To The Lions - 02 (30 page)

“Extraction?”

“That’s
what they call it.”

“Why?”

“They’re
extracting not only his life, but his dignity.”

Gage
squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as he said, “Are they beating him, or
raping him?”

“You
know the answer,” the Frenchman whispered, shaking his head in disgust as he
ambled toward the yard.

Gage
stood there and watched the scene for several minutes, allowing his blood to
come up.
 
There was no inner war, no
deliberation.
 
He already knew how to
respond.
 
He focused on the men behind
that top terrace’s wire mesh.
 
To a man
they all wore the mark of Los Leones.
 
They all laughed.
 
They all
chanted.
 
Some high-fived, some rubbed
their crotches.
 
And while a man, a human
being, suffered in that cell, those sons of bitches out on the terrace acted as
if they were watching
El Clásico
.
 
So, rather than deliberate, Gage made up his
mind but let it burn.
 
After three minutes
and forty-two seconds, despite his still-healing back wounds, he balled his
fists and stalked across the floor.
 
Not
at all nervous, Gage took the first level of steel stairs at a steady jog, as
if he was headed to his own cell, ascending with his head down.

As
he reached the landing from the first flight of stairs, Gage saw Salvador,
standing against the fencing with his fellow Semental, the one on the
crutches.
 
Both men stood with an
upturned ear, listening to the commotion above them.
 
As Gage turned to the second stairwell, he
heard Salvador’s urgent protests and running feet.
 
Five steps up, a thin León wearing an
eye-patch had been looking upward.
 
Seeing Gage coming, he dropped down one step and put his forearm on
Gage’s throat to stop him.
 
Gage clamped
the man’s arm with his left hand, twisting harshly, making the smaller man turn
to relieve the pressure.
 
But Gage didn’t
stop, he wrenched the man’s arm upward until he felt the deep and satisfying
pop as the punk’s shoulder dislocated, yanking the humerus away from the
scapula.
 
Still holding the man’s left
wrist, Gage thrust the man’s neck forward with his right arm, hammering him
onto the stairs so hard he wondered if he might have killed him.
 
Satisfied the stair guard was out of
commission, Gage climbed the stairs.

At
the top, on the second terrace, the mob of Leones, which must have consisted of
two hundred men, all faced inward, chanting and yelling.
 
The smell of the electrified, inflamed
humanity was sickening, angering Gage further by the second.
 
As he spun from the stairs onto the terrace,
a young León turned, eyes going wide as Gage’s forehead rushed to his
nose.
 
The head-butt was perfect,
crushing the gang member’s proboscis in a spray of stark blood.
 
The man went down in a heap, holding his nose
and squirming about as if he’d just been doused in acid.

Due
to the noise and the remainder of the gang staring inward, Gage was able to
push his way forward.
 
In ten more seconds
he was at Cesar’s cell, shoving his way inside, repulsed to see one man
violating Cesar while another pleasured himself on the far side of the
cell.
 
Aware that he wasn’t a León, someone
grabbed Gage around the neck, taking a vicious elbow to the face for his
efforts.
 
Gage turned, fielding punches
from another León while the one he’d elbowed crumbled below him.
 
Grasping the puncher by the sides of his
head, Gage pressed inward with his thumbs on the man’s eyes, satisfied with the
agonized scream in response.
 
That man,
too, went down in a pile on top of the unconscious gang member.

As
the two downed men temporarily clogged the doorway, Gage thrust a front heel
kick to the masturbating prisoner, who was eyeing Gage with temporary
shock.
 
When Gage’s heel mashed into the
man’s swollen member and testicles, the man’s shriek was so loud in the
enclosed space that Gage felt it might have damaged his eardrums.

The
rapist, in his own sick world, was still rutting on Cesar.
 
Due to the noise, he had no idea what was
happening behind him.

Knowing
his own death was near, and resolved to go out in blinding flames, Gage grasped
the rapist by the neck, digging his fingernails in as he yanked the surprised
man off Cesar’s back.
 
As the rapist
rolled to the floor, Gage began to kick the man, aiming for his head.

