Noble Warrior (11 page)

Night Train surveyed his peers then nodded his head. “Smith and Wesson'll do the honors for ya, boss.”

“Great, we have one volunteer. Who's next?” The other four prisoners, Motor Mouth, Banger, the guy not named Timmy, and McCutcheon, all stayed mum.

“Okay, if that's the way it's going to be.” Krewls tucked his chart underneath his arm, walked into the center of the room, and began tapping each of the remaining
prisoners on the top of his head.

“Duck. Duck. Duck...GOOSE!”

Krewls's hand stopped on the guy not named Timmy, and the new convict's eyes practically popped out of his head.

Me?
the look on his face said.
You want me to fight this animal?

“I'll do it,” M.D. suddenly blurted out.

Krewls shook his head back and forth. “Oh, no,” he said in a disapproving manner. “Please don't tell me I just boated a fish with a conscience.”

“I said, I'm in,” McCutcheon replied.

The guy not named Timmy looked up at M.D. with wide, thankful eyes.

“All right,” Krewls said. “I guess I get to road test my new ride to see what I got under the hood before the big show begins.”

Krewls uncuffed M.D. and then Night Train. Both stood.

Night Train, three inches taller, seventy pounds heavier, stepped nose-to-nose with McCutcheon.

“I'm gonna fuck you up.”

“I don't have a beef with you.”

“You will in a sec.”

“I don't want to fight,” M.D. said in a calm and tranquil voice. “We do not have to do this.”

“Shit, if I were you, I wouldn't want to fight me either,” Night Train said. “Prepare to meet Smith and Wesson.”

Night Train rolled his neck in a wide circle, raised his fists, and kissed each of his biceps one at a time. Fifteen seconds later, he lay crumpled on the intake room's floor, blood
running from his nose and mouth, the center of his face looking as if he'd been smashed in the middle of his grille by a metal pipe.

Muscles without speed were like birds without wings for M.D.: nothing but target practice.

Krewls rubbed his chin. He'd seen a lot of prison fights in his time, but this kind of quickness, strength, and precision? The major smiled. “You gonna make me some genuine
cash-o-la, ain't you?”

M.D. spit, sat back down, and reminded himself yet again that he'd only come to the D.T. for one reason, and it wasn't to assassinate the High Priest. His aim was to save Kaitlyn.
Nothing else mattered. He owned a plan to do it, too. A plan that did not involve murdering D'Marcus Rose. But he hadn't shared it with anybody. Not Puwolsky. Not Stanzer. Not
Krewls.

They weren't the only ones who could scheme, he figured.

Unconscious on the floor, Night Train, in a pool of his own blood, spasmed. McCutcheon hadn't wanted to hurt him. He didn't want to hurt anybody on purpose. Not ever again. It went
against his code. But seeing the guy not named Timmy get his head kicked in would have been like driving past a car accident with a pregnant lady trapped inside a burning vehicle, without stopping
to help. He simply had to stop it.

McCutcheon reflected on the fact that his entire identity now revolved around helping those who could not help themselves. It had become his life's mission. This is why he knew that
despite Stanzer's words, he felt the colonel would never completely abandon him, no matter what happened with Puwolsky. McCutcheon wasn't stupid enough to fully trust a man who could
not be trusted. Yet he knew in his heart he could trust Stanzer.

There was just no way, M.D. told himself, that Stanzer would simply forget about his prize young soldier and cut him loose. M.D. had done too much good work, proved himself too talented, shown
too much of his deep value as an asset to the program. Sure, Stanzer may have been a salty prick at times, but the guy was loyal.

McCutcheon felt confident that if push came to shove, and things went sideways with Puwolsky, he always could count on his colonel. Even if his colonel had led him to believe otherwise.

“Don't get too comfy, sugar pies,” Krewls said as two guards wearing rubber gloves to protect themselves from blood hoisted Night Train up, lifting him by his Smith and
Wessons. “A few more minutes and then it's off to your new home.”

