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

by Matt Rogers

  King knew there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  He was hauled to his feet by rough hands and shoved in one direction. The security were not kind to him. After all, he’d killed many of their co-workers. They wrenched the cable ties tighter, until King felt the circulation in his hands and feet cut off.

  Someone shoved him into the back seat of one of the SUVs and he felt a gun barrel press into the side of his neck. This time, there was no possibility of making a break for it. His arms and legs were useless. His vision was restricted by the bag. There were four men in the car with him — he could tell from the sounds of their breathing.

  He winced as his liver spasmed in his side, almost causing him to vomit against the rough material of the sack. He forced himself not to. The smell would be awful if he let it out.

  The SUV left the crash site behind, whisking him away toward an unknown destination.

  King knew he was royally screwed.

  CHAPTER 19

  After twenty minutes of transit, King was wrenched out of the car and hurried through hallways and up stairs and into a small room, judging by the noise his footsteps made on the carpet. Two hands shoved him down, and he landed in a rickety wooden chair. The pain in his liver had only just started to subside, but he knew the dull ache would stay with him for days. It wasn’t the type of blow that could be easily shaken off.

  Someone whisked the bag off his head and artificial light flooded his vision. He took a moment to adjust to the sensory overload, then peered around the room.

  It was the hotel room he had ransacked earlier that afternoon.

  Nasser’s hotel room.

  The man himself sat on the surface of the desk under the window, his legs spread and his elbows resting on his knees. He loomed forward and stared across the room with the same grotesque sunken eyes that King had seen in the surveillance photos.

  ‘You have caused me a great deal of trouble,’ Nasser said in crisp, fluent English.

  ‘So shoot me,’ King said.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘What’s stopping you?’

  ‘Something that happened earlier today that confused me. Something I want answers to.’

  King tried to adjust his hands against the cable ties biting into his wrists, but it was futile. ‘Look, I’m not going to tell you fucking anything, so you might as well just kill me.’

  Nasser rose off the desk. ‘Yes, you will.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘You have no idea how many people I have heard say that before. My methods always work.’ He reached out and plucked a serrated knife off the surface of the desk. He twirled it in his fingers, locking his eyes onto the blade, his gaze sadistic. ‘Doesn’t take much to make people talk. Trust me.’

  ‘Your methods didn’t seem to work before,’ King said. ‘Judging by the fact that you have no idea who I am.’

  Nasser cocked his head. ‘And why would I know that?’

  ‘Lopez and Price didn’t tell you. Bet you tried, though. You couldn’t get it out of them. I’m proud.’

  Nasser paused. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The two men who came before me. What did you do to them?’

  The man scoffed. ‘I have no idea what you’re getting at. If you’re attempting to put off the inevitable by running your mouth, you’ve failed miserably.’

  King didn’t respond, because in his head the gears were whirring. Certain events that had previously been shrouded in mystery started to grow clear. He wondered if Nasser would fill in the blanks…

  ‘In fact, seeing that you brought up two men, this is also what I’m interested in,’ Nasser said, stepping towards King. ‘I have access to all the cameras in this building. Earlier today, I saw you in this room. You were kidnapped at gunpoint by a pair of men wearing balaclavas.’

  King made to respond, yet something made him hesitate. The way Nasser had said it…

  ‘They weren’t your men,’ King said, vocalising his realisation.

  Nasser shook his head. ‘I was hoping you would clear up who they were, and what intentions they had. Otherwise…’ He twisted the knife in the air, mining a corkscrewing action. ‘Do you know who they are?’

  Now I do, King realised.

  He felt his blood boil.

  John Lopez and Samuel Price hadn’t disappeared due to Nasser. They had vanished of their own accord. Fallen off the grid voluntarily, for reasons unknown. Then they had laid in wait for King to follow in their footsteps before leading him at gunpoint into a vehicle and attempting to get him off the island.

  Now, they were either at the bottom of the Nile or somewhere out there…

  King hoped they were alive. His features turned hard and expressionless. There had been significant betrayal here, and he had yet to work out the reason for it. But he would. Nothing would stop him from hunting those two pieces of shit down and finding out exactly why they had done what they had.

  ‘I don’t know who they are either,’ he said.

  ‘What did they do with you?’

  ‘Forced me into a car and tried to get me out of Zamalek.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I fought back.’

  Nasser smirked. ‘You’re a tough guy?’

  ‘Tough enough.’

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  Silence.

  Nasser raised the knife. ‘I’ll get it out of you one way or another.’

  ‘You keep saying that,’ King said. ‘I’ve yet to see any attempt at doing so.’

  The man’s wide eyes narrowed. ‘You work for money? You work for my enemies?’

  ‘Depends who your enemies are.’

  ‘I can pay you…’

  King scoffed. ‘Why on earth would I work for you?’

  ‘You killed many of my men tonight. Very easily. I could put your services to good use.’

  ‘Your men?’ King spat, contempt in his tone.

  The air turned hostile. Nasser narrowed his eyes and gripped the knife’s handle a little tighter. ‘Yes, my men.’

