Asa

 

With our destination so close, and both of us set on our goal of dethroning Dalton Saylor, we set out early the next morning. It seemed the air was electric with possibilities as I gassed up the car and we lit out of town, headed for the Fortress, pushing ninety the whole way. I hadn't wanted to speed like this before with Lauren in the car, since I hadn't been sure of what she'd do with the cops if I was pulled over. At least I knew she was on my side.

 

By late morning, the expanses of the plains had become dotted by trees. By early afternoon, the stands of trees had become forest of pines and evergreens that swept out as far as I could see. The air seemed heavier here, more humid the closer we came to the gulf. Soon, the pine trees were replaced by oaks and elms, Spanish moss hanging low from their limbs. We were in Louisiana, and you could almost hear the jazz if you strained your ears enough, or smell the jambalaya and boudin cooking if you sniffed the wind.

 

I pulled over to gas up the car for the last stretch of the drive. The Fortress was in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't know how long it would be till I saw another station. I left Lauren in the car, unshackled, and went inside to pay. Soon as I was finished, I gave Galen a call to let him know I had Lauren Saylor and I was going in. Of course, I didn't tell him about anything else I had planned.

 

“Ready?” I asked Lauren as I climbed back in the car.

 

Her lips formed a firm, thin line, pressed together so hard they were almost white. “I think so,” she replied.

 

I grabbed her hand, squeezed. “We'll get through this,” I told her. “Together. Okay?”

 

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said, seemingly forcing a smile as she squeezed back. “Together.”

 

By evening, we were within spitting distance of Dalton's little fiefdom, his own private expanse of land where he lived like a depraved king, a place where the only law was his private whim. Here, where the woods bordered the bayou, and people lived on the edge of poverty, no one cared as long as you had money, and the cops could be easily paid to look the other way.

 

We turned off the main highway and took to the backroads, following the directions Galen had given me some weeks back. We threaded through the trees, over back creeks, and through a small, deserted town Dalton Saylor had bought and cleared out.

 

The road leading up to the Fortress was unmarked, and we took the turn in silence. Then the trees broke, and we saw Lauren's father's kingdom for the first time.

 

“Jesus H. Christ on crutch,” she whispered in awe.

 

“You said it, babe.”

 

The Fortress rose fifty feet in the air from the soil like a monstrous concrete monolith, its gray surface stained with water runoff. Each side was at least as long as a football field, maybe longer. No windows were cut into the sides, so it looked like some massive mausoleum plopped down on the edge of the Louisiana bayou.

 

The Fortress was Dalton's point of import from all places anywhere. South America, the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico. Even Europe and Africa, some whispered. A private air strip crossed one edge of the land, and small planes came in and out all the time with their smuggled goods. One side of the compound even had docks, a place where smugglers could bring their drugs and guns up off the coast, then secret them away in the Fortress and get them ready for distribution to the rest of the country. Finally, along the backside of the building, there were tractor-trailers lined up for bringing in and taking out goods, distributing overland to all forty-eight continental states.

 

On the land side a perimeter fence stretched nearly twenty feet high, with razor wire strung across the top, split the Fortress off from the world outside. A guardhouse stood next to the one entrance in, and it was always manned, day or night. People in our organization figured some of them were ex-military, private contractors just looking for an easy buck. Others were men who had been with Dalton from the beginning.

 

Saylor shipped other items in and out, of course. He had to have something to make everything look nice and legal. But, shipping normal dry goods wasn't where he made his money. Far from it. And, over it all, swarmed armed men like ants crawling over a carcass. Men walked the security fence, worked the security gate, and there were even snipers on top of the building. How much money was this costing the old man each day? Private security like this didn't come cheap. Neither did the men who were needed to watch the security cameras that dotted the building, cameras I could see even from this distance. There must have been dozens and dozens, covering the whole landscape from every angle possible.

 

“Never seen it before?” I asked as we slowly approached the gatehouse.

 

She shook her head. “Think my mom would have wanted me raised in this kind of place? Hell no, I've never seen it! Just heard Pops talking to the guys about improvements and all that kind of stuff. I hadn't imagined it'd be this big!”

 

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Makes the Branch Davidians down in Waco look like amateurs.”

