American Criminal (7 page)

    Ray’s mind flashed back to images of all the enjoyable vacations he had taken. He thought of the people he went with and the fun things they did. It was hard to shake a good feeling when confronted with these positive images. He knew that switching tracks and thinking about the reality of his situation would destroy it. He hadn’t felt this good for at least four and a half months. Ironically, on the plane bound for prison, he felt the healthiest and most alive he had felt in the past half-year. He decided to continue the euphoria by imagining all the enjoyable destinations he had traveled to while he drifted to sleep in the airline chair.   

    Not surprisingly, he awoke feeling disoriented after dreaming of the golden beaches of the Caribbean. He looked around, anxiously, in an attempt to re-orient himself. At first glance, the plane looked like any other jetliner he traveled on; passengers were seated intermittently in front of him as the interior of the plane converged in a linear perspective. But when his gaze continued forward, he saw the steel cage that separated the prisoners from the guards. The sudden feeling of depression he experienced, after dreaming about exotic vacations, was indescribable. In an instant, he felt like he had suddenly lost all the people in the world he ever loved. It was a feeling of despair unlike any he had before and it washed over him like a black ocean.

   
I have to think my way out of this if I’m going to survive.

    Burnside tried to dam the despair flooding into his brain.

   
Things could be worse. I could be confined to a hospital with an incurable illness. I could be dead. At least now, there is some hope of getting out of this situation alive. There may even be hope for freedom if I keep my eyes open for opportunities. I’m going to make it out of this. I am going to figure out a way to make it to freedom. They are not going to keep me locked up for something I didn’t do, no matter how secure the prison allegedly is. I will follow their rules while keeping an eye out for weaknesses in their system. When I discover a weakness, I will exploit it.

    If he ever made it to freedom, he was planning to engage in what he considered to be a bold new experience: revenge.

   
The
people who put me here will not make it out of this without at least suffering as much as I have suffered.

     When he referred to the people who had put him here, he did not mean the judge or the jury. They were simply part of the automatic system that went into effect after the drugs had been planted and the lies told. The people who put him here were his corrupt partners on the police force; they were people he knew well and worked with for a number of years. He knew exactly who they were and where to find them. During his six years on the force, he had encountered several cops who were bending and sometimes breaking the rules for their own benefit. He always honored the Brotherhood and kept quiet about it. That was then. Now, if he had the chance, he would take them all down. Even if it took twenty-five years, he would take them down. That would be the motivating force that kept him going.

     Beware the fury of a patient man.

    It was a quote from the poet, John Dryden, and it was absolutely true. A tenacious part of his mind planned to eventually obtain justice for the past four-and-a-half months of pain and everything he would have to endure in subsequent years. 

    Payback is going to be hell.

    A bitter half-smile crossed over his face at this thought.

    Just like in the movies. My life is becoming a movie cliché. Maybe the movies don’t have it wrong after all. Maybe revenge is a legitimate motivator for survival.

    At the present, all other goals seemed petty by comparison. The many benefits and pleasures of freedom paled in comparison to the feeling he anticipated while enacting his revenge. The most enjoyable and delightful scenarios he could envision were nothing compared to the idea of vengeance. Historically, he guessed that countless people had the same feelings he had since human beings first organized into crude communities. He imagined that throughout the ages, there were always those who were inclined to destroy someone else’s life in an effort to protect themselves from their own crimes, or to get ahead in some way. The problem was that if the person whose life had been destroyed survived, there was only one course for the survivor to take: vengeance.

    Burnside interrupted his rumination to glance around his environment as he noticed a gradual downwards slant in the interior of the jetliner.

   
We’re descending. It’s almost zero hour. Now, I’m really going to see what I’m made of. I’ve heard stories about these maximum-security prisons. In many ways they are worse than super-max facilities. In the super-max prisons, inmates are considered too dangerous to interact with each other, so they are isolated from each other 24/7. In a regular maximum security facility, I will be interacting with other prisoners several hours every day. There are going to be some mean hombres in this joint.

    Ray closed his eyes and tried to relax as the slant of the plane’s interior increased as the jet speeded its descent. At this stage of the journey, the thrill was gone as the plane touched down on the runway. All the classical conditioning in the world couldn’t wipe out the harsh reality: they were taking him to prison. Even worse, a maximum-security prison.

   
There’s nothing I can do about it
.
Fighting will only get me thrown into
solitary. I’ll play their game for now.

    Burnside scanned the prisoner compartment. The plane hadn’t come to a stop yet, but the guards were already releasing the inmates seated closest to the front. The first two prisoners were led out of the plane by four guards. A new set of guards Burnside didn’t recognize entered the plane and began working on the release of the next two prisoners. They were escorted out like the other two. The process continued monotonously until they finally reached Burnside in the back.

     Ray might have been a peace activist for all the trouble he gave them. Full compliance was his new philosophy.

   
You guys may have me now… but just wait. Just wait.

Chapter 8

Interview

    The guards escorted Burnside out of the plane and he cursed when he saw a prison bus waiting for them on the runway. He didn’t have a fond recollection of bus seats and hoped the journey would be brief.

