Corrupted: A Jason King Thriller (Jason King Series Book 5)

by Matt Rogers

  Then Carter gestured down the entrance to the narrow cobblestone trail they had come to rest beside. It curved between a cluster of Renaissance-era buildings, running through to destinations unknown.

  ‘If you would, please,’ Carter said.

  King raised an eyebrow. He kept his mouth shut, electing to prolong the uncomfortable silence until the man in front of him was forced to provide an explanation.

  Which proved unnecessary.

  A woman stepped out of the shadows a dozen feet inside the lip of the alley. She wore an expensive puffer jacket and khaki trousers tucked into high-topped combat boots. Her hair had been pulled back into a rudimentary ponytail.

  She looked different to when King had last seen her — two weeks previously in New York.

  ‘Should have known,’ he muttered.

  Isla seemed more on edge than usual. She wore a terse expression and stared at King like he was her last lifeline, a final hope amidst a sea of confusion. It didn’t take much deductive reasoning to understand that something was awry.

  She took a step in King’s direction and beckoned him into the alley. ‘Your vacation’s over.’

  4

  ‘Nice to see you again too,’ King said. ‘Who’s this guy?’

  ‘That’s Carter,’ Isla said, her tone monotonous.

  ‘I’m aware of that. Anything else you might care to share about him?’

  ‘No. Follow me.’

  With that, she wheeled on the spot and set off down the deserted laneway. King flashed a glance at Carter, who shrugged apologetically and indicated for him to follow.

  He had little other choice.

  ‘Is this another one of those situations where you give me the barest amount of detail and then throw me into the thick of it?’ King said, stepping into the alley with measured strides. ‘I really didn’t appreciate that last time.’

  Isla scoffed and turned to face him as she walked. ‘King…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Egypt was on you. I don’t recall telling you to butcher a small army along the way. All we needed was a single dead extremist.’

  ‘I think you know stealth isn’t my forté.’

  ‘I’ve come to learn that.’

  King grabbed her by the arm and stopped her in her tracks, pausing in the centre of the cobblestone path. Carter almost ran into him from behind.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ he said, gesturing in a wide semi-circle.

  Isla glared at him. ‘We need you. Right now.’

  ‘I’m visiting someone,’ he said. ‘You can’t just whisk me away to do your bidding without giving me a single hour’s notice.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she said. ‘That’s what you signed up for. And we don’t have an hour’s notice, King. We needed to be in the air an hour ago.’

  ‘To where?’

  She flashed a glance at her digital wristwatch. ‘Russia.’

  They pressed on into the old town of Gamla Stan.

  One hundred feet later, the cobblestone lane opened out into a spacious two-way street lined with residential buildings. Two orderly rows of civilian vehicles ran along each side of the asphalt, all sporting permits on the dashboards to signify that they belonged to residents.

  Except for one.

  Isla and Carter led him to a brand-new Saab 9-3 Turbo X, so pristine that King thought it might have come straight from the dealership. Isla unlocked the 4WD and ushered him into the back seat.

  ‘Rented?’ he said as he slipped into the interior.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘On loan from the airport. We came straight to you as soon as we landed.’

  ‘Am I going to get even the slightest hint of an explanation?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Isla said, pressing two fingers to her eyes in a rare display of something resembling emotion. ‘There’s a million things running through my head right now.’

  ‘Feel free to share them with me at any time.’

  She spun in the passenger seat to meet his gaze as Carter reversed the Saab out of the parking space and stamped on the accelerator. King felt the power of the engine kick in as he was thrust back against his seat.

  ‘Why are we in a hurry?’

  Isla breathed out hard and closed her eyes for a moment, clearly attempting to gather her wits. ‘Okay, where do I start…?’

  ‘Why I’m headed to Russia. That might be good.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Cut the sarcasm.’

  ‘Give me answers.’

  ‘The Kamchatka Peninsula,’ she said. ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘It sounds remote.’

  ‘It is. It’s a stretch of mountains and volcanoes in the Russian Far East. The whole region’s barely populated, and those who do live there are predominantly ethnic Russians. Many of them live in rural villages with little modern technology. Makes it a clusterfuck of a situation when any kind of disease starts to spread.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘There were ten World Health Organisation workers stationed at one of the villages. It’s so isolated that it doesn’t even have a name. They were fighting an outbreak of tuberculosis amongst the locals.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘No-one knows. They had strict check-in policies that they haven’t adhered to for over thirty-six hours. Given the somewhat dangerous location, it’s sent alarm bells ringing.’

  King let the words sit for a moment before proceeding with a response. ‘Stop the car.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pull over right now unless you want me to do it for you.’

  Isla exchanged a tense glance with Carter. Then she relented, giving a slight nod to indicate that he should follow King’s orders.

  Carter screeched to a halt between two parked sedans.

