Next was a routine “interview” with a serious-looking young man equipped with a clipboard, who asked his questions as a male inmate nurse drew blood from each man seated across from him. Cross simply shook his head no at each question.
“You have to speak up,” the serious young man said. “Otherwise, I would have to look up to watch each answer. That would make this take a lot longer. Do you understand?”
“It’s not complicated,” Cross said, softly, but in a meant-to-be-insulting tone. “If I ever have to answer ‘yes,’ I’ll say it. Otherwise, just assume it’s ‘no.’ So you won’t have to strain yourself to look up. Do you understand?”
The young man’s flushed face revealed his reaction quite clearly.
Cross was walked to a bank of individual cells, flanked by a pair of guards.
“You stay in Iso for forty-eight hours,” one told him. “If you test out medically, you go into Gen Pop. You can get some of your stuff back then, too.”
“Swell,” Cross said.
“You gonna be a problem?” the other guard asked, tightening his hold on Cross’s cuffed wrists.
“You treat a white man like this, who knows?”
The guards exchanged a look, but said nothing.
CROSS WAS lying on his bunk, hands behind his head, eyes apparently closed. From behind his slitted eyelids he saw the approach of a white man in a cut-off T-shirt, his bare arms covered in dark ink. The man watched Cross closely, seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. He reached inside his shirt, tossed something on the floor of the cell, and moved along.
Cross didn’t stir for a long time, watching as a traffic pattern was established: a porter, moving his mop at jailhouse speed; runners with carts full of reading material; mace-equipped guards, always in pairs.
Finally, Cross picked up the package from the floor of his cell. It was wrapped in a sheet of newspaper—one with the RACE KILLING headline. Inside, he found a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. And, on a small piece of paper, the hand-printed words: “Your Brothers Are Here.”
Cross opened the pack, shook out every single cigarette, lined them all up on his bunk. He carefully disassembled the cigarette pack, then split the individual paper matches. Precautions completed, he lit a smoke and kicked back on his bunk again, watching the smoke drift to the ceiling.
NIGHT IN the Isolation Wing was no different from day. The range of occupants was staggering, but the hardcore thugs were sleeping as peacefully as they would at home. Back at home.
Whining, frightened first-timers tried to deal with their anxiety by pacing nervously, nail-chewing, smoking. Some shrieked for help, others just shrieked.
An NFL-sized black man sat quietly with his arms folded, deep in thought. Not pretty thoughts.
A self-described “peckerwood” with a fifties haircut gripped the bars with his hands in the classic pose.
A Latino was busily scratching a heart into the cell wall with a tiny scrap of metal.
Some were crying, as silently as they were able. One paced, clearly contemplating suicide. Another was obviously blissed out on some kind of chemical.
And some were doing a land-office business selling wolf tickets: “You messed with the wrong man this time, punk. When they rack the bars tomorrow, you’re dead!”
One man screamed, “I’m not him!” Over and over.
“Disciples!” a scrawny black youth shouted, more to bolster his courage than to claim his gang, none of whom were anywhere close.
Outside the cells, a guard watched a bank of small-screen TVs, an earplug in his ear. Most of the screens showed various shots of the Isolation Wing, but only the one displaying some TV “reality” show had his full attention.
TWO DAYS later, Cross was walked through a long corridor, now dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit. For reasons he didn’t bother to inquire into, his street clothing had not been returned as promised.
Cross wasn’t the only convict in the line. An airlock door slammed behind each of them as one opened in front. This procedure was repeated until all the inmates had been moved to another section of the institution.
“Welcome to Population, gentlemen,” a black guard clearly proud of his popping biceps called out, reading from a memo book. “Listen up for your cell assignments. Jones: 7-Down, Cell 12; Rodriguez: 6-Center, Cell 9; Arden: 4-Up, Cell 19: Maxwell; 3-Center …”
The discharge area where the guard stood was shaped like the hub of a wheel. The eight spokes, each clearly marked with large numbers over its opening, were the various tiers to which the guard referred. Each spoke had 3 tiers: Up, Center, and Down.
Guards ringed the perimeter. A hexagonal booth was set into the center of the hub, constructed entirely of bulletproof glass. Inside sat four guards, facing out, each wearing a communications headset.
A mass of inmates had gathered to watch the new arrivals. The “mass” was actually several clumps, divided along racial lines, with an electrically charged space of hatred separating them. As the new arrivals were released to their various cell assignments, they almost magnetically gravitated toward their own racial groups, which absorbed them all until their faces were no longer visible from the center guard-booth. Then all the new arrivals were silently escorted back into the tiers.
Walking next to Cross was a young white male, slender, with a short, once-styled blond haircut. As they entered the tier, a voice floated out:
“Hey, pretty boy! Guess what, baby? You just got yourself a new daddy … starting tonight!”
The kid next to Cross flinched involuntarily. Cross suddenly stopped in his tracks and slowly walked over to the convict who had yelled out the kid’s future.
“You trying to say something to me?” Cross asked.
“Why you asking?” the convict challenged, surprised at a response from anyone other than the young man he had been working on.
“Why? Because, if you are, you’re in the wrong place.”
“What?”
“The Suicide Watch is over on the other side,” Cross said, deliberately locking eyes with the other man.
That man started toward Cross, fists clenched. But he was intercepted by another white male—older, shorter, but with an air of authority. “Ice it, Tank,” the older man said. “He’s one of us.”
Stepping between them, the older man whispered to Cross through the bars: “You’re the guy who blew up that nigger in D.C., right?”
“That’s the charge,” was all Cross said.
“RAHOWA!” the older man replied. “I’m Banner. Commander of the Brotherhood in this joint. This here’s Tank.”
Cross held out his hand. “About time,” he said.
The slender white kid slipped along the corridor to his cell; none of the gangs were watching anyone but Cross and Banner.
“THIS YOUR house,” Banner said to Cross, gesturing with his hand as if ushering an honored guest into a reception room. The tier had been closed, so the individual cell doors were standing open.
In fact, it was a cell. But, unlike the others, this one was not barren: a full set of toiletries sat on a handmade shelf below the mirror inset above the sink. The toilet itself had a seat made of some sort of thick woven material. The wall featured a couple of centerfold-style pinups. There was a knitted cover on the bed, with a fresh carton of cigarettes sitting on the pillow. The cell gave every sign of having been meticulously cleaned.