    The seats were just as uncomfortable as the ones on the previous bus. Black thoughts skittered through Burnside’s mind like scurrying rats as he leaned forward so he didn’t crush his wrists, which were secured tightly behind him to a metal bar.

   
I will make them all pay.

   The ride was only forty minutes. Burnside’s back was hurting, but not as bad as on the previous trip. His jaw dropped as the bus approached the huge prison complex. The prison was still a good distance away, but it dominated the horizon like a low gray mountain. Narrow towers jutted up intermittently from the structure like castle parapets. They stopped at the first checkpoint, which was a half-mile outside the prison walls. A thirty-foot barbed wire fence surrounded the desolate land. The gate was the same height and topped with vicious-looking razor wire.

    The driver exchanged paperwork with a pair of guards at the shack next to the gate. Burnside noticed they both carried shotguns.

    These guys aren’t fucking around.

    Burnside glanced left past the guard shack and watched the fence disappearing into a distant linear perspective. He turned right and was met with the same sight. 

    The land between the fence and the prison was desolate with the exception of a second metal wire fence. They drove another quarter of a mile down the bland two-lane service road until they reached the next fence. Burnside noticed this one wasn’t as high as the first and had no barbed wire.

    I could scale that one no problem. At night, in the dark, with the nearest guard-shack two hundred yards away, I could climb it without being noticed.

    Then he saw a sign on the fence; DANGER: ELECTRIFIED: KEEP BACK.

   
So much for that plan.

    Burnside waited impatiently while the bus driver went through the same routine with a pair of guards at the second shack before driving through.

    The prison walls looked about four stories high. From far away it looked like a long, low structure, but closer up, it appeared taller and more imposing. They arrived at a small parking lot next to a large loading dock area and took a right. Burnside scanned the loading dock as they passed. The dock was raised so trucks could back up to it and unload cargo. Four massive gates towered above the raised platform. Only one of them was open. A tractor-trailer truck was backed up to it. As the prison bus drove past the truck, Burnside craned his neck and saw a forklift drive out the back of the trailer with a crate attached to its fork. He watched it speed across the platform through the tall gate. He had to turn away as the prison bus turned onto a service road, which was tight against the towering prison wall. Burnside knew they were approaching a guard tower, but he couldn’t see it from the close angle. He tried to look up as they passed and only succeeded in straining his neck.

    The bus continued rumbling down the service road until it reached a wide courtyard. It turned left into the courtyard and drove around a circle to a set of double glass doors.            

The bus stopped and the engine shut down. Burnside wanted out.

    But not out to that place.

    The double glass doors opened and a procession of guards filed out two-by-two. Burnside counted at least ten of them walking toward the bus. The bus guards let the prison guards into the caged area and the prison guards took over. All the prisoners were shackled with behind-the-back wrist and ankle restraints. The going was slower as both sets of restraints were attached and the prisoners shuffled forward slowly. The short chain on the ankle restraints meant that the guards had to actually help lift the prisoners down the short set of bus stairs to the ground.

    Burnside’s turn came all too soon. He scowled as a guard undid his handcuffs to replace them with another set of behind-the-back restraints.

    Now would be the time to make a move.

    He did nothing. He stared ahead while the guards snapped the metal restraints on his wrists. He did the same for the leg restraints. He was biding his time. Any fighting would be useless at this juncture. He would wait until fighting meant something.

    They walked toward the main entrance in a long, single file line. Burnside stopped when the prisoner in front of him stopped. A new group of guards blocked their progress.

    “Hold up!” one of them shouted.

    Burnside peered past the shoulder of the inmate standing in front of him, and watched as a pair of prisoners at the front of the line were disconnected from the rest and led through the double glass doors - surrounded by four guards. Six more guards dispersed on either side of the line of prisoners and took up positions. Burnside stepped back and to the side, so he had a better view of the front of the line. He guessed there were at least eighteen prisoners standing in front of him.

    “Get back in line,” the nearest guard, a freckle-faced kid who looked like he was fresh out of the Corrections Academy, said to Burnside as he drew a baton from his belt and stepped toward him.

    “Sure, no problem, officer,” Burnside said, lifting his eyebrows in mock innocence as he stepped back into line.

    He watched the guard grudgingly slip the baton back into his side holster and take a half step back.

    Burnside craned his neck around the shoulder of the prisoner in front of him to see what was going on. He watched as either the same four guards, or another group of four guards (they all looked the same), exited the double glass doors and approached the front of the line. Two more prisoners were led away through the doors.

    Again,
this is going to take forever if they keep doing it this way. 

    Burnside was startled by the sound of a heavy engine firing up behind him. He turned and saw the prison transport bus pulling around the courtyard circle. He watched it enter the access road and drive out of sight behind the prison courtyard wall.

    “Turn around and face front!” a voice shouted from Burnside’s right.

    He turned and regarded the same young guard, who chastised him earlier for stepping out of line, moving toward him with a drawn baton.

   
This kid is wired too tight for this job.

    Burnside turned toward the guard. Upon closer inspection, the guard looked barely old enough to shave. He was a stocky, freckle-faced kid with a blonde crew-cut.   

    Probably has something to prove.

    “What’s your problem? I haven’t done anything to you,” Burnside said quietly to the guard.