  ‘They’re not yours. They’re hired guns — probably Walcott’s. You’re just an extremist looking for a sugar daddy. No-one’s loyal to you. No-one cares about you.’

  The words did their job. King laced the tirade with such disrespect that Nasser was unable to stop himself from reacting. He strode forward, rounding the bed, strolling into range.

  With his wrists and ankles bound, King knew his chances were slim — but this would be the only opportunity to act, while Nasser’s security had stepped outside.

  He felt the tunnel vision take hold. It came in the most dire situations, when a single movement could spell the difference between life and death. In these seconds he operated with such clinical precision that he had made it through a thousand similar instances before.

  It seemed no-one learned that putting a bullet in Jason King from afar was the best option…

  Nasser lunged with the knife from a foot away. Whether because of his inexperience in dealing with live hostages or the abundance of energy coursing through him as he tasted blood in the air, King silently thanked him for his foolishness. All the man wanted to do was sink the blade into King’s torso, and he dropped his guard in order to throw as much effort as possible into the lunge.

  King launched sideways, tipping the frail chair over. He crashed to the floor and rolled out of the seat. At the same time, Nasser tripped over the chair leg, recoiling from the sudden shift in energy but unable to halt his momentum in time. He sprawled past King, slamming his shoulder into the wardrobe doors. Despite the stumble, he kept his fingers locked tight around the knife handle, refusing to let it fall from his grasp.

  King swore. Further action was necessary.

  In one fluid motion, he rolled along his back and sprung to his feet, ankles still locked together. The constriction of the cable ties sent terror coursing through him, but he quashed it.

  He was horrendously disadvantaged — but that hadn’t stopped him befor
e.

  As Nasser got his feet under him and made to lunge again with the knife, King reached down with both hands and seized the wooden back of the chair. He swung it toward the ceiling, muscles straining, veins pumping, throwing everything into the scything uppercut just as Nasser sprung at him.

  The chair cracked into two as it struck Nasser’s elbow hard enough to fracture the bone.

  He screamed and recoiled, finally letting go of the knife. It clattered to the carpet between them. King winced at Nasser’s outburst, aware that security would be in the room within seconds. He felt animalistic urgency spur him into action. He bent down and seized the knife by the handle, spinning it as he did so.

  He sawed viciously at the cable-ties — it only took a second to sever the thick plastic. With his hands free, he lashed out at the inches of space between his ankles, cutting those bonds too.

  Just like that, he was free.

  In a fair fight, Nasser had no chance. The man was close to King’s height but fifty pounds lighter, his frame gaunt and weak. Now, he was also unarmed. King barely paid him any attention as he spun on the spot, anticipating the inevitable response to the commotion.

  Just in time…

  A beefy man in an ill-fitting black suit was halfway into the room, shouldering the door aside with a handgun at the ready. King had no choice but to hurl the knife and hope for the best. If he hit nothing, it would provide an ample distraction to close the distance and turn the confrontation into a brawl.

  In the end, nothing further was necessary.

  In the blink of an eye the man’s head snapped back and he ricocheted off the far wall, denting the plasterboard as all the life sapped from his limbs. King ground to a halt, stunned by what he saw. The serrated blade was lodged halfway into the guy’s skull above his right eye. His eyes stayed open as he slumped to the floor, blank and glassy. The handgun — another P228 — skittered away.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ King muttered.

  Movement behind him, rabid and frenetic. He ducked instinctively, and a lazy fist swung over his head, slower than anything he had trained to avoid. If it had landed, King barely would have felt it. He turned to find Nasser adopting a fighting stance, beckoning him to retaliate.

  King smirked, then threw the man into the side of the wardrobe hard enough to break a rib.

  Nasser slumped to the floor, eyes squeezed shut, winded and defeated.

  ‘Stay put,’ King said. He skirted into the entranceway.

  From what he could hear, the hallway outside was deserted. Nasser obviously had more men, but so far none had materialised.

  He heard a door slam hard in the distance. From what he could discern, it came from the stairwell that Lopez and Price had used to get him out of the building earlier that day. Faintly, he heard hurried footsteps against the carpet. Nasser’s men were wasting no time in hurrying toward the room. They were clearly being paid handsomely to protect their client — which they had so far utterly failed at.

  King turned back to Nasser, who had shrunk into the corner. The man cowered in a ball with both hands over his ears, likely hoping that his security would hurry in to save the day.

  And they would … if King let them.

  ‘I need you alive,’ King said. ‘But it’s going to be tough to fight my way out of here towing you behind.’

  Nasser stared blankly. Something twitched in his eye, maybe a false hope that King would decide to leave him untouched and escape on his own.

  Quite the contrary…

  King strode up to Nasser and hauled him to his feet, wasting no time being gentle. He manhandled the extremist around the bed and over to the other side of the room, where medium-sized windows looked out over the deserted road below, illuminated sparsely by a handful of deep yellow street lights. King tapped a hand against the glass. It was thin.

  He grimaced. ‘This might not be fun for you.’

  ‘What?’ Nasser said, held by the collar at arm’s length, helpless to stop what came next.

