Betrayed: A Jason King Thriller (Jason King Series Book 4)

by Matt Rogers

  Fuck it.

  King threw caution to the wind and — without hesitation — sprinted for the nearest window. In the confusion, Nasser’s security had lost his exact location, either too rattled by the deaths of their co-workers or simply unable to pinpoint him in the sea of ballroom tables. As such, it took a half-second longer than usual to notice his mad dash and adjust their aim accordingly.

  That was all he needed.

  No-one managed a single shot until he launched into the stained glass with every morsel of energy he had in his body. By that point it was too late. A few rounds tore past him, shattering the windows on either side. There was no direct hit.

  The glass gave under his weight and he found himself airborne, the warm air whistling against his face. He’d closed his eyes as he jumped to protect himself against broken glass and as a result found himself falling blind. He hoped his trajectory was correct. All he could hear was a whirlwind of noise and all he could feel was his limbs dangling in open space…

  If he missed the fountain, he knew that would be the end. If the impact against the ground didn’t paralyse him, the bullets raining down as he lay helpless would.

  He hit something.

  Hard.

  Back-first.

  He broke through the surface, and all went quiet. Water enveloped him on all sides, shutting out the sounds of gunfire and shattering glass and screaming opera attendees. He hit the slimy floor of the fountain a second later, but the foot of water had slowed his fall enough to take most of the punch out of the impact.

  He scrambled out of the shallow water, his entire back stinging from the landing. He wiped his eyes and hurdled over the lip of the fountain onto dry ground, almost colliding with a pair of valets fleeing from the pandemonium. They side-stepped his dripping mass and took off at a sprinting pace for the end of the long, sprawling driveway.

  King ran — equally as energetic — in the opposite direction, ducking under the awning jutting out from the lobby’s entrance.

  Just in time…

  Bullets rained down on the gravel around the fountain from above. The gunmen were leaning out of the freshly broken windows, searching for King’s form in the grounds below. He sprinted under the roof just before the hail of gunfire hit.

  Half of the narrow road looping around the fountain lay underneath the patio. It provided cover from the elements for guests to hand their supercars over to the valets and make a grand entrance. King saw that someone had been in the process of doing exactly that when chaos struck.

  He recognised the sleek form of a blue McLaren P1, one of the rarest vehicles on the planet alongside the LaFerrari. As far as King could remember, less than four-hundred of the cars had been produced in total. He knew because he’d looked into getting one back in Corsica. Clearly a statement had been made by arriving in it. Maybe it belonged to the businessman he’d had an altercation with at the bar…

  Whatever the case, it would suffice. He had to make a break for it and there was no better ride to attempt that in.

  The engine was still running. When the shooting had begun, the socialites who owned the supercar must have been in the process of exchanging its keys with the valet. Both doors rested in their upright position. It had all the trademarks of a vehicle that had been hastily abandoned. King silently thanked the timing of the situation for lending him a hefty dose of luck.

  He ducked into the driver’s seat, barely able to cram his frame into the small compartment. He yanked the door into place and it clicked shut. The engine purred as it rested idly on the gravel. King gripped the wheel, feeling the soft leather, and stamped on the accelerator.

  ‘Holy shit,’ he grunted as the tyres spun on the gravel and the supercar lurched off the mark.

  He hadn’t been expecting such a rapid acceleration. With the power to reach sixty miles per hour in less than three seconds, he felt the massive punch of G-forces in his chest and clenched his teeth to ride out the sensation. The passenger door crashed down into place. As he spun the wheel and took the McLaren out of cover, he had already hit thirty miles an hour.

  He knew what would come next.

  He pressed himself as tight as he could against the seat and waited for the inevitable…

  A round tore through the roof of the vehicle, punching through the centre console before the crack of the report echoed through the grounds a half-second later. Even though he had anticipated the shots, he still flinched. His hands slipped on the wheel — a disaster at the speed he was travelling. The McLaren swerved on the gravel and careered into the side of the fountain, obliterating one of the headlights.

