Deadlock (Ryan Lock 2) (7 page)

Phileas, who’d been talking to Reaper, turned to the man who’d been pole-axed by Lock. ‘Knock it off,’ he said. He tapped Reaper on the elbow. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

He and Reaper headed off to the track that circled the yard. Lock fell in behind them.

As he did so, the man he’d just attacked got to his feet and grudgingly put out his hand. ‘They call me Eichmann,’ he said, by way of introduction. ‘I keep an eye out for Phileas.’

‘Lock,’ said Lock, shaking Eichmann’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s not fall behind here.’

‘What the hell you talking about?’

Reaper and Phileas were already level with the three members of the Aryan Brotherhood. If they decided to rush Reaper there would be less than twenty yards to cover. Maybe Phileas had suggested that he and Reaper take a stroll for the express purpose of getting Reaper in close enough to the hit squad.

‘I’m talking about the Three Stooges over there by the fence,’ said Lock, staring straight ahead.

‘Don’t worry about them,’ said Eichmann. ‘We got the numbers on this yard now.’

‘Sometimes it doesn’t come down to numbers.’

‘So what does it come down to?’

‘The element of surprise,’ said Lock, heading straight for the three members of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Eichmann followed Lock as he zeroed in. When he was within five feet of them – a distance at which they would have to move towards him in order to strike a blow – he stopped. All three were under six feet tall, but what they lacked vertically they more than made up for in terms of sheer dumb muscle.

Lock greeted them with a nod. ‘Gentlemen.’

‘What you want?’ the Aryan Brotherhood member in the middle asked him, the blood vessels in his neck bulging.

‘I was going to ask you pretty much the same thing,’ Lock said. ‘You keep on sneaking romantic little glances over in our direction, and it’s kind of creeping me out. If you could stop doing it, I’d appreciate it.’

‘Hey,’ said the one in the middle, ‘this is our yard.’

Lock glanced over his shoulder at the dozen or so Nazi Low Riders assembled on the benches who were staring with menace at the three Aryan Brotherhood members. ‘Not any more it ain’t.’

The Aryan Brotherhood member in the middle took a step towards Lock. Lock raised his hands, palms open, shifting his right foot back a little and keeping his eyes on the man’s hands.

Like some kind of conjuring trick, there was a sudden flash of metal in the man’s hand, and he lunged towards Lock with the shank. But Lock managed to catch his wrist. Behind him he could hear the shouts of the guards and other inmates. The two other Aryan Brotherhood members rushed towards him, but Eichmann blocked them, taking a few solid punches for his trouble.

Lock lowered his body to give himself some leverage, turned the man’s wrist, and snapped it with a dull crack. The blade fell from his hand, landing in the dust. Lock used his hold on the man’s broken wrist to pull him slowly down towards the ground.

The guards were close now; Lock could smell the oxygen-suffocating odor of pepper spray. He let go, and took a couple of steps back.

A baton crashed into his side. Then the guards rushed past him and Eichmann to deal with the three Aryan Brotherhood members, ordering them to the ground. All three finally complied, one taking a blast from a guard’s taser first.

Lock and Eichmann rejoined the group of Nazi Low Riders as more guards arrived, herding everyone back towards the confines of the unit. Lock was worried that he would be pulled from the group, but the guards seemed more concerned with restoring order. At the main door leading back into the unit, he watched as the three Aryan Brotherhood members were hustled through a gate in the chain-link fence and out of the yard.

Lock caught Reaper’s eye.

‘What was that about?’ Reaper asked him.

‘Something my old man taught me,’ Lock said.

‘And what’s that?’ Reaper said, rubbing the back of his neck with one giant shovel of a hand.

‘Always get your retaliation in first.’

13

The screen door of the rented single-story house slammed behind Chance as she emerged into the early-morning sunlight. She stood there for a moment collecting her thoughts. She was dressed in an outfit guaranteed to deduct at least twenty IQ points from any heterosexual male: cut-off Daisy Duke shorts, a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt, white cotton ankle socks and a pair of black kitten-heel sandals.

