Noble Warrior (20 page)

W
hen Demon and M.D. stepped out onto the main courtyard where all of the general population inmates took their daily free time, Krewls's
mouth fell open. He'd been expecting D'Marcus and his crew of felonious henchmen to walk through the ag seg door he'd opened for them fifteen minutes earlier. Instead, he saw
McCutcheon and his father and no one else.

“A few of dem guys musta slipped back there,” Demon said as he sucked a small stream of blood running from the knuckle of his right hand. “I myself didn't see much but I
can only imagine a fall like that gotta be mighty painful.”

McCutcheon and Demon continued forward and walked over to an unoccupied cement bench far away from every other con on the yard. Moments earlier eighteen hundred prisoners had been doing
push-ups, playing checkers, or shooting the breeze, but the sight of M.D. still on his feet after all the bragging and boasting the Priests did about how they were going to orchestrate a father
taking out his very own son, caused man after man on the yard to stop, stare, and wonder.

If McCutcheon was here, then who was in there? Eyes scanned the ad seg entranceway, but no one else appeared. Suddenly small huddles began to form across the yard. Krewls popped a sunflower seed
into his mouth and tried to project a calm, in-control demeanor, but his fellow officers felt tension seize their chests, and they started making small and nervous moves like re-tucking in their
shirts and adjusting their belt buckles. High-stakes political strategizing began to take place right in front of all the officer's eyes, each gang recalculating their level of status and
power on the yard.

It wasn't the formations of small scheming teams that unnerved the guards; it was the knowledge that after their strategy sessions would come action.

A fight broke out over by the pull-up bars where the Priests took their rec, and Krewls watched as a swarm of convicts formed a large circle around two warring men. Perhaps the two bulls would
be the only ones to go to battle, Krewls thought, so he let the fight go on without interference. The major's highest hope was that once the conflict ended, a new leader would emerge, assume
control of the Priests, and everything else would remain status quo on the yard.

It didn't happen that way at all.

Inside the wall of bodies, legs kicked and punches got thrown, but mixed loyalties led to multiple Priests taking sides and jumping into the fray, and a single fight turned into a medium-sized
brawl.

Then a few more Priests jumped in. Soon the crowd surged to forty people. This was much more than a personal conflict; this was civil war.

Sensing their opportunity, the East Side Mobsters rushed at the Priests. The E-S-M had been getting punked by the Priests for far too long, and when they saw the weakness in their enemy, they
decided to take a crack at hitting back at the soldiers who'd taken so many unfair shots against them.

Then the Princes of Mayhem attacked from the flank, taking their cue from the E-S-M, but the Princes' biggest enemy, Hellz Reaperz, saw a chance to move up the totem pole with the Priests,
so they jumped in to help their part-time allies. In less than one-hundred and twenty seconds, hundreds of men were fighting. A fallen prisoner took a stomp to the side of his head. Four men beat
on a guy's open face. An inmate's eye socket had been broken open so badly that his optic nerve dangled from his head like a white yo-yo on a chunky, bloody, fleshy string.

Krewls blew a whistle, waved to the tower, and shots rang through the air. Per prison protocol, the guard in the sky fired a series of warning rounds high in the air, but since the rubber
bullets were not aimed at anyone, the inmates kept fighting, more blood flowing with each passing moment.

Horns blared. Sirens screamed. Guards, fearing for their own lives, counted the moments until reinforcements arrived. More shots rang out and rubber bullets flew. The inmates fought on.

Then came the tear gas.

Scores of men began to gag and then fell to the ground, lying on their bellies spread-eagle in a sign of submission. Striving to cover their eyes and mouths with their shirts, they moved from
battling to one another, to battling the vile fumes.

Despite the gas, the fighting raged on.

A dozen guards dressed in riot gear raced toward the action sporting helmets and masks that prevented the tear gas from affecting their breathing. Wielding shields, batons, stun guns, and pepper
spray, they began unleashing every tool in their arsenal against any man who remained on his feet.

More shots ricocheted off the ground, but as the situation escalated from Level Orange to Level Red, the snipers moved from shooting the earth to shooting at prisoners. Convicts began taking
rubber bullets to the chests, arms, and legs. Even the ones lying down. The shooters didn't care. Neither did the guards. With the institution in such disarray, no one was safe and no amount
of force would be deemed too excessive.

A slug hit a Priest in his ear and he fell to the ground, permanently deaf on the left side of his head. Another bullet hit an E-S-M in his testicle and caused it to swell to the size of a
grapefruit. The prisoners on the yard lay in a fog of fumes and smoke, praying for a strong gust to whisk the chemicals away. Demon and M.D., far away from every other person, huddled close
together and made sure no one attacked. Both knew they were targets. Both also knew that from this point on, they would only have each other.

As the gas, bullets, and batons began to take effect, the number of convicts continuing to war diminished, and the number of men fighting dropped from thirty to twenty and then to ten. After
another hailstorm of clubbings, Tasers, and pepper spray, the guards regained control of the yard, and every inmate out for rec time lay spread-eagle on the ground.

All choked, many bled, but nothing had been settled, which, as Krewls knew, could mean only one thing.

There was more war yet to come.

It took the guards more than three hours to get all the prisoners securely locked back in their cells. Not long after everything settled down, McCutcheon had a visitor.

“You just fuckin' up my whole little enterprise, ain't ya?”

M.D. didn't reply.

“Well, Puwolsky did tell me to feed ya to the birds once your work was done. Guess it's now time to put some pepper on ya.” Krewls spit out a seed. “Pepper up both you
and your dad.”

M.D. sprung up at the mention of Puwolsky.

“What, you thought he was coming to save ya?
Shee-it
, he and his partner, they set you up from the get-go, and once we get some order restored 'round here, your ass, sugar
pie, is all mine.”

