Never Again

Four on his right, three on the left, five in front. Newbies behind. Three.

Always alert. Always.

And one thing repeating in his mind: Bones was wrong.

Okay, Bones was never wrong about the important things: bones, IDs, which home insurance policy was a better value (she really read all that fine print), what Christine should eat (even if she didn't like to eat it), how to take care of his back.

But his wife was wrong. He was in general population.

They lied to her, a smokescreen meant to appease her while they did whatever they damned well wanted to him.

Well, he'd done his best to delay his transfer. Six weeks. He was a Ranger, a sniper. Beaten, blown up, shot, tortured. He could handle this.

Don't look weak, don't look scared, don't look. But keep your eyes wide open.

And march. Stop when the man in front of you stops. Wait. The guard passed out people like cards, two to a cell. One left, one right. Then the march of the penguins began again. Stop. Deal more cards. March. Stop. March. Stop.

You're the next card that's dealt. Only one card this time. Turn left. Meet your new 8x10 room. A bed. Bottom bunk. A steel box bolted to the floor. Stainless steel sink and toilet.

And bars. Lots of bars.

oOo

From one cage into another. Dinner. Seventeen in front. Eight, nine sitting down. Four serving. Dozen, two dozen behind. A tray. Plastic plate. Plastic fork.

Mushy beans. Mystery meat. Potatoes. Bread. Orange for dessert. Army food rations were better. What he'd give for a meal at the diner with Bones.

He couldn't stop thinking about her. And Christine. Parker. Pops.

Yet thinking about them rather than this place was easier. And harder.

Sit down. Shovel in the food. Try not to actually taste it. Swallow the food along with any fear or anxiety.

Show nothing.

Accountant type next to him. Glasses. Next guy's a former trucker. Guy across is shaky, nervous. Newbies, attract one another like magnets. Stick together.

Look up. Keep an eye out for familiar faces. People watching him. Someone on the inside ready to take him down. It's like high school on crack; the cliques here will do more than just judge you out of their group.

They just might kill.

Gang bangers. Skin heads. Bikers. Repeaters. Losers.

Like him.

But not like him.

He's the man with a target on his back, the golden ticket to street cred. Or the means to end the Foster case.

Permanantly.

oOo

Night comes and the bird's back in the cage. Now he can stretch his thoughts as he's safe for the night. His cellmate is a 60-year-old in for bank robbery, half-blind and half-gone already, snoring like a stuttering jet plane.

Bones would have something to say about that. Tell him he's got nostra-calinori-phlebticcoccus or some such thing, recommend some kind of breathing therapy and cure the guy.

God, he missed her.

She'd been so damned relieved to tell him that he was going into the segregated part of the jail. Talked to everyone she could think of to get him moved. His partner, always protecting him.

And it didn't work. They played her, played him in this. Marked him.

He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up an image of his wife, a memory of his daughter and son, but the darkness refused him a small glimpse. Instead, he heard the soft mewling of what sounded like a cat in pain between the jet blasts above.

He knew that sound.

Put a man in a cage around other men in cages and sometimes the worst comes out. He knew the sound: liquid fear smothered. The accountant, maybe. Maybe the other guy. Nervous tic guy. One man's misery touched every other man's pain.

He listened to the jet engines above him, closed his eyes and counted the hours until morning.

oOo

He'd sent people here, came here to interview inmates. Can't make bail, threat to the community, capital offense, bail denied, you stay here, courtesy of D.C. until trial. But the trial began here. One inmate told him that if he could survive here, he'd make it in prison.

Guy hung himself.

He'd been in bad situations. Kosovo. Cape Town. Kandahar. Karbala.

He'd survived then, he'd survive now.

Then he had had a strong sense of self-preservation, a desire to see his grandfather again, a need to see his son. Now he had Bones and Christine and Parker. Pops and his mother. Even Max and Russ and a sister-in-law and nieces. And the others. Friends so close they were really family. Now he even had a bigger reason to live, a greater purpose than to see Bones and his children, to see Pops and Max and his mother.

Justice.

He held no delusions that Lady Justice was truly blind, that she didn't somehow peek beneath the blindfold at times, but she stood no chance if the FBI was dirtym was circumventing the law and turning its own blind eye to the guilty. And all he could think of was never again; he wasn't about to surrender.

oOo

Breakfast. Tray. Scrambled eggs then toast. Bacon. OJ.

Shuffle down to the end of the line for the plastic ware. Shuffle to a seat.

He'd been spoiled by diner food, by his own morning prep. But he'd slept some, the jet engines shutting down last night as had the sobs of despair a cell over. Here he doesn't have a morning paper, but he has body language to read. The trucker shuffles to a seat next to him, acknowledges him with a nod. Then the nervous guy. Another look. Blank this time as if the boredom of the routine has already zapped his brain turning him into a jail zombie.

Then the accountant. His shoulders sags, his face betrays a restless night. He shuffles toward them like an old man.

But he doesn't quite make it. A tall Latino bumps him, sends the breakfast tray crashing to the floor and Ranger alert, he sees this isn't going to go well for the accountant. The slight is all it takes as the Latino swings his own tray into the man's face, sending the man and his glasses skittering to the floor.

It's an unfair fight and he doesn't have much use for bullies. Two of the Latinos are kicking at the accountant who's curled up like a pill bug, but each kick opens him up just a little to more abuse, more damage.

The guards react slowly as inmates crowd around the wreck of the man writhing on the floor and without thinking, he elbows his way into the thick of it with no thoughts about Bones or keeping his head down or surviving but only about how this is wrong and the guards aren't moving fast enough to break it up and how the cries of pain of the man on the floor are his own silent cries and he snaps an elbow into the solar plexus of one of the Latinos and then lands a punch to his throat as a roar goes up around him and he moves on the other Latino who's stepped back, delivers another kick to the prostrate accountant before whirling on him with a fist that catches his shoulder but doesn't stop him as he pivots, hiding his right that sneaks in low and finds flesh then bone and repeats two, three times before his left makes a J arc and snaps the man's head back and sends him crashing backward into the crowd that acts like a trampoline to send him back to him for another blow before he feels the weight of a body, then two, maybe three tackling him to the ground.

And the roar of the crowd goes silent.