Rodeo's two henchmen lay moaning, halfconscious. That left Rodeo, who faced Bolan, one hand pressed to his tender side. His bald head was bumpy in the bright sunlight, the small eyes almost invisible under the dark canopy of his thick eyebrows. He reached inside his waistband and plucked out a nineinch shank. "You gonna die, asshole. In small pieces."
Behind Rodeo, young Dodge Reed had recovered enough to understand what was going on. He looked at the two writhing men on the ground, the gleaming shiver of sharp metal in Rodeo's hand. Then he attacked. It wasn't much of an attack, a weak punch to Rodeo's back ribs, as if he was trying to find the same spot where Bolan had hit the prison tough guy. Rodeo barely noticed the punch, whirling fast enough to backhand Reed, knocking him off his feet and spinning back to face Bolan again with his blade.
"That kid's gonna be even sorrier than you, Blue," Rodeo said, grinning. "He's gonna be the whore of some of my guys, who aren't too nice. But then, at least he'll be alive awhile. Not like you."
Rodeo held the shank flat in his hand, the way an experienced knife-fighter would. Bolan spread his arms wide, centering his gravity as he backed up slowly.
From behind him came the creaking of a wheelchair, and Lyle Carrew swung into view, setting the brake on his chair, smiling for the first time since Bolan had met him.
"This I got to see," he said, rubbing his hands together. Rodeo's toothless pal groped around on the ground, trying to pull himself up. Blindly he grabbed Carrew's wheelchair. "Hey, man," Lyle said, hammering him on top of the head with a fist, knocking him back to the ground, dazed. "Hands off," he said.
The first cut came from a fake. Rodeo thrust the blade low toward Bolan's stomach, forcing the Executioner to dodge to the left. When he did, Rodeo whipped the shank upward toward Bolan's exposed throat. Bolan pivoted in time, but the steel shank scored, tracing a bloody line across his shoulder. The slash burned a little, but Bolan ignored it. He'd fought guys with knives before.
Many didn't know how to use them properly. Those who knew what they were doing were another matter.
Especially when they were that tall.
The hand with the knife teased at Bolan, flicking out, then pulling back without committing itself. Bolan watched it, saw the tattooed tail of the snake coiled around the wrist, the rattles etched onto the back of the hand.
"Come on, you guys," Carrew encouraged. "These guards aren't going to play dumb forever."
Rodeo lunged again, the blade torpedoing at Bolan's heart. Bolan chopped at the wrist, knocking it away. That blow would have broken an ordinary man's wrist. Not Rodeo's. He kept coming, thrusting the knife in quick jabs. Bolan leaped out of the way each time, finally grabbing the wrist and pulling Rodeo closer, snapping his forehead into Rodeo's chin, trying to twist the blade out of Rodeo's hand.
"Guards!" someone whispered.
Rodeo and Bolan pushed apart. There was more to fear from the guards than from each other. Inmates had all the time in the world to deal with petty squabbles. But not from solitary confinement. By the time the guards pushed their way through the crowd, Bolan and Rodeo were standing far apart, Bolan helping Reed to his feet, Rodeo nudging his men with his feet.
"What's going on here!" the first guard demanded. "What happened?"
"Basketball," Bolan said, "We were playing. Scrambling for the ball. A wild elbow, you know. Accident."
"No harm, no foul," Rodeo agreed.
"Search 'em," the first guard ordered, throwing all of them up against the wall. They patted each prisoner down, but there were no weapons. Rodeo's blade had been passed on to a friend who was already on the other side of the yard.
The guard pulled Rodeo's heavy henchman to his feet, wincing at the pulpy shredded face.
"Holy! Get this one down to the infirmary."
"What about me?" Rodeo's other man asked, his toothless mouth a bloody hole.
"Yeah, you too. Let's go." The first guard hauled them off. But Bolan saw a look pass between the second guard and Rodeo, something like a shrug.
Rodeo nodded and rubbed his hand over his lumpy bald head, fingering his braided tail. He stared down into Bolan's eyes, and growled, "Soon, Blue. Very soon."
7
Bolan leaned over his cell's tiny sink and dabbed some wet toilet paper to the cut on his shoulder. Behind him, Lyle Carrew put on reading glasses and jotted notes in his steno pad.
"Thanks," Bolan said.
Carrew didn't look up.
"You talking to me?"
"Yeah. I said thanks."
"For what?"
"For your help out there. Flooring Rodeo's henchman."
Carrew looked up and laughed.
"Hell, I wasn't helping you, fish, I was hurting him. Big difference. Bastard touched my chair. I taught him not to."
"Yeah, well, thanks anyway." Carrew frowned at Bolan. "I don't want you getting the wrong idea, fish. That could be fatal. Nobody around here helps anybody else unless they want something. I don't know what you want from that Reed kid, that's your business. You don't look like you want him the way Rodeo wants him, but either way I don't care. Understand me now."
"Sure. All for none and none for all. That about sums it up?"
"You got a look, man, that says you don't believe me. Just so we're clear, you and me, and you don't go expecting any help later when Rodeo comes after you, and he will, for sure. Let me show you something."
Carrew's hands reached back into the mechanism of his chair, fiddled with something and suddenly there was a flat blade in his hand, eight inches long, sharpened on both sides.
"See? Now if I really wanted to help you out there, I'd have tossed you this. Am I right?"
Bolan nodded. "Thanks for straightening me out. I'd hate to go another minute thinking maybe you were doing something nice."
Lyle Carrew replaced his shank in its hiding place and wheeled toward Bolan. "You're a weird guy, Blue. I know your rap sheet, and I've seen you handle yourself damn well out there. You been inside before, you know how things work."
"I'm sentimental," Bolan sneered.
"You're something. I haven't figured out what. Yet."
Bolan glanced at his wound. The bleeding had stopped. He shrugged back into his shirt and thought of how he could get to Dodge Reed. Now with Rodeo and his gang after both of them, he'd have to make his break soon. Real soon.
To make matters worse, Carrew's curiosity was aroused. The man in the wheelchair was sharp, perceptive. The slightest hint that a prisoner might not be what he appeared could send a shiver of paranoia through the prison population that would result in a shank buried in his back within the hour. Cops had gone undercover in prisons before. When discovered, they didn't livelong. Carrew was peering over the rims of his glasses at Bolan. The glasses made him look oddly bookish. "You aren't talking now, Blue. You got something to hide?"
Bolan acted angry. "What's your problem, man? Shit, you go around here acting you've done twenty years of a life term. Telling me how it is. Who not to trust. Hell, all you did was punch out a doctor and scare some nurses. Big goddamn deal."
Carrew chuckled. "Seemed like one to them."
"Yeah, well that kind of prankish crap don't cut it in here. Most of the guys are in here because they've wanted something and they were willing to rob or hurt or kill to get it. What you did didn't get you nothing."
"That's a fact," Carrew said, folding his glasses and tossing them on his bunk. "You probably think I'm just some crazy black with a chip on his shoulder about his color or being crippled or both."
"Are you?"
Carrew shrugged. "Maybe. Yeah, maybe I'm just a bitter vet. Or bitter about being black. You want a fact, Blue? Something that'll knock your socks off? Here's a statistic for you. In the U.S. an inmate has a one in 3,300 chance of being killed during one year in prison. But the average black man outside prison stands a one in 1,700 chance. That means he's at twice the risk of being killed outside jail. Yeah, that might make me bitter, make me toss a few TV's Out of a window."