Alexander Langley stared through the forward windshield of the helicopter as the pilot radioed in his clearance and began his descent.
Beyond mere exhaustion now, Langley’s eyes were bleary; his head pounded and his body craved sleep. For a moment, he mused upon how fragile he had become since retiring from the forces. But, he supposed, twisting the arm of the most powerful man on earth could be draining.
“Absolutely no way!” the President of the United States of America had practically shouted at him. “Totally out of the question! I can’t believe you’re even bringing this to me! You of all people, Alex!”
For his part, Langley hadn’t let John Harper’s outburst faze him. He had held his ground, staring through the teleconference suite at U.N. Headquarters, his image and voice being transmitted into the identical suite in the White House.
Leering back at him, each of their faces displayed on six-foot tall, high definition screens to either side of the president was Sec Def Mick Kane and CIA Director Jason Briggs.
“I wouldn’t, Mister President,” he had replied with all the diplomacy he now wielded instead of an assault rifle. “If I thought there was any other way. But the fact of the matter is, sir; we need him.”
Harper’s face had darkened. “The man is a traitor,” he snarled. “A traitor to his country, to his people, to his uniform. To me,” he added. “He took an oath to protect the citizens of this country, the office of the president and, having abandoned that oath, he committed perhaps the vilest betrayal of all. He betrayed the men and women under his command. He has the blood of U.S. citizens and U.S. soldiers on his hands. He escaped justice once, Alex, but fate has given us, and the families of the dead, a second chance to see that justice enacted.”
“With all due respect, Mister President, I am aware of his history.”
“You’re aware? Damn it, Alex, he betrayed you too!” Harper had practically roared at him. “When he escaped Leavenworth, he set you up for the fall, made it look like you had helped him escape. A great man like you had to throw in your military career because of a cowardly little traitor like him. Now you want me to set him free? Give him a presidential pardon? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I really can’t!”
Silence had settled over the four occupants of the two rooms then. Langley had seen the president’s face, flushed red a moment ago, struggle to relax. He’d also noticed Jason Briggs’ eyes boring into him through the digital stream. Trying to read my thoughts, Jason? He’d thought sardonically. He’d always known that his previous superior had considered him an accomplice in the escape, despite the bullet to the knee.
“No, Alex,” Harper almost whispered the words, reigning in his emotions. “Nathan Raine is going to burn in hell for what he has done to this country.”
Langley waited for a heartbeat and then matched the president’s tone. “I don’t doubt it, Mister President. But, sir, I’m concerned that if we don’t include Raine on this mission, then we will all, the people of this country and of the whole free world, burn right there alongside him.”
The dramatic statement had finally broken through the president’s thick skin. A flash of worry flickered in his eyes. “What are your thoughts, Jason?”
Briggs continued to peer down his beak-like nose at Langley, his shrewd eyes calculating. “This establishment, this country, trained Nathan Raine to be the best of the best. There is no doubting that the man we all once knew would be not only a great asset, but could pull this mission off single-handedly, if he had to,” he replied carefully. “But it is that very ability that concerns me, Mister President. He is a loose cannon, and if he again turns his sights on us, I’m scared to think of what might happen.”
“But what’s done is done,” Mick Kane spoke up unexpectedly. All eyes had turned to him, a flash of anger in Briggs’.
“I don’t mean that callously, Mister President,” he clarified. “There is no doubt, nor denying what he did. He went off the rails and people, good people, died because of it. But, if your intelligence is correct,” he glanced significantly at Briggs, “then he has spent the last three years in hiding, eking out an existence flying tourists to their rich resorts.” His eyes flicked in Langley’s direction, a brief nod of allegiance. Langley liked the Sec Def. Both former soldiers, they knew what it was like out on the battlefield far more than the politicians they served.
“The mighty have fallen, sir,” he concluded. “He has nowhere to go, no prospects, and no future. Presidential immunity in exchange for his help. I don’t believe he would throw that away.”
“He may be a loose cannon, Mister President,” Langley had cut in then, sensing his moment, “but without him, mark my words, without a shadow of a doubt, this mission will fail.”
Harper’s face had still been angry, Langley could see. His eyes burned with hatred. Raine’s history with the president was personal. He wasn’t just any old soldier that had gone rogue. He was the man selected by the president to command his own personal army, and he had betrayed both the professional oath that he took to the President and the personal promise he had made to John Harper.
“It seems that fate has dealt me a losing hand,” the president had finally said. “To protect this country, I must make a deal with the devil.”
Well, Hell certainly is the place to do that, Mister President, Langley thought now as he was guided by three prison guards under the still spinning rotors of the chopper and into The Castle.
It was a silent place, especially at this late hour, the muted stillness broken only by the occasional slamming of huge metal doors and the clanging home of giant locks.
He was passed through numerous security checks, an inordinate amount of time being taken as the guards, or ‘corrections specialists’ as they were referred to, scanned the metal plate in his knee.
In a sadistically whimsical part of his brain, he mused that his torn knee, after three years, had finally come full circle.
With very little care for his elevated status, the guards finally decided that he was carrying no weapons or other forbidden objects and he was led deeper into the facility.
Composed of three, two-tier triangular pods, the facility covered fifty one acres of land. The white walls were broken by solid metal doors and peering inside a handful that were vacant, he saw barren cells, empty save for a metal cot, a toilet and a sink.
After what seemed like an endless march, accompanied only by the pounding of his and the guard’s boots, the jangle of keys and the electronic buzz of mag-locks, he arrived on Death Row.
Despite its airy, sterile atmosphere, compared to the cold grey, dungeon-like aura of the original Castle, USDB Death Row truly was a place of the damned. Reserved for some of the most vile creatures in the world, rapists and murderers, trained in the art of killing by the United States Armed Forces, this was their purgatory; their last stop before the chair, then Hell.
Traitors, all of them, reserved for only the lowest level of the Underworld.
They ultimately halted outside of a thick metal door set into the middle of a bland wall of breeze blocks, supported, Langley knew, by concrete and iron bars.
Even in a maximum security prison where escape was impossible, this cell was the ultimate in containment and solitary confinement. Only two men had ever escaped from the United States Disciplinary Barracks. In 1988, David Newman had made it all the way to Kansas City before being caught four days later. Nathan Raine, however, had been on the run for three years and was only caught due to a stroke of severe bad luck.
He wasn’t going to escape again.