This is about me, not them.'
'Okay.' He leaned close to Stone and whispered in his ear. 'But they still managed to follow me up here.'
'You're sure? You saw them?'
'Not exactly, but it couldn't have been anyone else. At least the chick is up here. Susan, not that that's her real name. Pretty sure she spun a story at a local diner that almost got my ass handed to me.'
'If she did, it was only out of friendship to me, Knox. She's not worth going after. You've got me. That's all Hayes wants anyway.'
'But still, you think they might figure out we ended up in here?'
'I'm not sure because even I can't believe we're here.'
Knox slapped his hand against the hard wall. 'So how do you think they're running a drug op from a supermax prison?'
'Haven't gotten that all figured out yet. But it's not like they have to worry about witnesses. They sort of have a
'And the prisoners might not even know. But I guess all the guards are in on it.'
'That's not necessarily true,' said Stone thoughtfully.
'Why?'
'There was one guard who used to work here. He was killed in a deer hunting accident that I don't think was so accidental. His name was Josh Coombs and I believe he stumbled onto what was going on here and paid the price for it.'
'Coombs? Also the name of the folks who got blown up.'
'Yeah. Willie knew Debby Randolph hadn't killed herself. His mom's in on it, I'm pretty sure. They used her to try and kill him with an overdose. When that didn't work, they went for essentially a homegrown IED.'
'Mother killing her own son?'
'In a town called Divine. Yeah.'
The door to the cell was hit with a massive blow. Both men staggered to their feet and backed away.
'Shut up in there!' a man screamed through the door.
'Okay, we're shutting up,' Knox said.
'I said shut up, assholes.'
Knox and Stone said nothing, just stared at the door.
'One more word and we're extracting your asses.'
Silence.
'Okay, you asked for it. Walk over to the cuffing slot, turn around and extend your hands through the opening. Now!'
Stone and Knox looked at each other. Stone went first, extending his hands through the slot with his back facing the door. He was cuffed hard, his bony wrists slammed together and cut by the edge of the slot. Then Knox did the same.
'Now move away from the door,' the same voice barked.
Knox and Stone retreated to the back of the cell.
The door was opened and what happened next was only a blur.
Five body-armored men with face masks poured in carrying two huge inch-thick Plexiglas shields. They hit Knox and Stone hard, slamming them against the stone wall. Pepper spray hit them both in the eyes, even as Taser shots paralyzed them. They went down, wanting to claw at their eyes, but with limbs electrified stiff as a corpse
Picked up again, they were carried to a room that had two steel slabs covered in what looked to be urine and feces. They were smashed down on these hard cots and put in five-point restraints. Before the guards left they were Tasered once more.
'What the hell was that for?' Knox managed to scream as the current pounded him.
A guard with one stripe on his sleeve hit him in the mouth with his fist. 'Not obeying orders. This ain't like other prisons, old man. This is Dead Rock. Don't know what prison you come from but you get no warnings up here, boy. No damn warnings. And just so's you know, I can Taser your ass just for the hell of it. 'Cause my old lady didn't blow me, or 'cause my dog shit on the rug.'
'I work for the CIA.'
'Sure you do. Hey, fellows, we got us a spy right here. Bet your friend is KGB.'
He walked to the next slab and smacked Stone in the face. 'You KGB, Grandpa?' The guard reached a gloved hand down to Stone's crotch and squeezed. 'I asked you a question, old man.'
Stone didn't say anything; he just looked at the guard, remembering every detail of his face through the clear mask. And he suddenly recognized him too. He was one of the men with the baseball bats who'd beaten up Danny and then come after him. This was the third one, the coward who'd run for it, but Stone had still managed to nail him in the back with one of the bats.
'You ever tell your buddies you ran out on them?' he said quietly as the Taser sting wore off.
The guard gave a nervous, hollow laugh under the burn of Stone's gaze, glanced at the other guards and took his hand away. As he was leaving the room with the other guards, Stone managed, despite the restraints, to turn his head just enough to keep his eyes on the fellow. Then the door closed.
'I guess they're trying to break us quick,' groaned Knox.
'They'll have to work harder.'
'You think so, do you?'
'Yeah, I do.'
Something in his voice made Knox glance over at him. 'Were you ever a POW?'
'Six months. This place is actually pretty nice compared to what the Viet Cong thought was humane. All I had there was a pit with a sheet over it, beatings whenever they felt like it, along with an interrogation technique that would make waterboarding seem like dunking for apples. And the food they threw down once a day would not be considered edible by any stretch of the imagination.'
'But we're not twenty years old anymore, Carr.'
'Call me Oliver, Carr is dead.'
'Okay, but we're still not twenty.'
'It's all in the mind, Knox. It's all in the mind. If we don't believe they can break us they never will.'
'Yeah, sure,' Knox said, clearly unconvinced of this.
'You got any family?'
'Son and daughter. My boy's in the Marines stationed in the Middle East. My daughter's a lawyer in D.C.'
'I had a daughter. But she died. How about your wife?'
'Dead.'
'So's mine.'
' Brunswick, Georgia? Claire?'
Stone didn't say anything.
'Guy named Harry Finn said that Simpson admitted to having her killed. That he ordered a CIA hit on you and your family.'
Stone stared at the ceiling, slowly flexing his limbs against the thick leather bindings. 'Harry's a good guy. Knows how to cover your back.'
'I'm sorry about your family… Oliver,' he murmured.
'Get some sleep, Knox. Just get some sleep. You're going to need it.'
Stone closed his eyes.
A few minutes later an exhausted Joe Knox did the same.
CHAPTER 64
