Читать книгу The Fixer - John Stewart - Страница 6

Chapter 1

The Beginning

Mark woke in a hospital bed in prison. The left side of his face was swollen with cuts along his cheekbone and eyebrow. His left eye was completely swollen shut. He looked down at his hand. His right was bloody across his knuckles. It was also handcuffed to the bed rail. His ribs were wrapped, and it hurt to breathe.

The prison doctor walked up. “You’re awake. That’s good. You know one of these days they’re gonna get the best of you.”

Mark spoke and heard his own voice sounding muffled. “How many?”

The doc looked into his eyes with a penlight. “How many guys did it start with, or how many did it end with?”

He swallowed and felt the soreness in his throat. “How many did I kill?”

The doc straightened. “Two. You broke one’s neck and choked the other guy to the point you crushed his esophagus. What made you so mean in your life?”

Mark shook his head. “Life didn’t make me mean, Doc. Combat did and a man in Georgia. Call me TK. That’s what my friends call me.”

The doc patted him on the shoulder. “We’re not friends, Mark. You just end up in here every week, getting something looked at or sewn up. You’ll be in here for a few days this time. The injury to your eye is pretty severe. I don’t want you back in population until the swelling goes down.”

“Thanks, Doc. Hard for me to keep them off me if I can’t see them coming.”

The doc walked away, and Mark reached up with his left hand to feel the damage on his face. He couldn’t remember the fight this time. From the amount of damage, he could assume that he got kicked in the face or something. That must have knocked him out. He had to get out of this prison.

Mark wouldn’t join any particular group in prison, and that got him against several. He would fight somebody in one of the groups about every two weeks. He would tear them up or, in today’s fight, kill someone, and that would buy him a month of peace in solitary confinement. Soon though someone would come after him to seek revenge.

He had been a Special Forces soldier, trained to the max by the military in hand-to-hand combat, special weapons, and counterintelligence. He spent fifteen years in the army doing just that. The nickname TK had come from the colonel he saved during one mission. The colonel’s convoy was hit, and he had been taken hostage. Mark and three others were sent in to get him. Killing almost twenty Taliban soldiers in the rescue. The colonel started calling him TK after he cut one of the Taliban’s throats with a knife so fast the guy didn’t even know he was cut. The colonel called him The Killer for a while, and eventually it got shortened to TK.

The colonel never forgot the event and had pushed for Mark’s promotion and reassignment. Mark left the dessert shortly after that and became the colonel’s right-hand man. The colonel was part of a special unit gathering intel on terrorists all over the world. Mark found himself in situations constantly that took a cool head and quick reflexes. The gig was great for the next four years.

Mark had met a young girl two years into the assignment and began dating. They were getting more and more serious and had begun discussing marriage. She lived close to the base he was stationed at in North Carolina. She was a waitress at one of the bars Mark would frequent from time to time. They were a thing almost immediately.

Mark was on a mission to some foreign place with zero communication. Katie, his girlfriend, was used to guys hitting on her and always handled it quickly. One night a guy was persistent, and she began to get uncomfortable. She told the manager, and he angrily told the guy to leave. Katie finished the shift, and one of the guys walked her to her car. She never noticed the guy following her as she left the parking lot. Video surveillance showed the truck leave behind her but didn’t catch the tag number.

Mark came home to multiple messages from the police and several from the owner of the bar. Katie never made it home that night. Her car was found off a stretch of dark highway down in the ditch. Keys in the ignition with a damaged rear end. The police report stated that it was a kidnapping by a staged rear end collision and forced crash into the ditch. Mark went insane with rage.

He immediately went to the police station, and they had no leads. He made them show him the video coverage of the parking lot and the cameras along the route. Not one got a usable image of the guy’s tag.

The police, after a month, had moved on to newer cases, and Katie missing was determined to be an unsolved case. Mark had been there many times and had torn the place up twice in fits of rage at the cops’ lack of care for his girlfriend’s life. At the two-month mark, Katie’s body was found in one of the local rivers. Her head was missing, and she had been mutilated. Mark ended up in the hospital that night getting stiches after putting his fist through the window of a cop car at the scene.

The murder was unsolved, and Mark decided to take the investigation into his own hands. He began to interview witnesses and track down leads to this guy in the bar that night. Mark used his contacts at the CIA and FBI to find every truck in the area that matched the description of his truck. He interviewed everyone that was in the bar that night to try to find anyone that knew the guy. The owner one night gave him a copy of the surveillance tape he had saved, knowing it was important. Mark took it to the base and ran facial recognition software for every guy on the tape.

