Thriller: Code Name: Camelot - An Action Thriller Novel (A Noah Wolf Novel, Thriller, Action, Mystery Book 1) (4 page)

FOUR

D
eath row at
the US Disciplinary Barracks, which was better known as “The Castle,” didn’t look like anything you’d see in movies. Noah wasn’t placed into a cell with bars, but into an actual room. There was one bed, bolted to the floor and the wall, a table with one bench seat attached to the wall beside it, a set of shelves, a stainless steel combination sink and toilet unit, and a shower stall. He was allowed to make purchases from the commissary, including food, snacks and candy, pencils and stationery, playing cards, and personal hygiene items, and the prison library brought a book cart around three times a week. He would be allowed to select up to four books at a time to keep in his room.

For a man who had been sentenced to death, this almost seemed like easy street.

He’d been given a mattress, a pillow, sheets, blankets, towels and such just before he’d been escorted into his room, so the first thing he did was make up his bed. That occupied less than three minutes, and he didn’t know when he might get a chance to get the books, but there was a small tablet of paper and a couple of pens on one of the shelves, so he sat down and began to write some letters.

During the time he’d been incarcerated in Iraq, Noah had not been permitted to write any letters to friends back in the states, on the theory that the situation made him a security risk. Now that he was back in America, though, he’d been told that he could write to anyone he wanted. He had very few friends, but he wanted those that he did have to know the truth of what had happened to him.

He picked up a pen and stared at the paper for a moment, trying to decide whom to write to, first. His grandparents had kept in touch with him over the years, but he wasn’t sure that he was ready to tell them what was going on. His friends from the first foster home he lived in had remained loyal to him, especially Molly, but she was a genius, and would immediately start trying to figure out some way to help him. Considering her career in a government think tank, he didn’t really think it would be a good idea for her to get involved in his problems.

Jerry, his best buddy from those days, had grown up to become a rocker. He was front man for one of the most popular rock groups going, named The Question. He was rarely anywhere near home, and the letter might take months to even get to him. Jimmy, the other boy he’d befriended back then, was doing time himself, after getting caught up in an investment scam that tried to hide money from the IRS. He had two more years to go on a five-year federal sentence, so Noah figured that his own sentence would probably be over before Jimmy got out.

The only one left to write letters to, then, would be Jerry’s sister, Lizzie. Lizzie and Noah had exchanged a few letters over the years. Even though she was married, he knew that she still harbored a bit of a crush where he was concerned, but he also knew that she would make sure everyone else who needed to found out the truth. He sat there for a moment, and then began to write.

Lizzie,

First, let me apologize for not writing sooner. I’ve been in a situation where I wasn’t allowed to write letters back home to anyone, until now, and I hope you understand and forgive me. Believe me, it wasn’t my
choice.

I’m afraid I’ve gotten myself into some trouble. It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you, but the gist of it is that I found myself in a position where I had to kill some of my own men. Please believe me when I say that it was absolutely necessary, and I saw no other
choice.

However, when I reported the incident that led to it, other men who should have been prosecuted for their own crimes all concocted a story of their own, and laid all the blame on me. I have been court-martialed, convicted and sentenced to death. I’m filing an appeal, but there really isn’t much hope that I can prove my innocence, or even prevent my own
execution.

Noah went on to explain the whole story, including just who Lieutenant Gibson’s father was. He cautioned her not to try to get involved, and to make sure she got that through to all of the others. There was nothing they could do to help him, and any attempt to do so would only blow up in their own faces. He didn’t want that, and had already accepted the inevitability of his fate.

It took him a little over an hour to write the letter, and he folded it up and put it in the envelope, leaving it open as he was required to do. He slid it through the slot in his door, so that one of the guards could take it to the mailroom. Then he sat down at his table again and began thinking about what he should do next.

He’d only been there for a couple of minutes when he heard the keys outside, and his door opened.

“Noah Foster?” One of the guards stood there in the open doorway, just looking at him.

“Yes,” he said. He hadn’t expected anyone to come to talk to him just yet, so his senses were on high alert.

