“YOU ARE certain of this?” The speaker was Corsican, an old man immaculately dressed but without a trace of flash to his perfectly tailored dark suit, worn over a white silk shirt with a black tie. A funeral outfit.
He was seated at a table for two inside Red 71, facing Cross. A lifetime of survival had taught the old man a great deal. He looked into the eyes of the man so physically close to him, but all he could see reflected in the irises of those eyes was the message that, whoever you might be, life—your life—meant nothing to him.
Whoever pays him first, the old man thought to himself. Aloud, he said: “There was little time, unfortunately. How such filth could have learned … Ah, it is not important, n’est-ce pas? But know this: he is hated by many. I will not lie. Some hated him for what he was, but others, they actually did business with him. And now they rot in prison. In most cases, this hatred would be an advantage. But it was because this creature is so hated that he is now so protected.”
“I know.”
“And yet you—? Ah, that, too, it is of no importance. I am an old man. My mind rambles. Pardonnez-moi.”
Cross’s only response was to light a cigarette.
“How much will you require as an advance?”
“Not how I work. The total gets deposited. You know with who. When the job is done, the money gets released to me. I don’t get it done, it gets returned to you. Every dime.”
“We have a contract,” the old man said. He did not offer to shake hands.
AT THE top of the stairs, the old man gave his two bodyguards a meaningful look. He had expected they might be searched. Instead, some kind of human beast had simply pointed a banana-clipped rifle at them. He held the rifle in one gigantic hand, as another might hold a pistol.
The monster gestured toward a pair of what might have once been sofas. His message was clear: Only the old man could go downstairs. His bodyguards could stand; they could sit; they could reach for whatever weapons they might be carrying—it was all the same to him.
The old man had long ago learned to mask fear with anger or disgust. “On s’casse! C’est une baraque de dingues!” he barked, deliberately moving out of that den of horrors before his bodyguards could bracket him properly. Sending the message that, once inside that place, you were unprotected, no matter who or what you brought with you.
As the three men walked through the mini junkyard surrounding Red 71, a piece of concertina wire twisted. Only the dogs reacted to the call-and-response mimic of Delta blues, which had morphed into “Chicago style” with the journey north and the switch from acoustic to electric. In that below-human harmonic, it sang:
“Baraque de dingues.”
There was a pause. Then:
“Reste.”
THE NEXT morning found Cross at the same table, sipping from a glass of vile-looking liquid as he read a newspaper headline:
SERIAL KILLER IN MYSTERY SUICIDE!
The name “Mark Robert Towers” appeared in the typescript beneath, cluttered with vague phrases such as “Perhaps the most prolific serial killer of all time.” There was more, all generic versions of the same theme: authorities investigating, isolation-cell safety, speculation about “final remorse.”
None even so much as hinted at any possibility that the suicide had been of the involuntary variety.
Perhaps the TV coverage …
Cross stood up and walked over to the wooden counter which was always standing sentinel at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the poolroom. The elderly man behind the plank counter did not look up as Cross joined him and changed the channel on the TV set.
The announcer was saying:
“Mark Robert Towers, who had recently confessed to a string of murders throughout the country, was found hanging in his special isolation cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Although rumors persist that Towers was himself a homicide victim, the authorities will only say that the matter is still under investigation. What is clear, however, is that Towers had no contact with other inmates, as numerous threats on his life had been received.…”
Cross moved his thin lips in a gesture some might mistake for a smile.
CROSS ENTERED the basement of a tenement. With the aid of a pencil flash held in his teeth, he quickly located the telephone junction box. He lightly touched each pair of connectors with a wandlike device held in one gloved hand. When the wand rewarded his efforts with a greenish glow, he attached a pair of alligator clips, both wired to a handheld phone.
When he heard a dial tone, Cross held a small tape recorder to the mouthpiece and pushed a button. The recorder played a series of tones.
The number he just “dialed” rang.
“Allô,” a man answered.
“C’est fini,” the recorder’s voice said. Unhurriedly, Cross disconnected the clips, pocketed everything, and left, as ghostlike as he had entered.
As he exited the building through the basement door, the passenger-side window of the Shark Car sitting across the alleyway zipped its side window down and up again: All Clear.
IT WAS the same newsreader, on the same channel Cross had watched in Red 71. The broadcast was coming into the War Room. The blond man yelled over to Wanda, “Get me …”
“Already on it,” she replied.