Slowly, he began to track down every person there that night. One year into the search, he got a break. A guy in the video was married, and the same guy had hit on his wife that night. The two men had got into it, but the bouncer broke it up quickly. The guy remembered the guy saying his name was Leo. Mark thanked the couple and went back to his list of owners of trucks. Of all the guys owning Ford F150s, year model 1990 to 1995, there were three with versions of that name. A Leo Cantrell, age twenty-eight. A Leon Riken, age sixty-two, and Leo Sparks, age forty-one. Leo Sparks had two prior arrests. One for assault and one for rape. He had served one month for the assault charge and beat the rape charge. Mark knew this was the guy.

He searched the database and found the truck now registered in Georgia. Mark took the information to the detective in charge of the case. The information died in procedure and jurisdiction. After many phone calls back and forth, Mark took matters into his own hands. He went and found Leo Sparks.

He was in a bar, still driving the 1993 blue F150. Mark followed him and watched him go into the bar. He waited twenty minutes and went in after him. He sat twenty feet away and watched the guy hit on every girl that came near him. Mark could feel the rage building inside him. He paid the check and went outside. He had parked behind the guy several rows away so that he could watch him leave. An hour later, Leo stumbled out of the bar and got in his truck. Mark watched him fumble with the keys, and he finally started the truck. Mark had already looked at the front of his truck and saw damage to the bumper that matched Katie’s car. This was the guy, and Mark knew it.

He followed the guy for ten minutes until he pulled into a trailer a few hundred feet back off the road. Mark went by and found a place to hide his own truck. Mark got out, tucking his Kimber 9 mm in his waist and his tactical knife in his boot.

Mark came through the woods up behind the trailer. As he approached a small shed behind the house, the smell was awful. He pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket. It put enough light out to see without being noticed. He eased the door to the shed open and immediately lost it. In the shed was a decomposing body of a young girl handcuffed to the wall. She was naked and gagged. To Mark, it was clear she was dead.

Mark came out of the shed and was staring at Leo and the business end of a .357 Magnum. Mark moved as the gun went off. Mark hit the guy so hard he went down and the gun flew. He dragged Leo into the shed and tied him right next to the girl. As he did, Leo woke and began to fight. Mark hit him three quick hits to help him understand who was in charge.

Leo spit blood and looked to his right. “What the fuck? Where am I?”

Marked grabbed him by the throat. “You know exactly where you are, you sick fuck. Tell me about the girl you killed in North Carolina.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone.”

“This is your house. You killed my girlfriend and dumped her in a creek. You’ve killed this girl, just like her.” Pointing at the girl next to him.

“I didn’t. This ain’t even my house. It’s my brother’s.”

“Oh yeah, where’s your brother? That’s your truck though right.”

“He’s out of town.”

Just then Mark could hear the sirens approaching. He looked around at the situation. He thought about how the cops would see it. He grabbed the rope holding Leo’s hands and cut it. Dragging him out of the shed and into the woods behind it. Leo started screaming, and Mark turned and hit him hard in the face. His knees buckled, and he went down. Mark picked him up and threw him over his shoulder. He carried the guy through the woods and dumped him in the front seat. He tied his hands to the grab bar and checked him for any other weapons. Mark grabbed his keys and took off. He could hear the sirens through the trees in the yard of the trailer.

As he pulled away with lights off, Leo woke again. “What the fuck, dude. Where are you taking me? I told you I didn’t kill that waitress.”

Mark looked over as he turned the lights on. “Who said anything about a waitress?”

Leo cringed, knowing he just screwed up. “Take me to the cops. I’ll confess.”

Mark shook his head. “No cops for you. I want to know exactly what you did to Katie. What she went through. The sooner you tell me, the better it will be for you.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. Just take me to the cops and I’ll tell it all.”

Mark pulled the knife from his boot and, with a flash, stabbed the guy in the leg. Leo screamed and then began to cry and beg.

“I ran her off the road. I grabbed her and took her to my place. She wanted me, I could tell.”

Mark stabbed him again in the leg a little harder and deeper this time. “You son of a bitch, she was gonna be my wife. She didn’t want you. She was friendly because that was her job as a waitress. What the fuck is wrong with you? Tell me what you did next.”

“I got her inside, and she fought me. I hit her hard, and she went down.”

“And then what?”