The guard nodded. “I’m Lieutenant Spencer,” he said. “I’m in charge of this unit. I make it a point to come and meet everyone assigned here. You getting settled in okay?”

“Yes, Sir,” Noah said, coming to attention, “and I apologize for my disrespect a moment ago. The way the light is set in here, I couldn’t see your rank tabs.”

The lieutenant smiled. “It’s not a problem, we don’t stand on a lot of ceremony in here. At ease. Have you got everything you need?”

Noah shrugged. “I don’t know that I really need anything,” he said, “but would you know offhand when the book cart might come around? Oh, and when do we get to order from the commissary?”

“Well, I can send the book cart down in just a few minutes, that’s no problem, and you can go ahead and put in a commissary order whenever you like. You get it the next day after your order. There should be an order form in one of those tablets on the table.”

Noah looked quickly, and sure enough, he found the form tucked into the back of the tablet he’d been using. “Thank you, Sir,” he said. “I’ll do my best not to cause you any headaches.”

The lieutenant nodded again. “I’ve actually been going over your file, today, and from what I can see, you must have been a model soldier and a model prisoner. Never so much as a disciplinary action, until now. I’d just about bet that there’s a lot more to your story than meets the eye, but I’ve been around here long enough to know that it probably doesn’t matter a whole lot.” He glanced down the hall to his right, then back at Noah. “We got a pretty good psychologist here, a lady named Doctor Oakes. She can’t do squat about your case, but there’s a very good chance she can help you cope with it better. Don’t hesitate to put in a request to talk with her, when things start to get to you.”

Noah smiled. “Thank you, Sir, but not a whole lot gets to me. I’ll be fine. Of course, it’ll help when I can get some books to read.”

“Okay, then,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll see to it the book cart comes in just a few minutes. And if you feel the need to talk with me again, I run this unit on an open-door policy. You just tell one of the guards, and they’ll let me know. I’ll come to see you at my first opportunity.”

The door closed, the keys rattled, and Noah was locked in again. He sat down at the table and began checking off things he wanted to purchase from the commissary. He ordered shampoo, soap, deodorant and an assortment of snack foods, and added a deck of playing cards for good measure. If he was going to be in solitary confinement, he might as well play a little solitaire.

Lieutenant Spencer was true to his word, and by the time Noah finished preparing his order, he heard keys rattling again, and the door swung open. A guard stood in the hall and watched as an inmate trusty pushed the book cart into the room.

“You allowed to keep four books in your room,” the trusty said, in the down-home dialect of the South, “and after this time, you got to give me back a book to get a new one. If you tell me what kind of books you like, I’ll try to pick some out the library and put on the cart for you.”

Noah grinned at him. “I appreciate that,” he said. “I like stories about history, especially stories that talk about how people did things a hundred years ago or two hundred or however long. Westerns are good, too, and if there aren’t enough of those to go around, I like spy stories and stuff like that.” He was looking through the books on the cart as he spoke, and pulled out a book about King Arthur, and another about magic. “These kinds of stories would be okay, too,” he said, and the trusty nodded.

Noah chose his four books, and set them on one of the shelves. The trusty began to pull the cart back out the door. “Okay, I be back in a couple days, and I see what I can do for you. My name’s Benny, you be seeing me a lot.”

The guard closed the door as Benny left the room, and Noah sat down to begin reading. King Arthur was one of his favorite quasi-historical figures, and Noah enjoyed reading about his adventures, whether from the original legends or those written by later authors.

Life settled into a routine rather quickly, mostly involving reading, eating the occasional snack, working out in the room, and his once-daily, hour-long recreational break, which took place in a concrete square somewhere in the middle of the building. The top of the square, but for a double layer of chain-link fencing, was without a roof and open to the sky. Since the weather was warm, he enjoyed the sensation of being outdoors, even if he couldn’t see a tree or blade of grass anywhere.

The rec yard, that concrete square, was just about fifty feet on a side, so Noah calculated that twenty-seven laps would constitute about a mile run. He ran for the full hour every time he got to the rec yard, averaging a mile every eight minutes, which gave him a little over seven miles a day.