Following
a half-minute of kicking, Gage, his body burning from the exertion, ceased his
action.
 
The rapist’s breathing was
ragged, his face bloody and unrecognizable.
 
Gage staggered to the back wall, hearing only Cesar’s muffled sobs.
 

It
suddenly occurred to Gage that he hadn’t been attacked, and all had gone quiet.
 
Despite the two men who’d clogged the doorway
earlier, Gage should have been torn apart by now.

When
he turned, Gage saw a León blocking the doorway, the rest of the men standing
behind him.
 
The León was about Gage’s
size, bald, with a thick golden ring between his two nostrils, like that of a
bull.
 

It
was the notorious prisoner El Toro.

In
his right hand was a curved linoleum knife, glinting from the solitary light of
the cell.

Despite
the presence of El Toro and his menacing blade, Gage welcomed the brief
respite, sucking in air as he surveyed the cell.
 
The masturbator was still on the floor,
huddled in the corner of the cell and whimpering, both of his hands cradling
the smashed treasures at his midsection.
 
Below Gage, the man whose face he’d pulverized was now laboring to
breathe, the maw on his face making wet, sucking sounds like a person sucking
the remains of a soda through a straw.

And
next to Gage, managing to cover himself with his wool blanket, was Cesar, curled
in a small ball on his bunk.

Gage
watched as the man with the nose ring and linoleum knife spoke quick Catalan to
the mob, using the word “
extraccio
”
several times.
 
The mob listened intently
and, when he finished speaking, they sullenly evaporated.
 

El
Toro then put on a little show with his hooked knife, moving it back and forth
between both hands, twirling it, eyeing Gage the entire time.
 
When he stopped, he aimed the blade at
Gage.
 
“You,
meu amic
, are to be commended for your balls of brass.”

Gage,
still catching his breath, didn’t respond.

“I’ve
instructed my men to cease the
extraction
of Cesar.”
 
El Toro lifted the knife,
pointing it at Gage.
 
“You paid that
price for him, which is honorable.
 
But,
gabacho
, you’ve paid his price with your
own life.”

Before
Gage formulated a response, boots thundered up the stairwell.
 
El Toro, his actions casual, concealed the
knife in his uniform, stepping aside and lowering his head but continuing to
view Gage from the corner of his eye.

Arriving
from three directions, Berga guards in full riot gear converged on the
cell.
 
Upon surveying the bloody scene,
the center guard rushed in and struck Gage, who made no effort to stop it, on
the top of his head.

Gage
fell.
 
His last sensation was that of his
legs failing him, as the guard and the bars and the lights rushed upward.

Blackness.

* * *

When
Gage awoke, he felt the rough cut of the heavy-duty zip ties that hogtied his
hands and arms, each movement sawing into his flesh.
 
The ripping pain of his back wounds was
outweighed by the pressure on his shoulder joints, making both feel as if they might
dislocate at any moment.

Enraging
Gage, he heard the casual banter between the guards lugging him around the
terrace, carrying him like a fattened pig to a routine slaughter.
 
Though his vision was blurry, he oriented
himself, realizing he was still on the top terrace.
 
They were nearing the stairwell all the way
across from Cesar’s cell, with the open air of the main bay between the stairs
and the cell.
 
One of the guards, his
voice gravelly, halted the procession.

“
Muéstrale
,” he rasped.
 
Gage was able to make out some of the man’s
Catalan, something about a good place to view it from.

Gage
was lifted so that his chest rested on the rail below the chain link
fence.
 
His eyes were still blurry from
being struck in the head—he blinked, clearing his vision enough to see two men
standing across the void in Cesar’s cell.

It
was the gang leader, El Toro, and he was holding Cesar up.
 
Cesar was still nude and his arms were behind
him, as if he were handcuffed.
 
Gage
realized the entire bay, for the first time ever during the daytime, was
completely silent.
 
El Toro, murmuring
something in Cesar’s ear, led him outside the cell, showcasing him in the
middle of the terrace.

A
cheer went up, hushed immediately when El Toro lifted the blade above his head.
 