“I raped her.”

Mark screamed and stabbed him twice more. Once in the arm and then in the back as he turned away. He pulled into a field and drove about a hundred yards away from the road. He slammed the truck in park and went around to the passenger side. Leo was crying and begging. He kept saying, “Take me to the cops.” Mark cut the rope and dragged Leo into the field. He knocked him to the ground. Leo grabbed his leg and his arm.

Mark towered over him. “Tell me how she died.”

Leo cried. “No. Just take me to jail.”

Mark rolled him over and began to hit him hard in the face. “Tell me.”

Leo was trying to block the hits but wasn’t doing very well. Mark stopped and pulled the knife again, putting it to his throat. “Tell me how you killed her, and I will make this quick.”

“I strangled her. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Mark cut his throat so deep he felt the knife hit his spine as he went across. Leo grabbed his throat with both hands, trying to keep the blood in. Blood soaked through his fingers and out onto the ground. Leo’s hands slowly fell away. His eyes were fixed, staring straight up. Mark pulled the 9 mm from his waistband and shot Leo three times in the chest.

Mark was so angry and so wrapped up in the revenge of Katie’s death that he didn’t notice the cop walking up behind them in the field. As Mark finished the three shots, the cop yelled “stop” and for him to “drop the weapon.” Mark froze, thinking what to do. The cop screamed again, and Mark turned slightly, still holding the gun.

That was when he heard the shot and felt the burning rip of a bullet go through his shoulder. The gun flew from his hand, and he spun as he went to the ground. The cop was on him in seconds, and he found himself facing Leo as the cop wrenched his shot shoulder behind him to put on the cuffs. Mark looked over one more time, and Leo was still staring blankly into the sky.

One month later, Mark was walking into the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Prisoner number 613850. Serving a life sentence for kidnapping and the murder of Leo Sparks. His shoulder had healed, but he needed to stretch it and work with weights every day to get it back to the strength he had before.

His first week there had been unusual. Mark being a military guy looked like the neo-Nazi type. He had been approached almost immediately by a black guy calling him a racist. Mark said he wasn’t and walked away.

The next day he went to the weights area and tried to get a workout for his shoulder. He was threatened by the group of Nazi guys there and ended up sitting alone on a small wall in the yard. Every group in the prison had some kind of agenda. One hated whites; another hated blacks. Others hated everyone, and a particular group loved everyone. Mark just tried to blend in and disappear. His cellmate was a three-time convicted drug dealer and wouldn’t shut up. Mark would stay in his cell as much as he could and just do push-ups.

The first fight came in the lunchroom from one of the Nazi guys. He was sitting with a handful of nobody guys when the guy approached. He grabbed the bread off Mark’s tray and took a bite. Mark knew enough about prison to know you didn’t let people treat you like a bitch. He picked up his tray and hit the guy straight in the throat. The guy went down fast, and Mark had three guards on him in a flash.

That was his first time in solitary confinement. For Mark, it was a relief. He didn’t mind being alone. His time in combat had taught him to be calm and quiet his mind for long periods of time. He did hundreds of push-ups a day. After three months in jail, he was in better shape than he had ever been. He had dropped twenty pounds and was ripped with muscle. His shoulder was almost back to 100 percent.

The second fight was more serious. He was back out of solitary and back in the cell with the drug dealer. Kyle was his cellmate’s name, and he warned that the neo-Nazi guys were coming for him. Mark would be ready, and he was constantly aware of his surroundings. One afternoon in the yard, he caught a glimpse of three guys moving toward him in a rush. Two had their hands out, but the third had a hand in his pocket. Mark knew that was the guy with the shiv. He turned as three got to him, and he immediately dropped one of them with an all-out punch to the side of his head. The other two paused just long enough for Mark to spin and pull the light jacket off he was wearing. He wrapped his left hand with the jacket and pointed at the guy with the shiv.

“Come on, little boy. Let’s get this over with.”

The guy pulled the shiv out of his pocket and held it in front of him, not really sure of how this would go but nonetheless committed.

The second guy began to move around to Mark’s side. He knew the plan was to get behind him and grab him, locking up his arms, while the other guys stabbed him multiple times in the stomach. Mark waited for the guy to move behind him and then sidestepped hard as he lunged for his back. The guy came right up beside Mark, and he pushed him hard into the guy with the makeshift knife. It happened so fast that the knife plunged deep into the guy’s stomach. He screamed in pain as the shiv holder pulled back, realizing what had happened. Taking his eyes off Mark when he did.

