Everybody Pays (32 page)

The black van was unremarkable except for the heavy grates of steel mesh covering every window. A closer look might have revealed other indications that the van was meant to hold captives, but the deserted two-lane blacktop wasn’t likely to draw observers. The van proceeded at just over the speed limit, negotiating the gently curving road with grace, yielding whenever a vehicle behind it indicated a desire to pass.

The van rolled along, covering ground. Inside, two beefy men in gray prison-guard uniforms sat in the front seat. They spoke little.

After another hour had passed, the passenger said to the driver, “Seems like a waste of all that meat.”

“We got our orders.”

“Sure. But it ain’t what the orders said, it’s what they
didn’t
say; you with me on that?”

“No, Homer. I’m not with you on that. In fact, I don’t understand a word that comes out of your mouth.”

Yeah? Okay, maybe you can follow this, all right? That bitch we got in back—when’s the last time you saw a piece of ass that fine?”

“What difference does that make?”

“To me? Don’t make any, I guess. I was just thinking. You know, about this job. I mean, we got nothing but little lines on a map. We drive until we find where they connect up, then we walk her over there and just drive away. And we’re supposed to leave her cuffed too. Right where we drop her.”

“So?”

“So that’s supposed to mean she’s still locked up, get it? So it’s legal and all. She was never out of federal custody, understand what I’m saying?”

“So?”

“Fuck, is that the only word you know? Do the math, stupid. Whatever this is, it ain’t kosher.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, you’re a wise motherfucker, aren’t you? I’m trying to draw you a picture here, but you ain’t looking. This broad, whatever’s gonna happen once we drop her off, she
sure
ain’t gonna say anything about us, you follow what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“All right, you stupid bastard. I’m done playing around with you. The way I figured it, we could have some fun once we drop her off. You been driving like a robot, got our ETA programmed right in,” he said, nodding his head at the dash-mounted GSP system, which displayed a grid with a blinking green cursor showing their actual whereabouts and a red star showing their destination. “You speed it up a little bit, we get there
sooner,
see what I mean? That gives us a little extra time. With that hunk of stuff back there. Handcuffed. You think we’d ever have a better chance?”

“You’re a sick bastard,” the driver said quietly.

“A disgrace to the uniform?” The passenger laughed. “Man, you think the
real
cops look at us as anything but dog shit? Prison guard . . . that’s lower than convict in their eyes. This ain’t no military operation,
Sarge,
” he sneered, hitting the last word with heavy sarcasm.

“Maybe not to you, punk,” the driver said. “We’ve got orders. We follow orders. That’s the way it’s done.”

“Yeah? Well,
you
do what
you
want. Me, I’m gonna go back there and see if that bitch wants to use that big mouth of hers for anything but complaining.”

The driver kept staring straight ahead through the windshield; his hands gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter perhaps, but otherwise unchanged.

The passenger detached his shoulder belt, slipped out of his bucket seat, and walked down the aisle to the back of the van, where a woman sat in the last seat, anchored by ankle chains, hands cuffed to a belt around her waist.

“It’s a long ride we got to go yet,” the guard said.

The woman did not respond.

“You, uh, want a cigarette or something?”

The woman stared out the window.

“I’m
talking
to you, bitch!” the guard snarled, grabbing a fistful of the woman’s thick hair and yanking it hard in his direction.

Her eyes were a strange shade, he thought, a kind of yellow-gray. He didn’t like looking at them anyway, he thought, dropping his gaze to her breasts as they strained against the once-white sweatshirt she wore.

“No reason why you and me can’t be . . . friends,” he said softly. “You know the deal—I figure they must have told you. We drop you off, leave you chained to a tree. Now, maybe somebody’s coming. Maybe not. But I guess you figure they are, or you wouldn’t be so relaxed.” He reached out with one hand and cupped her breast, bouncing it gently. “You grow these yourself, or did you buy them?” he asked.

The woman looked somewhere else, her mouth flat and grim.

“We got
plenty
of time,” the guard said. “All I want is a few minutes. You give me that, I give you a real nice ride, you understand?”

The woman didn’t reply.

The guard slapped her viciously. A dot of blood bubbled in the corner of her mouth. The guard leaned close to her ear. “I can do that. Or a lot more. Anytime I want. Nobody’s gonna hear you scream. Or maybe I could . . . give you that cigarette you turned down before. Lit. Right on top of one of those big boobs of yours. You like
that
idea, cunt?”

“Did Riselle like it?” the woman asked, her voice as calm as a person asking directions.

The guard punched her just under one breast. Smiled when her face instantly lost color. “The next one, maybe you’re gonna puke all over yourself. You fucking bitches think you can tease a man all day long, flash some tit, get my nose open, and nothing happens? Let me tell you something, cunt.
All
of those sluts, they wanted it. Or they traded for it. Women are all whores anyway. It’s just a question of the price. You want a lot of pain, just keep it up. I got all the time in the world. Now, what’s it’s gonna be, whore?” he asked, his tongue touching the woman’s ear. She whipped her face around so quickly into a head butt that the guard was aware of nothing but a sickening crunch against his temple. He staggered backward, dazed. Held his feet for a second or two, then collapsed in the aisle.

