The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(73)
We kept to the sidelines, moving low and fast, trying to stay out of the snipers’ sight. I hoped they might hold back if they saw Jablonski, but I didn’t want to test that theory. As we hustled for the stairs, a skinhead launched from an open cell door and threw himself onto Caitlin.
She didn’t give him time to regret it. Looking vaguely annoyed, like she’d just found a mosquito on her arm, she shot out her hand. Her index and middle finger punched into his eye sockets, two knuckles deep. She flung him to the concrete, striding past his shrieking, thrashing body without a second glance and flicking blood from her fingertips.
Jablonski stared back over his shoulder as I nudged him along. His eyes bulged.
“How the hell…who are you people?”
“She’s the right hand of a demon prince,” I told him, “and I’m her boyfriend. Probably should have found that out before you blasted me with a fire hose, huh?”
“He did what?” Caitlin said.
“Aw, it’s okay.” I gave Jablonski a shove, getting him moving up the corrugated metal stairs. “I can let bygones be bygones. Besides, I promised I wouldn’t kill him if he did what I told him to.”
We found Brisco a couple of tiers up, surrounded by his boys and with his T-shirt and uniform slacks drenched in blood. Most of it, except for a nasty-looking gash across one beefy bicep, wasn’t his. Judging from the trail of bodies he’d left in his wake, most of them tattooed with Calles ink, the guards had gotten that race war they wanted after all.
“Nutty thought,” I said, “but maybe you should think about getting out of here while you can.”
He shrugged. “Where am I gonna go?”
“Fair enough. You didn’t happen to see Raymundo, did you? I need a word with him.”
“Nah,” Brisco glanced over his shoulder. “He’s still in the hole. At least until me and the boys pay him a little visit.”
“Me first. You got my camera?”
He slapped it into my palm. A little worse for wear, a little sticky, but the memory card was intact.
“What about him?” one of Brisco’s entourage asked, glaring at Jablonski. They all were, actually. He wasn’t a popular man.
I pretended to think about it.
“Well, here’s the thing. I promised I wouldn’t kill him if he did everything I told him to, and he did.” I patted Jablonski on the back. “So I guess here’s where we part ways. Nice seeing ya, buddy.”
“Wait,” Jablonski said, his head on a swivel as he backed up against the guardrail. “You can’t leave me here!”
“Sure I can. Look, all you have to do is make it from here to the exit by yourself. It’s not like you went out of your way to give every man in here a reason to hate you, right? What do you think, Brisco? What are his odds?”
Brisco slapped his fist into his open palm.
“Not good.”
Jablonski tried to run. He made it two, maybe three steps before they fell on him. Then it was all fists and feet and strangled pleading, and we left Brisco and his boys to their revenge.
As we hustled down the stairs, Caitlin took her phone from her coat pocket.
“Yes,” she said, then fell silent for a moment. “I’m breaking Daniel out of prison, Emma. What are you doing? And I’m hoping the answer is ‘the quarterly financial reports’ because they were due last Thursday.”
She looked sidelong at me as we ran, listening to the quick, almost frantic chatter on the other end of the line, and mouthed “unbelievable.”
“Oh. Oh. Well, that is useful information. Thank you, dear. Yes, yes, you’re terribly thoughtful and I couldn’t have a better best friend. Yes, we’ll have to do a—”
A con with a bloody spike in his grip charged at us, shrieking like a madman. Caitlin’s free hand clamped down over his face. She wrenched his head sideways, his neck breaking with a sharp snap, and let his corpse drop to the concrete.
“—a girls’ night out when I get back,” she said. “But right now I really need to focus on the task at hand. I’ll call you.”
“Problem?” I asked as she slipped the phone back into her coat.
“You could say that. Apparently somebody had a bit more political pull than we anticipated. They’re not sending the highway patrol.” She kicked open a swinging door, leading us out of the hive, away from the chaos. “The governor has just deployed the national guard.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Emma’s watching the live news coverage,” she said, “which spread impossibly fast. They’re selling this riot as an organized terrorist attack, carried out by prisoners with extremist Muslim sympathies. Allegedly the guards have been rounded up and their captors—who have a bomb—have been calling all the cable networks to issue demands.”
I shook my head. “That’s insane. There’s nothing remotely like that going on here. Who’s making the phone calls?”
“Well-paid actors, I’d imagine. We’re witnessing a contingency plan in action, Daniel. This isn’t Rehabilitation Dynamics protecting their investment; this is Warden Lancaster, or one of his celebrity guests, covering their tracks. I guarantee that ‘bomb’ is going to go off in Hive B, just as the military prepares to roll in.”