 

I pulled the Camaro up in front of the gatehouse, with its cross bar down across the road and spike strips laid out. A man with a big fiery red beard and arms as big as mine came out from the gatehouse and approached us with an assault rifle slung at his side. He wore camo fatigues, the kind you'd see in the military. He came around to my window as I began to roll it down, his hand on the rifle's grip.

 

“What can we do ya for?” he grated in a thick accent as he came to a stop about four feet away from the window, far enough away that I couldn't surprise him by slamming the car door open.

 

“Got someone your boss would probably like to see,” I said as Lauren shifted around to be able to see past me.

 

“Oh yeah? Who might that be?” he asked, slightly amused as he hunched down and looked in through my window. His eyes widened in shock. “Holy shit!” He grabbed a walkie talkie off his belt and hit the button. “Got a car coming up. You ain't gonna believe who's in it, either. Lauren fucking Saylor.”

 

I glanced back at Lauren and gave her a wink. She didn't return it, though. Her face had gone almost ashen with bad nerves.

 

“The prodigal daughter?” crackled the voice back. “Galen came through, then, just like he said he would.”

 

“The one and only, Mr. Vance,” Red Beard said.

 

Mr. Vance? I shook my head a little, trying to remember who was who from what Galen had told me before I got sent to retrieve Lauren. The man on the radio, if I remembered correctly, was Anderson Vance, Dalton Saylor's second-in-command, his right-hand man.

 

“Send 'em on up, then,” Anderson replied over the radio, his voice full of static. “I'll let Mr. Saylor know she's returned.”

 

“Well,” Red Beard said as he put the radio back on his belt, “y'all heard the man. Let's get y'all on up there.”

 

“Right,” I said, nodding as he went over and pulled away the spike strips from the road, then went into the guard house and hit a button that raised the crossbar from the roadway.

 

I pulled through the gatehouse area and drove up the road to the main structure. There was a large parking lot area, not much more than an expanse of packed and reinforced earth, off to the side and I pulled the Camaro around and found a spot.

 

“Ready for this?” I asked Lauren again.

 

She swallowed, clearly nervous. “Yeah,” she rasped, nodding. “Let's go.”

 

We climbed out of the car and headed up to the warehouse. I wanted to put my arm around her, to reassure her that everything was going to be fine, but I didn't know who was watching. I didn't want to give anyone the impression that we'd been sleeping together. Somehow, it just seemed that might give them more leverage.

 

“What's your plan when we get in there?” Lauren asked as we got closer to the front entrance.

 

“Plan?” I asked with a shrug. “No plan, yet. No one knows anything about the way the Fortress works, so I don't have one.”

 

Lauren stopped in her tracks and just looked at me. I stopped and turned to her.

 

She leaned in closer, her eyebrows narrowing. “You mean you fucking dragged me half-way across the country, and you don't have a fucking plan yet?”

 

“Well,” I said, grabbing her shoulders, “you're the starting point of the plan. It's just going to take some time. That's all.”

 

She shook her head. “Fine, Asa, fine.” She brushed my hand from her shoulders, wiggled away from my grasp, then started back up the path. “Whatever.”

 

I thought she knew that I hadn't had a concrete plan once I got in – we were both playing this thing by ear. She was the biggest stumbling block to getting to her father. She knew that. “Lauren,” I growled as I came up behind her. I went to grab her shoulder, but as I did, the metal double doors of the warehouse clanged open.

 

A solidly built man in his late forties, early fifties, came out. He had a jaw line beard and dark, slicked back hair with hints of gray at the temples. His clothing was plain, run of the mill jeans and a t-shirt. A gun holster with a 9mm in it was tucked at his side.

 

“Lauren!” the man boomed boisterously as he came down the little path towards us.

 

“Uncle Anderson,” Lauren replied, her face surprised as he swept her into his arms and kissed her on the cheek.

 

“Lauren, baby girl,” Anderson said as he hugged her tight. “Damn it's been a long time! I'm so glad Galen could find you and send you along home.”

 

“Yeah,” Lauren said, patting his shoulders, clearly a little uncomfortable at the hug. She pulled back. “This here's Asa.”

 

Anderson looked her up and down again, a gleam in his eyes that I didn't quite trust, or like, before turning to me. “Asa?” Anderson said. “You Galen's man he called about just now?”

 

I cocked my head to the side. “Yeah. I'm the one who went and found Lauren for him.”

