by Matt Rogers
His eyes drooped closed.
‘Thanks for letting me know,’ Slater hissed through gritted teeth. ‘Anything else you’re not telling me about?’
‘My foot hurts.’
‘How close are we?’
‘Close.’
‘Give me your best guess.’
‘A hundred yards. Very close. Can I sit down when we get there?’
‘You can sit down now.’
Slater gently lowered the man into a seated position at the base of one of the pine trees. Williams rested his head against the bark and smacked his lips together, a dull smile on his face. Grateful for the respite. Slater slid the packet of OxyContin from his back pocket and pressed one more tablet onto Williams’ tongue, for good measure. He forced the man to swallow it dry.
Williams gulped it down without hesitation.
Slater said, ‘You’ll remember what I’m about to tell you. You let yourself go blind for the sake of progress. You spoke to me about being single-minded, but you didn’t consider the PR shit-storm if this goes public. You threatened me up and down in the car. You said you’d have my face at every airport, and Shien’s face on a missing persons alert. But you’re not going to do that. Because the second I get the sense that I’m wanted, I’ll go to every major newspaper in the country and feed them everything. You’ve seen the new world we live in. There’s an anonymous op-ed every other day. You think they won’t publish it? I’ll give them everything. And you don’t want that. So you won’t touch me, or her. You’ll let us live our lives, wherever we choose to do so. You’ll go back to your job and forget any of this ever happened. And you’ll have a deep understanding about where you went wrong.’
He took the Sig Sauer in a double-handed grip, skirted around the tree, and crept forward.
The wind picked up, rattling the branches above his head, dusting him in a light coating of snow.
Unperturbed, he carried onward.
Ready for war.
83
He broke into a sprint.
His eyes wide and manic.
Like a nightmare swelling up out of the woods.
He abandoned any hope of a stealthy approach. Ruby might have disagreed, but that had never been his style of approach, and he wasn’t about to start working on his weaknesses.
Not here.
Not now.
He pushed himself faster, kicking up snow as he ran, the boots doing an adequate job at keeping the cold out. Thankfully genetics and patient plyometric training had blessed him with the athleticism of a professional athlete. Where others might have stumbled and fallen in the uneven snow, he surged faster. He covered a hundred yards in roughly fifteen seconds, despite the sloping terrain and the maze of trees and the falling snow, and suddenly the compound was right there, looming up out of the woods.
Tucked away from civilisation.
He almost ran straight into one of the guard booths.
Everything happened at an astonishing speed.
He spotted two silhouettes huddled in the guard booth, barely visible through the foggy glass, and he raised his Sig Sauer to shoot them dead but they pounced back from the line of sight with uncanny quickness. At the same time he realised the glass was likely bulletproof, so he ducked low as he maintained as much pace as he could. In five massive strides he made it from the tree line to the chipped wood, arranged in the style of a log cabin. He knew there was a thick layer of metal on the other side of the artificial exterior, preventing the men in the guard booth from enemy fire. Slater took a deep breath, in and out, then leapt through the snow like a panther, diving to the left and clearing the side of the booth with his face and arms extended first. He twisted in mid-air, coming down on his side, gun up, and caught one of the guards in a precarious position. The guy was halfway out the narrow doorway, an orifice that hadn’t been converted to make room for the giant slab of muscle trying to squeeze through.
He was stepping out sideways — ordinarily not a big deal, but in a game of milliseconds and millimetres, all the difference in the world.
Slater took one look into the cold and soulless eyes, and saw the Heckler & Koch HK416 rifle with attached red dot sight and vertical fore grip heading straight for his own body, and he shot the man between the eyes.
A quick stab of guilt. Maybe the guy didn’t know the extent of what he was involved in. Ignoring the fact he was a mercenary for hire, offering his combat services to the highest bidder, there was a slight possibility the man hadn’t a clue regarding what he was protecting. But that was bullshit. He spent all day, every day out here. There was no-one else around. And the kids weren’t kept in cages underground. They patrolled the lodge, and therefore had to be let outside for fresh air every now and then.
Of course, there was the consideration of blissful ignorance — it was a government program, so the guy was simply going along with the herd.
Then again, so were most of the Nazis.
Slater rocketed to his feet, snatched the HK416 off the ground, testing its sizeable bulk, and swung it up to put it to use.
He crashed straight into the second man.
Again, everything happened horrifically fast.
The second guy had an identical high-powered assault rifle and he thrust it forward like a bayonet, hoping to feel the jolt as the tip of the barrel hit the meaty flesh of Slater’s torso. Then he could simply squeeze the trigger and put ten consecutive rounds through his mid-section and tear out most of his insides. Instead he overcompensated with the lunge and Slater jerked like a marionette on strings at the last second and the barrel sliced through the space between his arm and ribcage. He pinned it against his underarm and the guy squeezed the trigger regardless. The rifle jerked and jolted against Slater’s jacket, and the sound threatened to deafen him, but he held tight, and the bullets fired into the woods behind him.
He headbutted the man full in the face, missing his nose, striking forehead. Thick skull against thick skull. Practically concussing both of them. They recoiled at the same time, each arcing backwards, mushroom clouds going off in both their heads.