A few more minutes, M.D. thought, and the mission inside the mission would begin.

“S
trip!”

McCutcheon yanked his shirt over his head, removed his shoes, and took off his pants. After stepping out of his underwear he waited for his next directive.

“Bend and lift your sack.” The correctional officer's direct, impersonal tone communicated two different messages at the same time. Message one:
Do what I say and we will
not have a problem.
Message two:
If you do not do what I say I will use force to resolve our problem.

McCutcheon knew there was no point in fighting with the guards, so he complied and bent over. Entirely naked, his bare feet pressed against a cool floor, the officer probed M.D.'s rectum
with a cold, gloved hand. At most state penitentiaries, a visual inspection was more than enough for inmates just entering lockup, but at the D.T. the guards always probed. Not for extra security
but in order to flex their power. The D.T. operated on a “no negotiation” policy, which meant that if an officer was ever taken hostage in a riot situation, the institution would refuse
to bargain with the prisoners in order to secure an officer's release.

No negotiation. One hundred percent of the time. All the guards who worked at Jentles knew this stood as an absolute. This meant that all of the guards who worked at Jentles also knew that each
and every convict who crossed through their front gate might be the man who one day takes his life.

Establishing an upper hand right from the very start became a psychological tool to help ensure compliance.

As the guard searched McCutcheon's anus for contraband that he knew didn't exist, M.D. reminded himself once again that his greatest enemy from this point forward would be his own
mind. The system would seek to dehumanize him, mentally break him down in order to get him to submit like a tamed animal to the will of their sick, deranged culture.
No matter what
, M.D.
vowed to himself,
I cannot let this happen
. As an institution the D.T. turned men into beasts and beasts into savages.

McCutcheon would determine who McCutcheon would become. No one else.

“Spray.”

M.D. straightened up tall, lifted his arms and the guard blasted him with a stream of delousing vapors.

“Turn,” the guard ordered. M.D. did as instructed, spun, and closed his eyes. The second blast of disinfectant sent fumes into his nostrils that caused his eyes to water and his
cheeks to burn, while leaving the taste of stale copper pennies in his mouth.

“Dress.” The guard ripped his blue rubber gloves off of his hands and tossed them in the trash. Though the state employee felt no sympathy for McCutcheon, McCutcheon felt a moment of
sympathy for the guard. This officer was a man whose career consisted of looking into the anal cavities of society's lawbreakers. And he acted as such. His compassion for prisoners had
vanished long ago. To M.D., an ass search felt personal; to the staff member, it was just another day at the office.

Life had beaten him down.

McCutcheon deposited the civilian clothing he'd worn to Jentles into a clear plastic bag, and then slipped on a pair of white boxers and a T-shirt that smelled of cheap soap and bleach.
Next he put on a navy-blue prison jumpsuit with a thick orange stripe running across the shoulders, which sported a patch that said
INMATE
on the back. Though the black
letters had no significant mass, McCutcheon could feel their weight. A pair of starched white socks, a pair of laceless orange slip-on shoes, and the ensemble was complete. Once Motor Mouth,
Banger, and the guy not named Timmy had gone through their cavity search and re-clothing process, the four men were fingerprinted, photographed, given a bagged lunch, and returned to the intake
room to await transport.

None of them had eaten in hours. M.D. opened his sack. A sandwich, an apple, and a cookie. McCutcheon loved apples. Crisp, crunchy ones. But the mealy, soft ones that had no snap grossed him
out.

As soon as his finger made contact with the fruit's skin, M.D. knew he wouldn't be eating it. The squashy, red lump of bruised mush didn't even deserve to be called an apple.
M.D. tossed the inedible red oval back in the bag, fumbled past a cookie he knew he wouldn't touch, and hoped the sandwich might offer some protein that would prove chewable.

The cellophane wrapper described it as
TURKEY ON WHITE
, but after McCutcheon opened it up he thought a better description would be
FATTY RUBBER ON
FOAM
. Not starving due to the raw almonds he'd smartly snacked on before departing, he closed the bag.