  Isla spun in her seat the second the Saab had stopped. Her glare had fury behind it, clearly outraged that King would be so brash in the face of such concerning news. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I should ask you the same,’ King said. ‘A party of health workers don’t get in touch with the people they need to for a day and a half? They’re in the middle of nowhere. They’ve probably lost their signal. Maybe they’re in a bad storm.’

  ‘We don’t think so,’ Isla said.

  ‘Don’t the WHO have protocols in place for this sort of thing? What is this, Isla? This isn’t what Black Force is for.’

  She locked eyes with him, and he sensed anger there. ‘I don’t think I need to lecture you on the tensions between Russia and the U.S. right now. You’re a precautionary measure. We drop you in there and you make sure everything is okay. If the worst has happened, the consequences will be disastrous. You’re the closest thing our country has to a one-man wrecking machine. I’ve been given express orders for you to sort this mess out before anything makes it to the media. Understood?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You don’t have a choice, King,’ Isla said. ‘This is what you signed up for.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Pout all you want,’ she said. ‘But you do what we tell you to. Consider yourself lucky. In all likelihood they’re fine, and you can get back to your girlfriend as quickly as possible. Okay?’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that’s not going to happen?’

  ‘Because you’re a Black Force operative,’ Isla said. ‘Something will always come up. You know that. This recuperation period was a one-off.’

  Carter exchanged a look with Isla, who gestured for him to continue. He reversed out of the lot and veered back into the Stockholm traffic.

  King felt an icy resignation washing over him. He knew there was nothing left to argue. The switch in mentality from vacationing romantic to cold-hearted killer took some time to settle in.

  But now it had.

  His instinctual response to the situation had been resistance. Now he shook away the odd sensation and embraced what was to come. His services were needed —
it was not his business to question his orders. He assumed the finer details of the situation involving the WHO workers had been stressed over and considered by officials ranked far higher than him. He settled back into his seat and studied the passing scenery as they skirted around traffic.

  He was unsure what lay ahead.

  The detail had been scarce, but he assumed there was still plenty of time to be properly informed.

  ‘Where are we headed?’ he said.

  ‘Stockholm Bromma Airport,’ Isla said.

  King cocked his head. ‘Haven’t heard of that one.’

  ‘It’s a smaller number. Not as busy. We have a plane waiting. You’ll be fully briefed once we’re in the air.’

  King grimaced. ‘Wonderful.’

  Carter switched lanes and picked up speed, roaring closer to an operation that King subconsciously knew would not be as easily resolved as Isla anticipated.

  5

  Near Shiveluch Volcano

  Russian Far East

  The gold mine had been abandoned by its crew over eight years ago, skewered into the craggy plains of the Kamchatka Peninsula. A cocktail of frequent volcanic eruptions, devastating floods and the sheer difficulty required in transporting ore back to civilisation had resulted in its owners closing the doors after a single shaky year of mining operations.

  Vadim Mikhailov knew precisely when it had been abandoned.

  He was a man of opportunity.

  A man of preparation.

  A man of painstaking and meticulous scrutiny.

  He did not commit to anything without being confident of its success in advance.

  He cast a glance at the thick storm clouds that hung ominously over the towering Shiveluch Volcano in the distance. It caused him to grip the handlebars of his ride a little tighter. Even a man with his horrific past couldn’t help but shiver at such a sight. He slowed the Taiga-551 snowmobile to a crawl as he approached the familiar building resting in the shadows of a sheer cliff-face.

  This far off the beaten track, no-one would have a hope of discovering it at random.

  Which was precisely why he had selected it for his most recent business endeavour.

  Mikhailov felt the sheer silence of the region as he killed the engine and the snowmobile’s whine faded into nothingness. He clambered off the seat and dropped into the snow. The three layers of high-end winter clothing did nothing to stop the cold leeching into his bones. Out here, the temperature hit such extreme lows that any effort to avoid it proved futile.

  He had grown used to the sensation long ago.

  The cold-weather gear covered a hardened frame covered almost entirely in savage tattoos. Six years in the KGB a couple of decades ago had transformed Mikhailov. He had come out of the agency a cold shell of his former self. He happily admitted that. It had proved lucrative in the new Russian landscape following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

  The forty-five-year-old had high aspirations.

  This operation would help him achieve them.

  He touched a gloved hand to the jagged scar running underneath his eyelid, surrounded by burned skin and mangled flesh. An error of judgment, three long years ago. The old wounds still troubled him when the freezing cold seeped into them.

  He’d refused skin grafts.

  He’d wanted to remember his moment of weakness for the rest of his life.

  He trudged through the snow as the wind howled all around him, slicing across the sloping plains. The region was uninhabited for dozens of miles in any direction. Even reaching the mine via land was a dangerous task, achievable only by those who knew the area like the back of their hand.

