by Matt Rogers
He was running on an intoxicating cocktail of stress chemicals and forward momentum, but eventually he would crash, as all men did.
‘Need something for the pain?’ Slater said.
‘No,’ Williams said, a vain attempt to mask weakness.
‘Too bad.’
Slater changed right there, shivering in the abandoned lot as the cloudy sky grew infinitesimally brighter. He pulled on the khakis and tugged the compression long-sleeve over his barrel chest. Then he slipped into the vest and shrugged on the giant winter coat. He fetched the Sig Sauer out of the driver’s seat. It had an aftermarket fifteen-round capacity, and he’d already fired one bullet into Williams’ foot, but the lack of spare magazines didn’t faze him as much as it should have. He figured sooner or later he’d come across one of the mercenaries Williams had recruited to guard the compound, and if all went according to plan he would put the guy down and strip him of his firearms before he knew what hit him.
Slater held the weapon at the ready and pointed to a narrow bridge that ran across the Allagash River, barely wide enough to fit a single vehicle.
‘Walk,’ he said.
‘What about the extras you mentioned?’ Williams protested.
‘Oh. Right. Something for the pain.’
Slater pulled a packet of OxyContin out of his pocket, siphoned off the kid at the surplus store for twenty bucks above asking price, and tossed one of the strips to Williams. He regretted taking advantage of the opioid epidemic, but he had little choice. ‘Take four.’
‘Won’t that put me in a trance?’
‘That’s the goal. As little resistance from you as possible.’
‘I don’t want four.’
‘Take four or I’ll shoot you four times.’
Williams nodded. He put the tablets in his mouth. He mumbled something.
Slater snapped a plastic bottle of water off a six-pack in the back seat and tossed it underhand. Williams caught and drank.
‘Hungry?’ Slater said.
The man nodded. Slater couldn’t help but agree. His last meal had come the day before at the brunch spot. For good measure, he waited ten minutes silently in the cold, tapping the Sig Sauer against his leg, watching Williams like a hawk. Without any food in his stomach, the pills hit like a truck, and Slater saw the man’s eyes glaze over.
Williams faltered, resting against the side of the cabin, and started sliding down the Ford’s chassis. Slater propped him up, slapped him on the shoulder to kickstart his processing capabilities, and handed him one of five ration packs Slater had scooped up at the surplus store. Williams flapped his lips together, a dull smile plastering his vacant face, and tore at the cardboard packaging.
Slater fetched two MREs of his own.
They tucked into Italian chicken and instant noodles and muesli, each serving as dull as the last. But it was food, and it filled the void in their bellies all the same. Slater checked the coast was clear before handing Williams his second pack. The man ate it groggily, openly salivating, spit drooling from the corner of his mouth. Slater helped himself to the final ration pack, unsure when he would eat next.
Recharged by the nutrients, no matter how poor they tasted, he levered himself off the back seat and dropped down into the snow alongside Williams.
‘Ready?’ he said.
Near a state of delirium, Williams nodded, but this time his smile wasn’t as open.
It was sinister instead.
Slater put everything together. The drugs were hitting hard, and they wore away any hint of deception. Slater should have fed them to him earlier.
Now he said, ‘You’d better tell me what’s up.’
‘Too late,’ Williams mumbled.
Slater came up with the gun, ready to shove it into the man’s ear and make him squirm with fear, but before he could do that the cool touch of a blade pressed hard into the artery in his neck, only ounces of pressure away from opening his lifeblood up to drain out into the snow. It startled him with such ferocity that he almost shot Williams through the chest from fright alone, but he managed to refrain with milliseconds to spare. His heart rate skyrocketed, thumping so hard in his chest he thought it might burst.
Ruby Nazarian whispered in his ear, ‘Bet no-one’s ever snuck up on you like that.’
80
Slater stood bolt upright, rigid, unmoving, like a sick mirror image of a soldier standing at attention.
Gently, he muttered, ‘What would you like me to do?’
‘Let go of that weapon, for starters.’
He dropped the gun without hesitation. He had no other choice. The slightest hint of unwanted movement in any direction would set Ruby off. He knew it with absolute certainty. He’d seen the way she’d slaughtered the men in Colombia. Graceful, with no wasted movement. His death might even look artistic. A quick line across the neck, barely noticeable in the moment, and his fate would be sealed.
It’d take less than half a second.
As fast as he was, nothing trumped her speed. So he let the Sig Sauer clatter to the earth and stood palms out, fingers splayed.
Ruby shot a foot out and kicked the gun a dozen feet away across the slick concrete, where it came to rest in a miniature snowbank. Well out of range.
Russell Williams watched in a groggy stupor, eyes hazy and unfocused, but satisfied all the same.
‘Where the hell did you come from?’ Slater muttered through clenched teeth.
‘Shhhh,’ she breathed in his earlobe, so close he shivered from sheer unrest. ‘Quiet now. That’s it. You got anything else on you?’
‘No.’
‘He’s telling the truth,’ Williams mumbled.
The man took another bite of his instant noodles. Grinned through a mouth full of food.
‘He could have deceived you,’ Ruby said.
