Free The Traveler by David Golemon Page B

before settling on the wheelchair and its occupant—“your day of days has arrived.” The guards watched the men in the cell for a moment and then turned to leave.
    The three brutes had lost all of their enthusiasm for getting even with the young man who had broken two of their noses. They turned away from him with one last dirty look at the man who had interfered, and moved off to sulk, because everyone knew that with the arrival of Gutiérrez some of their fates were already sealed.
    The young man in his wheelchair watched the small man with the black beard and bandana as he eyed the departure of the three thugs. He moved his chair forward until he was next to the man with the horrid and fright-inducing tattoo.
    â€œThank you,” the young prisoner in dirty denim said in English, very slowly as if his unlikely savior wouldn’t be able to follow the boy’s native tongue. The small man turned and looked at him with a frown and concerned dark eyes.
    â€œYou’re not very smart for some sort of computer prodigy.” The man slowly looked him and his chair over. “I mean you don’t even speak Spanish, do you?” the man asked, losing all of his own practiced Spanish accent. The boy’s face went slack. “Well, for the next hour or so you better become a hell of a lot smarter if you want to live long enough to eat dinner tonight. You understand?” the man asked, his three gold teeth shining in the diffused light of the old cell.
    â€œWho are you?” the young man asked.
    â€œA dickhead, son, a real dickhead”—the man smiled, exposing the brightness of the gold dental work—“who never understood my boss’s philosophy of not volunteering for anything, so for now just refer to me as Captain Dickhead.”
    *   *   *
    Richie Gutiérrez sat atop the small platform that fronted the warden’s office and faced into the prison’s small exercise yard. The prisoners had all been brought out with the exception of the three men who were the object of today’s lesson in why you shouldn’t betray or mess with Richie Gutiérrez.
    The middle-aged man, who was raised on the mean streets of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and had fought his way upward through murder, kidnapping, and torture to lead the most ruthless cartel since the heady day of the drug war in South America, was sitting in a large and very ornate chair as if he were the Roman emperor Caligula overseeing a gladiatorial death match. His dress was more appropriate for an evening cocktail party. He was drinking tequila with finely chipped ice as the prison’s population was brought into the area surrounding the exercise yard. The chain-link fence separated the privately owned inmates who were there to witness what it was they would one day face themselves.
    Gutiérrez accepted a refill of his tequila as he ate grapes and laughed along with his six henchmen as they watched the festivities below. There were two armed men not part of the prison’s staff of mercenaries in each corner of the balcony. It wasn’t that the drug dealer was afraid of outside influences interfering as the prison was completely legal in the eyes of the law, it was his closest associates the guards watched. The dangerous business he had risen to the top in broke no lackadaisical attitudes in the arena of trusting one’s subordinates. No, Gutiérrez was very safe from the law, because here, in this place, he was that law.
    The FBI, DEA, and the American Homeland Security had chased the cartel and its leader for nearly seven years and could never find him. The warrant the Americans carried told the world that they intended very bad things for Gutiérrez and his organization. The man knew that was not possible in his world. Even with the major monetary loss caused by the subject of today’s circus had not dampened the cartel’s fortunes as they made the deficit up by increased