AS THE members of Unit 3 evaluated the information that was pouring over their terminals about the serial killer’s suicide—“Or was it murder?”—the Shark Car slipped through the city.
“He’s here,” Wanda said.
“Still wearing his special little coat?” Percy said, his voice heavy with suppressed anger.
“No searches,” the blond man warned. “We’re fully operational now.”
“Fully rogue operational,” Percy reminded him.
“We can do it,” the blond man answered. “And once we bring … whatever the hell it is … once we bring it in, we’ll be properly acknowledged, don’t worry about that.”
“Maybe by the people you work for,” Tiger replied. “Me, I’m not on your payroll—I’ve got my own scores to settle, remember?”
Tracker was silent. Why repeat that which has already been said?
INSIDE THE War Room, the blond man tried to project an air of assurance. “We can make it happen.”
“And you want me to take your word for it?” Cross responded, his face a blackboard immune to the blond man’s chalk.
In the silence that followed, Cross reached into the depths of his coat. Before Percy could level the MAC-10 he instinctively pulled, Cross held up a pack of cigarettes.
“No smoking in here,” Wanda told him, wishing she had made the statement the last time this cold man had paid them a visit—she knew it was much more difficult to reclaim territory once ceded.
“I didn’t light it,” Cross pointed out. “I just wanted to share tobacco.” With that, he offered the pack to Tracker, who was seated behind him. Tracker carefully extracted a single cigarette before he tossed the pack over Cross’s shoulder, confident that it would be caught.
“What the hell was that all about?” Percy demanded.
“You would not understand,” Tracker told him.
“Try me.”
“You don’t want that,” Tracker said.
“You sure?” Percy fired back.
“Stop it!” Wanda snapped. “When this is all over, you—all of you—can do whatever you want, okay?”
“Yes, mistress,” Tiger giggled.
CROSS, TRACKER, and Tiger were deep in conversation, with Percy occasionally contributing. The blond man was off somewhere with Wanda. If their absence was a source of concern to those remaining, it didn’t show.
“You’ve got a complete record of their hits?” Cross asked.
“No way we could,” Percy said, blunt-voiced. “It’s not like they’re subtle about who did the ones we know about, but we gotta figure there’s bodies that haven’t turned up yet. They’re probably out making a bunch more while we’re sitting here.”
“What about that thing … with the dogs. There’s something there; I just can’t pull it out,” Tracker said.
Cross felt the current just released. “They ever kill cats?”
“Not house cats,” Tiger told him. “Maybe a jungle cat, we couldn’t say for sure. But we found plenty of bodies with regular cats around them … and the cats were still alive.”
“That’s the hook,” Cross said. “They don’t care about—”
“Who?” Percy leaned forward.
“Cats. Cats don’t bond to humans the way dogs do. Whoever they are, they only hunt humans. In at least some of all those other kills you told me about, dogs were hacked too. The killers came for the humans and the dogs tried to protect them. Nothing personal to the killers—the dogs just got in the way.”
“Silent whistle,” Tiger said, almost to herself.
“Hearing range, yeah,” Cross picked up her thread. “I don’t know about cats, but dogs, no question they can hear harmonics humans can’t.”
“Dogs can hear them coming?” Percy asked, as if the whole picture was finally snapping into focus.
Cross shrugged. “It’d fit, right? The dogs hear … whatever this thing is. Or maybe they smell it. Either way, they go right into protection mode. But the humans they’re trying to protect wouldn’t get that message—they’d think the dogs were snarling at shadows.”
“That is why our people always had dogs,” Tracker confirmed. “But the … Simbas, if that’s who they are … there’s still something almost … clean about what they do. It is as if they only hunt hunters.”
“Or they only kill killers,” Cross narrowed it down.
“What about this one, then?” Percy challenged, pulling out an eight-by-ten photo of a signature-kill corpse hanging from a jungle gym in a kid’s playground. “This guy wasn’t even armed.”
Cross picked up the photo and studied the scene. Flipped it over, read the ID information on the back. “There’s info here,” he said. “Can any of you except Blondie’s girlfriend work that computer?”
Tiger shook her head. Tracker’s answer was silence.
“I can’t make it sing and dance the way that slope bitch does,” Percy said, “but I can get some basic stuff out of it. What do you want?”
“A BCI?”
“Can do,” Percy responded, planting his heavyweight body on Wanda’s stool. He started banging away immediately, jeopardizing the keyboard with vicious two-finger blasts.
Cross lit a cigarette. So did Tracker.