‘He’s not that smart. He thought you never returned to duty. He actually believed me.’
Ruby purred. ‘How could he think such a thing? I would never…’
‘What happens now?’ Slater said.
‘Just give me the word,’ Ruby said.
‘Wait,’ Williams mumbled. ‘I’m thinking.’
‘You’re high as a kite. Let’s get this over with.’
‘Wait.’
‘How many pills did he give you?’
‘Four.’
‘That’s not too bad…’
‘They’re strong,’ Slater said. ‘Evidently.’
‘I can see that,’ she hissed, her voice intoxicating. ‘Not another word from you, you beautiful man. You’re not in charge here.’
‘I’m in charge,’ Williams said.
Slurring his words.
‘Not as much as you might think,’ Ruby said. ‘You’re on cloud nine.’
‘But … you still answer … to me.’
Oh boy, Slater thought. They’re kicking in now. All those opioids, straight to the brain.
Williams swayed on the spot.
‘Okay, well, you’re persona non grata,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll count you out.’
She gripped Slater’s throat tight, pushing the blade an ounce or two harder. She drew blood. It ran hot and crimson down his neck.
She pressed her full lips right up to his ear, grinning, probably flashing the same pearly white teeth Slater remembered from a hotel room in Quibdó.
‘I quite liked you,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a shame.’
He didn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t afford to.
‘Couple. More. Seconds,’ she said.
Her breath came soft and deadly into his ear canal.
‘There we go,’ she said.
Practically erotic.
Williams said, ‘Wait.’
Practically yelling.
Ruby sighed, and it sounded like thunderclouds in Slater’s ear.
She said, ‘What?’
‘He came all this way. Shouldn’t we show him around?’
‘He’s not worth the risk. You’re high. Don’t be an idiot.’
‘As far as I’m concerned … I’m still in charge here…’
‘I’m overruling you. You’re not fit to do your job.’
‘Don’t you dare cut his throat.’
Slater tilted his head to the left as much as he dared, which constituted only a few millimetres. But now his voice had no chance of getting caught by the wind.
He was nearly face-to-face with Ruby.
He said, ‘Did it hurt that Abigail was better than you at everything?’
81
She jolted a millimetre. Stunned.
His intuition proved accurate.
Wherever she’d come from, she didn’t know Slater had paid her family a visit. It stunned her into a split second’s hesitation, and her grip slackened, just enough to create the tiniest of spaces between the blade and Slater’s torn skin.
He whipped the side of his skull into the bridge of her nose, shattering something important.
She recoiled — a forgivable offence in the big picture.
It was human nature. There was no resisting that sort of response. Unavoidable. No matter how much training you had. Slater would have reacted the same.
She jerked with the knife, blinded by a hot flash of pain but determined to cut Slater’s throat regardless. But the recoil, coupled with her grip slackening, gave enough space to sidestep away from her. Slater cut it close, but the same could be said for anything in his life, and he figured by this point he had an unquestionable knack for escaping death by a hair’s breadth. He felt the displaced air wash cold and dangerous over his throat, the blade coming so close to his flesh he could hear the gentle whistle of steel through freezing alpine air.
He nearly gasped from the terror alone.
But then he was out, twisting away from Ruby’s lithe frame, and for the first time he saw her. She wore an expensive tracksuit sculpted to her body, probably worth a few hundred dollars alone, designed to keep the cold out and keep the heat in.
Her hair was pinned tight behind her skull, revealing the Southern European bone structure shared by Frank Nazarian. The same tight jawline and high cheekbones and glowing eyes. Beautiful, in any other setting.
Like a supermodel.
But now the eyes were closed, and the blade slashed at thin air, and her nose streamed blood, twisted at a grotesque angle. Slater recalled exactly how fast she’d moved in the clearing in Colombia, and he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance with his bare hands — her with a knife and him … without.
The pain still seared in her head, hot and recent, and he knew he’d only get one attempt at a strike before she cleared the cobwebs and came back with composure and precision. So instead of maintaining his outward trajectory and going for the Sig Sauer on the ground, he backtracked inward and twisted into a side kick.
There was nothing artistic or graceful about it. It was technical, of course, but the nature of the Muay Thai arsenal relied almost entirely on brute power, on drilling a certain move over and over and over again until it seared into the brain and became muscle memory. You see combat on the big screen, with villains performing beautiful spinning attacks derived from capoeira and other performance martial arts, but in reality most attacks in that vein are fundamentally useless. Slater had nothing impressive in his repertoire besides ten years of unlocking his hips and kicking the shit out of a leather bag until his shins bled and his lungs burned in his chest. And, piece by piece, he got more powerful. He hit harder. He knocked the bag a little further. He began to twist so fast and kick so hard that it was a wonder he didn’t tear the leather clean in two.
That was all it came down to. Musculature, and power, and speed, and ferocity.
He hit Ruby in the ribcage with all four.
He didn’t hold back.
In his compromised state, Williams flinched and ducked low as the slap of shin against abdomen ricocheted off the impact site and rang through the empty parking lot. The man probably thought he’d been shot.
