by Matt Rogers
Making me drop my guard.
So Bautista got his hands on the gun.
But that was it.
Because as soon as Slater recognised what was happening he exploded off the mark.
And he was fast, too.
Faster.
He smashed his right elbow sideways, so quick and accurate that you’d think he’d locked onto the side of Bautista’s temple with a laser-guided targeting device. He struck soft tissue and felt it crack under the rough, calloused skin of his elbow, and the thick bone underneath. Bautista flailed back, experiencing something akin to a bomb going off in his left ear, and Slater took his other hand off the wheel and brought it around in a looping bundle of nerves and strength. He kept his palm open, his fingers splayed, opting to disorient rather than try and put him out cold with a more accurate blow. He couldn’t risk a closed fist whistling past, hitting thin air, leaving him horrendously exposed. Instead he slapped Bautista full in the face, palm to nose, fingers into eyes. But it was more of a detonation than a slap. It broke the guy’s nose and blinded him simultaneously, and the force behind it thrust him back into the soft leather of the seat, and now he was completely off-balance.
Slater wrestled the AR-15 out of his hands and spun it around and jammed the barrel into the man’s throat, pinning him in the diagonal wedge between the seat and the passenger door.
He pulled the trigger.
Blood and gore sprayed but Slater barely saw it because he was reaching back for his own door handle, finding it, heaving it outward against the thick jungle wind buffeting the jeep like a slipstream. But he got it open and levered himself out of the driver’s seat, and he glanced ahead and saw the encampment shockingly close, and he made out the wide eyes of a handful of perimeter guards recognising the fact that the oncoming vehicle wasn’t slowing down.
The whole plan, the whole tactical approach, ruined before it had even begun.
Slater spotted commotion in the centre of the clearing. He squinted for a half-second — all he could afford, given the circumstances. He realised what he was looking at.
His eyes widened.
He adjusted the jeep’s aim, shifting the wheel a couple of inches to the right. It probably wouldn’t be enough, but he didn’t have time for anything else.
He threw himself out of the moving vehicle, still clutching the rifle.
Plunging into the hot darkness.
29
The big man with the fat lips wrestled Casey out of the bunker, leaving Ruby with her head bowed and the manacles around her wrists locked tight. Casey caught a final glance of the slim girl and her overly baggy clothes. They locked eyes. The big man threw Casey over his shoulder, and she slapped at his enormous back to no avail. Ruby blinked once. Casey thought she saw tears.
Then they were out of the bunker, and Ruby disappeared from sight.
The big man heaved her across the clearing, throwing him clean off his shoulder with more force than necessary. She travelled a couple of feet in the air and then sprawled into the mud, hitting the clearing floor with a wet slap.
It hurt — everything hurt.
She stuck an open palm out in front of her body to break her fall, but it bent awkwardly at the elbow as she hit the mud. There was a twang, and a gasp, and a recoil as the pain hit, but she didn’t think anything was broken. Not that she could tell. She could barely pay attention to it.
She tumbled onto her back and tried to get her feet underneath her, regaining some semblance of balance, but before she could do anything the big man seized her by the hair and hauled her toward a thick smooth slab of concrete in the centre of the clearing.
It was a strange sight. She narrowed her gaze and focused on it, and her surroundings fell away. Tunnel vision. That was where she was headed, and it was all she could concentrate on. The laughing, leering, sadistic men all around her shrank to nothingness.
All she could see was the stone slab, like a crude version of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus cut in half.
She realised it was some kind of giant meeting table, made from the same material the bunkers were constructed from. Leftovers, probably. Shaped and fashioned into a large rectangle and slapped in the centre of the clearing to please the narcos. Make them feel important. Make them feel like regular Italian dons. They could gather round something physical and huge, something that supercharged their testosterone. The big man with the fat lips probably felt like a king gathering his soldiers around the concrete, relaying orders, passing documents over the smooth stone.
Right now, it seemed to serve as the destination of Casey’s last breath.
The big man picked her up off the ground, putting all his strength into the move. Nerve endings on her scalp screamed for relief — she was suspended solely by her sweaty hair, matted together in clumps and knots. She kicked and screamed. It achieved nothing. The big man regarded her with contempt, then seemed to decide that the act of executing her was beneath him.
So he passed it to an underling.
He threw Casey toward one of the narcos. A tall, thin man with rippling muscle and beady eyes and hollow cheekbones. His head was shaved bald. He wore a sweat-soaked singlet and cargo shorts. He caught Casey around the mid-section and threw her onto the table. She barely resisted. She sprawled out horizontally, and the next thing she knew the barrel of a pistol skewered into the side of her temple, pinning her head against the concrete. One shot and her brains would eject all over the stone.
‘Please,’ she whispered, mortally terrified.
The big man strode toward her and crouched down. ‘Who is your friend?’
‘I don’t know, I swear.’
‘Not a good answer.’
‘You need me alive.’
The guy raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’
‘My … friends. They know secrets about … your enemies. They can tell you. But they won’t unless … I’m alive.’