“Nice,” Cross said, whistling.
“We take care of our own,” Banner said proudly. “We got a kite you was coming. And we got a lot of juice with the COs, so it was easy to hook you up in front.”
“Very nice,” Cross said, taking off his shirt. His undershirt was sleeveless. Banner moved in close, making no secret of the fact that he was carefully examining the exposed tattoo.
What Banner saw was a wooden cross. From one of the horizontal bars, a black man hung limply from a length of rope, a noose around his neck. The effect was both terrifying and chilling: a man lynched from a Christian cross. At the base of the cross, there was a series of lightning bolts … seven in all.
“Damn!” Banner said. “I never saw one like that before.”
“Never?” Cross asked, his tone just this side of threatening.
“Well, I heard something about them … but I been down a long time. Stuff comes in from the World, you can’t always trust it.”
Cross moved even closer to Banner, his face almost touching the other man’s. An intimately aggressive gesture, deliberately invading personal space.
“White Night,” Cross said, very softly. “You ever hear of that? Be a good idea for you to ask around. Then come back and see me”—making it clear he was dismissing the other man.
THE RIGID requirement that all prisoners had to be locked down each night by ten o’clock was apparently no deterrent to certain individuals.
Late that night, Banner was standing next to a man whose body was covered in whipcord muscle, a pair of thick-framed glasses on his face.
“White Night,” Banner ordered the other man. “No, I don’t know how to spell it. Just find out … and find out quick!”
The man with the glasses walked back toward his cell, past a guard who seemed not to notice. Only the sharpest eyes could have detected a folded scrap of paper passing from captive to captor. And everyone was quite deliberately not watching.
THE GUARD clocked out a few hours later. He drove to a nearby bar, and ambled over to the pay phone between the toilets in the back.
His call was answered by a man in a quilted smoking jacket, royal-purple silk with black lapels. He was leaning back comfortably in an oxblood leather armchair, surrounded by walls of bookcases. An elaborately framed law degree hung on one bare knotty-pine wall. A bare brunette posed against another.
The man hung up, then punched a button on a phone console. A light blinked in another location. A short, squat man in a room dominated by electronic gear picked up the receiver.
“Yeah,” he said, in response to a snapped-out question. “We got someone deep inside, but he’s expensive. Real expensive. How high am I authorized to go?”
“As far as you have to,” the lawyer instructed.
“And you want it …?”
“Now. Tonight. Understand? Tonight, or it’s worthless. I have to visit him tomorrow. And I need to have this information when I do.”
The lawyer punched another button on his phone console, as if to re-emphasize who was in charge. The brunette recognized the gesture, and slowly slid her back down the wall. A trained dancer, she never broke eye contact with the lawyer as she slowly worked herself into an all-fours position on the plush purple rug.
THE SHORT, squat man was on the phone, speaking urgently. “I don’t care what it costs. Yeah, it has to be tonight. Send it over the modem, encryption 44-A. I’m wiring the payment into your account soon as I hang up. It’ll be there in ten seconds. Now, go get what I asked for!”
“Oh, I’ll get it, all right,” Percy said, after hanging up the phone on the other end. “Sucker.”
THE NEXT day, a man who had exchanged an elaborate smoking jacket for a conservative but costly three-piece suit was seated across from Banner in a private conference room. The lawyer was talking; Banner was listening.
“White Night. Night, like the opposite of Day. It stands for the time when every single kike on the planet goes down, and they take the muds and fags with them. Kristallnacht to the tenth power.
“Nobody knows how many of them there are, but word is they’re the special enforcement arm for some of the leader-less cells. If this guy has seven bolts under the cross, it means he’s done seven hits. Not total—seven for White Night, specifically.
“We picked that tactic up from the Russians. Tattoo IDs, I mean. Not just the usual ink, something you have to earn. This guy—Arden, right?—he’s an executioner. I don’t know what kind of backup he has in here, but one thing’s absolutely certain—he’s got total backing from the top. He’s going to expect cooperation. Absolute cooperation.”
“Hey, thanks, man. You really came through.”
“Fourteen Words,” the lawyer intoned, leaning forward to shake hands.
Banner watched the lawyer walk out of the conference room, the expression on his face clearly disclaiming any sense of “brotherhood” with a man who memorized slogans but still charged full price.
THE PRISON yard was clearly and sharply divided into sectors. There were, literally, lines painted on the concrete. The tower guards kept their weapons close to hand all the time. And in plain view.
The Latino contingent was off to one side—cohesive, but seriously outnumbered. This wouldn’t be the case in Cook County Jail, but in the federal tank, where most of their tribe wasn’t gang-connected, just awaiting deportation, they were such a distinct minority that intra-ethnic fighting wasn’t even an option.
Despite the summer heat, all sorts of recreational activities were intensely pursued: weight-lifting, handball, dominoes, men walking endless circuits around an oval track, some in pairs. Banner stood in a corner with Cross, a wall of white soldiers between them and the yard.
“Truth is, the way things are now, us and the niggers, we both work the same rackets.” Brief glances showed the truth of his statement: unaffiliated inmates were being shaken down, cigarettes were changing hands for pills, a shank was hand-passed from one man to another, all the way down a chain, and all strictly by color.
“We got this joint divided about in half, but even that won’t hold—they’ve been eating away at us over the past few years. All over the country. At least in the federal pens, that much I’ve seen for myself.
“Used to be we had the whole dope thing wired. Guards wouldn’t mule it in for niggers, and their bitches can only carry so much at a time. But those days are gone. There’s a lot of major dealers doing time now—they got their own street sources. And don’t forget, there’s nigger guards now, too. So they pretty much can get whatever we can get.”
“From what I hear, they’ve been getting some bodies.”
“True enough. They took out that Towers guy right in his cell. No big mystery to that. Guards in here are just like cops on the bricks: there’s a price for everything. They most likely didn’t do any more than just leave that skinner’s cell unlocked.”
“Why that one? You taking his kind in now?”
