Hunters

by Matt Rogers

‘My life is over.’

  Violetta looked around at the lavish bedroom, the luxury. ‘You ruined more than a few lives getting here. Call it karma.’

  It didn’t compute. It never would.

  Vásquez began to cry.

  Then the gunfire from Torres’ neighbouring mansion reignited, twice as furious.

  There was a war unfolding next door, and King was in the thick of it.

  Violetta wanted nothing more than to sprint down the road, help him as best she could. She could see Alexis was thinking the same.

  But they couldn’t.

  Slater’s life hung in the balance.

  The jigsaw hadn’t slotted into place yet. The pieces were hopelessly scattered.

  Can we salvage this? Violetta thought.

  It would come down to a matter of seconds.

  She tapped the phone against her temple twice to centre herself, pacing back and forth across the room like a caged animal.

  95

  The impact ended up working in Slater’s favour.

  He was already turning, the back end of the Mustang sliding out, when the pursuing truck rammed them.

  Sure, it bounced his head off the wheel, but his headache couldn’t get any worse. It was like a drill in his brain, and as soon as the adrenaline wore off it would cripple him. But that hadn’t happened yet, so why worry?

  The collision shot the Mustang forward and it managed to clear the surrounding traffic. Only by dumb luck, but Slater had relied on dumb luck more times than he liked to admit. He surged into the narrow mouth of East 36th Street and got his bearings.

  There it was.

  The flag of El Salvador, its blue and white stripes fluttering in the soft breeze, dangling from a diagonally positioned pole above a small black door on the ground floor. The consulate was smaller than he’d anticipated, its entrance merely a hole in the wall, almost anonymous in the chaotic mess of Manhattan’s shopfronts.

  A thought came to him. What if they don’t open up? It’s still early.

  Too late to worry about that.

  Either they died or they didn’t.

  He skidded the Mustang to a halt out front, and only when the car came to a chugging stop did he realise the extent of the damage. The whole right side was caved in, the door twisted beyond recognition. Smoke billowed from under the hood.

  And Alonzo was groggy.

  At some point, one of the impacts had knocked him out.

  He tugged feebly on his mangled door handle, but the deformed door didn’t budge.

  Slater yelled, ‘Climb over!’

  He threw his own door open, climbed out, and levelled the HK45CT at the approaching Dodge RAM.

  A tiny gun against a growling truck packed with killer operatives armed with automatic weapons, but Slater had triumphed in the face of worse odds in the past.

  Correlation isn’t causation, he reminded himself.

  Then he realised there was still time to make it into the consulate before the truck reached them.

  Alonzo fell out of the driver’s side, scrabbling after Slater. He sprawled to the bitumen, trying and failing to gain control of his limbs. The sensation must be alien. Perhaps he’d never been concussed before.

  Must be nice, Slater thought.

  He hauled Alonzo to his feet with one hand and kept the pistol trained on the Dodge with the other. Then he moved Alonzo off the street, onto the sidewalk, whereupon cowering pedestrians screamed and fled.

  The Dodge screamed as the driver hit the brakes, and operatives leapt out before it was stationary.

  There were four of them. Three were masked in balaclavas, each face cover sporting a different macabre image — a skull, a wolf, a clown. The fourth had foregone the anonymity, revealing his crew-cut, sharp jawline, and cold eyes.

  They were killers.

  They were Will Slater ten years ago, ready to die for their country.

  Die for a giant corporation.

  Insane to consider, but they’d do it. At the core of it they were selfless men, brainwashed by superiors, honed into human weapons.

  Slater didn’t want to hurt them.

  They, on the other hand, wanted to tear him limb from limb.

  And they could do it. They all had carbines with full mags, and as they leapt out of the truck they brought them up to aim at Slater and Alonzo.

  Slater backed up to the consulate’s small front door and kicked backwards with the strength of a desperate man. The lock shattered, and the door thundered inward.