Then…

The
overhead lights glinted off the curved blade of the linoleum knife as it
plunged downward.

“No!”
Gage shouted, lurching and tugging, trying futilely to free himself from his
bonds.

El
Toro struck Cesar under his ear, ripping the knife across his upper neck, ear
to ear, going back and forth several times, the scraping and cutting and
gurgling audible across the expanse.
 
He
lowered Cesar’s limp body to his knees, holding the dead man up under one
armpit.

The
main bay was a cacophony of frenzied cheers and catcalls.
 

In
a move that surpassed the sickest of fertile imaginations, El Toro reached into
Cesar’s ghastly incision, rooting with his hand for a moment.
 
Then, lifting Cesar and using some sort of
fashioned hook, he propped Cesar’s body outside of his cell, hanging him there
as if he were standing.
 
Taking a wet towel
from inside the cell, El Toro diligently cleaned the blood from the face and neck
area until his ghastly masterpiece was visible for the screaming masses of
Berga Prison.

El
Toro had pulled Cesar’s tongue out through the neck wound.
 
Gravity pulled the complex muscle downward,
giving it the unsettling appearance of a necktie.

El
Toro stood next to Cesar, admiring his work with a sickening grin on his face.
 
After a moment, he moved to the fence and
raised his arms in victory.

The
main bay exploded in noise.

Chapter Nineteen

Gage
estimated that he’d been on the concrete floor for about a day.
 
There wasn’t one bit of light seeping through
the doorway, which was probably sealed by gaskets on the outside of the heavy
metal door.
 
Using his hands, he’d done a
methodical probe of every square inch of the square room, finding only a fist
sized air vent and a small drain in the center of the floor.

They
didn’t even provide him with a bucket.

As
time had worn on, Gage’s head hurt to the point of making him lie down and
close his eyes.
 
While he wouldn’t
describe the state he’d experienced “sleep,” whatever it was, and for whatever
period of time, had helped alleviate some of the pain, most of which came from
the top of his head where the baton had struck.
 
After awakening and sitting up, Gage flexed his right hand, feeling the
pain and swelling, idly wondering if he’d cracked a bone on some León’s face.

Around
the time his internal clock passed twenty-four hours, the door opened, spilling
painfully bright light into the cell.
 
When Gage’s eyes had somewhat adjusted, a man in cheap slacks and
shirtsleeves politely motioned him out.
 
Gage had never seen the man before, noting his holster and Sig pistol.
 
The man waved his hand in front of his face, muttering
something in Spanish about Gage’s smell before he cuffed Gage and led him through
a series of hallways until they reached a private bathroom.

The
man rapped on the steel door and said, “You’ve got twenty minutes.
 
Use the toilet, shave, shower, and comb your
hair.
 
All the toiletries you need are in
there, and I will inventory them afterward.
 
You’ll be on camera so don’t be cute.”

“Why
am I getting a private shower?”

The
man eyeballed Gage’s build and pulled several pieces of fresh prison clothing
from a rack on the far side of the hall.
 
He opened a box and removed a new pair of thong sandals, still held
together by a plastic band, speaking as he worked.
 
“You’re going in to see Capitana de la Mancha.”
 
He clucked his tongue.
 
“She’s a fanatic for cleanliness, so I
suggest you scrub yourself very well.”
 
The man pressed a button on his watch, motioning to the door.
 

“Twenty
minutes.
 
Enjoy it.”

* * *

As
if he were a vice president in a Fortune 500 company, awaiting a meeting with
the chief executive, Gage was allowed to wait in a pleasant sitting room as Capitana
de la Mancha’s assistant pecked away at her Lenovo computer.
 
The only two things marking the waiting area
as a prison setting were the thick safety glass protecting the assistant, and
the armed guard who sat next to her.
 
This was the eighth unique guard Gage had seen thus far.
 
The burly guard sported an M1911 pistol,
probably in .45 caliber—not in his holster, but in his hand.
 
There were gun ports in the glass, presumably
there in case Gage became enraged and started tearing the Spanish version of
People magazine apart.