“Hell, no! Way we figure it, the niggers just wanted to profile. Send us a message that no white man’s safe—they can get to us anywhere. That’s why we hit two of them the next day—that was our answer.
“In here, it’s just like out there, only it’s coming on faster. Race war, that’s what I’m talking about. And only one race is gonna be standing at the end.”
Banner’s words echoed as Cross watched plain-view violence being studiously ignored by custodial staff: everything from fistfights to Pearl Harbor knifings. Nothing had changed from the last time he was incarcerated—firebombing a cell, poisoning food, and battery-packing a sleeping victim are permanent fixtures of prison life. Doing lengthy time was always a multi-color fabric, and homicide its only binding thread.
All conversation stopped as a flying wedge of guards stomped past, double-timing, shaking the ground with the pounding of their heavy boots. They were dressed in one-piece uniforms, body armor, and helmets with full-face visors, mirror-glassed to make individual identification impossible. Each officer carried a see-through shield, shaped so he could maneuver behind it, and a full belt of weapons, including illegal-voltage Tasers.
But no firearms. Not inside the blocks. The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ way of saying “Never again.”
“Goon squad,” Banner side-spoke to Cross, while looking in the direction the squad was running. “Must be some weird stuff going on over there again.”
“What’s ‘over there’ mean?”
“That whole block,” Banner answered, nodding his head in that direction. “Upstairs, it’s PC. Middle is for the psychos. Down is the Death House. Two rows of twenty cells each … with the Green Room in the middle.”
“Green Room?”
“Used to be the gas chamber, long time ago. Now it’s just an empty room. No executions here. For that, they have to move you to a Level Seven.”
At the words “Death House,” a concrete-colored blotch semi-materialized high up on the wall behind the two men. As the goon squad moved in, “Death House” was repeated at below-human-threshold. Then …
“Hit!”
The guards began to club a prisoner repeatedly on his unprotected head, continuing even after the man slumped to the ground, blood running out of both ears.
A mural flashed on the overlooking wall. The ace and jack of clubs appeared, then immediately vanished, leaving some convicts blinking. And the TV monitors blank.
SEATING IN the prison mess room was as radically divided as on the yard, but all races had to pass through the same serving line.
Tension crackled the air. No more perfect opportunity to plant a shank in an enemy’s back existed. The convict gangs deliberately ate in shifts—some designated to watch the backs of their comrades while they ate, after which they would change places.
Guards patrolled up and down the aisles, as tightly wound as the prisoners. Something was going down. Something a lot bigger than any individual attack. But nobody seemed to know what that would be, or where it was going to come from.
AFTER SUPPER, a group of Aryans positioned themselves to the far right of the shower room. A young white inmate walked toward them, a towel in his hand.
“Fish,” one of the thugs hissed.
The young white man stepped to the other side, and found himself on black turf, where he was immediately accosted. “You in the wrong part of town, Chuck!”
The white inmate turned away, mumbling apologies, but too late—he found himself surrounded by blacks. The same whites who had been ready to rape the young man now moved in to defend him, chesting their way forward.
The distinct sound of a shell being jacked into a chamber chilled the entire shower room. All eyes turned to a trio of guards: one kneeling, two standing, all ready to fire their “non-lethal” weapons. This was a kill-trained team, eyes unreadable behind their face shields, but there was no mistaking their orders.
“Better come with us,” one of the whites said to the young man, putting his arm around the kid’s shoulders.
“Thanks, man. I didn’t know.…”
“It’s okay,” the older man told him, comfortingly.
As he walked the kid toward the right side of the shower room, two of his crew stayed behind, watching his back. And waiting their turn.
“Fresh meat,” one said to the other.
“Yeah. Looks juicy, too,” the other responded.
As the words left his mouth, a tiny line of darkness appeared to circle one of the showerheads, throbbing as if it had a pulse. At the word “meat,” the circle became arrow-shaped, pointing down:
“Hit!”
AT THE scream, the squad charged into the shower. They found one of the would-be rapists dead on the floor, his blood flowing into the drain. But even the most invasive search failed to turn up a weapon of any kind.
It wasn’t until the bag-and-tag team took the required photos that the presence of a tattoo on the dead man was noted.
“Must be a new one,” the camera operator said, looking at the jack of spades overlapping the ace of hearts.
By the time the body was wheeled into the infirmary, the tattoo had disappeared.
And the photos the team took never came out.
THAT SAME evening, Cross was again having a smoke on the tier, leaning over to watch the activity below. He turned at Banner’s approach, and they began a conversation.
Suddenly, the Riot Bell sounded. The goon squad thundered past, sweeping convicts out of its way like a bulldozer.
“Goddamn it!” Banner rasped out. “They must’ve made another move. This keeps up, we might as well have it go all-out.”
IN THE prison hospital unit, a white inmate was lying on a bed, the back of which was elevated to put it in something close to a sitting position. No injuries were visible, but his face was bleached out, as if his eyes had seen something too much for his mind.
He was surrounded. Not only by guards, but also by men in suits who must be Administration from the way the guards deferred to them.
One of the suits shook his head, and made a gesture. The others walked out with him, leaving the contingent of guards in place.
Within minutes, the suits walked through the corridor, grim-faced. They didn’t stop until they reached the Director’s office.
“HE’S STICKING to his story?” a gray-haired man asked the others.
“That’s right, Chief,” one of the suits replied.
“What’s your take on it?”
“I’m not sure, sir. The kid’s not lying. Not intentionally, anyway. Far as he’s concerned, some kind of creature just … materialized or something. Then it hacked four Brotherhood members into hunks of meat.”
“You think …?”
“I don’t know what to think. Those cons—the dead ones—they’re known booty bandits. No question what they had on their minds when they muscled that kid into that corner—we even found a little tube of Vaseline on the floor. So, if it wasn’t for the physical evidence, I’d say the kid was flying on chemicals and he just hallucinated the whole mess. Hell, that’s what we’ve got him here for, right? Dope fiend?”
The suit looked up, his face grave. “He didn’t hallucinate those bodies. God! They were done the same way Towers was. Like there’s a goddamned recipe or something. And nobody saw a thing.