Ruby crumpled, dealing with all kinds of internal injuries Slater couldn’t hope to list, and the knife spilled from her spindly fingers. He kicked it away, neither as graceful or as poised as she’d done to his own weapon, but with ten times the power. It sailed through the air like a fastball and disappeared into the rapids a few dozen yards away.
Slater grimaced — he’d caught himself in the heat of the moment. He could have used that switchblade for what lay ahead.
Oh, well.
A gun will suffice.
‘That was my favourite knife,’ she breathed.
Then she shut up.
Because the pain overwhelmed her.
She squeezed her eyes shut, curled into a ball, and rocked back and forth, bleeding from the corner of her mouth as well as her nose.
Slater said, ‘Sorry. You did just try to kill me.’
He fetched the gun, half-expecting Ruby to rise to her feet like something out of a demonic nightmare, but nothing happened. Williams stood rooted to the spot, visibly aghast at the change in circumstances. His tiny pupils, shrinking from the effects on the parasympathetic nervous system, darted from Ruby to Slater, and back to Ruby.
He screwed up his face.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘That sucks.’
Almost comical.
Four pills deep.
Slater picked up the Sig Sauer, strode right back to Williams, and snatched him by the collar. He thrust him forward, in the direction of the bridge, and the man began a series of staggering lunges in that direction, barely keeping his feet underneath him.
Slater crouched down in front of Ruby.
Now they were alone.
He pointed the gun at her head, just in case.
She opened her eyes. The amber seared into him.
Accusatory. Inflamed. Enraged.
‘I probably broke a few of your ribs with that kick,’ he said. ‘You’re not doing anything in a hurry. All that grace and dexterity — out the window. Damn shame. I should kill you now. You’d do it to me. But maybe that’s the difference between us. Because you lost all your free will when they brainwashed a twelve-year-old. You don’t know anything but the mission and the objective. You don’t know anything else at all. You’ll never change allegiances, no matter how much evidence you get shown. I can do that if I understand I’m wrong. Maybe because I walked into a recruitment office as an adult, when I was old enough to decide for myself. Maybe that’s why I’m leaving you alive right now. It’s not the smart thing to do, is it? You could probably take some painkillers. Get up and find your knife in the river and come hunting for my head. Maybe you will. But I’ll take that risk. Just like how I’m risking everything for a little girl I barely know. You know how easy it would be to walk away right now?’
She just looked at him.
He got to his feet.
‘I’ll say goodbye now, because I doubt I’ll ever see you again. You’re not sneaking up on me again like that with broken ribs. If I see you again, I’ll kill you. Make no mistake about it.’
She kept looking at him.
‘But you don’t deserve to die.’
The amber eyes glowed.
‘Ask yourself if I’m really such a bad guy. Ask yourself if I’m really the monster they told you I was.’
She said, ‘Thank you.’
Barely audible over the wind howling out of the forest.
He didn’t say anything.
He walked around her and headed straight for the wilderness.
A gun in his hand, a vest over his shoulders, and not a clue as to what he might find in the forest.
He crossed the bridge, following Williams’ lucid stumbling, and a dark thought struck him as the trees wrapped around them and they stepped off the trail.
He thought, What if Shien doesn’t want to leave?
82
It didn’t matter.
He cared about her more than she knew, and he was prepared to seem like the devil to her if it meant giving her a normal existence. If she felt right at home in
the Lynx program, learning deception and espionage and fifty different ways to kill a dictator, then when she turned eighteen she could head straight back to the military and weave her way back into a government program at her own discretion. Slater wouldn’t be around to judge her then. She could do whatever the hell she wanted.
As he kept a hand on the back of Williams’ neck and listened to his dreary mumblings and directed the man through a shadowy army of alpine trees, he wondered what the hell had kept him motivated through this whole ordeal.
Was this a futile attempt at being a father?
He shrugged it all off, and focused on the dark gloom ahead.
Winter had seized hold of the region, harsh and brutal in its intensity, covering the treetops in a thick dusting of snow, blocking the cloudy light from filtering through to the forest floor. They walked through the shadows, almost ethereal in nature, heading for nowhere in particular, with no plan in particular to rely on.
Slater didn’t care.
He was accustomed to this.
Lowering his voice to compensate for the sudden quiet, he said, ‘We’re getting closer. If you haven’t given me an accurate layout of the facility by the time we reach it, I’ll announce my arrival by shooting you in the back of the head.’
Williams believed him. He craned his neck, head drooping left and right, trying to look Slater in the eyes. Slater touched the barrel of the Sig Sauer to the man’s brow.
‘Speak,’ he said.
‘It looks like a ski lodge,’ Williams mumbled, the OxyContin reducing his vocabulary to grade school level. ‘There’s a big long basement underneath, where all the training takes place. They live upstairs. In nice rooms. Bunk beds. Uh … two guardhouses. Wait, no, three. I don’t come out here much. Just normal booths. Nothing special. All the good stuff is around the compound. All those tripwires on the trail. Motion sensors. They’ll know you’re coming.’
‘Motion sensors everywhere?’ Slater said. ‘Even in the woods?’
‘Mmhmm,’ Williams mumbled.