Slater couldn’t see or hear.
But if he had one talent on this godforsaken earth, it was to recover fast from punishment.
Faster than anyone.
Seeing stars, seeing double, seeing triple, then seeing nothing at all, he lunged forward, barely fazed. The HK416 he’d stripped off the first guy was nowhere to be found. He’d lost it at some point. His outstretched fingers found a uniform, and he wrenched with all his might. Still barely able to see. He bounced a skull off bulletproof glass, accompanied by a sickening crack, and then he rotated the momentum back in the other direction and hauled the guy up, then across, then down. Putting technique into it, faint archaic echoes of judo practice imprinted on his memory. Putting his hips into it. The guy weighed less than him, so he was helpless to resist, especially with his limbs slackening from the impact against the glass.
Up, then across, then down.
Straight on his head.
Silence.
Slater’s vision came back, along with an ear-splitting headache, nearly the equivalent of a migraine. Working his jaw left to right, he stumbled out of the tiny guard booth, grabbed two handfuls of the first guy’s uniform, and dragged him into the cabin, moving fast.
He looked down at the uniforms.
Froze in place.
Thought hard.
And got straight to work.
They were nearly identical to the gear he was dressed in. At least from a distance. He eyed the room and found a full face military helmet with a visor. Old school, for winter combat. He grabbed it, shoved it onto his head, and put the visor half down, so the shadow would conceal the rest of his face anyway. But he needed his voice to make it out of the helmet. He checked himself over, put his hands behind his back to hide the fact he was black, and sauntered out onto the small landing like nothing at all was wrong.
Roughly six seconds after dumping the last guy on his head.
A single second later, four guards materialised from either side of the giant lodge in the centre of the snow-covered clearing.
Two per side, running at full pelt, breathless, weapons at the ready.
Two had helmets on.
They screeched to a halt in their tracks, spotting what appeared to be a colleague just outside the booth. Slater nodded from a distance, keeping his hands behind his back, tilting his face toward the floor. He adjusted his position, covering the murky puddle of blood on the landing, freshly drained from the exit wound in the first man’s skull.
The four of them looked to him expectantly. He stared at four automatic assault rifles, held at the ready.
If it had come to a firefight, he wouldn’t have survived. Not out here. Not with a complete lack of cover, besides a guard booth so small he could touch both walls at the same time by standing inside and holding his arms out straight.
Slater shot a sideways glance at the bodies inside the cabin, mulled over it for an instant, and then took a wild-ass guess.
‘False alarm, boys,’ he yelled in a muffled mixture of every accent in the continental United States, hoping they would each interpret it in their own way. ‘Thought I saw a buck.’
‘Are you kidding?!’ one of them yelled back.
‘No. It scared the shit out of us. Sorry again. A little jumpy today.’
‘Don’t ever discharge your weapon again without good reason to, you dumb fuck. You’re both fresh faces but you should know the goddamn rules.’
And then the barrels came down, and they dispersed, grumbling to themselves, with a hint of embarrassment that they’d come ready for war.
Slater stood panting on the top step, and he swallowed raw fear as they headed back for their booths on the opposite side of the lodge.
84
He stayed where he was for a beat, and then strode straight back into the booth.
He took a deep breath. Put his hands on his thighs. Bent down and recovered. He was still off-balance from the clash of heads, and now that he was alone the terror returned in all its grandeur. He pictured his brain, every part of it, infinitesimally tiny, every neuron rattled and displaced and thrown off-kilter by the clash. He could see it there with its own consciousness, furious at the surrounding body, in disbelief that someone as idiotic as Will Slater would disrupt the frail parts of it so soon after recovering from the worst concussion of his life.
‘Relax,’ he breathed, his voice rattling around inside the helmet. ‘You’re fine. You’re fine. Relax…’
His heartbeat settled, descending into monotony, and he breathed in and out again.
‘You’re okay,’ he said. ‘You’re okay.’
A black operations warrior reduced to a nervous wreck.
The frailty of the human mind, he thought to himself.
And he was okay. He recalled the patches of missing time from the Russian Far East, and shivered involuntarily. Nothing could be worse than that. He’d knocked his skull around, but the brain was a fickle thing, and sometimes everything was fine. He had a headache, and nothing else. No blackouts. No nausea. No stutter-like effect on his reality.
He grasped the hilt of the HK416 in a sweaty palm. Steeled himself.
Not long to go.
And then what?
Don’t think about that.
He dropped the visor all the way down, plunging the world outside into a murky filter. Something about helmets unnerved him. Like he was playing a video game. Like none of this was real. He stepped out of the guard booth, slinging the assault rifle over his shoulder as casually as he could. The lodge was too far away, and there were too many windows across the two storeys. He couldn’t tell if there were eyes on him.
He coughed, straightened up, and headed for the building, stepping down into the snow. His boots sunk into the fine powder, wrapping around his ankles. He lifted one out, and put it down. Like wading toward a war zone in a hazmat suit. But it was the only way to conceal his identity.