“Yeah, I know: in a place like this, nobody ever does. But this much is for real. Not even our own CIs know anything. And, with what we put on the table for them, they’d spill in a minute if they did.”
RUMORS WHIPPED like a vicious wind, gusting throughout the prison on razor wings, passing from whisperer to whisperer, each time picking up speed and adding content.
“They got four of our guys!” Banner said to Cross. “Four! This is out of control.”
“Now you know why I’m here?” Cross asked.
“Yeah. And all glory to Odin that you are. I’ve got over twenty calendars in, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Even when they had us outnumbered five to one, they couldn’t make things like this happen.”
“I’m gonna need some stuff.…”
“Whatever it is, you got it,” Banner promised, as solemnly as a new bride.
VISITING DAY. Tiger waited patiently in line for her pass. She was dressed in a burnished-gold short-sleeved T-shirt several sizes too small, black spandex pants, and bronze spike heels with black soles. Nobody was looking anywhere else: male or female, black or white, convict or guard.
“Prison’s prison, but that there is just plain wrong,” a black convict whispered to the man next to him as Tiger strutted past. “I knew there was still women out there, but this is downright ridiculous, bro. How am I supposed to look my wife in the eye, now? That woman could always tell when I was slip-sliding around. Now I’m in a place where she knows I can’t be getting any p-ssy. But I bet I got that exact same look on my face, right this minute.”
Tiger greeted Cross with a deep kiss and tight embrace. Her mouth stayed locked on his a long time. If the guard hadn’t been busy gaping at the wonder of spandex, he might have told them to break it off.
The Visiting Room was as racially divided as the rest of the prison. Cross escorted Tiger over to a corner, a move requiring them to walk the entire length of the room. Cross looked neither left nor right. Physical attacks can happen anyplace in a prison, but the Visiting Room was considered sacrosanct space—any excuse to cancel visiting privileges would be a victory for the guards and a defeat to all prisoners, regardless of color.
Cross slid into an empty space created by Brotherhood members. He sat with his back to the wall, virtually disappearing behind a human curtain.
On the other side of the large room, a young man who was once “Roscoe” from a disguised posse car spoke respectfully to a man known to him. Not personally, but as a trusted comrade of his own leader.
Roscoe left his gangbanger threads at home. He was dressed in a neat business suit, talking to a middle-aged black man wearing a tricolor African knit cap.
The man was one of obvious importance, as could be judged from the phalanx of on-the-alert convicts surrounding him on all sides. He was deep in conversation with Roscoe when Cross and Tiger walked by. Not a flicker of recognition showed on either man’s face.
Cross took Tiger’s hand, pulled her into the corner with him. His eyes danced over the room as they spoke softly to each other. After a few minutes passed, he got up and approached a white guard.
Over the guard’s shoulder were the restrooms. Though they were once painted men and women, that paint had long since been worn off. And never replaced. It was common knowledge that the left room was for contraband transfer, the right one for sex. Only one couple at a time was allowed in either.
“You’re next,” the guard told Cross.
As a man and woman emerged from the restroom, arms around each other, Cross again took Tiger’s hand and walked her with him to the vacated spot.
Inside, he leaned against her, speaking only for her ear.
“They’re here,” Cross said. “No question. Got four more last night.”
“Save some for me,” Tiger answered, pulling her T-shirt up to her neck. Cross pressed her against the wall. The surveillance camera captured the groping, but not the mouth-to-mouth transfer, an exact duplicate of the “greeting” kiss they had used to test that same system earlier.
JUST WHAT was transferred was not known until Cross had passed through three separate search stations before being allowed back to his cell.
Cross sat on his cot, smoking as if deep in thought, watching through veiled eyes. Suddenly, the entire wing was plunged into darkness. As the inmates cursed and the guards tried to fight off panic, Cross removed a wafer-thin microchip from behind the back molar where Tiger had planted it with the tip of her tongue. After many rehearsals, he was able to open the back of the prison-issued radio working by touch alone. It only took a few seconds to insert the microchip.
BY THEN, Tiger was on her way out of the institution. But before she stepped off the grounds to enter the parking lot, she was cornered by a guard who clearly spent a lot of time in the weight room—a state-of-the-art facility installed to help prison employees deal with the stress of their jobs. Another “working-class union victory” in a country where the salaries of prison guards are triple those of child-protection caseworkers.
“You look like a smart girl,” the guard leered, looming over Tiger. “I’ll bet you know how you could make it real easy on your man back there.” As if accidentally, his fingertips lightly brushed across her breasts.
“Really? How?” Tiger asked, wide-eyed and smiling sweetly.
“It’s easy. You go along; he gets along, see? You like to play games, honey?”
“I love to play games,” Tiger purred.
“Yeah? What’s your favorite?”
“Squash,” Tiger whispered, her lips twisting from come-hither to combat-snarl. The guard, instantly paralyzed and about to faint from the stabbing pain, futilely tried to pry her vise grip off his testicles—so recently engorged, but now in danger of withdrawing completely into his body.
As the guard slumped to the ground, still cupping his sack and mewling, Tiger walked off, her spike heels clicking a challenge to anyone else with bad ideas.
THE NEXT morning, the surveillance cameras planted throughout the prison flashed various war-zone images. Roving gangs stalked the corridors, armed with a variety of homemade weapons. The level of organization was impressively military: one man walked point, the next men up carried the heaviest weaponry, the last man walked backward.
Even as the convict patrols were in motion, other prisoners were working on rearmament: carefully turning out shanks from any material possible, sharpening them down to needle points, wrapping their handles in tape.
Specialists were at work as well. One was twirling a glue-coated piece of rope through a pile of finely ground glass; another was fashioning a crude zip gun out of a length of tubing, a carved-wood pistol stock, and a thick rubber band for the nail that would serve as a firing pin.
“We only got two bullets,” the con keeping watch said to the gun-builder, opening his hand to show the tiny cartridges within, “and they’re .22 shorts. Tell the Sandman he’s got to be close.”
Some convicts were walking alone. One moved stiffly—the steel bar stolen from the weight room and now hidden down the leg of his pants hampering his movements. Another apparently unarmed warrior’s entire upper body was wrapped in “Convict Kevlar”—thick layers of dampened newspaper.
