Warlord

THIRTY-EIGHT

GOOD AFTERNOON, SERGEANT. I'm Detective Michelle Garcia, Palm Beach PD."

"Afternoon, Detective Garcia," the short, doughy-looking corrections guy said, making a big show of looking at his watch. "Three fifteen. 'Specting you a little earlier, Detective. This your prisoner, here, John T. Smoke?"

"Yes, this is Mr. Smoke. I am putting him in your custody."

"My friends call me 'Smokehouse,'" Stoke said to the corrections officer in the voice he dredged up from the bottom. "I better not ever hear you say that name."

"All this boy's paperwork in order?" the guy said, ignoring Stoke. Like he got shit from cons all the time, rolled off his back like swamp water off an iguana.

The corrections officer had a khaki gut pouring over his black leather utility belt and a thick redneck accent, and Stoke hated him on sight. His name, according to the cheap plastic tag, J. T. Swoon. Hell kind of name was Swoon? Sounded like folks who married cousins to Stoke, people who lived in "hollers."

"Paperwork right here," Michelle said, and handed him a Palm Beach PD manila envelope with the name "John D. Smoke" printed on it in large letters. Swoon took out a sheaf of papers, glanced through them quickly, and nodded his head.

"Looks like it's all in purty good order, Detective. 'Less there's anything further I need to know about this here prisoner, I can begin processing this boy right now and you can skedaddle on back to the beach. Keep that nice tan a yours goin'."

Michelle rolled her eyes, gave Stoke a sweet look that said, Sorry about this asshole, I get this all the time, don't worry about it. She gave him a quick smile, turned around, and left before her face gave anything away.

"For some damn reason or other," the sergeant drawled when all the paperwork was done, "I can't lock you up yet. A suit over to the Admin Building has asked to see you. Something about a murder you allegedly committed up in Statesville, Georgia? A state trooper? You remember anything about that, boy? No? I'm talkin' to you, Smokehouse."

"I ain't got nothin' to say to you, cracker. Let's just get this over with."

"You call me 'cracker'?"

"You call me 'boy'?"

"You lookin' at hard time here, boy, that I can gar-an-tee. Hacks in here don't cotton to smart mouths. Sit your ass down over there on that bench. Guard'll be here momentarily to escort you over there-here he is now. Hey, Squirrel."

"Hey, J. T. This the one goin' over to Admin?"

"Yep, that's him. Calls himself Smokehouse. He's a big 'un, ain't he, Squirrel? You watch your damn ass with this one, son. Got a mouth on him, too."

"Les' go, boy," Squirrel said, and Stoke got to his feet.

The hot, humid air outside felt like a blast furnace. Miami, compared to the swampy Everglades, is Juneau in January. It was a long ten-minute walk over to the Admin Building and Stoke was soaked to the skin when they arrived. He was amazed at the size of the prison complex. It was shaped like a wheel, with cell blocks hanging off the end of each spoke. In the center of the hub was the ugly three-story building he was now entering.

They crossed the small lobby and took an elevator to the third floor. The guard, short, round, with a walrus moustache that obscured the lower half of his face, never said a word, which was just fine with Stoke. When the doors slid open, a big-bellied man in a short-sleeved white shirt and loud tie said, "I'll take over from here, Squirrel."

Squirrel gave this prison administrator his best shit-eating grin and said, "Looking good, sir. Like 'at tie yer wearin'. Sharp." It was obvious Squirrel didn't get a whole lot of face time at Admin, and when the doors closed on him, he was still smiling.

Warden Robb had a pretty brunette secretary in a tight pink sweater plucking at a computer just outside his office, but the warden himself was standing in the open doorway and motioned Stoke inside as soon as he appeared.

"Please come in," he said to Stoke, and went back into his office. The secretary swiveled her chair and looked up at Stoke as he passed. She looked like one of those tourists in New York, the first time they see the Empire State Building. They crane their heads back and back and just keep bending backward until they can see all the way to the top.

"You want to close the door, Mr. Jones?"

"Sure," Stoke said, and did.

"Well, I'm not going to say welcome to the Glades, but welcome to the Glades, sir."

"I appreciate that."

"Afraid I got some bad news for you, though."

"My friend Sharkey?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hurt? Dead?"

"Not dead. But it was close. He's over in the prison hospital. Sit down, will you? Pull that chair up."

"What happened, Warden?" Stoke said, sitting, silently condemning himself for not getting here sooner.

"Y'know, Mr. Jones, I been worried about that boy ever since he got here. Nice Cuban kid with a big smile. I had one of my most trusted guards keeping an eye on him. His name is Figg. Orson Figg. You remember that name if you find yourself in real trouble in here. He's the only guard you can trust and he knows who you are and why you're here."

"And my friend? What happened?"

"Yesterday, bunch of 'em Aryans caught him alone out in the yard. Before we could break it up, they'd stabbed him twenty-two times. Ice picks, mostly, couple of shiv wounds."

"Jesus."

