Actually, today had been a fairly quiet day for Patrick, When he was in solitary, he was more or less out of the minds of the bikers, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other wackos who were looking to kill him. When he was out among the other prisoners, he kept his distance, with more or less success. Usually one guard was assigned to watch over all the isolation inmates and try to prevent trouble.
The common area on each floor of the jail had ten steel star-shaped tables fixed to the floor, with five fixed chairs at each table. Hot meals were prepared in the kitchen, then placed on paper plates on fiberglass trays and wheeled out to the common area on large carts. Utensils were cardboard. Prisoners selected a meal, either vegetarian or nonvegetarian, a beverage, and a dessert, then found a seat.
Except for sick or very violent prisoners, there was normally no preplanned segregation of any kind in the jail. The prisoners did their own segregating-blacks sat with blacks, whites with whites, Hispanics with Hispanics. There was usually enough available seating at meals to allow the members of rival gangs to be seated apart. But even when space was relatively tight, the prisoners knew that meals were not the time to get into a fight. Besides, despite the dangerous tension level, the jail was not a hard-core facility. These were prisoners awaiting trial, not yet convicted and sentenced. Most of them minded their own business and stayed out of trouble.
Patrick took the first available tray; he didn’t want to appear picky or slow the line for those behind him. He poured himself a cup of water, grabbed a carton of milk from a large tub of ice and a brownie from the dessert counter, and found a seat between two older-looking guys. The meal was what they called Salisbury steak: a piece of indeterminate meat floating in a puddle of slimy gravy, along with sodden boiled carrots, reconstituted mashed potatoes with more gravy, and a slice of white bread that had to be one or two days old but had been steamed into a semblance of freshness. The two guys on either side of him glanced at him but said nothing.
Everything on the plate tasted pretty much alike, which really characterized life in jail, Patrick thought. In a way, it reminded him of pulling strategic nuclear alert years ago: your life regulated by horns, bells, whistles, shouted voices, and the PA system; the sameness of everything, from the food to the uniforms; the regimentation; and most of all, the lack of freedom. Of course, there was no real comparison. But it was remarkably easy for Patrick to put his mind back to those days when, for seven days every three weeks, he was a virtual prisoner of the Strategic Air Command jailers, serving an unwanted but self-imposed sentence in support of the laws of nuclear deterrence. He had always passionately hated alert, hated the wasted time and wasted resources, and he found it ironic that he was relying on those memories to help keep his sanity now.
He left half of his plate untouched, finished the brownie, and drank up the milk and water. Seconds weren’t allowed, so he looked around for someone who might want his leftovers. The two old characters next to him declined. He asked the other guy at the table, “Hey, want any more?”
“Leave me the fuck alone,” the guy spat. Patrick was sorry he’d said anything. The man was big, lean, and tall, with cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He looked as though he’d been beaten up-his nose was broken and twisted and his face bruised. There were tattoos on his arms-and not tattoo-parlor ones but prison tattoos, made by inmates with sharpened ballpoint pens…
… and one of the tattoos, the biggest one, on his left arm-was a Satan’s Brotherhood tattoo. Oh shit…
The biker was hunched over his tray, enveloping it with his arms as if protecting it from a thief. This was a good time to get the hell out of the common area, Patrick decided. He got up quickly. “Hey!” the biker snapped, fixing wild, psychotic eyes on him. “You! Who are you?”
“Nobody, chief,” Patrick said.
“The fuck you are,” the biker said. “I know you. I hearda you. You’re the guy who was goin’ around killing Brotherhood.”
The two old guys scattered as fast as they could. The biker got to his feet, eyes burning. Patrick looked up at the guard tower, but the guards up there were busy. “Listen, chief,” Patrick said, “you’ve got it wrong. I didn’t kill any Brotherhood members.”
But the biker exploded like a volcano. “Die, motherfucker!” he screamed, and launched himself at Patrick. He tackled him to the ground, rolled on top of him, pinned his arms, and pummeled his face. “This-is-for-the-Brotherhood!” he shouted with each blow of his fists.
By now the other prisoners had joined in the fray. “Get him!” they shouted. “Kill the cocksucker! Kill him for the Brotherhood!”
Patrick felt something warm on his face, and through his blurry eyes saw blood all over the biker’s fists and shirt. Then the biker wrapped his huge hands around Patrick’s neck. In a daze, Patrick heard a whistle blow and the PA system blare out something about a lockdown. Then the biker squeezed harder. He felt a hand on his throat, another on the side of his head, then a sharp push-and everything went dark.
Chapter Four
Mount Vernon Road,
Newcastle, California
Wednesday, 1 April 1998, 0905 FT
Jon Masters awoke to blackness. He found his hands and feet handcuffed to what felt like a chain-link gate, and a thick hood over his head. He had been stripped naked. He had a colossal headache, a result of the gas they had used to put him asleep, and he could smell vomit on the inside of the hood.
He lay there for what seemed like hours. Then he heard a door open and footsteps approaching him. “Guten Morgen, Dr Masters,” said a voice.
“You must be one of Townsend’s goons,” Masters shouted. “Let me go, jerk-face.”
A blow from a leather whip struck him across the face. “You will call me Major or sir,” said Bruno Reingruber. “You will conduct yourself like a man and not a comicbook character in my presence. Your situation is already dire enough without the added unpleasantness of being punished for rudeness.”
“Fuck you,” Jon said. “Let me go right now! Help! Someone help me! Help! Some goddamn German guy is going to kill me!”
“Sehr gut. Have it your way, Herr Doktor,” Reingruber said. Several pairs of rough hands grabbed Masters, unfastened his handcuffs, and forced him facedown onto the concrete floor. The handcuffs were refastened behind his back, and he was lifted up and shoved into a metal drum. As icy water poured over him, he cried out in shock. It filled the drum to the level of his mouth, and a grilled lid was snapped onto the drum.
“We know from experiments the Third Reich did during World War Two that a human can survive immersed in water like this for about an hour,” Reingruber said. “Of course, their subjects were concentration-camp prisoners, probably in far poorer physical condition than yourself. We shall be back in an hour and see how well you did.
“You should also know that we shall be exploring the spectrum of physical, psychological, and emotional torture. We shall learn together, we and you, of your fears, your nightmares, your weaknesses, and your thresholds of pain and stress.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Jon cried through chattering lips. “What do you want?”
“Why, Doctor, you may feel free to tell me anything that you might think I would like to know,” said the Major. “But you are being punished because you seem to have this macho image of yourself that will undoubtedly prevent us from dealing with each other in a civil manner. You need to accept that this attitude is counterproductive and will not do.”