The guard got to one knee, shook his head to clear it. “This is gonna be fun,” he said, reaching for his canister of mace.

The van pulled off the two-lane blacktop onto a gravel road. Followed it for 2.87 miles and turned left into a dirt path. The driver watched the digital odometer and the satellite tracking system carefully, nodding to himself as he spotted a clearing just ahead as the cursor and destination icons merged. He brought the van to a stop. “I’ll take her out,” he said to the passenger, who lay half slumped in his seat, face bloody, uniform pants stained.

The driver went to the back. The woman’s face was battered, one eye fully closed. The once-white sweatshirt had been cut off her body with a knife. It lay in shreds around her waist. “Jesus Christ!” the driver said, kneeling to unlock the ankle chains. “I got a medical kit in front. Just wait till I—”

“Going
now,
” Tiger mumbled to him.

“Sure, okay. Can you walk?”

“Yes,” the woman grunted.

“Lean on me,” the driver said, slowly moving toward the rear of the van. He threw a series of switches. The doors hissed open and a set of steps automatically descended. “You want me to lift—?”

“I said I can walk,” the woman snarled. She took a step and then toppled forward. If the driver had not caught her, she would have hit the ground face-first. The driver half-dragged, half-carried her to a sitting position at the base of a tree stump. “Lady, I’m sorry,” he said. “I got my orders. Just drive until we got here. I didn’t know that freak Homer was gonna—”

The driver stopped talking when he saw the two men bracketing him. Both wearing ski masks, one pointing a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, the other a heavy blue steel semi-automatic pistol. “Turn around,” the man with the pistol said. The driver never considered reaching for his holstered weapon.

“Where’s the other one?”

“In the van,” the driver said. “Front seat. I didn’t—”

“Shut up,” the man with the pistol said softly. Then the driver heard him speak to the woman. “One or both?” is all he said.

“Not him. Just the other one,” the woman answered, her voice thick with clotted blood.

“So the one in the van, he
started
it, huh?” the man with the pistol said, much louder than necessary for the woman to hear.

“Yes!” she answered, a moan with steel still in its core.

The driver heard noises behind him. He couldn’t understand them—knew they were human, but not like any human sounds he’d heard—even with a decade behind bars for reference. He heard something crash through the brush toward the van. Heard the door torn open. Heard a body being dragged out. Heard “You started it!” screamed by the voice of a deranged maniac. Heard the unmistakable sound of something unyielding being rammed into human flesh. Over and over and over. His knees buckled but he held himself firm. Just like the Army, he told himself. I got my orders.

The driver heard the snap of bone . . . bone too large to be snapped by human hands. A thin scream escaped the lips of the other guard. Then he was silent. But the flesh-pounding assault continued—a wall of dull-red noise.

“Get back in the van,” the man with the pistol said. “Don’t turn around. You were transporting her to Carver. There was a huge tree limb across the road. You stopped. The other guy got out. That was the last time you saw him. Somebody slipped little plugs into your nose. When you woke up, the woman was gone too. Call HQ. Report in.”

“I don’t—” the guard started to say, but a giant hand closed around his carotid artery. He felt something inserted into his nostrils just before he lost consciousness.

When he awoke, he was alone in the van, parked alongside the two-lane blacktop, a mile or so before where he had originally turned off. A tree limb across the road blocked his path.

He called HQ.

Rhino was crouched over Tiger, who lay in the back seat of the shark car. “She’ll be all right,” he said. “Maybe a slight concussion. The cheekbone’s probably fractured. And she lost a couple of teeth. No internals, no wounds.”

“He started it,” Princess mumbled, looking down.

“He did, brother,” Cross said soothingly. “You did right. Easy now, okay?”

Ace sat between Cross and Princess, shaking his head. “We was gonna do the fucking guard anyway, right? I mean, that’s what the feds paid us for.”

“Yeah,” Cross said quietly. “The weasel had about a hundred sexual-abuse complaints against him. About two dozen of the women were going to testify. This way, he gets himself killed, line-of-duty, all that. Must have been an escape attempt gone wrong . . . ’cause Tiger got killed too. Everybody’s happy.”

“Except he—”

“I know. It’s on me. I fucked it up. Never thought he’d try anything in a moving vehicle, with a live witness and all. Tiger, I’m . . .”

The woman waved Cross’s words away, her eyes starting to focus.

“How the girls gonna be happy, man?” Ace asked. “Their lawsuit just got killed too.”

“They’re amateurs,” Cross said. “For them, revenge would be better than money.”

“
I’m
a pro,” Tiger said softly. “And you couldn’t pay me enough money to let that . . . thing live another day.”