"Amazing thing? By the time we'd ripped those goddamn White Aryans off him, he was still on his feet. Boy just wouldn't go down. Damnedest thing I ever saw."

"Sharkey?"

"One tough little rooster, I'd say. Wouldn't let anybody help him walk inside from the yard, neither. Shooed 'em all away. He just kept puttin' one foot in front of the other till he got inside, blood spurting from all those fresh holes in him. Once he was inside, out of sight of the population? Hell, he collapsed on the floor, unconscious."

"Can I see him?"

"Of course, but I'd wait. Get the inmates' attention you go see him first thing you get here. Word spreads like wildfire in here. Right about now, everybody in here's gabbing about the Statie you allegedly killed up in Claxton, Georgia. I'll get word to you when I think it's okay to visit. Don't worry about him, Mr. Jones. He'll recover. He just lost a helluva lot of blood out there in the yard, but no organs or major blood vessels were punctured."

"Thank you for taking care of him."

"These are my people in here, Mr. Jones. You wouldn't know it half the time, way they act, but they are. I know why you're in here, by the way, and I can tell you you're not a minute too soon either."

"How's that?"

"This Sword of Allah? Ones that blew up Jackson Memorial here a month or so back? Escapees? They got something big in the works. That's the hack grapevine anyhow."

"Bigger than Jackson?"

"Jackson Memorial was just practice, according to what I hear. Big, that's all I know. Something on a massive scale. I had a paid informant inside the Swords till about six months ago when he ended up dead. Wish to hell I knew more. Maybe you can find out, Mr. Jones. Nobody else can."

"That's why I'm here."

"You look like you can handle yourself."

"Still alive, anyway. That's something, I guess. I need to get inside the Sword. Get close to senior management, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah. But you got to let them come after you. You go after them, they get suspicious."

"Done this before, but thanks for the advice."

"Sounds right. Now, listen up. There's one inmate in here you definitely need to watch out for. Guy who controls the White Aryan Nations in the state of Florida. This boy is a three-hundred-pound ripped gorilla of a man, kickboxing, tai chi, karate, what have you, spends every waking moment pumping iron, a cunning psychopath who calls himself 'Bonecrusher.'"

"He one of the ones who stabbed my friend?"

The warden laughed. "Bonecrusher? Naw. Man doesn't operate that way. He's a specialist. He likes to break your back or your neck or both legs, or all three and then set your ass on fire, watch you fry. He knows he'll never get out of here alive and he don't mind the hole much, so he pretty much acts accordingly."

Stoke smiled.

"Warden, I'm not interested in the Aryan Nation. What I do need to know is who I need to get close to inside Sword of Allah? Who sits at the top of the pyramid? Who can tell me things I need to know in a way that I can believe what I'm hearing?"

"Good questions. The guy everyone thinks runs the Swords is a big mean sumbitch calls himself 'Ishtar.' The real brains belong to one of our beloved Gitmo transferees named Sheik Shiraz. Pakistani. Blew up that Israeli embassy in 2002. Smart little bastard, everybody calls him the imam. Talks like Yoda in Star Wars, know what I mean? Riddles. Very polite. All kinds of degrees from Islam U. or Islam you ain't. You get tight with the little guy, earn his trust, you have earned your government salary times ten, believe me."

"One more question, Warden, and I'll go to my cell and settle in and get comfy. Bottom line, what the hell do these people in here want? These Islamic fanatics? Call attention to their cause? Terrorize and intimidate our country's citizens? What? What is the Sword's ultimate objective?"

"Hell, that's an easy one. Kill Americans, Mr. Jones. Kill us like they did down at Jackson Memorial, kill our allies the Brits like they did at Heathrow airport a year or so back. They hate our country, our people, our way of life, and everything it stands for. And this is pure hatred with a passion that is almost inconceivable to ordinary people like you and me. They want to bring us to our knees, Mr. Jones."

"And they are everywhere."

"That's right. And then they want to cut our heads off with the Sword of Allah. If that's not enough, they want to die doing it."

"How about we begin at the end of their wish list, don't you think, Warden? They die doing it. That sounds good. Then we work our way backward from there? Start with that Fort Hood asshole. One who had Post-Traumatic Mass Murder Syndrome 'cause everybody was mean to him. Start with him."

The warden laughed, locking eyes with the big black man.

"I don't know you, sir. But by God I'm glad you're here. For whatever crazy personal reasons you may have for doing this, I can only say I admire your-"

"Called duty, Warden. Only thing worth living or dying for. Friend of mine named Alex Hawke taught me that a long, long time ago."

STOKE WAS IN CELLBLOCK D, the most secure of all the close custody wings at the Glades. It was also where the Sword of Allah members were housed. Keep the cancer contained as much as possible. It was a long, long walk to his cell, shuffling along in the ankle bracelets, and the wrist bracelets, and the little flip-flop slippers he wore with his bright orange prison garb.