That was all the time he needed. Mark was on the guy in a flash, taking the shiv from him and stabbing him several times as he walked away. He put the jacket back on and headed for the door going back into the main cellblock. The three men lay in a heap all together on the ground. Two were bleeding, and the third was still unconscious from the blow to the head.

Two guards ran past Mark as a siren sounded in the yard. One of the guards stopped Mark at the door. He put the billy club to Mark’s chest. “Hold it right there.”

Mark put his hands up in surrender. “What?”

“What the hell was that about?”

Mark lowered his arms and sighed. “They want me to join their little gang, and I said no. Now they have to try and prove some kind of point. It’s not gonna end well for them.”

“Farmer, don’t let me catch you starting any of that shit with them. I’ll have you back in the hole if you do.”

Mark smiled. “Please tell me what I need to do to go back to solitary. I hate being in this shit out here. I just want to do my time quietly.”

The guard grinned and removed the billy club from his chest. “Go inside and let me go see what kind of damage you did.”

Thirty minutes later, Mark was handcuffed and standing in the warden’s office. The warden was reading the report and looking at the pictures of the three men. Mark stood there at attention, feeling like a private in trouble.

The warden looked up. “Mr. Farmer, you’re not in the military, you don’t have to stand at attention.”

Mark relaxed his stance slightly. “Sorry, feels a bit that way.”

“Why did you fight these men?”

Mark glanced down at the pictures and then back at the warden. “They wanted to kill me.”

The warden closed the file and handed it to the guard standing to his right. “Yet there was no weapon found, but somehow two of these men had stab wounds. What do you know about that?”

Mark shrugged. “They had a shiv, not sure what happened to it. The one guy tried to stab me, he missed, and stabbed his friend. I took the shiv and stabbed him twice. Not lethal but an attention getter. I just want to be left alone. Sir.”

The warden stood and began to walk around the office. His office was decorated tastefully with a large bookcase on one wall. There were law books and prison reform books mixed in with novels of all sorts. The warden paused and stared at the wall of books for a minute. Slowly he reached up and pulled a book off the shelf.

The warden came between Mark and the desk, leaning back against the desk. He handed Mark the book. Mark looked down and read the title. The Right Way to Run a Prison by Warden J. Miller.

Mark looked up into Warden Miller’s eyes. “You wrote this?”

“My father. I’m Chris Miller. Mr. Farmer, I read your file. I know about your military background and about your murder case. I don’t agree completely with your conviction, but you can’t take the law into your own hands out there or in here. I can’t have you fighting in my prison yard every day.”

“I didn’t start it, but I damn sure ain’t gonna let some Nazi asshole stab me with a shiv.”

The warden stood. “Thirty days in solitary. Read the book, Mr. Farmer. It talks about prison culture in there. Join a group and make peace. Otherwise, your stay here will be short, and it won’t end well for you.”

The guard grabbed Mark’s arm and pulled him away from the desk. The other guard standing behind the desk never moved.

The warden walked back around and sat in his chair. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “I want him out of my prison. That guy is nothing but trouble we don’t need.”

The guard slowly moved away. “I’ll set up a transfer. We can send him to Florida with next month’s transfer. He can stay in solitary till then.”

“Good. Do the paperwork and I’ll sign it. He’s not a bad guy. Did you read his file? What the guy did to his fiancée.”

“No. Was it bad?”

The warden stood up and took off his suit jacket and threw it on the chair next to the desk. “You would have done the same thing he did. He found the guy here in Georgia. The guy had another dead girl in a shed, tied up. Raped repeatedly and strangled. He dragged the guy into a field, beat him, and then cut his throat. He pulled his gun and shot the guy three more times as a cop was approaching.”

The guard smiled. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. It was the three shots that the jury couldn’t let go. The prosecutor made a big deal about excessive force and him being a danger to society.”

“And they hung him for it?”

“Yep.”

The guard stopped at the office door and looked back at the warden. “You know, if we send him to Florida, the same thing will happen. He’s not going to join any group and be their muscle. He ain’t that guy.”

“I know.”

The door closed behind the guard, and the warden turned to the window overlooking the prison yard. The prisoners in orange jumpsuits mingled in packs throughout the football-sized field. He looked at the various groups. He saw the Nazi group huddled in a corner. They stood out like a sore thumb. He knew at that very moment they were planning to kill Mark Farmer.

He closed the blinds.