  King wrestled for control as another cluster of bullets punched into the supercar’s rear.

  He flashed a glance in the rear view mirror and saw men in matching suits sprinting through the lobby, racing for their vehicles. It seemed that Nasser wouldn’t be satisfied by letting King escape. The man wanted him dead.

  King took his eyes away from the rear view mirror and instantly went pale.

  Two midnight-black SUVs were parked horizontally across the path, blocking off all access to the main road. King saw civilians fleeing on foot around it, crying and shrieking in their three-piece suits and lavish gowns. To either side of the path rested a maze of gardens and ornaments, highlighting the decadence of the Opera House grounds. King had few options, but one of them wasn’t slowing down. There was a small army of security behind him looking to take his head off.

  He swore, spun the wheel and punched the accelerator again.

  The engine screamed. The McLaren leapt off the path and into the manicured grass at fifty miles per hour. Its chassis vibrated and rattled. King jolted in his seat, riding out the carnage. Then the supercar dipped into a narrow rut, tearing part of the hood off as it impacted the soft ground. King hit the brakes and battled to steer. He narrowly missed a pair of tree trunks, tearing up the flowers lined between them.

  Finally he shot out onto the asphalt beyond, his heart pounding and his forehead dripping sweat. The tyres squealed as they found purchase on the road, then King corrected his course and roared away from the Cairo Opera House.

  As he did so, the two SUV’s blocking the road both reversed to let through a convoy of vehicles…

  CHAPTER 18

  The Cairo Opera House disappeared from view in seconds.

  King took the McLaren round a bend and hit the throttle, and the supercar was swallowed up by the claustrophobic heart of the district. Zamalek flashed by on all sides. What had once been a pleasant, airy atmosphere had been transformed by the night. Now, King flicked his gaze around the darkest corners, expecting gunmen to be lying in wait, expecting a bullet to punch through the windshield and put his lights out. He swallowed hard and kept his focus on the road ahead, flashing by at an unfathomable rate.

  The streetlights were spaced out too far, and the single remaining headlight in the front of the P1 did little to illuminate what lay ahead. King entered a zone of total concentration, aware that the slightest slip-up at this speed would cause a crash so devastating that the chance of survival would be close to zero. He headed south, toward the opposite end of Gezira Island, where hopefully he could lose his pursuers amidst the maze of residential buildings.

  So far, he was failing.

  The McLaren had a significant speed advantage on the pursuing vehicles, but that did little to help in a district as clustered as Zamalek. Constrained by the boundaries of the island itself, the roads curved sharply every few hundred feet, switching into narrow lanes and residential streets before King could pick up any significant speed in the supercar. He saw a sharp ninety-degree bend ahead and slowed accordingly.

  Headlights flared behind him as a pair of cars roared into his street.

  Shit.

  The trouble with Zamalek was the district’s lack of traffic. At this time of the evening he was close to the only car on the roads — besides the SUVs attempting to run him down. On top of that, the McLaren stood out considerably from any o
ther car, no matter how luxurious. Its sleek blue chassis and stark beauty attracted attention, which was the last thing King wanted.

  He swerved around the corner, eyes wide in order to focus as hard as he could on the road. Behind him, the pair of cars in the lead took the bend a little more drastically than he did. He saw one of the vehicles hit a metal telephone pole in his rear view mirror, headlights flicking off as the hood crumbled around the steel. The driver had been in too much of a rush to bother controlling his car.

  The car that successfully completed the turn was a shiny black Range Rover Evoque, windows tinted. Clearly skilled at evasive manoeuvres, the driver lost little speed during the bend, the big tyres of the Evoque billowing smoke into the night sky.