“Want my cookie?”

M.D. raised his eyes. The guy not named Timmy was holding out his dessert.

“Keep it,” M.D. said. “And keep your spirits up, too. Gonna be rough on all of us in there. Remember, your spirit is your strength.”

“Thanks,” the guy not named Timmy said. McCutcheon set his bag down on the chair next to him, figuring if he got too hungry later on he'd suck down the mustard package for
energy.

“It's go time, sugar pies!”

M.D. took a deep breath and centered himself. Though already harrowing, his journey into the penitentiary was just at its beginning.

A white metal door with blots of orange rust peppering the frame screeched open, and McCutcheon crossed into the main detention area of the D.T. He'd expected the prison to smell bad,
serve horrible food, and host rats, roaches, and lice. What he hadn't expected was the noise. Prisons were hard, tough places built with hard, tough materials designed to lock away hard,
tough people, and Jentles sounded exactly that way.

Whenever architects constructed a home, a school, or a library, they took acoustics into consideration. Whenever architects designed a lockup facility, their aim was containment. No one cared
about the way sound bounced off the walls; preventing society's scum from escaping was all that ever mattered, and when it came to keeping the rabbits corralled, no facility in the nation
owned a better record than the D.T.

Not a single inmate had escaped from Jentles in the last fifty-five years, the longest current streak in America. Trying to break out was virtually impossible, and it had even become a running
joke among the cons.

Only two ways out of the D.T.: front-door parole or back-door parole. Front-door parole means you get your walking papers. Back-door parole means the morgue truck. Ain't no third
option.

Rabbits, the slang word prisoners use to describe jailbreak artists, had no chance once they arrived at the D.T. “Aw, look at the lil' bit of sweetness we got right here,” a
shirtless, tatted-up prisoner yelped out as a guard escorted the four new fish down the central corridor. “Hey, honey bunch, you got plans later tonight?”

McCutcheon ignored the catcalls and kept his eyes straight ahead, one foot in front of the other, alert, focused, and present. Behind him Motor Mouth waved hello and gave shoutouts to old
friends, while Banger, forced to take two small steps to every one the guard took due to his leg chains, dragged his feet. As for the guy not named Timmy, M.D. hoped he could keep his eyes in his
head, his face expressionless, and his ears tuned out to all the chatter on the cell block.

He couldn't. McCutcheon glanced over his shoulder and his insides melted. He could feel the guy not named Timmy's fear from fifteen feet away.

As could every other man in the institution.

“Yo Bug, give that one to me.”

“I see me some dinner.”

“Somebody gonna split that boy like a wishbone.”

“Keep it moving, keep it moving,” the guard ordered to the guy not named Timmy. But it was too late. Not five minutes in and he'd already shown his cards. All those weeks of
preparation that his father paid so much money for were down the drain.

Convicted felons who've circulated through the penal system a few times knew that one of the worst things about entering a new facility was the cellmate lottery a prisoner faced upon
arrival. Would your new cellie be a serial killer? An unpredictable psycho? A son-of-a-bitch suffering from some kind of untreated mental illness? Lockup saw all kinds. Self-mutilators who try to
hurt themselves so that their physical pain drowned out their emotional devastation. Gassers who took shits in their own hands, and then smeared it across their own bodies or threw feces at the
guards. Most feared, however, was the bull homosexual, the prison wolf on the prowl for fresh meat. Two grown men. One small cell. For the weak, things could get ugly fast.

Of course, inmates didn't come with warning labels stapled to their foreheads. Some had a short temper. Some loved pain. Some were just plain bad. Even an average size, average looking
con, who appeared steady, calm, and rational could quickly turn out to be the most homicidal man on the cell block. The stress of incarceration ate psyches like termites ate wood, rapaciously and
with no quarter. Everyone was damaged. Everyone was unpredictable. Everyone was a threat.