* * *
I turn from the guard's body and look at the ancient, fire engine red Oldsmobile convertible that Vic's accomplice has driven up beside the prison bus. With more chrome than the current Rambo incarnation, the car would be a teenager's dream machine.
"What the hell is this?" I demand, throwing the bloodied shovel into the ditch beside the bodies of the guards. "Haven't you guys ever heard of being nondescript? They’ll see this from ten kilometers away!"
Victor bends down and removes the keycard from a guard's belt, which he promptly uses to disarm his collar. "Let's go," he grunts and pulls me around to the passenger door. I see the other cons in the wilderness reclamation work detail sprinting, despite the heat, for the cover of the trees. In their orange uniforms they look like so many wisps of flame darting through the long dead ruins of Albuquerque. Of course, they won't get far. The signals in their collars will have the heat on them inside an hour.
"Ease off!" I yell as Thring pushes me into the car and steps into the back seat.
This is new. Over the past two months Victor never laid a hand on me. I've come to control the prison in that short time, after disposing of Marco Vance. But now he manhandles me and won't follow my orders as usual. I don't like it. I don't like the convertible. I don't like Chester Gould.
Chester Gould. Now there's a shifty little backstabber if ever I saw one. First of all, he's not even 150 cents tall, probably less than 60 kilos, and has about as much muscle as Vic has brains. His sparse, scraggly hair is pulled back from his sloping forehead and over his ears to a short ponytail, held by a red rubber band. The skin on his face and hands is also pulled tight and thin, like a worn shroud, the veins bulging like long green worms. His protruding eyes, black and hardly visible beneath heavy lids, are set close to a prominent, aquiline nose. His small mouth is bordered by extremely thin lips, which rarely ever close to hide his perfect teeth. A small, delicately maintained mustache completes this picture of deceitful sycophancy.
Whereas Victor reminds me of a looming troll blessed with a lack of warts, Chester looks like nothing more than a diseased undertaker.
All I know is his name, which is bad enough, and his manner, which nearly makes me retch. But the fact that he picks just about the most easily identifiable car in the world doesn't do much for my confidence in him. Nor his boss.
Chester puts the car in gear and we speed off, clouds of dust spraying up behind, blocking the view of the carnage Victor and I wrought.
“Why the hell didn’t you bring a skycar?” I demand to know.
“We don’t need a skycar to get where we’re going.”
"And where we going, Chester?" I make sure that the stress I put on pronouncing his name can be mistaken for nothing less than unbridled contempt.
"Well, Ross," he responds, exactly imitating my own voice, "we're going to find your money and then to see Mr. Ziebel."
I grab him by the throat and yank him over to my side of the car, squeezing. Nobody talks to me that way. His face quickly turns redder than the Olds as Victor lunges for the wheel and we swerve crazily to a stop.
"Listen, you sawed-off little runt!" I growl into his fiery face. "You call me Mr. Drake and take off this cuff off now or I'll rip your larynx out!"
Chester can't respond, of course, because my grip is quickly crushing his esophagus, but Victor yanks my hands away and throws me out of the car like a lifeless rag doll. By the time I get up, they are both standing, facing me, weapons in hand. Chester has recovered pretty quickly from my attack, and he smiles reproachfully.
"Mr. Ziebel wouldn't like you choking me, Ross." Chester Gould's voice is a model of honey-soaked false obsequiousness. His smile and fawning manner convey a picture of the cowardly, bootlicking toady. But the malignant lifelessness of his black eyes reveals his true nature: a ruthless killer who pulls triggers as much for perverse enjoyment as cold-blooded necessity. "But I do like that neck restraint. It completes that 'incarcerated' look those fine mandarin garments so subtly hint at. I suggest you refrain from future attacks."
Victor, looming beside him, grunts in agreement. That grunt has come to annoy me for the last couple of months, as we waited in prison for the escape. That grunt makes up about fifty percent of Vic's vocabulary.
I move forward.
"Not any closer, Ross. I'm fully aware of your dislike of confinement, but don't let it force you into a suicidal position."
Standing side by side, in front of the car, they go together like broken glass and donuts. Vic, in his dusty orange prison uniform, stands like some ebony war monument, right hand dwarfing the .44 Magnum it holds. Beside him, Chester dabs the sweat from his forehead with an orange handkerchief from the pocket of his pin-stripe suit. Unlike Vic, he's spotlessly clean. He’s even straightened his tie.
I step closer.
Chester raises his tiny Derringer, which in his small effeminate hand looks like a heavy pistol. "You're not as crazy as that, Ross. In fact, you're not nearly as crazy as you'd have everyone believe."
"You'll soon find out how crazy I am." Chester's Colt won't stop me, but Vic's Ruger certainly will, if I don't move fast enough.
"Ah, ah, ah. Come on, Ross, don't be stupid. Such aggressive behavior will only end up with you getting ventilated."
This guy is just as original as Victor. Did they get their vocabulary from two centuries ago?
"You can't shoot. Ziebel won't get his money."
"Which you'll take us to right now, if you please. I don't have to kill you to immobilize you, so be smart." He replaces his handkerchief into his chest pocket and pulls out something else. The collar transmitter.
"After all, what's twelve million between friends?" With a flick of his thumb my neck restraint stabs me with electricity. My pain inhibitors take up most of it, but I'm still forced to my knees, gasping.
Chester wouldn't dare hit the detonator switch, but he is just the type to shoot off my kneecaps to get his point across. I glare at Chester and Vic. The time will come when I'll have the better of these two, and then I'll send them straight to Hell.