  Still holding Alonzo by the collar, he stepped over the threshold and dragged the man across.

  Then he bent at the knees and put the HK45CT on the floor, between his feet.

  He stood back up.

  Unarmed.

  Filling the doorway.

  The operatives hesitated. Clearly, if they had the easy option, they wanted both men alive. Better a slow death, wringing every scrap of intel out of them, than gunning them down pointlessly.

  Slater sensed the room he’d stepped into was populated by diplomatic officials, but he didn’t dare turn and look. He could hear the completeness of the shell-shocked silence. They understood that an armed conflict had fallen into their laps and froze like statues, watching it unfold.

  Still facing the encroaching operatives, Slater put his hands up, exposing his empty palms. ‘Take me, then.’

  Violetta, he thought. If there was ever a time to come through…

  Shooting it out would be futile, which was why he’d dropped the gun. Even if he was reflexively superior, he’d still need blind luck to nail four moving targets in body armour whilst avoiding the hail of gunfire that came his way.

  But as hesitant as he was to get into a firefight, they were just as hesitant to shoot into a consulate. It wasn’t an embassy — the Consulate General of El Salvador would only handle smaller diplomatic needs — but the ramifications of shooting it up were the same.

  The man in the skull mask held the others back by raising a gloved palm, and he lowered his aim away from the consulate’s doorway.

  Slater didn’t budge.

  The skull cocked to the side as the operative scrutinised his prey.

  He walked forward, up onto the sidewalk, until he was four or five steps away from Slater.

  One big lunge from either party, and they’d have their hands on each other.

  Slater could smell the sweat underneath the balaclava. The man stunk of adrenaline and testosterone.

  Slater said, ‘Come on in. Take us.’

  A long pause.

  The skull was inhuman, its wearer’s eyes covered by ballistic wraparound shades.

  The man’s voice was deep, basso in tone. ‘You know something I don’t?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Get out of here,’ a loud voice said from behind Slater, accented and pumped full of bravado.

  Slater risked a look over his shoulder, then returned his gaze to the skull mask. He’d glimpsed a Latino man with brown skin and a full head of thick grey hair, slight of build, wearing spectacles, hunched over in a suit that was as far from tailored as you could get. He stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by cowering diplomats.

  ‘Who are you?’ Slater said, looking at the operative over the threshold but speaking to the man behind him.

  ‘The consul,’ the man said, trying not to lose his bravery.

  The chief diplomat, Slater thought. The guy in charge.

  Slater said to the consul, ‘Do you adhere to human rights law?’

  An embassy or consulate was obliged to weigh up whether someone seeking shelter was at risk of serious injury or death at the hands of local authorities.

  ‘Not for you,’ the consul said, and now his voice was shaking. ‘I don’t know you. Or your friend. Get out.’

  Slater smiled, like there was no problem at all. Now he addressed the operative, whose breath he could feel hissing through the balaclava over his mouth. ‘And you? You know about the rule of
inviolability?’

  Straight from the Vienna Convention.

  The local authorities have no rights to enter an embassy or a consulate without permission from the ambassador.

  The skull mask stared, unmoving. The basso voice said, ‘Do I look like the local authorities?’

  He had a point.

  Black operatives adhered to no laws. It was the nature of the job.

  The consul said loudly, ‘You may enter! I want nothing to do with this. I don’t know these men.’

  The operative stepped forward.

  Now only three paces away.

  Slater tensed up.

  I’ve bought all the time I can.

  Then the skull mask cocked to the side again.

  This time, not out of curiosity, but as if the wearer had heard something.

  A gloved finger came up and pressed his ear.

  He was listening to something. Someone.

  New orders coming through an earpiece.

  Slater stared hard at his own reflection in the wraparound shades. Trying to bore through into the man’s eyes.

  The operative straightened up, three feet from Slater. The two men were identical in height. He could bring the carbine up to Slater’s stomach and pump him full of lead if he wanted.

