Page 12 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
“Get him out of here!” Rivas finally barked, breaking the spell. Of course Rivas had a wife and kids. Who among his men didn’t? The old man had simply guessed.
“Yes, Lieutenant.” Two more soldiers with secured weapons each grabbed an elbow and dragged Tamacas away, the two armed soldiers close by. Tamacas cursed vile threats against them all as he was hauled through the door.
The old man’s threats weren’t entirely idle. His murderous son, Narcisco, was now in charge of the organization and still on the loose, rumored to have fled the country.
Rivas pushed that thought aside as he stood alone in the room. He breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t lost a single man, and had captured his primary target. It was a good night. He prayed the other operations around the country had gone as well.
He turned to leave, but caught a glance at the grinning, fleshless monster in the corner, and the weighted scales clutched in her lifeless hand.
He whispered a prayer, crossed himself, and left.
6
Lieutenant Rivas rode in the cab of one of the big military trucks rumbling through the gates of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). The five-hundred-forty-thousand-square-foot building loomed like a medieval castle in the El Salvador countryside. It was as impressive and impregnable as any fortress built with human hands. The facility was ringed by a thirty-three-foot-tall concrete perimeter wall, several interior walls and fences, nineteen guard towers, and a fifteen-thousand-watt electrified fence. Military units patrolled the outside of the complex, and nearly two thousand guards, police, and infantry manned the interior. It was designed to hold forty thousand prisoners, and today’s caravan would fill their crowded cells to the limit.
The entire facility had been built with breathtaking speed by President Rómulo Olmedo, determined to turn El Salvador from the murder capital of the world to the safe haven of Latin America. His unrelenting campaign against the criminal gangs that terrorized his nation had succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. The young lieutenant was proud to be part of that effort.
Rivas dismounted from his vehicle after the long line of trucks squealed to a braking halt inside the final perimeter fence. Black-clad police in riot gear barked orders and the prisoners poured out. Within moments, several hundred prisoners—now shackled in chains by their ankles and wrists behind their backs—were herded like cattle into the intake facility, where they would suffer the indignities of whole body scans, cavity searches, cold-water showers, and the like.
The cuffed prisoners ran stooped over, their lines of stripped bodies undulating like a tattooed centipede. Out of that angry herd a head turned, and Oscar Tamacas shot a final, fatal glance straight into Rivas’s eyes before disappearing behind a set of large steel doors.
“That him?” the warden asked.
Rivas nodded. “Just an old man now.”
The warden shook his head gravely. “He’s old-school scary. I’ve heard stories.”
“I know. I’ve lived with them.”
For years, Rivas had held his sobbing mother in his arms as she described the mutilated corpses of her family and the manner of their horrific deaths. Her grief and his family’s honor were the main reasons Rivas joined the campaign against the crime lords.
The two men watched the big steel doors slam shut. Shouted orders echoed around the compound. Rivas glanced up at one of the tall towers crowded with vigilant guards armed with machine guns. The prison operation was a well-oiled machine and the men highly trained for their specific mission. Escape was clearly impossible.
“What will happen to him in there?” Rivas asked.
“They’ll put him into a separate unit for gang leaders, away from gen pop.”
“Is that a good idea, putting the bosses all together like that?”
“You worried they’ll come up with some kind of a plan?”
“They’re the smart ones, aren’t they?”
“Smart? Look at them now. They’ll sleep on steel bunks stacked four high with no blankets, eat meals with their hands, and take their water out of troughs like mules. What kind of plans can those smart boys make?”
Rivas shrugged.
Who knew what went through the minds of men like that?
?
The warden was right.
Oscar Tamacas found himself shoved into a communal cell ofeighty other gang leaders, all MS-13. Like the others, his head had been shaved, and he wore the same white cotton shorts and T-shirt. The clothing was meant to mitigate the blue-inked badges of rank and honor swirled onto their flesh—another form of humiliation.
The gangsters in the cell across the wide hallway were Barrio 18, their sworn enemies inside El Salvador. In fact, the entire CECOT facility was segregated that way. The authorities didn’t want to turn their prison into a dogfighting slaughterhouse the first day it opened. The Barrio 18 guys began jeering at Tamacas when he was first herded into the unit, but the guards quickly shut them up. The Barrio men lined their cage and stared silent daggers at Tamacas, who had personally killed or wounded many of their number. Any one of them would sacrifice himself for the opportunity to murder Tamacas.
At first, Tamacas was grateful for the setup. As soon as the door swung open he was surrounded by a dozen old comrades, who paid him deferential respect and even affection according to their rank in the alpha hierarchy. The hugs and smiles were genuine enough, but the old fox immediately understood the secondary purpose of the friendly caucus engulfing him.