Tiger said nothing. And missed nothing.
They waited.
“Son of a bitch!” Percy said, staring at the screen. “He was a goddamned pedophile.”
“A what?” from Tiger.
“Baby-raper,” Cross told her. “That’s what he was doing in that playground. Hunting. Stalking the ground, picking out a target. You understand?”
She nodded, a warrior’s stony mask dropping over her gorgeous features.
“And now all of us do,” Tracker added grimly.
THE BLOND man and Wanda entered the War Room together. Wanda sniffed at the smell of smoke. But her annoyance instantly vanished at the far worse violation she detected: in her absence, someone had dared to touch her computer. Her dark eyes whipped around the van. Only Tiger reacted … with a fake-seductive wink.
“Learn anything?” the blond man asked.
Nobody answered.
“You know what we want,” the blond said to Cross. “And you want to see a grant of immunity all typed out and signed, with a blank space where the crime should be. With the same exact computer, printer, and paper that was originally used, so you end up with a perfect match. Okay, you’ve got it.”
“Sure I do.”
“What kind of proof could we possibly give you?”
Cross put two fingers against his jawline, as if he was thinking it through. The blond man kept a barely veiled smug look on his fox-face.
Cross snapped his fingers with an “I’ve got it!” expression on his face. “If you’re really all that connected, you should be able to tell me where this guy is,” Cross said, pulling an old mug shot out of his coat.
“Who’s this?” Blondie asked.
“A baby-killer,” Cross told him. “A baby-killer with real immunity. New face, new name. He’s doing lightweight time … somewhere.”
The blond man handed the mug shot behind him, without looking. “Wanda …”
Wanda snatched the mug shot and placed it on a photoimage enhancer. She pixilated it carefully, then used a digital scanner to break the face into tiny components, each with its own number/letter series. She was playing her keyboard like a first-chair cellist, her face glowing with the joy of the chase.
As she worked, her movements told Cross that this genre of hunting was Wanda’s raison d’être. As each new piece of information came up on her screen, she reacted in a distinct but subtle parallel to a woman being worked up to orgasm.
NAME/NATAL/GIVEN: SLOCUM, LINDSAY, NMI.
NAME/CODE: INSIDER-KP.
NAME/CURRENT: FELTON, REGINALD D. (ANIEL)
The same process occurred, much more dramatically, with the face itself. Cross watched as it progressed from the original through the various stages of plastic surgery to its current configuration, which bore no resemblance to the original mug shot.
At Wanda’s touch, information continued to play across the screen:
LOCATION/U.S. INSTILLED. #11-C
SECURITY LEVEL - 1
Wanda hit a final button and a printout flowed into her hands. She handed it over to the blond man, who, in turn, passed it to Cross.
“Satisfied now?”
“You got yourself a deal,” Cross replied.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that I’m gonna do what you want done,” Cross promised. “But I got other business first. Now, what else have you got on this freak?”
“The priority—”
“Two things,” Cross said, his voice as deceptively transparent as an ice cube. “One, your priority doesn’t mean a thing to me. Two, as it turns out, I have to do this other business to get something I need to do the work you want done.”
“Perhaps we could—”
“Shut up and let the man do his job,” Percy cut the blond man off.
Tracker and Tiger were silent. That frightened the blond man a lot more than Percy’s growling. And he was truly terrified of Percy.
“NO WAY I can interview him?”
“Not a chance,” the blond told the man at the other end of a phone conversation. “We came to him, not the other way around. But we do have video of him interacting with us, if that would be any help.”
“All right, partner,” the consultant said. “Send what you’ve got over that special little modem of yours—I’ve got the one you gave me all hooked in. Not just the video, now—everything you put together before you decided he was the man for the job.”
“How fast can you—?”
“I’ll call you when I’ve got something to say,” the consultant answered, a split second before he pushed the “end” button on his cell phone.
CROSS STEPPED off a commuter flight, picked up the rental car waiting for him, and drove straight to a pawnshop that was on the permanent Watch List for local law enforcement.
His hair was a tangle of blond curls, and he sported a prominent beauty mark on his cheek. An earring dangled from his right ear on a long chain. Anyone who looked closely enough would see the “ball and chain” symbol for a submissive in a “collared” relationship.
Cross exchanged only a few words with the proprietor. They entered a back room. When Cross left the pawnshop, he was carrying a small suitcase.