In his room, he did push-ups, sit-ups, squats and jumping jacks, averaging three hours of PT every day. His shower stall had a solid rod across its door from which a curtain hung, and he began using it for chin-ups, inverted crunches and other workout exercises that he devised. He had always kept himself in good condition, but he was rapidly getting into the best shape of his life, even if only to escape the boredom of death row.

He had been there a month when Lieutenant Mathers turned up. He was in the middle of a workout when the door opened, and one of the guards told him that he had a visitor. Since he hadn’t been expecting her, he had to go to the visiting room covered in sweat, and he was surprised when she rushed across the room to give him a hug.

“Sergeant Foster,” she said excitedly. “I’ve been trying to get word to you for two weeks now that I got myself transferred back to the states. I’m actually in Missouri, at Fort Leonard Wood, but since I’m still officially assigned to your case I can come to visit you anytime you need me to. Sit down, sit down!”

She hurried around to her side of the table and took her chair, while Noah sat down in his own.

“So, how are you doing?” Mathers asked. “Anybody mistreating you in here? Any threats, beatings, anything like that?”

Noah shook his head. “No, nothing at all,” he said. “I’m doing well. I get to read, work out, rest when I want to. This whole death row thing isn’t all that bad, to be honest. Well, except for the fact that it comes to an unhappy ending.”

Mathers rolled her eyes. “Do you ever take anything seriously? Listen, I’ve been working on the appeal, and I finally managed to get hold of your psychological records. The problem is that they don’t show you having any serious troubling issues. This histrionic blunted affect disorder that it talks about, that’s considered a high-functioning mental condition that doesn’t prevent you from acting rationally, and even makes rational decision-making easier, because you naturally think in logical sequences.”

Noah shrugged and grinned. “Sure, as long as I’ve got somebody to copy. Rational? I wonder if there’s an accurate definition for that word. My real concern is that maybe I’m too rational, rather than irrational. To me, seeing what I saw when I got to the lieutenant and the platoon that day, I took what I considered to be rational action. I put a stop to the situation. Seems to me it’s the rest of the world acting irrationally, by trying to eliminate me from the gene pool.”

Mathers sighed, and shook her head. “I know, and I agree completely, but that doesn’t help our appeal. If the judge would actually read what this says about you, he’d know that it’s almost impossible for you to act in any manner other than rationally. That should be enough, at least, to commute your sentence to life.”

They talked it over for a couple of hours, but every idea that Lieutenant Mathers put forth was shot down by Noah’s logic. There simply didn’t seem to be a feasible way to convince the court that Noah deserved to live, after he’d already been sentenced to death. Noah did his best to comfort his attorney, who was taking it all a lot harder than he was.

“Aren’t you scared?” Mathers asked him. “Aren’t you worried about the fact that they want to take you into that room, strap you down and inject chemicals in you that will make you go to sleep forever?”

Noah’s eyebrows went up. “Why should that scare me? You know, my grandfather is a minister, and many years ago he led me through the process of becoming a Christian. If my grandfather is right, then death is only going to be a doorway from this world into Heaven. And if he’s wrong, then it’s simply going to be the end of my consciousness. I won’t feel anything, I won’t know that I’m dead, I will just come to an end. There won’t be any pain, there won’t be any sensations at all, because there won’t be any
me
. So you tell me, what is there to fear in death?”

The lieutenant’s eyes were wide. “What is there to fear? Maybe nothing, for you, but what about the people you leave behind? What about the people who will hurt and grieve because you’re gone? Aren’t there people out there who depend on you?”

“No, not really,” Noah said. “I have very few friends, and my grandparents are the only family I have left. They claim to be happy to hear from me now and then, but they don’t want to be close because I scare them. Being a minister, my grandfather simply can’t understand someone who doesn’t have the capacity to love inside him, so to him, I must seem like some sort of demon. Whatever the case, I’m pretty much alone in this world, and while those few friends might think it’s sad that I’m gone, we’re not so close that it would bother them for more than a couple of hours.”