The pit bull that Chance had won from a Hell’s Angel in an all-night poker game barked a warning from its metal-framed run which ran the length of the house. She had planned to sell it on to a guy she’d met who was into dog fighting, but in the end decided to keep it, figuring it would prove a deterrent for inquisitive neighbors So far she’d been proved right. In the month she’d been renting the small whitewashed bungalow, no one had been to her front door, not even the mail man.

She climbed into the red pick-up truck parked in the drive, tossed her briefcase on to the passenger side of the bench seat and reversed out on to the street at speed. Within ten minutes she was roaring down the on-ramp and merging with the early-morning traffic on Interstate 5 South. She kept her speed at an even sixty as she headed out of Los Angeles.

She flicked on the radio, catching a Jimmy Buffett tune mid-chorus. Jimmy was singing a song called ‘We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About’. It was one of Chance’s favorites

Chance rolled down the windows either side of her as traffic ahead of her slowed to a crawl. The breeze felt good on her skin. In the lane next to her a businessman in a BMW saloon was staring at her. She raised her sunglasses and winked at him. The poor sap lost all concentration and looked up just in time to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him. Chance spotted a gap in the outside lane and zoomed into it, leaving the BMW driver in her dust.

Men. Always thinking with their dicks.

Leaving Orange County the traffic cleared, and she started making good time. The meeting was set for eleven o’clock and she couldn’t afford to be late.

In the end she made it with an hour to spare, taking the off-ramp twelve miles shy of San Diego and following the directions on her GPS according to the coordinates she’d been given.

The rendezvous point was down a dirt track at the back of a vacant lot. The track dead-ended at what looked like a disused auto repair shop. Chance parked the truck and went to take a look around.

The building was squat and low. There were two large sliding doors. She heaved one open and stepped inside. The place smelled of motor oil and tobacco. A bench ran the length of the back wall. A stack of truck tires was piled against a barred window.

Chance heard a vehicle approaching, its gears grinding. She ducked outside to take a look.

A yellow rental truck parked up and a man in his late fifties sporting salt-and-pepper hair and a pair of old-school RayBan Wayfarer sunglasses hopped out of the cab. He was wearing khaki combat trousers, a white T-shirt and black boots.

He stopped when he saw her and looked her up and down. Her outfit was definitely having the desired effect.

‘Hi,’ she said, flicking back a strand of blonde hair from in front of her face.

‘Well, if this don’t beat all,’ he said. He had more than a hint of a Southern accent. Georgia maybe. Or Mississippi.

‘You bring everything?’ Chance asked him.

‘Oh, I got
everything
,’ he said.

What an asshole, thought Chance.

‘Can I see it?’

‘Sure, it’s in the back of the truck.’

She followed him to the rear of the truck. He fiddled with a padlock then opened up doors at the back. He climbed in the back and helped her up. There were three plywood coffins there.

‘Nice touch,’ said Chance.

‘No one’s going to open one of these coming back from Iraq on a military transport plane,’ the man said.

‘You mind if I take a look?’ she asked him.

‘Go right ahead, honey.’

She prised open the lid of the first coffin and took a look inside. She took out an M-4 assault rifle and checked it over.

The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ‘It’s all here. Everything you asked for. Now, did you bring the money?’

Chance nodded, replacing the lid. ‘You help me get this stuff loaded first?’

‘Sure thing. Tell you the truth, I’m glad to be getting rid of it,’ he said, rolling up his sleeves to reveal a black sun tattoo.

They set to work moving the coffins from the back of the hire truck to her pick-up. Chance could tell that the man was surprised by her physical strength. ‘You sure you should be lifting stuff?’ he asked her.

Chance smiled sweetly. ‘Dude, your belly’s bigger than mine. What do you think Pilgrim women did when they were pregnant? Sit home and eat bonbons?’

He laughed and they carried on.

As they lifted the final coffin he told her to be careful. ‘This one’s got that real special delivery.’

Chance felt her heart quicken. ‘The pressure plates?’

‘Calibrated to the weight you asked for.’

Slowly, they maneuvered the coffin from the truck and slid it along the bed of the pick-up. Then Chance covered all three coffins with a green tarpaulin.