A no-tell motel took his cash. Cross changed his clothes, then re-entered the rental car. First, he plugged a memory stick into the car’s data-port, disabling its GPS. Then he drove for a little less than two hours, totally fixed on his objective, never noticing the urban grit give way to a scenic countryside.
He arrived at what looked like a college campus. A closer look would reveal it to be a minimum-security prison. Cross, now dressed in a conservative suit, with the fool-the-eye disguise removed, entered the prison, carrying an attaché case. He was processed through, enduring only a scanner—no pat-down searches were required at this security level.
Next stop, the Visiting Room. It was an open plan, no barriers between visitors and convicts. Lots of people were visiting, children playing with their sort-of-incarcerated parents; unarmed guards in neat uniforms circled quietly, observant but lacking the hyper-alertness of security staff in real prisons.
Cross was directed to a corner table. He waited patiently until an inmate walked over to him. The man was tall, slender, handsome to the verge of “pretty,” with a pencil mustache highlighted against his café-au-lait skin.
The two men’s heads moved very close together; they spoke in barely audible whispers.
“Just get him out to the South Yard anytime after two-thirty tomorrow afternoon,” Cross said.
“Man, I don’t know if I can do that. It ain’t like we tight or nothing—I don’t hardly know the dude.”
“Save it, Maurice. One, you owe me. Two, talking people into things is your game. And, three, I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Look here, bro.…”
“Wait. There’s still a number four.”
“Which is …?”
“You remember your old pal Ace? He told me to give you a message: You don’t get this guy out into that South Yard tomorrow afternoon, you better lock up. For the whole rest of your bit, understand? You can’t do that here, so you’ll need a transfer. And you’d better tell the Parole Board you’d rather do more time, too. The longer you stay Inside, the safer you’ll be.”
Maurice nodded, not happy about it, but resigned to the realities of his life … one of which was men like Cross.
CROSS WAS in full camo gear, which covered not just his body but his head and hands as well. He worked his way through the hills surrounding the institution he had visited the day before. A quick glance at his watch—13:56—confirmed he still had plenty of time.
Methodically, he set up a sniper’s roost. Next, he removed a rifle from its case, found a comfortable prone position, and dropped the heavy barrel’s bipod to steady the scope.
A thin smile cracked his masklike face when he saw Maurice on the yard. The pimp was talking earnestly to a white male, gesturing wildly with his hands to emphasize whatever he was saying.
Cross dialed in the man’s face, then slowed his breathing. When certain he could get off a round between heartbeats, he slowly squeezed the trigger.
The target’s head exploded, followed immediately by the cccccrack! of a high-power cartridge.
Cross carefully disassembled his sniper’s rig and repacked everything, working quickly but unhurriedly.
Then he made a careful retreat through the wooded hills. He stopped near a big tree marked by a freshly dug trench in the ground, lined with some sort of metallic cloth.
His camo gear came off first. By the numbers. When everything was stowed away, including the sniper rifle, Cross dressed himself in conventional hiker’s clothing.
A piece of polished steel confirmed his restored appearance. Cross then removed a pair of large glass-stoppered bottles from behind the tree. As he poured the contents of each bottle into the trench, they formed a new substance, which immediately went to work. Cross watched as everything inside began to liquefy, then carefully resealed the metallic cloth with his gloved hands.
It only took minutes for Cross to replace the divot, check the scene to make certain he’d left no trace of his presence, and move out.
“I CAN’T believe it,” the young cop said. “I mean, how could a sniper pick him off at that distance? That’s almost half a mile.”
“I guess when they say ‘low security’ that about covers it,” McNamara replied.
“That man you sent—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” McNamara answered, using the cold voice he saved for special occasions. Professional occasions. “And neither do you.”
“Okay,” the young cop replied, his eyes wet. “But I’ll never forget it, anyway. And if he ever—”
The young cop stopped himself from saying anything more. The man he had been talking to was already gone.
“ALL I can do is give you a stack of rule-outs, partner.” The consultant’s voice came through the van’s multi-speaker system.
“I’ll take whatever you have, Doctor,” the blond man said. “For one, he’s no sociopath.”
“But he makes a living—”
“No offense, my friend. But if you keep sticking your two cents in, this conversation’s going to take a long time. I get paid by the hour. And a lot more than two cents.”
Tiger giggled. Percy threw his thousand-yard stare. Both aimed at the same target.
