by Matt Rogers
‘That doesn’t look good,’ King said.
‘Planilla,’ Raul whispered. ‘Watch yourself.’
After he finished the pat-down, the guard gave King an ice-cold look with his good eye and punched him in the stomach. King saw the shot coming and jerked back as it landed, turning it into nothing more than a glancing blow. Dissatisfied with such an outcome, the guard swung for his head. He ducked under it, dodging the wild haymaker. It whistled past, close by. No connection though. This made the man furious. He’d been schooled by a battered inmate in handcuffs. He lashed out feebly with a kick, which ricocheted off King’s thigh, doing little damage. Then he turned and stormed out of the pavilion.
If only he was allowed to kill me, King thought.
The handcuffs were removed. The guards kept their shotguns raised high in case a suicidal prisoner got any ideas. The pellets were anti-riot but a spray to the face would risk serious injury — even death. King didn’t risk testing them.
He sucked the pavilion’s humid air into his lungs and his heart rate began to calm. He realised he wasn’t as hurt as he initially expected. He’d done well to cover up during the beating, and as such he was only bruised. He knew he would still be more than capable of holding his own.
The Guardia Nacional began barking commands in Spanish, and the prisoners responded. They formed a somewhat orderly line near the gate, waiting patiently. The hostility in the air had vanished.
‘What’s going on?’ King whispered to Raul.
‘We’re eating,’ the man answered.
At least a dozen guards and prison officials escorted the cluster of prisoners out of the pavilion. King was struck with a couple of rifle butts, forcing him into the midst of the procession. They were led into a spacious yard of dead grass. On the other side of the yard rested a long low concrete building with no windows.
‘That’s the kitchen,’ Raul explained.
King nodded, enjoying the weather for the brief moment he had outside. He quickly deduced that an escape attempt on the walk to breakfast would be a death sentence. He’d seen the officials swap their riot guns over to the real thing as the prisoners left their usual enclosure. One step out of line would be met with a hail of bullets.
The kitchen turned out to be much like a school canteen, only more sterilised. Metal floors, metal walls, metal benches, metal tabletops. Everything was smooth and shiny. It must have been the most sanitary area of El Infierno. King assumed it had been constructed this way to make cleaning easier. A simple wipe-down of all surfaces would make it ready for use again instantaneously.
Under the watchful eye of a small army of prison officials, King lined up to receive a plastic bowl half-full of lukewarm meat and rice, accompanied by a cheap disposable cup filled to the brim with water. Raul and Luis collected identical bowls behind him and the twins sat opposite him at the nearest table. Other prisoners sat down all around them and wolfed their food down without cutlery, most drooling onto the steel tabletops. A junkie with wide eyes and a limping gait slapped his bowl down next to King.
Too close.
The man stared at King questioningly, as if trying to provoke him. King knocked the bowl off the table and pushed the man away. He scurried wordlessly into a corner and collapsed in a heap, succumbing to the truckload of narcotics coursing through his veins.
King turned back to Raul and Luis, ignoring the junkie. The twins had been watching his every move. Almost studying him.
‘What?’ he said, questioning their looks.
Raul shook his head and took a mouthful of the gruel. ‘You’re nothing like the usual newcomers.’
‘How so?’
‘You’re not scared. At all. It takes people at least a few weeks to acclimatise to this kind of environment. They spend that time shitting their pants, usually. Taking beatings from other prisoners. Doing everything they’re told. You came in here like a force of nature.’
‘You don’t think I’m scared?’ King said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You don’t look it. You’re the bravest fresh face I’ve ever seen. And we’ve been here a year now.’
‘That’s the point. Fearlessness and bravery are two separate things.’
‘What?’
‘Of course I feel fear,’ King said. ‘Who doesn’t? I just ignore the instinct to run away. That’s all there is to it.’
‘I don’t think it’s that simple, gringo.’
‘Of course it’s not. You don’t want to know what I’ve done to reach this point. Can I ask a question?’
Raul cocked his head. ‘Sure.’
‘How come you speak perfect English and your brother doesn’t speak a word?’
‘He can speak a handful of phrases,’ Raul said. Luis’s striking blue eyes pierced into King as he watched the proceedings silently. ‘But it was a childhood friend who taught me. Every day. For years. Luis preferred the outdoors. He likes soccer.’
They finished eating in silence. It seemed Raul had plenty of curiosity about King’s past. He decided to keep the details of his career shrouded in mystery. For now. He didn’t know these men well enough to divulge sensitive information just yet. He gulped down the fluid and finished the bowl in front of him.
Breakfast concluded uneventfully and they were returned to the pavilion and shepherded into the enclosure. By the time the gates slammed shut behind them, the atmosphere had changed considerably from when King had arrived back in the pavilion earlier that morning. The raqueta — which Raul informed King was prison slang for search — had sucked most of the verve from the more dangerous prisoners. Most of the men had been demoralised by the Guardia Nacional stripping their weapons away. Almost all now found themselves unarmed.
King didn’t imagine they would risk a physical confrontation with him after what he’d done to Tevin’s bodyguard upon arrival.