"Open eight!" one of his two guards shouted, and the cell door slid back with a bang. They sat him down on his bunk and took off the ankle bracelets. They left the wrist cuffs on and sauntered back outside, waiting for the cell door to slam shut. The guards ruled the joint with a piratical swagger, Stoke saw, and a solid grasp of the principles of intimidation.

"Close eight!" the hack said, and motioned for Stoke to put his hands through the food tray slot. He did, and they removed his handcuffs. After they'd walked away, Stoke sat back down on the bunk, rubbing his bruised wrists, taking inventory. He was supposed to have shared this cell with Sharkey. But he'd been a day late and one shiv short, and the sons of bitches had gotten to him. He lay back on the thin mattress and put his hands behind his head, thinking things over.

Lot of work to do in the joint.

Whole lot of work to do.

He reached into the small duffel he kept under his bunk. Inside a hollowed-out hardcover copy of Gravity's Rainbow, the thickest book he'd been able to find at the used bookstore, was a shiv made out of a sharpened spoon and the melted plastic of seven toothbrushes, just like the one he'd made and given to Sharkey. In another big, hollow book, The Teeth of the Tiger, by Tom Clancy, one thousand dollars in twenties and hundreds.

He felt around inside the bag and pulled out his dog-eared copy of the Koran. He'd been reading it religiously every night since committing himself to incarceration in the Glades. He had a green highlighter and he was marking phrases he might just drop into the conversation if the opportunity presented itself, with Ishtar or one of his disciples.

The Koran was okay, a little harder to read and memorize than Bible scripture, though. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He'd remembered that psalm word for word since he memorized it when he was six years old. He said it a lot, when he was afraid, or even sad or lonely. It always helped. He thought all religions did that for people, and he'd really had a hard time finding the part in the Koran where it said hey, here's an idea, go out and murder innocent men, women, and children if you want a ticket to paradise.

Tonight, instead of reading silently to himself, he tried something a little different. Just in case anybody was listening, he recited the Muslim call to prayer in a loud whisper:

God is most great.

I testify that there is no god but God.

I testify that Muhammad is the Prophet of God.

Come to prayer.

Come to success.

God is most great.

There is no god but God.

He said it a few times, just to get the rhythm of it and let his words echo down the cell block. After a while he tired of religion and pulled out his paperback copy of The Dreadful Lemon Sky. That was the Travis McGee book he and Eddie's two-man book club was reading this week. What he liked most about it, Lemon Sky, as compared with the Koran, was you didn't have to underline or highlight anything.

You just got swept along by the master himself. There he goes, there's old Trav again, locking up the Busted Flush, setting the alarm, saying good-bye to his pal the Alabama Tiger, before going out on a knight's quest with Meyer, to find some poor woman's killer, after she showed up one night with ninety large and gave it to Trav for safekeeping. How's the Koran going to compete with literature like that? Or even the Bible for that matter? Luke, Matthew, and John-those guys put together couldn't hold a candle to John D. MacDonald.

He got to page fifty-one, couldn't keep his eyes open, his mind concentrated on all this advice all these fanatic Arab cats were all so hepped up about. He was open-minded, hell, he'd tolerate just about anything, but he couldn't see what these people, these radical Muslims, these al Qaeda and Taliban suicidal underpants-bombing maniacs, what had they ever, and he meant ever, done to deserve anybody's attention, much less respect.

Let's see, he said to himself, holding up his hand with all five fingers raised. Had they ever built a single road, dammed up a single river, dug a single well to produce one damn bucket of water? No. Generated one single watt of electricity, built a single car, plane, boat, train, bicycle, or skateboard? No. Two fingers down. Okay, had they funded a single bank, constructed a single home, manufactured a single lifesaving medicine, hell, even a single product, written a single Pulitzer Prize-winning article, or a novel? Nope. Three down. Or maybe even composed one single damn song, choreographed one damn dance? Nope. Four down. Won a single election or even given a piano recital in all of their whole, long, bloody history?

No. Five down.

They killed people, that's it.

Stoke made a solemn promise to himself, right there in his cell. If he could, as long as he was still able and strong, he'd kill them first. He'd find the heart and rip it out. At least before they could kill any more of his own people.

Remember America? Folks had plain forgotten what that word stood for.

People who had a justifiable right to be proud of what they'd done. People who'd broken Hitler's back. Freed countless millions from the Soviets. Got Gorby to tear down that effing Wall. People who'd tried to make the world a better place. Fed billions of starving people around the world. Built homes for ones lost in floods or fires. Sent billions and billions of dollars of food and medicine all over the world, took on the dictators who wanted nothing but power. Fought for the right stuff. Fought for freedom. For the right of every man, woman, and child to be free.

Independence.

That's what he was talking about.

He wasn't talking about religious or political nuts who just wanted to blow airplanes out of the sky or put six million Jews into the oven, gas all those Kurds just because they were Kurds. No. He was talking about plain old patriotic Americans, simple as that.

With those semi-deep thoughts very much on his mind, Stokely Jones edged nearer to sleep.

First night in the Glades, Stoke slept like a baby in his mama's arms.

Second and third nights, not so much.