On the yard, a group of blacks practiced a complex set of martial-arts katas under the watchful eye of their instructor. The Aryans were neither planning nor practicing, they were already picking out potential targets. A lone Latino squatted as far away from the black and white crews as possible. He was delicately fingering a short length of razor wire, heavily tape-wrapped at one end.
WITHIN MINUTES, any illusion of organization had disappeared. Close combat raged over every screen.
One camera showed a black man cornered by a group of whites. He held a two-pointed shank in one hand, poised to strike, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to survive the coming encounter.
Another showed a white convict taken out from behind by a pipe-wielding black.
The cameras were capable of zooming when hand-operated. Usually set to “automatic sweep,” now they were individually manned. A close-up showed a dark hand holding a small glass bottle with a rag wick. He lit the wick and threw the bottle into a cell, which exploded in flames. The camera did not reveal how the unseen firebomber had managed to get inside the Isolation Wing.
“Tell my Juanita I died a man …” one Latino murmured to his crew as they dragged him from a battle scene, his life bleeding away from multiple stab wounds.
A slim but hard-muscled Latino wearing a T-shirt knotted at the midriff over a pair of bleached jeans with the back pockets removed whirled in mid-stride, a curved piece of honed steel in his hand. “Come on!” he challenged an unseen menace. “I got what you want right here, don’t I? So come and take it, puta. You call me maricón? Bueno. Quién es más macho, eh, puerco?”
THE IIT—the prison’s Internal Investigation Team—was standing outside a large cell, clad in full-body armor. One was shining a high-intensity lamp, the other taking photographs. They paid no attention to the large group of black convicts in the background, perhaps because five other members of their team were facing that direction, their hands full of firearms which clearly failed to meet any “non-lethal” criteria.
Two fresh kills were hanging inside. Neither had a spinal cord; only one had even a fragmentary piece of a skull.
“Twenty-nine, documented,” the cameraman said.
“Damn! They’ve never hit in this wing before,” the man shining the light replied.
“Who knows?” The cameraman shrugged off the statement. “The pictures I take never come out anyway.”
BACK IN the Administration office, the IIT leader was making his report. “Chief, they took out a few more. Must have been before the riot jumped off. Same as in the shower room. Four men were in the rec cell at the end of the corridor. Playing cards, far as we can tell. All blacks. Probably UBG.
“Why they let this guy Camden live, we don’t know. We don’t have him registered as UBG, but we know he rolled with them. Still, he wasn’t a member. Never inked up, either.”
A studious-looking member of the IIT was holding a file in his hand. “I’ll tell you what was different about that one, Chief. He didn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“The crime. Yes, I know, the whole joint’s full of innocent men. But it really looks like this guy Camden was outright railroaded. He was just a kid when he first came into the system—crime committed on federal property, some park, I guess. They probably only sent him here to send a message to blacks on the street. There’s nothing in his file that connects him to that rape he’s doing time for.”
“I don’t know his case, just his charges. What are you saying, the whole thing never happened?”
“No, the girl was gang-raped, all right. And they got the guys who did it. Five of them, matter of fact. This guy Camden, like I said, he was just a kid at the time. He was hanging out with the men who committed that rape, but that was much earlier that day, a good nine hours before the rape went down.
“And get this: the woman herself—the victim—she even said as much during the trial. Pointed right at Camden and said he wasn’t one of the ones who raped her.”
“And he was still convicted?”
“I guess he was, although I’m damned if I can see how. No fingerprints, no DNA, solid alibi. This is one kid who never got a break.”
“He sure got one last night,” the Chief said, turning to address the entire IIT. “This has got to stop. I need all the shot-callers in here. And I mean now!”
INSIDE THE conference room. At one end was the Chief, flanked by openly armed guards. At the other end: Banner, the middle-aged black man in the tricolor cap, and a Latino with three tears prominently tattooed on the right side of his face, just below his eye.
The Chief addressed all the convicts collectively. “This is how it’s going to be, from now on. I brought you men in here because the killings have to stop. They don’t stop, and I’d just as soon have you all gunned down.
“Now, you all know I can do that. Another escape attempt gone wrong, who’d be shocked at that? And there wouldn’t be any of that ‘At-ti-ca’ bullshit, not this time. You must know we’ve got every one of your crews infiltrated. And that the security cameras see only what we want them to see.”
“You can’t fake—”
“Can’t fake what, Banner? Can’t fake a convict we own stabbing a guard? Why even fake it? And why would we miss a guard who was bringing in drugs … or maybe even pistol that ended up in another convict’s hand. You know, that same convict who started the whole escape attempt.”
“I believe you,” the black man said. “You people got Freon for blood.”
“You’re not wrong, Nyati. And I’d rather go that route than put up with anything that makes it looks like I can’t control my own house. If this is some stupid game to get the media on your side, it’s already failed.”
His eyes still on the black man, the Chief continued: “We’re telling nothing but the truth in here today. I’ll be dead-center straight. Nyati, at first we thought this was your gang’s work. It looked like one of your typical UBG moves. But now some of your own men have been hit, and in exactly the same way.
“And you, Ortega, maybe you thought your carnales could lay back, let the other colors cut their numbers. But when Montero and Rodriguez got done the same way, you knew you were in the kill-zone, too. There’s only one color that counts in here anymore. That’s red. Blood red.
“Banner, your guys took the whole first wave of hits—which was why we had it down to Nyati’s crew—but you’re not who we want, either. You might just be cold enough to sacrifice a few of your own crew if they were worthless to you—especially if they were working both sides; I already admitted that’s what we’d do, right? But you don’t have what you’d need to make this kind of bloodbath.”
The Chief fired up his pipe, taking his time about it, emphasizing who was ultimately in charge. Then he launched into his prepared speech:
“Like I said, I’m being straight with you. With you all, and all at the same time. Why? Because I don’t want any garbage floating around the rumor mill. This way, if one man lies about what went on here today, the other two can call him on it.
“But this next part’s even more important: I don’t want anyone to think one of you is holding more cards than the other. I know there’s no such thing as equality—not in here, not out in the World. You can say ‘gangs’ or you can say ‘countries,’ no real difference. But one side’s always got the edge, and I can’t have convicts believing any gang has got more firepower than I can call up.”