‘Where is Tevin?’ King said, noting the man’s absence during the morning meal. He loitered alongside the twins by the pavilion’s entrance while other inmates began combing through the room, retrieving their belongings scattered across the ground.
‘Probably holed up in his room,’ Raul said. ‘He gets certain privileges. They don’t bother him as much as they used to.’
‘Do the guards know what I did to him and his men?’
‘Probably not, and they don’t care. It’s kill or be killed in here. As far as the guards are concerned, we could tear each other to shreds. It just makes their job a lot easier. The prisons here are overcrowded enough.’
‘Then why take away the weapons?’
‘It’s an economy, gringo. Like a reset button. Now we need to pay for new guns. Which goes into the pockets of the prison guards. Which probably goes into the pockets of the Guardia Nacional down the line.’
‘Where do you get money from?’
‘Outside connections, mostly. The guards sometimes let us make calls. Organise for money to be sent here. That sort of thing.’
‘What do I do about Tevin?’
Raul looked up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s angry. He wants me dead. I was close to being killed when the raqueta broke out. I imagine there’ll be attempts as soon as these guys get their hands on guns again.’
‘You want to take him out?’
‘I won’t kill him. But I don’t think he got the message before.’
‘What message?’
‘I told him not to fuck with me.’
Raul laughed. It was cruel and full of contempt. ‘You’re in his world. Why would he listen to you?’
‘He’s an old man.’
‘He’s an old man who runs this pavilion. Everyone listens to him. Everyone does what he says.’
‘Why? Because he has a room? Because he has better access to guns and drugs?’
‘Partially. He’s respected.’
King got to his feet. ‘I’m sure he’s only respected because of what he can get done. No-one gives a shit about a feeble old murderer.’
Raul and
Luis studied him with curious looks on their faces. Like he was an anomaly.
‘What?’ King said.
Luis whispered something in Spanish. Raul smiled and nodded. ‘He’s still surprised that you don’t show fear. Everyone gets scared in this place. It’s hell.’
‘No it’s not,’ King said. ‘I’ve seen worse.’
He brushed past them and headed for the hallway. It was time to pay a visit to the man causing all this trouble.
CHAPTER 16
The hallway smelt like piss and shit and vomit. But so did everything else in the pavilion, so King sucked it up and pressed on. He passed inmates coming down from vicious highs, lying prone on the dirty floor. Doors opened and shut and mean-looking thugs passed him by, eyeing him off in the process. The place was alive with chatter and madness. The pavilion in El Infierno was a community in itself. King was just a single cog in a larger machine.
But so was Tevin.
He approached the door at the end of the hallway. It was bolted shut. But its material was flimsy wood. It would give. King strode into range and smashed it open with a single kick, planting his trainer firmly into the lock.
They weren’t ready for it.
He burst into the room, scanning his surroundings for any kind of weapon pointed his way. If there was, it would spell disaster, but he had confidence that the brash manoeuvre would take them by surprise — especially so quickly after a raqueta.
The dead man was nowhere to be seen. He’d probably been carted out of the pavilion when King was away with Rico. The two remaining bodyguards were in bad shape, and as a result they were slow to react. They were both sprawled across the couch, one with duct tape covering his badly broken nose and the other spaced out, not all there, still reeling from the effects of the concussion he’d received earlier that morning. Tevin himself lay on the same bunk, identical duct tape plastered across his own face.
The guy with the concussion made it to his feet first. He took a step forward. King twisted at the hip and drove all the momentum in his body through his right leg, whipping it round like a bat. His shin sunk into the side of the man’s leg, buckling it at the knee with the loud crack of skin-against-skin contact. Leg kicks caused massive damage to those unprepared to absorb them. The guy lost all momentum and toppled backwards, sinking back into the couch cushions. He’d have a sizeable bruise the next morning.
The bodyguard with the broken nose made a move, as if he were about to get to his feet.
King held up a hand, palm open. The universal stop signal. ‘You want me to break it again?’
The guy paused for a split second, but it was enough to sway control in King’s favour. He had all of them exactly where he wanted them. Once again he watched the effect of demoralisation take place. One guy backed away, and the rest instantly gave up on any kind of assault they’d been planning.
‘I didn’t think so,’ King said. ‘Stay where you are. Both of you.’
He crossed the room and sat down on the chair closest to Tevin’s bed, positioning himself so that he had every member of the room in his peripheral vision. Then he looked long and hard at the old man.
Tevin sneered at him. ‘What do you want?’
‘A resolution to this.’
‘You ruined your chances of that when you attacked me and my men.’
‘My chances?’
‘What?’
‘My chances have nothing to do with it. I’m telling you now, you’d better leave me alone. Or I’ll start recruiting inmates and we’ll get into a full-scale gang war.’
Tevin laughed. ‘With what money? I control this prison.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Want to test it? Go ahead. Do it.’
‘I might. There’s a lot you have to learn, Tevin.’
