Don Pendleton: Savannah Swingsaw

"My life story isn't any of your business, chump, so don't ask," he snapped, catching Bolan's stare.

"Right," Bolan said. He didn't have to ask.

He'd seen men like that before. And there was a look in the man's eyes, the kind of hidden pain recognizable only by someone who'd shared at least a glimmer of that pain. Bolan splashed some cold water on his eyes and turned to face the man in the wheelchair.

"Nam?"

The black frowned with surprise, nodding slowly.

"When?" Bolan asked.

"Sixty-six, near Saigon. We bulldozed some rubber plantations near the Cambodian border."

Bolan nodded. "Operation Cedar Falls."

"Yeah, that's right. You there?"

Bolan hesitated. He heard a hopeful note in the man's voice, but being in Nam wasn't part of the biographical file he and Brognola had created for Damon Blue. If there was going to be any chance at all of this, mission succeeding, he'd have to stick to the script. "Nah, I wasn't there. My brother had a friend. He yapped about it all the time."

"Sure," the man in the wheelchair said bitterly. "Everybody had a friend. Shit." He spun his chair around and wheeled forward to the bars. "Just stay outta my face, Blue."

"Fair enough. Only what's your name? I like to know whose face I'm staying out of."

The big man in the wheelchair kept his back to Bolan, his dead knees pressed against the bars. He didn't bother answering.

"Lyle Carrew," Gordon Schultz said.

He blew his nose into his napkin, then peeked into the napkin before crumpling it and tossing it onto his lunch tray. "That's his name. Shame about him being crippled and all."

Bolan shrugged, spooned more tomato soup into his mouth. The food wasn't too bad, no worse than most hospitals, but there wasn't enough of it. He'd finished his Salisbury steak and beet salad and had given Gordon Schultz two cigarettes for his soup and half a pack of crackers. The information came free.

Schultz stashed the smokes in his shirt pocket.

"Cripple or not," he went on, "the guy can handle himself. Saw him bust the arm of Billy Fieldstone last week. Young Billy's from down Folkston way, that's Okefenokee Swamp land, and he's got a bit of the KKK in his blood. Figured Carrew was an easy target. Learned different real fast."

"What's he in for?"

"Lyle?" Schultz smiled. "He's 'waitin' trial like us. Only he ain't as smart. At least you and me was just practicin' our trade, tryin' to make a buck. You holdin' up the liquor store, me a bank. But Lyle there..." Schultz chuckled "...he was just havin' fun. Tore up a whole wing of the V.A. hospital. Dumped files, beat up a doctor, scared the hell outta the nurses. Tossed a desk and a coupla TV'S from the eighth-floor window. Took four cops to cuff him. Not bad for a guy in a wheelchair."

Bolan stopped in midsip and looked across the room to where Lyle was eating at a table by himself.

"Has a temper, huh?"

"Damn straight. And that ain't the first time he tore that joint up. Last time he got thirty days. This time, I dunno. If he opens his smartass mouth to the judge...." Schultz shook his head to indicate it would be plenty of time. "They usually keep guys in wheelchairs in the infirmary, but Lyle put up such a fuss, you know, discrimination against the handicapped, that kinda crap, they stuck him in here with the rest of us. Some victory, huh?"

Bolan shrugged. "That's his problem, not mine. He's just my cellmate." He pointed his spoon at a table across the isle where Dodge Reed sat hunched over his ice tea looking frightened. He seemed even younger than in the photograph Hal Brognola had shown him. "What's the kid doing here? Mess up on some fraternity prank?"

"Him? That's, uh, Reed. Got some stupid first name, what is it? Chevy or Ford. Somethin' like that." Schultz laughed. "We got him coupla days ago from the downtown jail. Some kind of embezzlin' from a record store. Kid stuff. Well, he's going to do some growin' up real soon."

Bolan kept his voice bored, indifferent.

"Whaddya mean?"

"See that guy over there? The one with the bullet head and the tiny eyes."

Bolan followed Schultz's gaze to a tall lanky man stacking empty trays and glancing possessively at Reed. "Big fella."

"Yeah, about six-six. Strong, too. Name's Bertrand Stovell, but calls hisself Rodeo. He's let it known that the Reed kid is his."

Bolan studied Rodeo from across the room. There was the mean look in the eyes that Gus had talked about.

Tattooed snakes crawled out of each sleeve of his shirt and coiled around his wrists like bracelets. He was completely bald except for one six-inch tail of braided hair at his nape.

Reed glanced up from his tray once and saw Rodeo looking straight at him. Rodeo grinned, showing a set of brown, twisted teeth.

Reed frantically looked back into ice tea.

"Rodeo always get what he wants?" Bolan asked.

Schultz snickered. "Mostly. Hell, just look at him. This ain't no federal pen, Blue. Not the Big A or anythin', where they got your hard-core dopers and killers. This is county, mostly made up of nonviolent types who're just pullin' their time, smokin' a little weed now and then. But basically they're just tryin' to get as much good time as possible to get out. They don't want no hassles. Problem is, we got a hell of a lot more cons in Georgia than we got cells, so the Big A, that's the Atlanta pen, been sendin' their overflow here. Screwed everythin' up, man. Those guys got their own rules, their own way of doin' shit, man. The rest of us just stay outta their way. Rodeo wants the Reed kid, fine. Who's gonna stop him? There'll be more tomorrow. One thing this place ain't short on, it's residents."

It was never dark.

It was never quiet.

The lights were everywhere, the noise constant. The hardest part was never being alone. And never being alone meant never feeling safe. It was like being back in the war, but with no place to hide. No jungle underbrush, no heavy darkness.

Bolan's concentration on the problem of protecting Reed and planning their escape was never as complete as he liked because he was always watching his back, checking out any con who came within arm's reach as a potential attacker.

Yet he continued to fine-tune his battle plan, mingling with other cons, gathering information as only those who'd spent time here would know. Together with what he'd learned from Brognola and what he'd been able to observe himself, Bolan had a pretty accurate picture of the place. Most of the 825 residents were housed in larger cells-two thirty-eight-man dorms, a bunch of sixteen-man cells and a sprinkling of two-to-four-man cells, even a few one-man isolation cells. There were no jobs, but most of the cells had TV'S. Still, boredom was the prison's worst enemy, distorting every action, making every grumpy aside a cause for fighting. The atmosphere was tense.

And to make matters worse, the spillover from other prisons brought an even worse element.

The average stay at Fulton had been thirty days, now there were real hard-timers. Contraband had been minimal, now it was rampant. Violence had been under control, now they were imitating Atlanta's policy, where prisoners were killed on "contracts" up to $2,000.

Fulton was trying a few reforms to keep the less hardened cons from joining the hard-core punks.

More frequent visitation, more recreation. It wasn't working. The really bad guys, like Rodeo, had more power over the average con's life than the entire prison system. That was the first lesson anyone interested in survival learned. All Bolan had to do was sit in his cell, go to meals and smoke in the exercise yard, keeping a discreet distance from the others but staying close enough to keep an eye on Reed. The rest of the time he perfected his plan.