The three gang leaders stood erect, arms folded in front of their chests, nothing showing on their faces. They knew the fact that they weren’t cuffed had been no gesture of respect—it was the warden’s naked display of power.
“I don’t care who started it, or why. But if there’s any more damn killing of any kind, this whole place goes on lockdown,” the Chief said, the very lack of inflection in his voice underscoring that this was no idle threat; it was a guarantee.
The Chief hand-gestured the three men to come closer to his desk. The guards parted to clear a space for them, then closed in behind. On either side of the Chief’s desk, the guard had been smoothly replaced by a man in a balaclava, holding a pistol in two hands, elbows braced against each body-armored chest.
Both men’s eyes had that soft, wet look any convict knew. If any of the gang bosses so much as leaned in the Chief’s direction, all three were chopped meat.
“Now, listen, and listen good,” the Chief told them, his voice both quiet and hard. “I didn’t say what I’m about to say, understand? Nobody here is ever going to say I did. The cameras are on, but that’s just in case any of you want to play kamikaze. You never heard straighter talk from my side of the fence, and you never will.
“Okay, listen up. You think we don’t know about the dope coming in? Or the gambling, the loan-sharking, the pimping? Any of the rackets your crews run? You think we haven’t broken the codes in your letters? Listened in on your three-way calls? You don’t think we’ve got informers all over the place?
“But have we keep-locked any of you? No. Any other joint in the country, you’d all be in black-hole Ad Seg. In fact,” he said, pausing a little to let his words sink in, “you’ve all been wondering when we’re going to get around to that.
“Well, we were never going to. We’ve been letting you guys run your own rackets for a long time, haven’t we? You think we don’t know which officers are on your payrolls? There’s things you can’t use your own mules for—we know all about that. And the cell phones, too.
“But you couldn’t stand prosperity, could you? You had to go and break the contract. Some of your guys have done some nasty stuff. Okay, we know there’s always going to be a certain amount of killing inside a place like this. It happens. But not the way it’s happening now.”
The Chief puffed on his pipe a couple of times before he spoke again.
“That contract between us didn’t have to be signed for everyone to know what was on the paper. You get a whole lot of … privileges, let’s call them, and I get a nice, quiet joint. Not so quiet that it would make anyone watching suspicious, but under control. I lose that, you lose it all.
“We know you’ve got some of the tunnel system mapped. After lights-out, you’ve been doing whatever you want down there. Every crew’s got its own section, and nobody’s been stupid enough to make us carry a body upstairs to the blocks.
“So listen close. We’ve got enough space in the blackout rooms for all of you—not just the shot-callers, all of you. This is a federal institution, remember? So if space gets tight we can always use a little bus therapy to fix the problem.
“We can keep this whole place on lockdown for as long as it takes to break every racket, wreck every system, destroy every network—all the things you’ve invested years to build up.
“And if you make us go that far, we can even make a few bodies ourselves.
“By tomorrow, we’ll have double staffing in place. Every new man is going to be on loan from a cell-extraction team—and you know who gets recruited for that kind of work.
“You ever try to live on one meal a day? Especially when you’re afraid to breathe too deep with all the gas floating around?
“And that’s just the beginning. The public is not going to do a damn thing for you. There isn’t going to be any media sympathy. No little Web site is going to ‘report’ to the outside. Cyber-troops can’t do anything but post a bunch of silly crap anyway. Nobody’s going to take them seriously.
“Why do you think we don’t care about the cell phones? Even that piece of garbage Manson got his hands on one. Once it hit the papers, they had to take it away from that sick little freak. But nobody bothered yours, did they? Ever wonder why?
“That’s all about to end unless this stops. So—anybody got anything they want to say?”
“It’s not us,” Nyati jumped in first. “When we thought this maniac was just snuffing Caucs, we didn’t give a damn. But now that he did some of us, we want him as bad as you do.”
“It wasn’t any of my guys, either,” Banner said. “Hell, how could we get a man into the nigger wing anyway? You got the cameras, so you know it wasn’t us.”
Ortega shrugged his shoulders expressively. “We are in the middle,” he said. “Like always. And the killer has taken some of ours as well. Would we seek revenge? There is no choice—if we cannot protect our own, we are nothing. But we do not believe it was any prisoner doing all this.”
“Nobody knows nothing, that’s the way you want to play it?” the Chief said. “About what I expected. The problem is, I don’t think you’re playing. I truly believe you don’t know one damn thing about what’s been going down. But if I have to ask you again, and you still don’t know the answer, I will.”
CROSS AND Tiger were inside one of the Visiting Room bathrooms. They stood derma-close, speaking at a level well below whispering.
“It’s time to tell me the truth,” Cross said. “All of it. Whoever’s doing whatever’s happening in here, it’s not something I ever dealt with.”
Tiger took a breath, then told Cross everything her team knew in one continuous rush, careful to separate provable fact from legend, myth, and rumor, but not leaving anything out.
Cross listened closely, taking it all in. Then he whispered back: “This … thing, it’s not new. Been around since forever, like you said. Signature kills, but all over the globe, so it can’t be any single one of … whatever the hell they are.
“No pictures. No forensics. And no survivor testimony, either. When they hit, whoever’s around that they don’t kill, those people never see anything. No game—they actually don’t see anything.
“But I already might know something, something you might want to throw into those computers of yours. There was a three-man kill in here just a little while ago. All in the same crew. All blacks, all sitting together. One of them, guy named Camden, he wasn’t touched. But he didn’t see anything. And, you know what? I believe that.
“What a sucker you all turned me into, huh? None of you have ever managed to even see one of them, never mind kill one for the autopsy table. And I’m supposed to capture one alive?”
“That’s what Blondie wants,” Tiger corrected him. “He thinks interrogation is the only way we’ll ever find out whoever they are. And why they’re doing what they do.”
“You trust him?”
“Get real. We all know his backup plan is not leaving witnesses. But he’s the only way Tracker and I could get a shot at the vengeance we swore. We’re outsiders … like you.”
“Didn’t you say there’s a rumor that a couple of them did get killed?”
