14
John Canyon had seen a lot of frightening thing. Headless corpses. The charred remains of children. During his second tour in the Persian Gulf, he bore witness to terrible atrocities inflicted upon the Kuwaiti people by the invading Iraqi soldiers in what was essentially organized rape and murder. He had faced enemies with hearts full of the worst kinds of depravity. Even then, he had never faced an enemy that frightened him like the man in the cage.
Canyon sat in front of the bars and watched his enemy watching him. He was reminded of a tiger he had once seen behind glass. This man, Frank, seemed to be a predator of equal magnitude, a powerful force of determination and skill.
His instincts told him to unload the shotgun into Frank and let the chips fall where they may.
With no preamble, he asked, “Is my son already dead?”
“No. He’s alive. For now.”
“I don’t know what happened to your missing agent. You’re declaring war on the wrong man.”
Frank leaned forward, the old cot protesting beneath his shifting weight. “You still don’t understand, Mr. Canyon. This is not a war. This is an extermination. But then again, I suppose the termites being sprayed with poison would feel that they are at war. To the exterminator, it’s just another day at the office.”
“You seem a bit overconfident for a man behind bars.”
“Please, look at your officers.”
Canyon glanced over to the other side of the station where Yazzie was dressing a small wound on Liana’s forehead.
Frank continued, “I could have killed them both. In the old days, I would have had some fun with the girl. She has fire. I bet she would surprise herself with how strong she could be. The other officer I would have probably just killed outright. He bores me. And I don’t like his name. Pit-cuh. What’s his first name?”
“Ernie.”
“That’s terrible. I would have killed him for sure.”
“This is all just a big game to you, isn’t it?”
“When viewed in a certain light, life is always a game. One with no rules, but definite winners and losers.”
“It’s the middle of the night. And I’m sitting here listening to fortune cookie philosophy from a guy who kidnapped my son. In most instances, I would be of a mind to start cutting on you until you answer my questions, but I get the feeling that you would never talk. I can see from your scars that you’re no stranger to pain. So what do I do with a man who I can’t force to talk?”
Frank shrugged. “It is a dilemma, and your only real option is to acquiesce to my demands. Return Maggie Carlisle to me, and you’ll get your son back.”
Canyon shook his head. “Would I? Even if I knew what had happened to your friend, why would I trust that you to hold up your end or that those boys are even still alive? No, I think I do have one other option.”
Standing and crossing the room, Canyon retrieved his shotgun from where he had rested it earlier. Yazzie called from the other side of the station, “John, what are you doing?”
“What I should have done from the start,” Canyon said, heading toward the prisoner.
He raised the gun to fire at a spot between the iron bars, but before Canyon could take aim, Frank launched himself across the cell and collided with the back wall of the makeshift prison. Frank was a large man, and he appeared to be aiming straight for the part of the wall damaged by the earlier shotgun blast. Dropping his shoulder and balling up, the prisoner broke through the paneling, the two by fours of the wall, and the fiberglass shell of the station.
Canyon stood dumbfounded as the man called Frank disappeared into the night through an exit of his own making. Trying to recover, he fired three volleys of lead into the back wall of the station, hoping to get lucky. But as he peered through the hole in the wall, he saw no bodies outside.
Turning to the three officers, who had drawn their weapons but seemed unsure of what to do now, Canyon screamed, “What the hell are you waiting for? You have a prisoner escaping!”
Coming to his senses, Yazzie barked orders to his two underlings, and the four of them trailed the man called Frank into the night.