Ignoring
the reading material, Gage leaned his head back against the wall, closing his
eyes as he ordered his thoughts.
 
Cesar’s
ghastly ritual killing had unnerved Gage badly.
 
But with Cesar and, presumably, Ernesto Navarro dead, it was time to
pull the curtain down on his entire incarceration.
 
Gage had seen wanton corruption before.
 
It was obvious that Los Leones were running
the guards here and, although it sickened his righteous side somewhat, Gage
planned to leave and never look back.
 
Oh, sure, he’d probably talk to some people once he got stateside.
 
One of Colonel Hunter’s best connections was a
friend to both U.S. senators from North Carolina.
 
Perhaps they’d put a little well-timed
pressure on the Spanish government.

Regardless,
Gage’s top priority was exiting Berga.
 
Afterward, he would collect Justina and they would depart Spain as fast
as could be arranged.
 

What a stupid decision this entire
stunt was
, Gage thought, admonishing himself.
 
Old
Navarro knew what he was doing, Gage, when he tempted you with that pile of
money.
 
But you should have known
better.
 

There
was a beep from behind the glass.

“Señor
Harris,” the assistant said, beaming as she touched her phone earpiece.

Gage
stood.

“La
Capitana will see you now.”

The
guard didn’t move, just flicked the Colt to Gage’s right.
 
When Gage moved to the door, it buzzed and he
opened it.

The
smell was the first sensation to affect his senses. Perfume: citrusy and
pungent.
 
The second was the visual
treatment the captain’s office had received.
 
While the last room he’d sat in had pleasant mauve paint, padded chairs,
a fake plant, and magazines, this office would certainly seem out of place in
any prison.
 
With a burnished wood floor,
oriental rugs, bookshelves loaded with leather-bound books and several original
oil paintings, the inviting room would be more suitable as a chancellor’s
office at a fine university.

“Just
so you know,” Capitana de la Mancha said in her nearly unaccented English, her
voice surprising him since he couldn’t see her, “you’re only the third prisoner
ever to enter these walls since I took over.
 
You should feel honored.”

Gage
stood there, unmoving, just inside the door he’d entered through.
 
He heard a tinkling of glass and a spurt of
running water, then the footsteps he recalled from his first moments in
Berga.
 
De la Mancha burst in from his
left, wearing the lab coat, crossing the office to take up a seat behind the
massive mahogany desk.
 
Recalling his woodworking
apprentice work during his recovery after Crete, Gage appraised the fluting and
columning of the desk’s finish, and the gorgeous wood itself—he pronounced the
desk as hand-carved and probably worth an average year’s salary in Spain.

“I
didn’t build this office,” she said, reading his eyes.
 
“It was done by my predecessor, a man with a
huge ego who was owed a number of favors.”
 
She surveyed the room.
 
“I guess
this was one of the favors.”

Gage
stood motionless.

“Hmmm,”
de la Mancha mused, her plucked brows tilting as she settled herself into the
low-back leather chair, “I’d heard you were a bit taciturn.
 
Please, do sit.”

He
obeyed, moving forward and sitting in the lone chair set about six feet in
front of her desk.
 
He allowed his eyes
to wander the walls and ceiling behind her.

“You’re
no doubt looking for cameras.
 
There are
none.
 
No one watches me.”

“Good
for you.”

She
reached into her coat, lifting a compact revolver by the trigger guard.
 
“See this?”

Gage
narrowed his eyes at the pistol, marking it as a Smith & Wesson 340 series—a
concealed-carry pistol.
 
“That’s a decent
Smith,” he said, “but not what I would recommend for you to carry in a prison
loaded with animals.”

“What’s
your suggestion?”

“Have
a look at the Springfield 1911 compact.
 
It’s larger but packs a wallop.”

She
moved the pistol to her left hand and scribbled a note on a yellow pad,
stabbing the paper afterward.
 
“Thank
you,” she said, moving the pistol back to her right hand.
 

Gage
committed her actions to memory, finding her loose and too relaxed
if
what she said about cameras was true.
 