‘The money’s here,’ she said, walking round to the front of the pick-up, opening the passenger-side door and grabbing the briefcase. She flipped open the two catches and held the contents up for inspection.

The man smiled at the thick bundles of hundred-dollar bills. His tongue flicked across his lips.

She looked past him to the rear of the truck. ‘Damn, that tarpaulin’s come loose. Could you fix it for me?’

‘Be my pleasure, honey,’ he said.

She put the briefcase down on the ground and reached back into the cab of the truck, grabbing a loaded Glock 9mm. ‘You’re so sweet,’ Chance said, leveling the gun at him and firing two shots into the man’s back from less than ten feet away. He took a step, his body twisting round. Then his legs folded and he fell, face down. She closed in on him, firing two more rounds into the back of his head.

Satisfied he was dead, she got back into the red pick-up, picked up her cell phone and called Cowboy, one of the two men she trusted most in the world. Along with his friend Trooper, Cowboy was a dedicated Aryan warrior. They had been by her side through the toughest of times, and in a world where trust was in short supply she knew they would stand by her come what may. They had proved as much when they’d helped her resolve the Prager situation.

Cowboy answered on the first ring.

‘I got it,’ she said.

‘Any problems?’

She stared in the side mirror at the man’s body lying flat, blood puddling out around him.

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Plain sailing.’

14

A blue-steel light filtering through the bars of Lock and Reaper’s cell announced the dawn of a new day. Along with the other inmates in the unit, Lock and Reaper had spent the remainder of the previous day confined to their cell. Having been escorted from the yard, the three members of the Aryan Brotherhood had failed to reappear. Lock guessed they had been transferred either to another unit or solitary, and not before time.

Regardless of the reason, and even with them gone, Lock knew there was no way he could afford to relax. The Aryan Brotherhood was a powerful organisation whose tentacles stretched out beyond their immediate membership, and its leadership wasn’t about to give up without a fight.

Finishing up a breakfast of fluorescent pink ham, bread, butter and an apple, washed down with milk, Lock put down his meal tray and nodded towards the stack of books on the floor. ‘Mind if I take a look?’

‘Go right ahead. You might learn something.’

Lock flicked past Reaper’s well-thumbed copy of
Mein Kampf
and settled instead on an equally dog-eared edition of Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
. He held it up. ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?’

Reaper looked up. ‘It wasn’t Sun Tzu who said that.’

‘Who was it then?’

Reaper laid aside his food tray and hopped down from his perch. ‘Michael Corleone in
The Godfather
.’ He plucked the book from Lock’s hands and held it up. ‘No, what Sun Tzu said was this: “Engage people with what they expect. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment – that which they cannot anticipate.”’

Reaper seemed to be reciting the passage from memory.

‘And what does that mean?’ Lock asked him.

Reaper hopped back up on to the top bunk with a grace that belied his age. ‘You’ll know it when you see it.’

‘An extraordinary moment?’

Reaper chuckled to himself. ‘Oh, it’ll be extraordinary all right.’

Lock felt a ripple of concern. Since he’d stepped into the cell, Reaper hadn’t come across as a man worried for his life. He also seemed to be finding great amusement in a secret only he was privy to. The more Lock thought about it, the more suspect Reaper’s testimony seemed to be. There was a game being played, but he wasn’t sure it was the game Jalicia and Coburn thought it was.

Lock was torn from his thoughts by the sound of cell doors being opened on the ground floor of the unit.

‘OK, gentlemen,’ shouted Lieutenant Williams, standing with his hands on his hips, in the centre of the floor. ‘Showers. Two cells at a time. And just so you know, if there’s any more trouble in this unit, you’ll be back on lockdown.’

Inside their cell, Reaper wagged a finger at Lock, and smirked. ‘You hear that, soldier boy?’

Half an hour later their cell door opened and, stripped to the waist, Lock and Reaper stepped out on to the tier along with two Hispanic inmates from the cell next door. Lock signaled for Reaper to hang back but Reaper pushed past the two smaller Hispanics and made his way towards the showers, which were at the far end of the unit. Lock took his time, keeping an eye on the two Hispanics as they followed Reaper into the showers.

Reaper soaped up and set about washing himself. Lock and the other two inmates did the same.