  He didn’t.

  He growled, ‘Fuck,’ turned and walked away.

  96

  The atmosphere in Vásquez’s bedroom chamber was like the aftermath of a junkie’s week-long bender.

  The hangover of fatigue.

  Alexis released the choke, revealing a swollen throat already darkening with bruising. All the anger and the hurt had been sucked out of the old man. He fell off her and crawled over to the nearby chest-of-drawers, using it to prop himself up. He stared at them, taking in deep breaths.

  Violetta made sure he was looking at her before she spoke. ‘You need to understand something.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We were assigned to this because we could play whores. The people we work with … you don’t want to know how bad they are. They’re a different breed to us. If your men lay so much as a finger on us on the way out, there won’t be any pretence of an act to worry about. They will all come for you, and you’ll wish my friend here choked you to death. Understand?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Now walk us out.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Once we’re in the wind, do whatever you want. Blame us. Use our descriptions. Do whatever you please to save your own skin. You’ve earned that much.’

  Vásquez nodded, but it wasn’t an optimistic agreement. Violetta understood. Whatever he said, he’d be killed or imprisoned regardless, stripped of the empire he’d used to so callously blackmail the President. But it was smart to give him hope, make him think there might be a way out of this, so he didn’t get nihilistic and kill them out of spite.

  Violetta repeated, ‘Now walk us out.’

  Vásquez blinked to try and ease some of the bloodshot veins in his eyes. It achieved nothing. He took a deep breath and said, ‘What if I don’t?’

  Violetta raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’m sure you two are very important to the people you work with. Perhaps there’s a romantic connection there? You’d make valuable hostages.’

  Alexis could have pounced on him in his weakened state, applied the same choke, or broken his arm with a kimura, or torn his Achilles with a heel hook.

  She did none of those things.

  She just stood there, loomed over him, and stared at him silently.

  Violetta said, ‘You could. But you won’t do that. And you know you won’t.’

  Vásquez struggled to his feet. Sized them up.

  Thought about it.

  But not for long.

  He extended his hand toward the locked doors. ‘After you, ladies.’

  Alexis noted his neck, the damage clearly visible and getting worse with each passing second. She said, ‘If they ask…’

  Vásquez said, ‘It was a rough session.’

  ‘And you go first. Not us.’

  He nodded defeatedly.

  All resistance gone.

  He led them out of the bedchamber and into the long hallway leading to the landing that overlooked the lobby. The pair of guards had their backs to the hallway, their hands on the marble balustrade separating the top of the landing from a plunging drop to the marble floor. They were diligent in protecting the bedroom from exterior threats. They hadn’t considered the threat was within.

  They turned as Vásquez and the women approached.

  One of the guards couldn’t stop his eyes from widening when he noticed Vásquez’s throat.

  ‘Sir, are you—’

  Vásquez shot him a glare. ‘That’s my business. Do your job.’

  The guard straightened, but Violetta caught the sly smirk he shot to his partner as they passed them by.

  The boss is into some kinky stuff, huh?

  Vásquez stopped at the top step of the left-hand staircase and swept his hand down it. ‘Thank you for your time. It was enjoyable.’

  Violetta re-adopted the southern drawl. ‘Ain’t that the truth, honey.’

  She saw the guards behind Vásquez visibly fantasising out of the corner of her eye.

  What they’d do for a single night…

  She and Alexis took the stairs daintily, playing up their roles, and found a solitary guard in the middle of the lobby waiting for them. He raised his eyebrows at them, and Violetta felt her core tense involuntarily. She hadn’t seen this man on the way in.

  If he blocks our path…

  There was nothing they could do, unarmed and surrounded by men with automatic weapons who outweighed them by dozens of pounds each.

  But his surprise wasn’t directed at them.

  As they walked past him, he turned and peered up at the landing, meeting Vásquez’s gaze.