Good
.

De
la Mancha settled back into her chair.
 
“It’s
my contention that, in the event you lose your mind and lurch at me, I can
shoot you before you reach me.”
 
She drummed
her left fingers on the left arm of the chair.
 
“So, you’ll excuse me if I go ahead and hold the pistol on you,
Gage Hartline
.”

There
was no point in appearing surprised at the mention of his name.
 
He shifted in his seat, nodding.
 
“I’m happy you know my real identity,
capitana
, because that saves me a long explanation.
 
Unfortunately, with the murder that occurred
yesterday…well, I think it was yesterday but I’ve been locked in a blackened
tomb for some length of time…regardless, my reason for being here in Berga is
no longer practical.
 
You see—”

She
stopped him by raising her left hand.

“Mister
Hartline, you were hired by career mobster Ernesto Navarro to protect his
sniveling son from the Spanish criminal syndicate known as Los Leones.”
 
She cocked her head.
 
“That’s the truth.”

Gage
inclined his head.
 
“
Capitana
, despite who, or who wasn’t, involved, my
official
mission here is under the oversight
of the Catalonian, and Spanish, governments and, as I said, is no longer practical.
 
Therefore, it’s pointless for me to stay
here.”

De
la Mancha smiled indulgently at him as he spoke, like an acting coach listening
to her freshman pupil delivering stilted, yet slightly improved, lines.
 
When Gage finished, she said, “Ernesto
Navarro paid off Acusador Cortez Redon to insert you into Berga as an
undercover agent.”
 
She began explaining
about Redon and Navarro, all while holding the Smith casually aimed at his
chest.
 
Her final words clapped like
thunder:

“You
have been thoroughly deceived, Mister Hartline, by the state attorney Navarro
thought was his confidant.
 
Redon was taking
Navarro’s money while also working with Los Leones.
 
They cooked up this entire deception so Los Leones
could find Navarro, and kill him.
 
In the
process, you were sold out.”

As
she spoke, Gage fought to keep his vision steady.
 
A whirling occurred in his mind, the type
that was once a precursor to his old post-traumatic-stress migraines, the
debilitating cripplers that once haunted his every day.
 
And, although he would certainly approach
this situation with reason in the hope that this little lady would lower her
guard, the sixth sense deep in Gage’s organism, the one that had warned him about
potential trouble on the isle of Crete, the one that sent him hurtling on a
cosmic collision with Nicky Arnaud, and the one that had kept him alive over a dangerous
twenty-three year career, told Gage that he’d been bent over and screwed, for
lack of a better comparison.
 

“If
that’s true,” he rasped, “why wouldn’t Acusador Redon just tell Los Leones when
and where he would be having a meeting with Navarro?
 
Why use such an elaborate setup, instead?”

“You
already know the answer, Hartline.
 
Navarro
was unconscionably vigilant.
 
My source
tells me he never announced where the meetings were, and would send for any and
all visitors with his own security people.”

Gage
pondered what she said—it made sense—but the onset of stress was preventing him
from thinking clearly.
 

Slow down, Gage.
 
The game just changed.
 
Slow down and think
.

He
turned his thoughts to Capitana de la Mancha.
 
Given her tone and body language, this woman, this warden, wasn’t about
to let him escape from here.
 
He had a
distinct feeling that this prison, her fiefdom, had lined her pockets with Europe’s
dirtiest money, creating a cinder-block killing machine for Spain’s burgeoning
gang, a place where many walked in and no one walked out.

Had
he been blessed with the luxuries of ample time and freedom, Gage would have
loved to do a forensic accounting of de la Mancha’s finances—not to mention the
banking records of her gangster guards. He shifted slightly in his seat.
 

“One
question,
capitana
, comes to my
mind.
 
Don’t you fear for your life when
working with Los Leones?
 
If you’re
complicit with them, and being paid as I suspect, why don’t they ask you to
allow their prisoners to escape or put ridiculous demands on you?”

“There
have never been any escapes from Berga, nor will there be.”

“And
what of the ridiculous demands?”