A few minutes later, they ducked in low under the clouds and slammed down hard on the runway. Lock lurched forward in his seat, the huge, bear-like Marshal sitting next to him putting out a beefy arm to prevent Lock’s head from banging the seat in front. The plane taxied to the far end of the runway and juddered to a halt.
As soon as the pilot had turned off the engines, Lock was hustled towards the front of the aircraft and down the steps, Ty behind him. Raw salt air mixed with a light mist as they were led towards two separate unmarked Toyota Land Cruisers. The vehicles skirted round Crescent City itself and headed north-east along Lake Earl Drive.
Lock sat alone in the back of the rear vehicle, minutes away from one of the most dangerous prisons in North America, suddenly glad that Carrie couldn’t see him. He’d called her from Jalicia’s office, hoping to get the answering machine, but she’d picked up on the third ring. He’d kept the details of his and Ty’s task as sketchy as possible. Witness protection. A five-day job. He’d said nothing about his reason for taking it on, or what it would actually entail.
He could tell that Carrie was doing her best to sound unconcerned.
‘So your trip to San Francisco was worth it then?’ she’d asked him.
‘Guess so,’ he’d said.
Lock had made a pact with Carrie that, despite her reporter’s instincts, she wouldn’t ask for too many details about his work unless he offered them up. And this was not a situation he thought it wise to tell her too much about.
There’d been an awkward silence.
‘Ryan, are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Why?’
‘I dunno, you sound distracted.’
‘It’s just been a long day is all.’
‘This job, do I have anything to worry about?’
‘No way. I’m gonna have Ty with me. We’ll be fine.’
‘OK then. So, see you in five days?’
‘Carrie?’
There was the trill of a cell phone in the background.
‘Other line. Gotta go. Listen, be safe, OK?’
And then she was gone, before he’d had the chance to tell her how much he was going to miss her and that he loved her. Sitting in the back of the Land Cruiser, he wondered if he’d ever get the chance to say those things. With a lurch of regret, he realised he should have said them while he’d had the chance.
Less than ten minutes later, they turned right past an unmanned guardhouse and into the Pelican Bay complex. They followed the road round to the left for a time. Finally, they stopped outside what Lock guessed was the processing area. The rear door opened and Lock stepped out. He stared up at the gun towers and electrified fences topped with strands of razor wire, his home for the next five days.
The Marshal standing next to him followed Lock’s gaze.
‘Welcome to hell, asshole.’
7
‘Roll it up, Reaper.’
Reaper hopped off the top bunk in his cell in the Secure Housing Unit. He raised his arms above his head and stretched out his back. Usually there were at least four officers present when he went anywhere, now there were only two. Reaper took it as a good sign.
‘Where am I going?’ he asked Lieutenant Williams. As cops went, Williams was OK. He didn’t yank anyone’s chain unless they yanked his. And, rarely for a guard, he didn’t hold a grudge.
‘Just cuff up for me, would you?’ Williams said, ignoring the question.
Reaper folded his arms. ‘Sure. Once I know where I’m going.’
Williams ripped the top sheet from the stack of papers attached to the clipboard he was carrying and passed it through the food tray slot. Reaper bent his knees, crouched down and picked up the piece of paper. He scanned it and smiled before handing it back through the hatch.
‘Don’t know how you swung it with the warden, and I don’t wanna know,’ Williams said, making a show of putting the movement order back on his clipboard.
‘Haven’t you heard, Lieutenant? I’m a reformed character.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Williams chuckled. ‘You got all your stuff together?’
‘Can you give me a couple of minutes?’ Reaper asked.
‘Be back in two,’ Williams said, turning military-sharp on his heel.
Reaper listened as Williams and his fellow floor cop exited the electronically controlled door at the end of the corridor. Once it had clanked shut, he set to work gathering his belongings, which mostly consisted of books. Being locked inside a cell on your own for twenty-three hours a day, you had to find something to occupy your mind or you went crazy.
He’d thought about this day for a long time, five years in fact, but he never truly thought he’d see it. Not with his record of behaviour. Since being moved to Pelican Bay from San Quentin, Reaper had twice shared a cell. On both occasions something his cellie had done — like coughing too loud, or talking too much, or snoring — had frayed his nerves to the point where he’d had no alternative but to dispatch them. It didn’t matter what colour their skin was either. He just didn’t play well with others.
There had been other homicides too. On the yard. In the showers. In the early days of Pelican Bay, back when they still fed the prisoners communally in chow halls, he’d strangled an elderly Hispanic inmate to death with his bare hands for serving him cold coffee. Some of the killings he’d got in trouble for, some he hadn’t. Getting into trouble didn’t really matter to him anyway. Not when you were serving three life sentences without the possibility of parole. What were they gonna do? Give you another twenty years? The guards and the police and the whole system must have thought so too because they labelled most murders inside prison as NHIs, which stood for ‘No Humans Involved’. Of course, kill an ATF agent, or order one to be killed, and that was different. Then they started talking about The Row, which had focused Reaper’s mind for the first time in a long while, and had gotten him thinking about the future.
Reaper could hear Williams coming back. He took one last look round the tiny cell, picked up his box of belongings and stepped out into the narrow corridor.
Leading the way, he marched to the end of the corridor and the door opened. Two more corridors, two more doors, and he was outside. He could actually feel a breath of breeze on his face. He was out of solitary.
That was the first step. In five more days, if everything went to plan, he’d be out of this place entirely. Then his mission could really begin.
8
The things I do for my country, Lock thought to himself, as he stood facing the wall of the prison’s tiny reception area, his fingers touching the whitewashed concrete, his legs spread wide as a prison guard squatted beneath him with a flashlight.
‘OK, now reach down there with your left hand and spread your cheeks,’ came the officer’s command.
Lock complied, consoling himself with the fact that men of a certain age in the United States actually paid a physician to endure this humiliation on an annual basis.
‘Keister’s clear,’ said the guard matter-of-factly to one of his colleagues. Then he turned back to Lock. ‘You can pull up your pants now.’
Before their handover to the US Marshals Service, Ty, who figured that over half of the kids he grew up with in Long Beach were currently serving time somewhere in the nation’s prison system, had brought Lock up to speed
