Jack Mars - Oppose Any Foe

Brown nearly laughed. He shook his head. “You know something, Jamal? You crack me up. You and your religion are a joke. Do I want to pray? Pray to what? There is no God, and you’ll find that out as soon as you – ”

Brown saw fire lick the end of the gun’s barrel. Then he was flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the warehouse high above his head.

9:45 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time (11:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

Florence ADX Federal Penitentiary (Supermax) – Florence, Colorado

“This is it,” the guard said. “Home sweet home.”

Luke walked the white cinderblock hallways of the most secure prison in the United States. The two tall, heavyset guards in brown uniforms flanked him. They were nearly identical, these guards, with military recruit-style crew cuts, big shoulders and arms, and even bigger midsections. They moved along, their bodies stiff and top-heavy, like offensive linemen from a football team who had been out of the sport for a while.

They were not fit in any traditional sense of that word, but Luke mused that they were the perfect size and shape for their jobs. In close quarters, they could put a lot of weight on a resistant prisoner.

Footfalls echoed on the stone floor as the three men passed the closed, windowless steel doors of dozens of cells. Each cell door had a narrow opening near the bottom, like a mail slot, through which the guards could shove meals to the prisoners. Each also had two small windows with steel-reinforced glass facing the walkway. Luke didn’t glance into any of the windows they passed.

Somewhere on this hallway, a man was screaming. It sounded like agony. It went on and on, no sign of ending. It was night, soon it would be lights out, and a man was shrieking. Luke thought he could almost make out words embedded in the sound.

He glanced at one of the guards.

“He’s okay,” the guard said. “Really. He’s not in any pain. He just howls like that.”

The other guard chimed in. “The solitude drives some of them insane.”

“Solitude?” Luke said. “You mean isolation?”

The guard shrugged. “Yeah.” It was semantics to him. He went home at the end of his shift. Ate at Denny’s, by the looks of him, and chatted the people up. He wore a wedding band on the ring finger of his thick left hand. He had a wife, probably kids. The man had a life outside these walls. The prisoners? Not so much.

A who’s who of rogues and baddies had stayed here, Luke knew. The Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was a current resident, as was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother of the two Boston Marathon bombers. The mob boss John Gotti had lived here for years, as had his violent enforcer, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano.

It was a breach of facility rules to allow Luke past the visiting room, but it wasn’t exactly visiting hours, and this was a special case. A prisoner here had intelligence to offer, but he insisted on seeing Luke personally – not on a telephone with a thick glass partition between them, but face to face, and man to man, in the cell. The President of the United States herself had asked Luke to take this meeting.

They came to a stop in front of a white door, one among many. Luke felt his heart skip a beat. He was nervous, just a little bit. He didn’t try to catch a glimpse of the man through the tiny windows. He didn’t want to see him that way, like a mouse living in a shoebox. He wanted the man to be legendary, larger than life.

“It’s my duty to inform you,” one of the guards began, “that the prisoners here are considered among the most violent and dangerous currently in the United States federal corrections system. If you choose to enter this cell and you decline personal…”

Luke raised a hand. “Save it. I know the risks.”

The guard shrugged again. “Suit yourself.”

“For the record, I don’t want this conversation recorded,” Luke said.

“All cells are filmed by surveillance cameras twenty-four hours a day,” the guard said now. “But there is no audio.”

Luke nodded. He didn’t believe a word of it. “Good. I’ll scream if I need any help.”

The guard smiled. “We won’t hear it.”

“Then I’ll wave frantically.”

Both guards laughed. “I’ll be down the end of the hall,” one of them said. “Bang on the door when you want to come out again.”

The door clanged as it unlocked, then slid open of its own accord. Somewhere, someone was indeed watching them.

As the door slid away, it revealed a tiny, dismal cell. The first thing Luke noticed was the metal toilet. It had a water faucet at the top of it, an odd combination, but one which made logical sense, he supposed. Everything else was made of stone, and in a fixed location. A narrow stone desk extended from the cinderblock wall, with a rounded stone stool like a small peg coming out of the floor in front of it.

The desk was piled with papers, a few books, and four or five stubby pencils like the ones golfers use to keep score. Like the desk, the bed was narrow and made of stone. A thin mattress covered it and there was one green blanket that looked to be made of wool serge, or some equally itchy material. There was a narrow window in the far wall, framed in green, perhaps two feet tall and six inches wide. It was dark outside that window, except for a sickly yellow light that streamed into the cell from a nearby sodium arc lamp mounted on the outside wall. There was no way to cover the window.

The prisoner stood in an orange jumpsuit, his broad back to them.

“Morris,” the guard said. “Here’s your visitor. Do me a favor and don’t kill him.”

Don Morris, former United States Army colonel and Delta Force commander, founder and former director of the FBI Special Response Team, turned around slowly. His face seemed more lined than before and his salt and pepper hair had gone entirely white. But his eyes were deep-set, sharp, and alert, and his chest, arms, legs, and shoulders looked as strong as they ever had.

His mouth made something almost like a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Luke,” he said. “Thanks for coming. Welcome to my home. Eighty-seven square feet, approximately seven and a half by twelve.”

“Hi, Don,” Luke said. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

“Last chance to change your mind,” one of the guards said behind him.

Luke shook his head. “I think I’ll be okay.”

Don’s eyes fell upon the guards. “You know who this man is, don’t you?”

“We do. Yes.”

“Then I guess,” Don said, “you can imagine how little danger I present to him.”

The door clanged shut. Luke had a moment, as they stared at each other across the cell – he might call it nostalgia. Don had been his commanding officer and his mentor in Delta. When Don started the Special Response Team, he had hired Luke as his first agent. In a lot of ways, and for more than ten years, Don had been like a father to him.

But not anymore. Don had been one of the plotters in the conspiracy to kill the President of the United States and take over the government. He’d been complicit in the kidnapping of Luke’s own wife and child. He’d had foreknowledge of the bombing that killed more than three hundred people at Mount Weather. Don was facing the death penalty, and Luke couldn’t think of anyone more worthy of that fate.

The two men shook hands, and Don placed a hand on Luke’s shoulder, just for a second. It was an awkward gesture by a man no longer accustomed to human contact. Luke knew that Supermax prisoners rarely touched another human being.

“Thanks for all the visits you’ve made and the letters you’ve sent,” Don said. “It’s been a comfort to know my welfare is such a priority for you.”