1
Colorado, USA, Present Day
The dry desert air of the southern Colorado highlands moved quickly across the landscape. Warmed by the Chinook winds blowing over the eastern side of the Rockies, locals sometimes called these winds the snowkillers, because their dry, warm air melted airborne snow before it even had a chance to settle on the ground.
Carlos Mercado felt the wind on his face as he glanced up at the prison walls and watched the sky. Some looked here for evidence of God, but not this man. Today he had put his faith in something far more prosaic, but there was still no sign of his salvation anywhere in the clear blue sky, and time was getting on.
Just like his chances of getting killed. Standing here, surrounded by killers, he knew he was living on borrowed time. He had enemies. Lots of them, and they knew how to reach him, even here. The idea of fighting to stay alive for the rest of his life frightened even him, the big man. Not that he would ever tell anyone that. He tried to work out exactly what to call a place that did this to you. He decided hell, but it didn’t matter what he called it. The United States Government called it Florence ADX, the highest security prison in the country.
This was his first year of a life sentence for murder and drug trafficking. Both him and his brother Miguel Mercado had gone down at the same trial. At least they were together, but he wasn’t a young man; whatever life he had left sure as shit wasn’t going to be spent in this hellhole. As the second in command of one of Mexico’s most dangerous cartels, he had become accustomed to a certain way of life, and a certain standard of living. He had discovered that the US prison service didn’t care about any of that. Here, he was just another inmate.
With whatever privileges he could get out of certain guards and nothing more.
One of which was paying for access to the roof, where he now stood out of sight of the watchtowers and gazed out across the Colorado horizon. Out to the west, across the plain beyond Coal Creek and over to the Wet Mountains, he watched a fat red sun sinking into a silky ribbon of ink-colored clouds.
But still no sign of his delivery from this hell.
“They’re not coming. They screwed us over.”
Carlos sensed his brother’s fear and raised a hand. “Patience, Mico. They’ll be here. We have been loyal to Tarántula and he will not forsake us.”
“I hope you are right, Los.”
But what if his brother was right, and they had been double-crossed? What if this was just an elaborate ruse to coax them out of the safe places they burned up their time in, and out into the yard, out into the open? Could Tarántula really be trusted? They had kept quiet at the trial and protected him, but they still knew enough to lock up their notorious boss for a hundred years. Maybe he had decided to have them silenced forever?
He scanned the faces of the other prisoners out on exercise time. Most were tattooed, some almost completely. Many had thick scars on their faces. Some looked almost normal, just like the man who laundered their money for them back in Mexico City.
But they all had murder in their eyes.
As if his will had moved them, three men from the corner of the yard turned and walked in his direction. He nudged Miguel in the ribs. “You know those guys?”
Miguel shook his head and took a step in front of his older brother. “No, they’re nothing to do with me. They’re pulling knives. I think this is the end, brother. Tarántula has ordered our executions to protect himself from the law. But we fight all the way down.”
“It’s the end all right, Mico, but not for us.” Carlos nudged his chin into the sky behind Miguel. “Our ride is here.”
“Really? I don’t see it.”
A tiny speck on the horizon grew larger until it slowly turned into a helicopter. It descended until it was barely a few feet off the ground, but still flying at full-speed. A spiralling wake of peach-colored dust billowed out behind the aircraft as it raced across the arid highlands to the west of the prison.
“I told you Tarántula would not betray us. Our loyalty to him is being repaid.”
Up on the wall, just outside one of the watchtowers, a guard saw the chopper rapidly approaching the prison and ran inside to hit the alarm. The siren screamed out across the yard and the prisoners were ordered inside. Most turned and walked toward the main building, but Carlos, Miguel and the three men with knives ignored the order.
“The assassins are still coming for us, brother,” Miguel said. “Whoever they are.”
“Then they are fools.”
The chopper flashed over the prison’s western perimeter and hovered above the yard. Guards were now all over the outer walls, backed-up by other officers armed with more powerful rifles on the roof of the main building. They opened fire on the chopper, but they were badly outgunned.
The helicopter spun around and a man wearing a bandana, sitting behind an M134 Minigun sprayed a brutal burst of fire at the armed guards now taking up a defensive position on the roof, cutting them to shreds. The guards gasped, dropped their rifles and clutched their chests. The wounds were fatal. They tumbled over the railing at the top of the watchtower and smashed into the ground face-first.
Across the yard on the outer wall, the other prison officers never flinched, but their