 

“Oh?” Galen said, looking back and forth between me and Lauren. “Galen said you picked her up from him a little while ago, that he had business and couldn't drop her himself.”

 

I clenched my fists. The motherfucker was trying to take credit from me, trying to get me in on a lower rung, probably so he could look better for Dalton Saylor, have something to hold over his head during future negotiations. Lauren caught my eye and shook her head, tried to get me to drop it.

 

I shook my head. “That's not how-”

 

“No worries, though, son,” he cut me off with a wave of his hand. “We'll take care of you, I guess, like Galen asked us to.” He turned back to Lauren and put his hand on her lower back in a possessive gesture, began to guide her up to the doors he'd just appeared from. “Now, come on up, baby girl, your pops has been waiting for you forever! He can't wait to see you!”

 

I grumbled silently to myself as I followed them inside the building. The twenty by twenty room inside was stylized like normal offices, with a Louisiana twist. Just in front of the door was an empty reception desk with a small potted plant on the desktop. A big, stuffed gator head sprouted from the wall over the heavy reinforced double doors on the opposite side of the room. One glance at those doors told you that it was the portal to the true Fortress.

 

“Not too impressive, is it?” Anderson asked as he guided Lauren around the desk and deeper into the Fortress with his hand on the small of her back. “The real show's on the other side of them doors, there.”

 

A sudden image of Anderson's wrist snapping like a twig, along with every single bone in his creole hand flashed into my mind. I could use a hammer to do it, maybe some tongs to hold it in place.

 

“How about you, shitbrains?” Anderson asked as we came to stop in front of the doors. “You impressed yet?”

 

“Asa,” I growled as I stepped up beside them. “Name's Asa.”

 

Anderson shrugged and laughed as he pulled open the door and led us inside. “Welcome, everybody, to the Fortress.”

 

I whistled low as I stopped on the other side of Lauren from Anderson. He was right. The Fortress was damned impressive. I'd never been in a cathedral before, but standing in the Fortress was what I imagined standing in one would be like. Only instead of it being a monument to God and the audacity of man it was a temple to greed. This was a place drugs had built, drugs and filthy lucre.

 

Goods were stacked high on shelves, reaching nearly fifty feet up to the ceiling. A wave of vertigo passed through me for a moment as I looked up at the towering structures and imagined what this would all look like if it came crashing down. Men worked with forklifts, taking down product and putting up product, a hurricane of ordered chaos, all dedicated to moving goods, drugs, money, and cash to the wider world.

 

“Wow,” Lauren gasped beside me.

 

“Fuck, lady. You said it.”

 

Anderson turned back to me. “Alright, asshole, this is your stop.”

 

I gritted my teeth and had to keep my fists from balling at my side for the slight of him slurring my name again.

 

“Galen and I discussed it on our call, and we got some work you might be built for. Go talk to the foreman, Randall, and he'll get you setup for your stay here.”

 

Work? That's now how this was supposed to go. Not at all. I looked past him, to Lauren, but she just turned her eyes from me. My heart sunk when she glanced away. She was in it, fully back in it, wasn't she? She'd just used me as her ride back, knowing full well what my plans were. I opened my mouth, went to say something, but shut it immediately.

 

I shook my head, knowing I'd lost my shot. At least for today. There'd be other opportunities, though. The hardest part of this job had been getting in, hadn't it?

 

“Randall?” I finally asked.

 

“Down yonder,” he said, pointing off down the way. “Tell him you're the one I told him about, he'll get you started.”

 

“Yeah,” I said. “Uh, thanks.”

 

Anderson nodded and I turned, began my meandering path through the huge Fortress, boxes and goods swirling all around me as men moved the lifeblood of the underground economy.

 

I shook my head again and glanced back to Lauren and Anderson, but they were already gone, disappeared into the bowels of the Fortress like so much drugs and money. I still couldn't believe she'd betrayed me like that. So easily, so quickly. I hit a stack of good with my fists, rocking it back and forth.

 

That was fine. I could bring down Dalton Saylor's empire all on my own, if I had to. This was just a setback. Who cared if Lauren had abandoned me at her first opportunity? Who cared if she'd already forgotten how I pretty much saved her life. Twice. Who cared that she'd never cared about me?

 

Who cared if I actually cared about her?

 

Fuck Lauren Saylor.

 

I worked better alone anyways.