The big man turned to stone, staring at her with genuine contempt, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Then he laughed. Sarcastically. Mockingly. He wagged a finger in front of her face.
He said, ‘You’re not good at this.’
‘Please.’
‘The only thing keeping you alive is the fact that there’s something in your head you can tell me about this stranger.’
‘There’s nothing.’
‘Then you’re worthless to me.’
He looked toward his underling — the guy pressing the pistol against her skull, wedging her in place.
The thin man’s beady eyes lit up, and he nodded.
Almost salivating.
Casey risked everything by holding up a hand. The thin man jerked on the spot, recoiling involuntarily. Hopped up on the prospect of murder, and accordingly reactionary.
The big man laughed. ‘Bit nervous, hey?’
The thin man said nothing.
Still holding out her palm, Casey said, ‘Wait.’
The big man said, ‘You’d better have something good.’
‘He seemed angry. When I spoke to him. I’d never met him before today.’
‘Angry at who?’
‘Everyone.’
‘Psycho?’
‘No.’
‘Just angry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s not much help.’
‘You should be on the defensive. That’s what I’m saying.’
‘He killed seven of my men in his own home. That must have been a gruelling war. He’ll be in no state to play offence.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Watch your tone.’
‘I’m just saying … how do you know that?’
‘It’s common sense.’
‘I wouldn’t use common sense with this guy.’
‘Wishful thinking on your behalf. You want him to save you.’
‘No, don’t worry,’ Casey said, eyes closed. ‘I know he’s not coming.’
No longer scared.
She’d reached the li
mits of her fear.
Now there was nothingness.
Tears ran from her eyes.
‘Just do it,’ she whispered.
The big man shrugged and backed away. He paused a few feet from the stone slab and nodded again to the thin man.
Final.
Unquestionable.
An unspoken command.
The skinny guy smiled and his beady eyes grew wider. He pushed the gun harder into the side of her head.
He was enjoying this.
Then an open-topped jeep containing nothing but a bloody corpse roared into the clearing and smashed into him from behind, pulverising his internal organs, throwing him several feet through the air like a rag doll, so loud and horrendous and overwhelming that Casey assumed the gun had gone off.
She blinked hard.
No.
She was still alive.
And a car had just barrelled through her peripheral vision, missing her by inches, scraping the side of the stone slab.
Heart thumping in her chest, almost paralysed by shock, she rolled away from the jeep — across the concrete — as all hell broke loose in the clearing.
30
Slater did nothing.
He was at the edge of the narcos’ awareness, enveloped in darkness, momentarily thanking fate for making him African-American. His skin wrapped into the night, turning him wholly invisible. He kept his mouth sealed in a hard line, so no-one caught a flash of brilliant white teeth. But they weren’t looking. They were concentrating on the vehicular missile that blared into sight, coming seemingly out of nowhere. Its hood detonated across the back of the guy standing over Casey and sent him cartwheeling grotesquely through the air. He slapped the wet dirt and lay still.
Broken.
Irreparable.
Dead meat.
Slater did nothing.
Pandemonium broke out. A couple of trigger-happy narcos screamed profanities and unloaded their weapons at the empty vehicle, achieving nothing besides complicating the situation. The deafening racket of automatic gunfire destroyed the relative calm of the night, save for the aura of dread hanging over the encampment. Slater sensed it, even as he lay burrowed deep in the vegetation, with ferns and reeds and mud and brambles pressing in on him from all sides.
This was a place of immense cruelty, and suffering. Endless suffering. Nothing good came out of here. The assortment of bunkers lay shrouded in the long shadows created by the halogen floodlights. He’d made sure to select a tactical position on the perimeter of the camp, so that most of the floodlights were pointed away from him.
He raised the AR-15 and singled out Santiago.
It wasn’t difficult. The guy exuded confidence and leadership — it was a subtle dynamic, but Slater could immediately tell he controlled things. He towered over the rest of the narcos, easily six two with room to spare, and his clothes bulged with a combination of muscle and fat. The kind of body professional strongmen possessed. People who trained their whole lives deadlifting incomprehensible weights, shovelling food into their mouths, transforming into literal cubes before their own eyes. Even from this distance Slater spotted the guy’s enormous meaty hands. Fat fingers. Fat lips. An ugly contorted face. A nose like a pig. Squashed eyes.
Hideous.
And dangerous.
Slater quickly scanned the rest of the population and found nothing particularly threatening. They were all long and rail-thin and bony and unaccustomed to a situation like this. All wide-eyed consumers of their own product. The jungle heat had shredded their body fat. Slater could break them down in an instant.
But he didn’t want to do that. He wanted this confrontation over before it got to close range. And if it did get in close, Santiago would prove a nightmare. So Slater lined up the sights with the AR-15 on the big man’s barrel chest as he waved off the gunfire, ordering his men to calm down, his ugly eyes already scanning the perimeter like a watchful hawk.
And he spotted Slater.
Awareness dawned on his face.
Slater hesitated.
What? he thought.
Impossible.
Fucking impossible.
‘There!’ Santiago roared, pointing a beefy finger at the darkness.
