining in Ryker’s mind was what he should do next: take Benito’s advice and spill the beans, or once more counter whatever was sent his way and fight back.
Ryker didn’t yet know the answer. Perhaps it was a choice he wouldn’t even get.
24
Ryker felt like a dead man walking as the group of guards herded him and the small band of inmates along the corridors of Santa Martha.
‘Once a week we go to the showers,’ said Benito – directly in front of Ryker – as if trying to allay Ryker’s fears of what was to come. Maybe he’d seen the doubtful look in Ryker’s eyes.
‘Why only eight at a time?’
‘They’re not big showers. The guards couldn’t handle more than that in such a small space. You’ve seen what it’s like in the yard.’
Was Benito’s answer plausible? Yes. If Ryker had been a schmuck, he’d have believed this was just another Santa Martha routine. And maybe the shower runs were operated in the way Benito had just described. Normally. Yet he didn’t believe Benito's words. He could feel the tension in the men. The inmates, the guards too. Ryker had little doubt that this particular trip was deliberately set up for an altogether different purpose.
The group of eight prisoners moved from an internal corridor into a changing area that had a simple wooden bench along one wall. One of the guards yelled a demand for the inmates to undress, and he and his three colleagues then stood watch as the men did so. Everyone in the changing area – guards and prisoners alike – acted as though this was the most normal thing in the world.
Ryker followed the order, stripping off his clothes slowly and cautiously. He kept his eyes on the men around him as he did so, looking for any hint of an attack. A weapon maybe.
As the layers were peeled off, Ryker saw the full extent of the black ink that swirled around the skin of each of the men. In Mexico, the black ink was more than just for art or for intimidation even – it was about telling a story; which gang the men belonged to, crimes committed, seniority. Virtually every man in the prison probably had tattoos like these, but Ryker could tell from what he was seeing that this selection of heavily inked men were all seasoned gangbangers, and probably prison lifers. Men who lived violence, who had little to lose.
It was Benito’s shrivelled body though that Ryker found his eyes most drawn to. The older man was cloaked from head to toe. It wasn’t just the extent of his tattoos that caught Ryker’s eye either, but the violent nature of them. There were skulls, severed heads, limbs, a bleeding heart. Yet it was the centrepiece tattoo on Benito’s chest that demanded Ryker’s attention. An oversized hornet that stretched from his navel all the way to the top of his chest, and across to the edges of his ribcage.
Evidently, the man Ryker had come to know was not the man that lay inside. Benito was the one. The man everyone else was willing to fight and to die for. The Black Hornet.
Ryker looked up and into Benito’s eyes. Benito smiled as he enjoyed his moment of silent revelation. His eyes slid down to Ryker’s naked torso. Ryker didn’t have a single tattoo on his body, but what he did have were scars. Lots of them. Much like the tattoos on the men in front of him, the many raised lines and welts and clumps of hardened flesh that covered Ryker’s body – knife wounds, gunshot wounds, scars from various fights and bouts of torture – told the story of his difficult and violent life.
Benito looked back up, into Ryker’s eyes, and his smile faded slightly as though he now understood just what kind of man he was looking at.
But the boss wasn’t about to call off the planned attack just because he’d caught a glimpse of Ryker’s troubled past.
Benito nodded.
Ryker sensed movement behind him. He knew what was coming. He’d been prepared for it. The odds were heavily against him, but Ryker’s natural reaction was to counter and fight, even though he’d moments earlier been in two minds as to whether that was the right course.
Ryker spun round and fended off the first attack, sending a wide hook onto the jaw of the inmate who had burst forward. But there were six other prisoners around him ready to grapple. Plus four guards. Rather than being there to keep order, the guards were there to maintain the balance of the fight against Ryker.
In the end, it was the guards, together with their batons, who made the difference. Three of the inmates were down and bleeding within seconds, but one of the guards pulled Ryker into a headlock, his baton tight up against Ryker’s neck. With Ryker busy fighting the choke hold, the other men managed to subdue him, pinning his limbs and his torso.
The men moved forward in unison as Ryker spluttered and gasped for air and fought for some control over his body. Like a pack of worker ants pulling an enormous, thrashing wasp into their nest, they hauled Ryker to the wide archway that led into the shower room. Above them, water was already gushing onto the tiled floor from the dangling shower-heads. The baton around Ryker’s neck was whipped away and he was shoved hard in the back causing him to stumble forward.
No chance for him to resume his fight though. Immediately Ryker was grabbed, shoved and pulled at. He lost his footing on the slippery surface and crashed down onto the tiles head first, his cheek and his eye socket taking the brunt of the force. The skin above Ryker’s eye split and soon his vision was tinted red as blood mixed with the water pooling on the floor.
Ryker fought back with everything he had but the other inmates crowded around and over him, pinning him down, each of his limbs held outwards and firmly in place by the strength of a man. There was weight on his back too, and a knee or possibly a baton pushing down on his neck. Ryker squirmed and fought, and tried to gain some leverage, anything that might give him a chance of fending the men off.
It was simple maths though; Ryker was seriously outnumbere
d, and the attack – far more organised than when Ryker had taken down the men in Lozano’s cell – had been designed to give Ryker no chance of fighting back.
Ryker stared across the floor, spluttering and blinking furiously against the water cascading down in front of him. Two wrinkled feet moved into his field of sight. The man crouched down so Ryker could just see his eyes. Benito. Water was dripping down off his face and his sagging body. He was smiling but his eyes were piercing and beady, and his features were harder, his look more confident and arrogant. Everything about him was now sinister and unforgiving. It was an alarming transformation from the man Ryker had come to know.
‘You had a choice,’ Benito said, his voice deeper than before, and almost a hiss. ‘Answer our questions, or not. Talk, or fight.’
Ryker tried again to buck but there was no moving the men who were holding him.
‘But today there is no choice,’ Benito continued, shaking his head. ‘There will be no questions, and you cannot fight this time. Your chance to talk will have to wait. This is simply a message, from me to you. I hope it makes sense.’
Ryker felt a sudden sharp pain on his rectum. Something hard – a baton? – pressing into him. He already sensed what would come next.
‘You Americans and English, you have a serious problem, I hear. Prison rape. The big men sticking their dicks into the little men. For the pleasure of those in charge, or for the punishment of others, I’m not quite sure. I’m pleased we don’t do that here. It’s so degrading, no? When we want girls, we don’t make do with weak men. We just get girls in here. Much better that way. But, the idea of the punishment, I still like that. There’s nothing quite so humiliating, I imagine, as having your body violated. And the pain, I hear, is excruciating. The damage that can be caused, well...’
Ryker felt an intense stabbing as the pressure was increased tenfold, the object thrust into him; it felt like his skin was being split in two. He tensed his muscles and squinted his eyes shut at the thrashing pain that spread right through him.