Tevin sat up with genuine anger in his eyes. ‘You do not understand. You walk around here like you know everything about this place, when really you don’t have a clue. You think you’re tough because you’re tall and you can beat people up, but that means nothing in here. I could click my fingers and have you killed. That’s the kind of control I have. I was considering doing so, but I’m waiting it out. Seeing how you’ll react. It’s not often we get a man like you in this pavilion. I’d like to play with you.’
‘I think you planned to kill me,’ King said. ‘But the raqueta interrupted all that. Now you’re scrambling for a plan. You can’t get your boys to jump me with their fists because I’ll send them straight to the infirmary. So you’re exuding this aura of control — like you’re far above me — when really you’re hurrying around behind closed doors like a coward, trying to figure out exactly how to deal with me. That’s why I’m here.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Neither do you, old man. You’re a toxic leader.’
‘What?’
‘You use coercion and manipulation to get what you want. People follow what you say because they’re scared they’ll catch a bullet if they don’t. That’s not control. You’ve got a unique environment here where that type of leadership happens to work. But watch what happens when people start floating across to my side. I’d guess that your little set-up will come to a crashing halt pretty soon.’
‘If this resorts to a war, you’ll lose,’ Tevin said. ‘Feel free to test out whether that statement is true.’
‘Maybe. Maybe I’ll kill you first.’
‘How would you do that?’
‘I could kill all three of you in this room within a minute.’
Tevin made to retort, but something stopped him. King kept his expression deadpan. He was confident in his statements because he knew for a fact that they were the truth. Tevin must have seen the look in his eyes. He knew King had killed many men before.
‘You’re a pawn in the grand scheme of things,’ Tevin said. ‘That’s why you’re in here.’
‘You’re right,’ King said. ‘For the life of me, I have no idea why I’ve been locked up in here. But my worries have nothing to do with you.’
‘You sure?’
‘Oh, I’m sure, Tevin. I see it. You’re trying to capitalise on the unease I’m feeling about why I’m in here. But you’re not involved — I know that much. At the end of the day, you’re an old criminal. And I’ll kill you just like I killed your bodyguard if I even get a hint that you’re planning something.’
He didn’t wait for the man to respond. He got to his feet and threw a feint. A stiff jab, pinpointed at Tevin’s nose but deliberately falling far short. Tevin recoiled like a deranged man, bringing both hands to his face, desperately trying to protect his already broken nose. In that moment he looked feeble.
Which is exactly what he is, King thought.
It left an impression on everyone in the room. They lost a little more confidence. Sagged a little further down in their seats. To exude complete control of the situation, King crossed to the toilet and relieved himself, outwardly uncaring of the tense confrontation. He hoped it gave off the air that he thought nothing of the men in the room. That way, they would subtly consider him their superior.
He turned and strolled out of the living quarters, whistling softly to himself as if he had not a worry in the world.
But he knew he was in trouble.
He’d seen the stubborn look on Tevin’s face. Sure, he was an old man, but he was set in his ways. He would not stop until either he or King were dead. King had left the Force to escape a life of killing. He would do everything he could to only kill when it was absolutely necessary.
He would wait until the moment someone showed violence, aggression or hostility towards him. Then he would demolish them, find out who put them up to it, and retaliate.
But before that, it was time to recruit help.
CHAPTER 17
He re-entered the pavilion in a state of heightened awareness.
He didn’t doubt that Tevin had considerable control of the general population in the enclosure. Money trumped all in El Infierno,
and Tevin seemed to have the most influence in that department. He was certainly a problem. But King had far greater troubles on his mind.
Unless he put together a concrete explanation as to why he had been falsely accused of murder and thrown into a gulag, he would remain in here forever. The prison was too well-fortified to attempt any sort of escape. For the time being, at least. He knew he might be able to do it, given his track record in the military and his widespread expertise in the art of physical violence.
But it would involve killing many guards, and causing general anarchy. It would mean devolving into the man he used to be, the ruthless mercenary hired by the upper levels of the U.S. Government to destabilise entire terrorist organisations and eliminate swathes of hostile threats. He’d left the States to escape that past. He’d sworn it would not return. He didn’t want to resort to such measures just yet. There was every chance he would die in the process. Perhaps there was a more pacifistic solution to his troubles.
He passed through crowds of restless prisoners, none of whom bothered him.
Then he saw the entrance.
The pavilion had a new arrival.
A man with pale white skin and thinning hair had been thrust up against the steel mesh by a couple of Venezuelan thugs in tattered singlets. They screamed expletives at him in Spanish, shaking him viciously in the process. Even from across the room, King saw the man trembling. There were tears in his eyes. He’d shown weakness almost instantly.
Bad idea.
King crossed the pavilion, heading straight for the trio. No-one noticed him coming. The two thugs were too preoccupied with terrifying their new slave to bother scanning for any approaching threats. The new guy was too busy shitting his pants to concentrate on anything outside his immediate vicinity.
He grabbed the thug on the left by the back of his collar and wrenched him away. The guy lost his balance and sprawled into the mud, taking a faceful of the stuff. The other man wheeled around.