Jesus Christ.
Slater abandoned all hope of eliminating the population discreetly. He was buried in undergrowth, as dark as the night around him, so Santiago either had X-ray vision or frighteningly good luck. But as the boss screamed a command the narcos twisted all the same, guns up, ready to roll.
Slater couldn’t focus on Santiago anymore.
The big guy was unarmed.
And Slater’s priorities had shifted monumentally.
Two assault rifles arced in his direction, close enough to hit him, even if they pulled the trigger and hoped for the best. Even if they fired blind.
Slater kicked into overdrive.
He whipped the barrel to focus on the closest man and pulled the trigger, blowing him away in a hail of gunfire. The guy took at least three rounds to the chest and went down like the sack of meat he was. Slater let go of the trigger and moved his aim to the second man and shot him in the mouth just as he was about to pull the trigger. The guy’s jaw disappeared and he dropped the AR-15 and keeled forward, out of the fight, either close to death or already there.
Slater had no time to make sure of it.
He reeled in place, skewering himself down into the earth to compose his nerves and tighten his aim. He swept the clearing in a single move, tugging the barrel from left to right and scanning every dark corner for signs of resistance. It was confusing as hell, and he couldn’t even make out how many narcos stewed in the shadows. Some were out in the open, but unarmed. Not an issue.
Any others armed?
Any other weapons?
There.
At the opposite edge of the clearing.
Oh, shit.
This guy had his aim locked on.
Already.
Slater fired.
He struck home. Two bullets to the throat, tearing across the clearing and pulverising flesh. The guy twisted and fell away.
But not before he got off a shot of his own, fired from a semi-automatic pistol. It was too dark to make out the weapon.
Twwaannggg.
The bullet grazed the top of Slater’s head, and at that point all the training and reflexes and advantages fell away. He’d been hit before, but never anything like this. Not in terms of pain, but in terms of potential ramifications. He thought he was invincible, but the reality of how close he’d come to death froze him in place, like a deer in headlights. Warm blood ran in rivulets down his scalp. The tiny piece of lead had carved a thin line through the skin, almost penetrating to the bone beneath.
Almost.
He froze, and a narco appeared. Another rail-thin man, but one charged with athleticism and explosiveness. Slater realised he’d misjudged the number of hostiles. This guy appeared from the darkness, unarmed, his fly undone. He’d been taking a leak. A couple of dozen feet to the left. No gun. No knife. Just a rampant death wish and an overwhelming urge to protect his boss.
He threw himself on top of Slater like a valiant soldier trying to smother a grenade.
Rabid and animalistic and intense.
His bodyweight pinned the AR-15 awkwardly to the dirt, ruining Slater’s chances of using it at close range. He tried to throw an elbow upward, but the positioning was all off. He missed, and his limb whistled harmlessly past the guy’s skull, weighed down by gravity. He preferred to throw downward, with gravity on his side, at all costs. Now he couldn’t breathe, with a man’s deadweight bearing down on his back, crushing his diaphragm into the wet mud, constricting his breathing, inducing a certain level of claustrophobia.
He pressed his face into the mud, cutting off his breathing.
But things had to get worse before they got better.
The compression gave him a few inches of space between the back of his skull and the face of the narco on top of
him.
The guy lunged forward, sensing opportunity, thinking he’d knocked Slater unconscious with the manic tackle.
Slater sealed his mouth shut and wrenched his head back.
Skull against nose.
Crack.
All kinds of damage.
The narco fell off him, howling, clutching his face.
Slater reared up out of the mud.
A man possessed.
31
It was bedlam.
Slater levered his hips and tapped into reserves of strength and hauled the guy into the nearest tree. He scrabbled around in the mud, searching desperately for the AR-15.
Couldn’t immediately find it.
Not enough time.
Reeling, pulse pounding, head swimming, he shot to his feet and timed the distance between them as the narco bounced off the thick trunk and stumbled back into range. The guy was seeing double, tears streaming from his eyes, blood streaming from his nose. All lined up for a single blow.
Slater gave it to him.
Elbow to throat.
A massive clothesline.
Taking him off his feet, destroying soft tissue in his neck, cutting off vital components of breathing. The guy gasped for breath as he went down into the mud, taking an amalgamation of vegetation with him. He kicked and writhed on the ground, manic in intensity, but nowhere near a respectable state to put up a fight. He would probably die from the collapsed throat wound.
Slater forgot about him.
Just like that.
Bigger threats to deal with.
He powered into the clearing, catching a glint of the AR-15 where it had tumbled out of reach into the mud. It was coated in the gunk. Slater got a finger inside the trigger guard, but it was all slick with mud and sweat and blood. He analysed what lay ahead. Santiago was nowhere to be found, vanishing into the ether. A ghost, by all accounts. Slater froze on the spot, momentarily puzzled. The big man hadn’t been anywhere near cover.
Where the hell is he?
But he couldn’t linger on that idea, because there were four narcos left, spaced out across the clearing, each in various states of distress. Two were powering toward the bunkers, no doubt in search of weapons.