“The sociopath diagnosis was ruled out because I couldn’t find even a trace of narcissism. And no question but the man has some real loyalty to others. But the absolute tell was when you were able to link him with that car bomb. The target was head of a cartel operating out of Guatemala—the first one to use MS-13 soldiers in America, in fact.
“You don’t know who paid him, but no question that Cross brought a whole team down there years ago. The mission had something to do with a diplomat’s daughter. Remember, I’m looking at papers with the usual spook blackouts of key data, so that’s the best I can do.
“Anyway, Cross lost at least two men in that operation. A narcissistic sociopath might seek revenge because of some ‘Nobody messes with me and gets away with it’ need to maintain his personal reputation, sure. But Cross seems to have been acting based on what the dead men would have expected of him. That’s the kind of leader professional soldiers would want to follow.”
“Anything else?”
“From what I can determine, there isn’t much to him,” the expensive consultant answered. “His personal relationships—male-female, I’m talking about here—seem to be limited to … professionals. Strippers. Or, if you like, ‘dancers.’ That kind of thing.”
“He pays for sex? That could—”
“I said ‘relationships.’ He’s not paying for sex. What you’d call a series of ‘girlfriends’ are all drawn from that same world.”
“Doesn’t that mean something?”
“Yeah, it actually does. It means Cross only understands people who work for their money, and do that work on his side of the law. Interestingly enough, his original partner—this ‘Ace’ individual—goes the opposite way. He’s had the same relationship with the same woman for a good twenty years. Children, too.”
“Does she know what he does?” Tiger asked.
“Probably not exactly, but she knows he works nights and never gets a W-2.”
“That doesn’t really help,” the blond man reminded the team.
“Not for what you want, no,” the consultant acknowledged. “Oh, Cross can do a lot of things, but now he seems to be following some script I can’t get at. His whole crew is like a band of guerrillas operating in hostile territory, but I can’t see any objective. They seem to hate the government, but they lack any desire to overthrow it.”
“Money?” Percy guessed.
“No,” Tracker responded instantly.
“He’s right,” the consultant echoed. “The money’s almost secondary to some of the things this crew has done. Taken individually, all might have their individual reasons. But what you have collectively is a gestalt of outcasts.”
“A gestalt?” Tiger asked.
“Easiest way to put it is like this,” the consultant answered. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
“Could you be a little more—?”
“Remember, I’m theorizing from what you supplied,” he cautioned. “All right. Of them all, the only one who seems fully centered is Rhino. Why he’s taken it on himself to protect Princess, I couldn’t even guess at. There’s no question that Princess on his own would be as dangerous as a horde of pit bulls on angel dust. Or that he doesn’t have a malicious bone in that huge body. He’s like a child … unless some button gets pushed.”
“Who can—?”
“Push his button inside the crew? Probably any of them, but only Cross does so deliberately. Once Princess shifts, he’s utterly without limits. You really need me to tell you that, after sending me those crime-scene shots? Like the one that shows he harpooned a man to a wall?”
“You said you wanted everything,” the blond man answered.
“So I did. Okay. Ace is a contract killer. But he and Cross go so far back that how they maintain that relationship is a puzzle. Buddha seems to be the most money-oriented of them all. And even Buddha has something else going on. He’s that rare individual who likes the chase better than the capture.”
“Meaning what?” Percy sneered.
“Meaning, if you put a million dollars on the table as a gift, he’d probably say something like ‘Thanks, but I’d rather steal it.’ ”
“That doesn’t provide us with much insight,” the blond man said, earning him another round of venomous looks from Tiger and Percy. Even Wanda slid her chair a few inches away.
“Let’s try it this way, then,” the consultant’s voice came through the speakers with a little more of his natural tone, thanks to Wanda’s adjustments. “Ace kills for money; that’s his profession. Buddha would kill for money, but he’s got no real interest in killing. Rhino has no hesitancy about homicide, provided it’s in furtherance of a specific mission. Princess, however, turns lethal only when he believes someone else ‘started it.’ That phrase is the one characteristic of his supposedly ‘unprovoked’ attacks.”
“His war cry,” Tracker ventured.
“That’s about right. As for Cross, there’s no question that he’ll kill—individuals or groups—without hesitation. But he’s not a pure contract man like Ace. In fact, the motivation for a number of homicides attributed to him is unknown.”
“Could he operate on his own?” the blond man asked.
“Can’t tell you. There’s no case that it appears he could have pulled off without assistance of some kind. But Cross is a man who collects obligations. And he’d call in markers anytime he needed them.”