“Yeah, but, like I also said, we don’t have any idea if it’s true. There was a report out of Africa, claimed two of them took an anti-tank round dead-center, blew them into little pieces. But, whoever they are, they always come for their dead, and they come fast. All we have is that one radio transmission. By the time a team got to the spot, it was nothing but fried earth.”
“What else?”
“They’re hunters, that’s all we really know. And they only seem to hunt hunters, if that makes any sense.”
“Maybe it does. But I’m damned if I know what kind of sense it could make.”
“I know. It’s not like anyone was hunting them. All we can figure is that this is like what would have happened if some UFO dropped down and rescued the Roman gladiators. But it rescued them too late—the gladiators had too much blood in their mouths to spit it out, use a toothbrush, and start over again as regular people.
“It’s not like they took a vote and decided fighting was more fun than farming. It’s like they were … transformed into something. And killing, that’s just … that’s just what they do, you know?”
“You sound like you don’t hate them.”
“Why would I?”
“Then, if they just do it because that’s what they are, why are you and Tracker going after them?”
“Because that’s what we do,” Tiger said.
Cross lit a cigarette. “They really came to the right place this time, huh? They want human-hunters, this joint’s full of them.”
“I know. We figure that’s why they hit that serial-killer freak.…”
“Yeah …” Cross mused. Then snapped his fingers. “Maybe that’s it.”
“What?”
“There’s been a couple of their kills in here. On the surface, they look the same as all the others. But on two of them, they let someone go, let them just walk away, like that Camden guy I told you about. They gave the same kind of pass to some white kid, too.”
“Oh, both of them got interrogated, trust me,” Tiger says. “Blondie pulled them right out of this place. But they don’t even remember being where it happened, never mind seeing anything. And that squares with other stuff we have. Like doing their number on a whole safari, but letting the natives go. Still, even that much, it’s only talk.”
“The stuff in here wasn’t talk,” Cross told her. “That white kid was about to be raped. Camden, the black guy, I’m not sure what the deal with him was, but the grapevine says he’s innocent, shouldn’t even be here in the first place. And his charge was rape. How could this … thing tell if a man was innocent?”
“Maybe they can smell it or something,” Tiger guessed. “Maybe that’s why dogs can smell them, I don’t know. But whatever they are, they’re not animals. At least not any animal anyone’s heard of. It’s like they kill for some reason, only we don’t know what that could be. Maybe it’s a … game or something, like that big-bucks consultant told us. And if all they count are the hardest targets, what’s harder than humans?”
“Yeah,” Cross thought aloud. “But if a killer’s kills belong to whoever kills him, maybe the goal was to get the highest body count.”
“So killing a serial killer—?”
“You’re sure it’s set up with Nyati?” Cross cut her off. He knew that, even with greasing the guards, surveillance was extra-high, and the warning knock on the door was going to come soon.
“Yes. But confirm over the transmitter first.”
“Sure. But tell your team there isn’t a whole lot of time left. Whoever they are, whatever they are, they’ve been going through this joint like pigs on pie.”
NIGHT FOUND Cross lying on his bunk, eyes closed, the earplug from his institutional radio inserted. Not an uncommon sight: a lot of cons used their radios as noise-blockers to let them sleep.
Behind his eyelids, Cross watched the limousine carrying the toadish man drive away. And saw the explosion that followed. His mind was working the logic string, doing the death-math.
Maybe they were there. Right in the middle of the blast. If that’s true, we can’t kill them no matter what we use. You can’t kill “kill.” But if they can get … splattered, maybe they have to reassemble before they can work again.
Cross nodded, as if something he suspected had just been verified. He pulled the earplug free and got to his feet. Silently, he twisted the heel off one shoe and removed the wire inside, working in complete darkness.
At the wire’s end was a tiny bulb. A closer look would have revealed that the wire itself was divided into several sections, each one no more than a few inches long.
Cross wrapped individual pieces of wire around the base and top of each of the bars in his cell window. He then connected the ends of all the wires into the one anchored by the bulb. He squeezed the bulb and stepped back. A faint hissing sound accompanied the just-released acid as it ran through the hollow wires into the bars.
Less than a minute later, Cross pulled the still-smoking sections of bars away from his cell window. He opened a carton of cigarettes and removed packages of dental floss braided into a thick strand. From the heel of his other shoe, he removed a center-weighted, tri-barbed plastic hook, folded flat. Released from the pressure that had kept it folded, the hook opened fully.
Cross tied one end of the braided floss around his waist, and looped the other around the chain holding his bunk to the wall. Then he reached out the window, supported himself with one hand, and used the other to fling the weighted hook up over his head. It took four attempts before he could feel the hook lock solidly into place.
His next step was to put on his shoes. Pulling at the side of each sole exposed another, much thinner one underneath. Those undersoles were coated with a sticky compound. Climbing gear, originally developed to give second-story men an edge, it had later been perfected by Buddha, to keep the crew ahead in the permanent arms race always running through the underworld.
Cross worked his way up, planting each sole securely, moving without haste. The rooftop was various shades of black: from the shadow-pools just past the rooftop to the faint glow from the surrounding lights, and the occasional penumbra from the bright swathe cut by tower searchlights.
Cross saw three figures, standing as if they had been waiting for him. He approached with deliberation, hands held away from his body in the universally understood gesture.
Two black men stepped forward. One carried a heavy shank, the other a much heavier lead pipe.
Cross put his hands up, stood still for their thorough search.
“Clean,” one said.
Nyati stepped forward. “Take off your shirt,” he said. “I want to see something for myself.”
Cross obeyed. He didn’t move as Nyati used a pencil flash to zero in on the tattoo. “Yeah. It’s exactly like Butch described it.”
Together the two men walked into a pool of total blackness, leaving the other two standing guard.
Nyati faced Cross. “I told Butch I’d meet with you. One time. There ain’t gonna be no more, so say everything you got to say.”
“These killings, easy enough to say they’re all about color, but we both know that’s not what’s going on.”
“We do, huh?”
“You know damn well I’m telling the truth. The UBG hasn’t got anybody who can walk through walls, and neither does the Brotherhood. It’s not lobos, either. There’s a hunter loose in this joint, and he’s working the place like a wolf turned loose in a corral of sheep. A concrete corral, with chained-up sheep.”