Quite frankly, he couldn’t believe the ploy had worked in the first place.
But that was why Black Force existed. Split second reactions. Spur of the moment decisions. Abnormal processing power, computing the best possible outcome, putting it into effect without fear or hesitation.
Actually, that wasn’t true.
There was always fear.
Endless fear.
But Slater had never let fear dictate what he did and didn’t do.
His breath clouded the inside of the visor, fogging it up, superheating it in comparison to the outside chill. An ordinary problem for civilians across the world. Usually no issue. Stop, clear the visor, put it back down, continue. But Slater couldn’t do that. He cursed the flimsy nature of the plan. He pressed on. Wading through quicksand. Trudging through no man’s land. He couldn’t see the windows. He couldn’t make out any features of the building itself, apart from the fact that it was a gorgeous log cabin with awnings jutting out over the windows and giant snakes of snow built up on the roof ruts.
Sweat trickled down his forehead, running over his nose, continuing to heat the inside of the helmet.
He kept going.
He pulled up to the door and knocked on it three times, a loud bang-bang-bang with the side of his fist with all the impatience he could muster. But he took care not to inject aggression into the tone. Just a disgruntled guard in one of the booths looking for an answer sooner rather than later so he could get back into the warmth of his hut.
The door opened.
Almost immediately.
Slater could barely see.
85
A female voice said, ‘Want to explain why the fuck you were shooting into the woods when the kids are having breakfast?’
‘False alarm, ma’am. Nothing to worry about.’
‘What are you doing here?’
Slater didn’t respond.
The voice said, ‘Get back to your shack. You’re not welcome here. Not during breakfast hours. And especially not now, after that shit you just pulled.’
Slater opened his mouth, then closed it again.
The helmet fogged even more.
The voice said, ‘Do you not understand the rules?’
Slater said, ‘It’s urgent.’
‘Do you think I care what’s urgent and what’s not? The rules trump whatever’s urgent.’
‘This trumps the rules.’
‘What is it?’
‘Above your pay grade.’
The woman snorted with derision. ‘Then it’s sure as hell above yours.’
‘Lady, this is serious. Williams called me directly. Ruby Nazarian is compromised.’
‘What? She just went out to deal with the threat…’
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘She said she needed to go. Immediately. She didn’t explain much.’
‘There was no threat. We think she’s defected.’
‘You can’t be serious. You’re a perimeter guard. Why’s Williams interacting with you? And take that helmet off, for Christ’s sake.’
Slater froze, unsure how to respond. If he ignored the direct request, it would be immediately apparent what was happening.
He needed the upper hand, somehow.
But he had to oblige.
So he stepped inside, one giant gesture, planting his foot down inside the lodge’s entranceway and shoving past the mystery woman at the same time. It was aggressive enough of a gesture to warrant a reaction, but he reached up and grabbed his helmet with both hands to try and dissipate the tension. If she saw he was following her commands, she might relax.
She didn’t.
She stepped into him, trying to force him away from the door frame with her own body. It hadn’t come to blows yet, but a couple of seconds more resistance and it might. She was trying to shut the door. He sensed her straining, pushing the big wooden slab back into place. It hit his shoulder and stayed there.
He kept going.
He forced hi
s way inside, shoving straight past her. From the brief physical interaction he sensed characteristics. She was somewhere around five-ten, tall for a woman, with a strong frame. She had no extra weight that didn’t need to be there. As soon as he made it past he darted another step into the empty room, yanking the helmet off in the same breath.
She slammed the door closed, and stood there, only a couple of feet away from him, staring at his face. She was in her thirties with a severe expression and piercing black eyes. Black as night. Like a praying mantis, like a beetle in human form. Half-Asian, if Slater had to guess. Maybe half-Latino, too. A strange mix of ethnicities. She wore a plain grey short-sleeved shirt tucked into a pair of black khakis, exposing thin arms laced with muscle and sinew. A hard woman. Used to ordering people around. Probably very good at it, too.
She said, ‘You’re not one of them.’
Slater said, ‘No.’
He tightened his grip on the HK416, testing the weight of the fearsome rifle.
He said, ‘How’s this going to go?’
She stayed with her back to the closed door, still dangerously close, within striking distance. But Slater figured with an automatic weapon in his hands and an obscene size advantage, he could more than hold his own.
She said, ‘There are young kids here. At least a dozen.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you here to kill them?’
‘No.’
‘What are you here for?’
‘A girl named Shien.’
The woman pursed her lips. ‘I see.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Of course I know her. I’m raising her. She’s one of our best pupils.’
‘You’re their carer?’
‘I’m Mother.’
She said it like a first name, like a title.
‘Right,’ Slater said.
‘You’re not welcome here.’
‘I didn’t expect to be.’
‘And yet, here you are, all the same.’
She spoke with a strange dialect, like she had no accent at all. And her conversational timing was way off. She left jagged gaps between sentences, and he got the impression she didn’t communicate with adults much. The whole vibe of the lodge threw him off. It was shockingly quiet in here. He felt the walls might crumble if he used the rifle. Like a strange fantasy land where no one followed cultural or social norms.