“Wolfe, right? You’ll be bunking here, on the very bottom.” The chief playfully slaps a Tigerfish Mark 24 Model 2 torpedo, one of several stacked and secured to racks above two empty metal shelves, a thin mattress and bedding lying on each.
Gunnar can feel the eyes at his back as he ducks down to the floor and crawls in. He pulls up—too late, as the wetness soaks his arm and back, the smell of urine suddenly overpowering.
Gunnar rolls out of the bunk. The crewmen snicker, a few in the back mumbling the kind of venom he has heard too often over the past ten days. He stands, eyeballing the chief, fatigue fueling his anger and killer’s instinct.
“Sorry, Wolfie old boy, should ’ave warned you. Ensign Warren’s a bit of a bed wetter.”
More laughter.
Gunnar glares at the smaller man. Let it go, G-man. Remember, discipline is a higher form of intelligence. He removes his soaked shirt, then turns, and heads back the way he had come.
The crew closes ranks, refusing to part.
A bare-chested ensign steps forward. A large man, he is two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than Gunnar, Heavily muscled, his chest and arms sport tattoos advertising his rugby team, his mother’s name, and the Christian religion.
“Lot of sailors died ’cause of you—” The index finger stabs Gunnar’s chest, the man’s chocolate brown eyes spewing hatred. “You got some set of balls coming aboard our—”
Gunnar snatches the index finger in his left palm, snapping the appendage backward until it dislocates, then, in one motion, he steps forward and slams his elbow down across the bridge of the taller sailor’s nose. The viciousness of the blow sends the nearest crewmen sprawling backward, allowing Gunnar to slip behind his would-be assailant, locking his forearm against the injured man’s windpipe.
“Back off, chaps, or I crush sailor-boy’s larynx.”
Threatening looks, but the crew steps back.
Gunnar feels warm droplets of the man’s blood on his arm. “Just for the record, I never sold Goliath’s plans to the Chinese. But I won’t hesitate to cripple or kill any man who tries to fuck with me.” He motions to the ringleader. “You, take off your shirt.”
The sailor grimaces, but removes his shirt, tossing it at Gunnar.
Gunnar releases his grip, pushing the tattooed ensign away from him. He backs out of the torpedo room, grabs a blanket and pillow from a nearby berth, then heads forward, the men parting as he passes.
The sixteen vertical launch tubes holding the Trident II (D5) nuclear missiles are set in two rows of eight, the towering pairs of silos containing the sixty-five-ton rockets that line the compartment like steel redwoods. Gunnar moves past the vertical columns, stopping at tube number seven.
Just need a few hours sleep …
He positions the pillow and blanket between the seventh and eighth silo and lies down, curling himself in a ball. He closes his eyes, fatigue dragging him quickly into dreams.
He is back in Leavenworth, lying on his mattress, staring at the bare cinder-block walls of his cell. Animal-like cries echo through the halls as yet another inmate bugs out, losing his mind, going ballistic.
Ten years …
One of the inmates had called the sentence Buck Rogers Time—prison slang for a release date so far in the future that it becomes too painful to imagine.
Alone, Gunnar grinds his teeth in the darkness beneath the sheet. Tears of anger and frustration and fear roll down his face, pattering softly on the bare mattress. The internal voice of the farm boy, the victim—begs God to awaken him from his hellish nightmare.
Ten years …
No Rocky, no Bear, no family, no friends, no comrades, no country—just animals, preying off each other’s fears. Animals, waiting for him to let his guard down, animals, waiting to sodomize him in the showers, to gut him in the yard …
Gunnar’s eyes snap open, his heart pounding. He looks up, gazing at the tight confines of the missile tubes, the claustrophobic surroundings reminding him of his time spent in solitary confinement. He recalls his experience in isolation, the punishment following his confrontation with the inmate known as Barnes. As he lay naked, on the stone floor in the dark, his tortured mind had been unable to cope with his sudden fall from grace. Stress and fear had caused the shadows to close in upon him, suffocating him …
On the brink of madness, his Special Forces training had taken over, his Ranger mentality becoming his compass, his salvation within the oblivion. Thrust into a world where he had no one, he realized he still had himself. Solitary became a blessing, giving him the time he needed to reroot his sanity.
Ten years …
One hundred and twenty months …
Five hundred twenty weeks …
Three thousand, six hundred and forty days …
Eighty-seven thousand, three hundred and sixty hours …
Five million, two hundred forty-one thousand—
STOP!
As Gunner paced naked in the stench-infested dungeon, his mind finally released him from the burden of hope. Yes, in the eyes of God he had sinned, committing crimes under the guise of war. Yes, he had hoped that by destroying the Goliath’s schematics he might achieve some sense of atonement. Perhaps Leavenworth was his real punishment. Perhaps one day, if he survived his sentence, he would have another opportunity to make good before he died. What mattered now was staying alive. Like it or not, he was in the jungle. Survival depended upon his ability to accept his fate and adapt to his new surroundings. Survival meant shoving his shame and guilt and anger into a lockbox and swallowing the key.
Naked, stripped of everything he had held dear, Gunnar Wolfe allowed his thoughts to change gears, his mind to settle into the mental pace of doing hard time.
Sleep tugs at his body, yet his mind refuses to let go, the hatred of the Vengeance’s crew still echoing in his thoughts. In the jungle, death is a numbers game, for both predator and prey. Zebra and wildebeests run in herds, as do prisoners. Gunnar might have been a lion in the outside world, but a single lion alone on the Serengeti still ends up food for the vultures. Survival in prison meant choosing sides, finding allies—families, who would watch your back, or so you hoped. Gunnar’s retaliation to Barnes’s attack had earned him the respect of a group of lifers, an older, more established prison gang, one that had the clout to keep Barnes and his Aryan Brotherhood away. Necessity forced him to join their group. On the inside, their company made him sick.
After three years, Gunnar had no idea who he was anymore.
The prison riot that took place during Gunnar’s fifty-seventh month at Leavenworth began at breakfast. Somehow a .22 caliber Beretta had been smuggled inside the compound, ending up in Anthony Barnes’s hands. The con knew the warden would be speaking to the inmates that day. The Aryan Brotherhood was ready.
In the melee that ensued, two guards were stabbed, another shot in the face. Cellblock C was sealed off, with Barnes threatening to kill the warden if he was not released.
The law of the jungle says you move on when your herd is not involved. The law of prison says an inmate does not intervene to save a boss.
The laws of Leavenworth state that a warden is no longer a warden if captured.
Barnes, left without his bargaining chip, decided to go out with a bang.
Whatever Gunnar was, whatever he had become in prison, the thought of the warden, a father of four, being tortured and killed by one of the cons struck at every fiber of his being. Without thinking, without any thought of repercussion, Gunnar allowed his commando instincts to take over as he made his way through the cellblock, stalking his enemy. After taking out half a dozen of the rioters, the former Army Ranger went after Barnes, snapping the man’s neck, never feeling the two bullets as they entered his abdomen.