“You know who he is?”
“I don’t even know what he is … but he’s not one of us.”
“He’s not white?”
“He’s not human. Not anymore, anyway. He’s a trophy-taker, and his tribe is keeping score. Under their system, you kill a killer, you get credit for all his kills.”
“I’d say you was crazy,” Nyati replied, “except I saw some of the bodies myself. What the hell they want with spines and skulls anyway?”
“I don’t know. It’s their mark, the one they always leave behind. Like fang-and-claw marks you see in the jungle. A signature kill.”
“How you figure on stopping something like that? Specially in here, with no guns?”
“Guns wouldn’t do it. If there’s a way, it’s gotta be slice, not shoot. But maybe there is a way. I say ‘maybe’ because the odds don’t look good. But to even give us that much of a chance, you gotta work with me.”
“I only work with my own kind.”
“Look, I’m not doing the ‘some of my best friends are black’ number, and there’s no time for that cred crap anyway. If Butch hadn’t gotten word to you, why would you be up on this roof right now?
“All you need to know—I guess I should say believe—is that, in this war, I am your own kind. Long as that … thing’s around here, the human race is the only race that counts.
“It’s always some kind of ‘us against them,’ right? Black against white, outlaws against citizens. But there’s one thing I learned a long time ago—no warrior is stronger than War. Until whatever that thing is goes down, we’re all the same color, just different shades.”
“So what are those people—”
“That’s just it. They’re not ‘people’ at all. So when I say it’s us against them, that’s just what I mean.”
Cross pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Without offering a smoke to Nyati, he fired it up, cupping the end with both hands.
“You know why I’m here,” he said. “And I know you got that word from people you trust. So do whatever you have to do, talk it over with whoever you need to. Make a decision, and get word to me.”
“How?”
“Friday, at noon mess, I’m gonna step into No Man’s Land. Alone. If you’re with me, you step into it, too. Make sure your men stand down. I’ll do the same. And then I’ll tell you how we can pull it off. Maybe pull it off. I’ll tell you face to face, right there.”
Nyati looked at Cross. “You ain’t short on balls, I’ll give you that.”
Cross slowly turned around and walked away, not looking back. The three black men were deep in conversation as Cross slipped over the rooftop and lowered himself back into his cell.
As he pulled the bars back into their original position and coated the broken spots with a black substance that gave off a faint hissing sound, a long, thin shadow shape-shifted on the roof.
The words “No Man’s Land” vibrated. Then, from inside one of the bars Cross had just sealed:
“Stay.…”
Two corners of torn playing cards trembled in the light breeze: the ace of hearts, and the jack of clubs.
“I THINK you’re crazy,” Tiger told Cross on Wednesday.
“You saying it won’t work?”
“I’m saying we don’t know. Nothing like what you’re talking about has ever been tried.”
“Just because Wanda can’t find it in her computers? I’ve been thinking about everything you told me. Doing time is good for that, thinking about the past. Roman gladiators that don’t know how to farm … Maybe we’re dealing with some kind of … presence. That’s the best way I can put it. All these kills, all over the world, for so many years—it can’t be some mob doing that.”
“Because?”
“Because no gang survives that long without takeover attempts. Maybe there’s a palace coup, like there was in Liberia. Maybe it’s a street shooting, like outside Stark’s Steakhouse in New York. Maybe it’s spreading the word that someone’s in custody … and cooperating. A million different ways. And nobody’s ever tried any of them? Ever?
“And even if any gang could survive for centuries—hell, it would have to be a lot longer than that—what’s in it for them now, all of a sudden?” Cross continued to answer Tiger’s one-word question. “There’s never been a ransom demand, never been a warn-off note; they never try to occupy territory. There’s no money. There’s only this … slaughter they do. And even that, it just doesn’t feel like revenge.”
“So what does it feel like?”
Cross held Tiger’s dark-amber eyes, speaking very softly. “It feels like pain. It feels like when someone gets killed—I don’t mean die of old age, or in combat—I mean …”
His voice stopped. He breathed slowly through his nose, trying to self-center, knowing he wouldn’t get another chance.
“Okay, this may sound crazy to you, but it’s all I’ve got. I’m not sure, but … maybe when someone gets killed for someone else’s fun, maybe their pain doesn’t die with them.”
“That’s nice poetry. What are we supposed to do with it?”
“Look, I don’t think it matters where they come from. All we know is that there’s certain work they do. And whatever that is, it always ends up in enough spine-ripped hanging corpses to make its own forest.”
“So you couldn’t get close to—?”
“It’s not something I’d want to get close to. But I know something that might take one of them down, keep him nice and quiet until you can come and get him. And I got the perfect damn place to do it. Right here. Now, all you have to do is listen,” he whispered.
Tiger remained silent for several minutes. Her only response was “Cross …”
“Can you get it for me? Yes or no?”
“Sure. It’s no big deal. We got real small ones now.”
“I need three of them.”
“Three?! What could you possibly—?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just remember: three of them, fast as you can, okay?”
“Okay,” Tiger agreed, her eyes sorrowful.
“What’re you so sad about?” Cross asked her. “No matter if I’m right or wrong, you’ll be outside the blast zone.”
“Are all men stupid?” Tiger said. Her face softened for a brief second, then hardened into a warrior’s mask.
She turned to leave, then felt Cross’s hand on her shoulder.
“What?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” She shrugged.
“Why does Percy think you’re a dyke?”
“Percy thinks any woman who’s not interested in him is such a rare phenomenon that it can only be explained by her being a lesbian. Truth is, I’m bi. What difference could that make?”
“Sure, I get that much. But the blond guy, too. And Wanda—”
“Those two are bloodless robots. But they’re not the same kind of robot. I could stick my boobs in Blondie’s face and he wouldn’t even blush. But if I so much as come near Wanda, she gets feelings she doesn’t want to have.”
“I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Why you and Tracker can work with people like them. It’s your only way in, isn’t it?”
“Until now,” Tiger said, and she spun around and walked away, transfixing those watching in the process. Hers was a purposeful move—not a single eye in the room turned toward Cross.