  King made certain that the fall wouldn’t kill him. He leant over and peered straight down, laying his gaze on a cluster of awnings and terraces jutting out the side of the hotel.

  Four floors.

  It’s possible…

  ‘See you down there,’ King said.

  Nasser’s pupils widened in an instant and he scrambled for words, terrified by whatever King was about to do. King felt no remorse. This man was planning something devastating, he knew that much. In the end, it didn’t matter whether he lived or died. He had tried to murder King not two minutes earlier…

  He wrapped two hands around Nasser’s shirt and hauled him off his feet like a rag doll. He spun three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, building momentum, then let go.

  Nasser smashed through the thin window pane and flailed desperately for purchase. Finding none, he fell — disappearing from sight. King thought he heard a faint cry of despair.

  He wheeled around and flicked the safety off the P228.

  Now the real fight began.

  CHAPTER 20

  In a traditional shootout, King knew the skill discrepancy would become immediately apparent.

  He put three rounds into the chest of the first man who came stumbling in, capitalising on the novice reaction. The guy paid for his recklessness with his life. King traced a triangle across his pectorals, three separate shots which smashed through internal organs and caused massive damage to everything they touched. He didn’t know which of the three killed the man, but he died all the same.

  The others held their ground.

  King knew they would. Laced with adrenalin and haste, he knew the first man into the room would set an example for the rest. They would see the result of his brazen charge and hold back, aware that every second they spent outside the room was another second King could use to kill their employer. They couldn’t fire blindly into the hotel room at risk of hitting their man.

  They didn’t know Nasser was four stories below — either dead or seriously injured.

  King had little care as to which result had occurred.

  He moved silently toward the doorway, not making a sound. The standoff turned tense quickly, with a brief period of silence prolonging into an awkward twenty seconds of hesitation. He understood the nerves at play for the men waiting outside the door. Unsure of what to do, their heart rates would increase drastically. Sweat would leak from their pores. The grips on their weapons would tighten. Their knuckles would turn white.

  They would be ready to react to the slightest provocation.

  King decided to use that.

  He scooped up one half of the chair he had broken during the scuffle with Nasser. This section was composed of the flat seat and a couple of wooden legs. He crept into the entranceway and hurled the seat like a fastball, aiming straight down the line. It soared through the doorway and clattered into the opposite wall of the corridor outside.

  Instantly, panicked reactions broke out. Two men fired at the moving object, letting their trigger fingers go at the first hint of trouble. He heard the thud of another man falling onto his rear, stunned enough by the loud noise to trip on his own feet.

  Go.

  King took off at a sprint, following the seat toward the doorway. At the last second he ground to a halt and stuck one hand around the corner where most of the shots had come from. He emptied the magazine in that direction, nine separate Parabellum rounds that tore through whatever flesh lay on that side of the hallway. Then he fell back, hearing the audible cries of the men who had been hit.

  A barrage of handgun ammunition tore up the doorway, seemingly coming from all angles at once. King recoiled. He had underestimated the amount of security Nasser had. Sure, he had incapacitated a handful of them, but now he had nothing but an empty gun and a pounding heart to show for it.

  He ran back into the room — and didn’t slow down.

  During the brief glance he’d made at the awnings below, he had noted the window of the room underneath Nasser’s hu
ng ajar. It would be a long shot, but he had no other choice. His options were exhausted and apart from a blind leap of faith, he could only wait to be overwhelmed by the man’s security team.

  Leap of faith it is…

  He hurdled the windowsill and landed delicately on the other side of the broken frame. There was nothing below but a fifty-foot drop to the pavement, besides the terraces and balconies dotting the exterior of the building. He hoped Nasser’s fall had been slowed by the fabric and he hadn’t been turned to pulp by the sidewalk.

  There was no time to check.

  King laid eyes on the window ten feet below.

  He stepped off the ledge.

  As he fell, a shot rang out over his head, so close he could almost feel the bullet pass by. He didn’t have any time to comprehend how close he had come to death, for the window rushed up to meet him in a split second.

  He thrust two hands out and grabbed hold of its frame.

  The entire pane snapped off its hinges.

  King swore and lunged for the sill as the window spiralled away. He seized it with one hand, slamming into the brick below with enough force to make him see double. He grimaced and locked his fingers tight, aware that if he let go it would spell death or paralysis.

  His feet dangled uselessly in the air.

  Above, he heard screams from Nasser’s room. The man’s security had barged into the hotel room and found it empty. King knew he would be torn to shreds by their bullets if he stayed where he was. He seized the wooden sill with his other hand and levered himself up through the open frame.

  A middle-aged couple in white hotel robes yelped as King fell over the edge of the sill and landed heavily on their carpeted floor. Bloodied and battered, he knew he was a sorry sight — especially since he had fallen from the room above.

  ‘Sorry,’ King said as he scrambled past them and made for the door. ‘Got lost.’

  With barely enough time to draw breath, he wrenched the chain off the inside of the door, threw it open and stepped out into the deserted third-floor hallway. The corridor was eerily quiet after the din of a gunfight, which he assumed had been heard for a couple of floors in either direction.