Krewls popped another sunflower seed into his mouth and ambled down the hall. “This is my prison, hero. You seem to have forgotten that, but I'm gonna make you remember.”

E
very inmate in the institution spent the next four days on Level Red lockdown without access to a shower, the commissary, the phones, or the rec
yard. Especially not the rec yard. Administration canceled all family visitations, eliminated the high school equivalency classes in the library, and even prevented cons from going to Sunday church
service. On day five, after yet another round of S.O.S. bags for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, McCutcheon's heavy door slammed open. Being the first prisoner to see a hallway in over one
hundred and twenty hours didn't make M.D. any new friends. Most of the cons, in fact, blamed him for the lockdown in the first place.

Why don't he just die like a regular bitch?
was the question most asked.
Who's he kiddin'? Everyone knows that at some point he gonna get got.

McCutcheon, of course, held a different opinion.

“Come with me,” a voice said. “And grab your stuff.”

A long walk through a winding series of buzzers and locked doors led McCutcheon to a distant wing of the facility he'd not yet seen.

“This is you and there's your new cellie.” Mends knew that easier ways existed for a man with his credentials to earn a paycheck, but money, he tried to remind himself,
didn't drive his actions; living a purposeful life, one marked by integrity and self-respect, did.

“For the time being,” Mends added. “The two of you should be out of harm's way in here.”

“With the fuckin' Cho Mo's?” Demon snapped.

“It's the safest unit on the grounds,” Mends replied. “This wing has been specially designed to keep inmates from being attacked by fellow inmates.”

“But the Cho Mo's?” Demon said again and then he yelped out at the top of his lungs. “I get my hands on any one of y'all and I am gonna BEAT YOUR ASS!”

The words
BEAT...YOUR...ASS
echoed through the corridor.

“Calm down, Demon,” Mends said. “The child molesters are serving their time just like the courts ordered them to do. They're paying their debt.”

“Fuck 'em!” Demon said. “Ain't nothing burn me worse. YOU SICK FUCKS!!!”

McCutcheon and his father had been placed in Cell Block F, a tier that demanded highly restricted access in order to keep its residents, mostly reserved, middle-aged men, safe. These were not
the thugs of the main yard; Block F was home to scores of inmates with non-calloused hands and slouching shoulders who knew how to do things like fill in Excel spreadsheets or calculate
amortization rates on home mortgages. Few knew how to street fight—at least before coming to prison—but perhaps that was why they preyed on young, defenseless children in the first
place.

“I'LL SMASH 'EM UP!” Demon said yet again, making sure his words rang out loud and clear. Though at least fifty other prisoners were within earshot, not one of them dared
to reply.

“I'll be back,” the major said after double-checking the cell door. No one stood lower on the totem pole of incarceration than child molesters. Even serial killers looked down
on them as unworthy moral scum.

As Mends walked away, McCutcheon tossed his gear on the high bunk and stretched his arms out wide. No, he could not touch each of the opposing walls at the same time.

Only the government, he thought, would build a system where child molesters got more space than people who committed insurance fraud.

Behind him, M.D. felt his father's eyes burning a hole in his back.

“Is there a problem?”

“Why you in here?”

“Why are you?” M.D. snapped, in no mood to hear a damn word from Demon about how to live an honorable life.

“Hey, I'm still your father. Speak to me with respect.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you back,” M.D. said. McCutcheon already fought his father a little less than a year earlier and kicked his ass, and he knew he could do it again at the drop of a hat, too.
After all the years of his dad slapping him around, treating him like a servant, punching his mother in the face, and threatening his little sister, M.D. felt more than ready to crack his
father's jaw at a moment's notice. In fact, he itched for a reason to do it.

“Aw, I can tell this is about to be a whole lotta of fun,” Demon said, running his mouth. “It's like father-son camping, Detroit style.”

A surge of anger swelled in McCutcheon.

“Why'd you even do it?” M.D. said, in reference to Demon saving him.

“You gotta ask?” his father answered. “
Sheee-it
, I'm hurt by the question.”

“You know, the only goddamn reason I'm in here is because of...” M.D. stopped midsentence before uttering his next word. He was about to say
Because of you,
but then
McCutcheon realized this might not actually be the case.

“Lemme ask you a question,” M.D. said, changing directions.

“Yeah?”

“Were you and the Priests ever going to kevork my girl?”

Demon cocked his head. “What the fuck does kevork a girl mean?”

M.D. exhaled a deep sigh. “That's what I thought.”

Krewls told him the truth: he'd been set up from the get-go. Kaitlyn was never in danger; the Priests hadn't summoned him to the D.T. to fight on their behalf, and Puwolsky
wasn't ever planning on coming back to yank him out of Jentles.

It was all a trap. A ruse. Deception. But who ambushed him? And why?

M.D. started pacing the cell trying to figure out the riddle. Only one explanation made sense.

Stanzer set him up.

The more M.D. kicked the idea around, the more he realized it was just like Puwolsky said to him when he emphasized how McCutcheon's entire existence posed a gigantic threat to
Stanzer's whole career. If the colonel got caught using underage soldiers to participate in covert missions, the politicians would roast him like a duck on Chinese New Year, and then serve
him up on a polished platter.

Stanzer, his barrel chest and bold, patriotic tattoos, practically brushed his teeth with the American flag, so losing his career would feel like more than merely being fired from a job and
publicly humiliated; he'd be losing his entire identity. The guy never took a wife, never had kids, and never viewed his personal destiny as anything other than that of being a wartime
soldier, even during eras of peace. Wearing a uniform stood as Stanzer's sole reason for living, and to lose that right would mean losing his life's purpose.