  King saw the headlights gaining ground…

  He mashed the accelerator into the floor, shifting gears to compensate for the radical rise in speed. Once again the familiar weight in his chest pressed tighter, thrusting him back into the seat. He left the Evoque far behind, tearing ahead, the turbo eight-cylinder whining.

  The two-lane road was long and straight, cutting through the centre of Zamalek with apartment complexes and clusters of cafés and high-end stores on either side. King decided that recklessness was necessary to evade Nasser’s security, and pushed the car even faster.

  Sixty miles an hour…

  Seventy…

  The single headlight flickered off momentarily, shrouding the road ahead in darkness. King kept his composure, aware that the brutal journey out of the Opera House hadn’t done any favours to the supercar’s functionality. A half-second later, the headlight came back on.

  At this speed, that was all it took.

  King looked ahead and blanched. He stamped on the brakes, hard enough to throw the back end of the McLaren out. Its rear tyres bit for purchase and the entire car swerved violently. He kept himself pressed into the seat and held on for dear life.

  The McLaren rotated a full revolution over the asphalt, finally coming to rest stretched horizontally across the two lanes. King jolted in his seat, thrown into the driver’s side door by the rapid deceleration. He let out a sharp exhale, releasing the tension in his limbs. He had been sure that the sudden braking would result in a crash — after which he doubted his ability to escape on foot.

  But he remained in one piece.

  He stared at the reason for his panicked stop. Four chest-height thick metal poles rising out of the ground — and beyond, a wide expanse of concrete filled with outdoor dining tables and chairs. Around the court, a ring of restaurants were closed for the night, ready to serve a wave of customers the next day. If King had continued into the poles at the speed he was travelling, he had no doubts as to the grisly result.

  As it happened, he had come to rest only a couple of feet from the rudimentary barricade signifying that the road was a dead end.

  He felt his pulse rise even further, knowing that he was trapped in the road without a weapon. The thought terrified him, yet at the same time he knew not to lose hope. He had been in more volatile situations before. He would improvise and overcome.

  Or he would die.

  He would soon find out which fate awaited.

  He slammed the McLaren back into first gear and spun on the spot, thrashing the motor to its full extent. The tyres found purchase and the low supercar took off in the opposite direction, headed straight back the way he had come.

  Now would be a matter of discovering how much ground he had gained on his pursuers.

  It didn’t take long to see the approaching headlights. There were four cars heading for him, travelling in a two-by-two grid across the lanes, blocking all opportunity for King to pass them by. He saw the convoy ahead and made a hasty decision.

  What speed is too fast?

  A cocktail of thoughts raced through his mind as the dangerous game of chicken almost reached its limit. He saw the SUVs only a few hundred feet away. They wouldn’t move, confident that whatever collision occurred would have devastating results for the lighter, lower McLaren.

  King shared that sentiment.

  He maintained an even speed of fifty miles an hour, then reached across and wrenched the lid of the centre console off its hinges. The thick plastic chunk tore away under the weight of his panicked movements. He leant down and wedged the lid between the top of the footwell and the accelerator. Then he took his feet off the pedals, shoved the driver’s door upward and leapt out of the vehicle.

  The fluid chain of movements unfolded in the blink of an eye, almost before he knew what he was doing. One second he was staring at the approaching SUVs, then he was diving out of a moving car at high speed. He hit the asphalt in brutal fashion — as he assumed would happen. It smashed the breath out of his lungs and spun him around several times before he rolled to a halt on one side of the road.

  The McLaren picked up speed.

  With the accelerator pressed to the floor by the console lid, every ounce of power in the supercar activated. It shot along the final stretch of open road. Staring at the sight from the ground, King estimated that the McLaren reached seventy miles an hour before the collision.

  He winced, anticipating the resulting crash.

  The two SUVs in front had no time to swerve out of the way. They hadn’t realised King had leapt from the car, blinded from the scene by the McLaren’s single remaining headlight pointing straight at their windshield. He saw one driver make a half-hearted attempt to avoid the head-on collision.