  He called up, ‘Busy night tonight, señor?’

  ‘¿Qué—?’ Vásquez’s confusion was authentic.

  The guard chuckled. Violetta figured he was the head of security, able to speak his mind to his employer rather than fall into line obediently.

  The guard said, ‘One after the other? Are you taking anti-ageing pills you didn’t tell me about? This is like the old days…’

  Vásquez said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  Violetta and Alexis were almost at the huge front doors. The great slabs of wood loomed over them.

  Over their shoulders, they heard the guard say, ‘You weren’t told about the next one?’

  ‘What next one?’

  ‘She showed us a message from you. Inviting her in.’

  ‘I didn’t invite anyone, you stupid bastard.’

  Before the guard could respond, Violetta was already reaching for the door handle.

  Whatever it was, it was bad news.

  Then the door swung inward before her fingers grasped the handle.

  Antônia stepped in, her figure clad scantily in a cocktail dress that left nothing to the imagination.

  They recognised each other in unison.

  97

  Slater closed the front door as best he could.

  He’d snapped the lock, so instead of clicking smoothly shut it hung jagged on its hinges, unable to close all the way.

  He turned, put his back to the door, and slid down it, all the fight sapped out of him.

  It had been a hell of a morning.

  He came face-to-face with the cowering diplomats. There were three in the reception area and one behind the glass-walled desk. The space was small and reeked of fear. Alonzo stood beside him, unsure of himself. He’d been in custody thirty minutes ago, rapidly accepting his fate. Now everything was unclear.

  The consul hadn’t moved. He watched Slater slide down the door with pure disdain.

  ‘Out,’ he demanded. ‘You have no business here.’

  Slater shook his head, his every move wearing the fatigue of the previous forty-eight hours. ‘That woul
dn’t go well for you.’

  ‘I will not be threatened.’

  ‘I’m not the one making the threat,’ Slater muttered. ‘You’ll be getting a call any—’

  A phone on the reception desk rang.

  The plump woman in the office chair behind it made to answer, but the consul cut her off with the snap of two fingers. He crossed curtly to the glass barrier, reached under it, and removed the landline from its cradle. He pulled it by the cord under the slot, lifted it to his ear, and switched to Spanish.

  ‘Hello?’

  An answer came through the line, and the consul jolted as if electrocuted. He stood bolt upright, his rounded shoulders straightening.

  ‘Yes, El Presidente,’ he said in a tone that conveyed barely-suppressed fear. ‘Of course. It would be an honour.’ Another pause, then, ‘Anything. It will be done. I will make sure of it.’ A longer silence. ‘Yes, El Presidente. I understand. You have my word. I swear on my children, I won’t let you down.’

  He waited, then lowered the phone.

  The other diplomatic officials were in a mutual state of shock, each of their reactions varying. A call directly from the President of El Salvador was unfathomable.

  The consul blinked hard for a while, then returned the phone underneath the glass barrier. He cleared his throat and spun to Slater. He scrutinised Slater in a new light.

  ‘Who are you?’ the consul asked.

  His tone toward Slater hadn’t changed, drenched in the same hostility.

  ‘Someone with connections,’ Slater said. ‘As you can see.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Slater shrugged, and left it at that. He didn’t have the energy for much else.

  To Alonzo, the consul said, ‘And who are you?’

  Alonzo said, ‘I don’t see how that’s your concern.’

  ‘Are you Salvadoran?’ the consul asked. ‘You look it.’

  Alonzo said, ‘Cuban.’

  The consul snorted dismissively.

  That made Slater lift his head. He said, ‘Where’s that tone you used with your President?’

  ‘I don’t know what you did,’ the consul said. ‘But I know he’s not helping you out of the goodness of his heart.’

  ‘I imagine there’s no good in that man’s heart,’ Slater said. ‘Whatever the case, he told you to help us. And you’re being standoffish. I place one call, it’s your head on a stick.’