“You understand, for our plan to work, we have to send him in there alone?”
“Sure, I understand. But I’m not sure you do.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means what I just said. A lot of people seem obligated to him, in one way or another. And they all have people obligated to them. Cross might walk in there alone, but I’d put my money on him not staying that way long.”
LATE THE next evening, the blond man and Wanda entered the War Room. They noted that Cross was already in a whispered conversation with Tracker.
“You tell him yet?” the blond man asked Percy.
“No.”
“Tell me what?” Cross said.
“You’re going to jail, pal.”
Something flashed across Cross’s face, less quickly than his left hand disappeared inside his coat. “You got a good sense of humor, Blondie.”
“Listen!” the blond man urged. “You saw the news. They hit again. Right inside the Isolation Wing of the federal lockup. The same wing where they were holding that freak who was trying to take credit for the Canyon Killings.”
“That suicide?”
“Suicide, my ass. That’s just for the media. Towers was one of their signature kills. Here, take a look for yourself.”
The blond man tossed several color photographs on the table. Each showed the serial killer who had tried to persuade the authorities he had bodies buried all over the country in an attempt to stave off his own execution. But the man was not hanging as a suicide would be—what remained of his torn-apart body was dangling from some sort of metal hook, both the skull and spine missing.
“Damn!” Cross said, realizing that the complex arrangements he had set in motion with the Corsican had all been for nothing—had he waited another day, he would have been paid anyway. Just like Viktor’s crew, he thought to himself.
“Yeah, that’s right. Whoever did this, that’s who we want. They’ve got to be locked up right inside that exact same place. That was as up-close-and-personal a kill as I’ve ever seen.”
“Where were they holding him?”
“I told you, in the high-power tank of the federal holding facility. He had his own cell, of course, but all you need to get yourself locked in high-power is be notorious. It actually makes up a large part of the entire institution. Some are in there awaiting trial, others awaiting transfer. So it could be anyone. And there’s no reason to think the place was as sealed off as it’s claimed, either.”
“What makes you think they’re still inside? They did their work, why wouldn’t they move on?” Tracker asked.
“There’s been two more since,” Wanda answered. “Inside that same place. Two more killings. Reported as inmate gang violence—stab wounds, lead pipes, like that. But we’ve seen photos of the bodies. They’re in there, all right.”
“If you want to hunt hunters, there’s no better place …” Cross mused aloud.
“Numbers,” Tracker added.
“What’s that mean?” Percy demanded.
“You kill a killer, all his kills belong to you.”
“Huh?”
“Remember what that doctor guy told us? About this being a game? That means someone’s keeping score.”
“Ah, that was just—”
“How did they manage to get it done? There are cameras everywhere inside that place,” Wanda interrupted.
“And that’s how we know there’s been an insane race war going on in there for weeks,” the blond man added. “The body count’s already over a dozen.”
“You said three—”
“I know, Percy. But only the last two match the signature. And they were both whites. Rumors are flying that there’s a special squad of black hunter-killers running wild in there. Keys to the tiers, everything. That joint is a pure terror zone. Way too many guards calling in sick. And they were understaffed to begin with.
“The Aryan shot-caller is a man named Banner. Triple-lifer, knows he’s never going to see the outside world. Only reason he’s in there is that he’s awaiting another transfer. Been moved a dozen times. Worthless waste of time—he’ll link up in an hour, no matter where they put him.
“The blacks are in a single unit. At least the warriors are. Call themselves the Urban Black Guerrillas. An informant told us that this comes out of their conviction that all prisons are ‘cities,’ and failure to control their own ‘neighborhood’ would be a mortal sin.
“There’s a loose group of Latinos. And I do mean loose. Mexicans and Marielitos aren’t ever going to get along, never mind those maniacs from Central America, or local Puerto Ricans. The only good thing is that there’s not that many of those. The bad thing is, that’s what caused them to band together.
“Even the Asians seem to have called a cease-fire between themselves while all this is going on.
“But we know we’re not looking at some convict race war. It’s their work, for sure. It’s like Tracker just said. With all those great targets just waiting—kill a killer, you take all his kills—I think they’re going to be around for a while. No point leaving crops to rot in the field.”
Cross locked eyes with the speaker. The others watched, expressionless.
“So you see,” the blond man finally said.
Cross lit another smoke. “I get it now. Okay, I’ll go with it. But there’s things you need to do first. And I need a couple of days to take care of some other stuff.”