  Too little, too late.

  The impact came in quick and devastating fashion.

  Metal twisted and the chassis of the SUV on the left crumpled. An explosion of noise punched through King like a drum, vibrating his insides. He saw the McLaren’s hood smash into the two SUVs. The entire supercar buckled and twisted under the force of the hit.

  The SUV on the right shot off the ground and overturned. It rolled once, twice, then demolished a quaint shopfront on the opposite sidewalk. It came to rest upside-down, all the windows shattered, its frame twisted beyond comprehension. King doubted anyone inside had survived.

  The second vehicle didn’t have such a drastic outcome, but nevertheless it careered off the road and onto the sidewalk. King guessed the driver had been knocked unconscious by the impact. It skidded on the pavement and slammed side-first into a telephone pole, hard enough to bend the sturdy metal and crumple one side of the car.

  The McLaren practically disappeared in the carnage, twisting away like a discarded plaything.

  King got to his feet amidst the destruction and crossed to the SUV that had hit the pole. He ducked out of sight behind the car’s bulk, aware that the two vehicles taking up the rear of the convoy had been untouched by the collision. They would be armed and ready to make him pay for all the chaos he had caused.

  He threw open the rear door and ducked for cover. No gunshots followed, or anything of the sort. He took a long moment to listen out for any kind of scrambling or panicked movement, but there was nothing. He ducked into the back seat.

  There were two men curled up on the Evoque’s leather, both injured severely. Neither had been wearing seatbelts, and as such had been thrown violently around during the crash, breaking all manner of bones and damaging internal organs. They would live, but right now they were in too much pain to function. King would have been suffering the same injuries if he hadn’t landed correctly after leaping out of the McLaren. Thankfully, he knew how to roll with an impact…

  He found what he was looking for and snatched it up. One of the men had dropped their Sig-Sauer in the crash. It lay on the middle seat beside his motionless frame. King checked the safety was off and left the vehicle just as quickly as he had entered it.

  As he spilled back out onto the pavement, he listened out for the sound of running engines.

  Nothing.

  The other two vehicles had pulled up at the crash site. King sucked in air and pressed his back against the Evoque’s crumpled exterior. The car was the only thing separating him from
a horde of gunmen. He knew the odds weren’t good, no matter how much success he’d found so far.

  He turned, ready to put a decade of rigorous training to full use. He let the nerves flow out of his veins and an icy calmness washed over him. This was where he thrived.

  Then he ran directly into a sprinting body…

  One of the security had bull-rushed his position. The skirmish quickly became a close-quarters brawl. In the resulting collision King’s heart leapt. He brought the barrel of the Sig-Sauer up to fire a round through the man’s head, but the shoulder-charge had knocked him off balance. He managed a single shot, and missed.

  A fist rammed into the side of his ribcage so hard that he felt air escape his lips. He moved to retaliate — then something strange happened. He went to raise his arm but a crippling wave of agony seared through his side, so intense that he felt his legs buckle from the pain. He groaned and fell to his knees, knowing why his body had reacted so violently.

  The man had sunk the punch into the sweet spot — his liver. Whether by stroke of luck or pinpoint accuracy, it had occurred.

  He felt his body paralysing itself to ride out the pain.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered as he collapsed to the pavement.

  A cluster of men surrounded him in an instant, seizing the upper hand in seconds. A bag of some kind was whisked over his head and someone hit him again in the exact same location, sending a fresh blast of searing hot fire through his mid-section. Sharp needles stabbed into the side of his temples, constricting his vision like a rapidly-shrinking tunnel. He had reached his pain threshold — and pushed beyond it.

  The sensation was incomprehensible.

  With his vision limited by the hessian sack, he was helpless to stop sharp cable-ties locking tight around his hands and feet. Helpless to move, helpless to fight back. The party had incapacitated him. They hadn’t shot him dead, which meant someone wanted him alive. Maybe to seek answers.