  Another reason why it was unoccupied.

  Mikhailov unlocked an enormous steel padlock clamped over the sliding warehouse door and wrenched it open. The door ground against its tracks, iced over from the elements pounding the building. He felt the veins in his forearms pumping from the exertion. When he finally forced the gap wide enough to fit a vehicle through, he stepped into the space within.

  The warehouse had a single feature — a giant steel cage set against the far wall that contained a rickety elevator suspended from a hoist. Beside the cage rested the hoist motor, connected to the elevator by thick steel wire rope.

  It descended six thousand feet into the bowels of the earth.

  Aside from that, the warehouse was empty. It was a vast space with a concrete floor, surrounded by four towering walls — nothing but a housing facility to protect the mine cage from the elements. Mikhailov cast his eyes around the room and imagined the warehouse filled with gold mining equipment many years ago, bustling with activity as miners toiled to earn an honest paycheque.

  His paycheques were anything but honest.

  Not that he cared.

  In his experience, honest paycheques had a distinct lack of zeroes.

  Deep in one of the pockets of his jacket, a satellite phone began to vibrate. Mikhailov peeled off one glove and fished it out. He pressed the device to his ear.

  ‘Da?’

  ‘Everything went smoothly,’ a gruff voice said in Russian. ‘We have them. We’ll be there in five minutes.’

  ‘Perfect. No trouble?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘The door’s open.’

  He ended the call and tucked the phone back into his jacket. He kept his hands inside the insulated material, shivering in the sudden quiet. To anyone unaccustomed to the mine’s remote location, the noises emanating through the warehouse would be nightmarish. The storms raging across the peninsula were faintly audible, howling and wailing like ghosts disturbed from an eternal slumber. The rocky outcrop behind the warehouse protected its surroundings from the wind, so that the storms in the distance sounded like an approaching apocalypse.

  Mikhailov wasn’t bothered by such things anymore.

  This place was his second home.

  He stayed completely still in the centre of the abandoned building, watching the entrance intently, waiting…

  Not long after, the throaty chugging of a powerful engine drowned out the distant wailing. Mikhailov knew everything about the approaching vehicle — because he had purchased it.

  He did not part from his hard-earned money without careful consideration.

  He did not throw millions of rubles at an armoured blast-resistant tank-on-wheels without knowing exactly what he was getting.

  The Otokar Kaya-II — painted midnight black upon its arrival in Mikhailov’s arsenal — could officially carry up to ten people and traverse almost any kind of terrain you could throw at it. That had been the main selling point when he had secured the carrier vehicle four months ago — whatever he decided on had to be able to make it to the mine with ease.

  The maximum road speed of sixty miles per hour was not an issue.

  The bulletproof windows, welded steel armour and NSV 12.7mm heavy machine gun mounted on the roof hatch had seized his attention instead.

  Mikhailov had effectively acquired a tank.

  Once he had his targets inside the vehicle, nothing would be able to break them out.

  The Kaya-II rumbled into the warehouse and stopped beside Mikhailov, chunks of snow falling from its massive wheels. The driver’s door opened and a man in combat khakis stepped down from the front compartment. A thick woollen balaclava covered his face, exposing only his eyes. Normally cold and hard, Mikhailov could now see the stress leeching from the man.

  He didn’t blame him.

  The drive would have been nerve-wracking, guiding a thirty-thousand pound tanker through the Kamchatka Peninsula, home to all manner of frozen lakes and unstable ground. They had charted a route through the terrain many times before, but that wouldn’t have shaken the nerves.

  The driver would spend the trip imagining the ice beneath the Kaya’s wheels giving way, a moment before the armoured behemoth sunk to a watery grave.

  Nevertheless, the man was being paid handsomely for his endeavours.

  ‘They’re in the back?’ Mikhailov
said.

  The man nodded. ‘All ten.’

  Mikhailov crossed to the rear of the Kaya-II and wrenched open the steel hatch leading into the body of the vehicle. He heard a chorus of whimpering from inside, accompanied by sharp inhales.

  They’re scared, he thought. Good.

  He cast his eyes over the shivering bodies, sprawled across the metal floor of the compartment, their hands and feet bound and their mouths gagged. He made eye contact with the woman closest to him. She stared up at him with terrified eyes, groggy from the drugs that had knocked her unconscious.

  ‘Did we do well?’ the driver said. A second man in an identical balaclava emerged from the passenger door. Mikhailov exchanged a nod of approval with the pair.

  ‘Where are the others?’ he said.

  ‘On the outskirts of the village,’ the driver said. ‘There wasn’t enough room for all of us to fit. We thought we’d drop this lot off and then pick them up on the way back.’

  ‘Why do you need to go back?’

  ‘To clean up the scene.’

  Mikhailov paused. ‘What’s to clean up?’

  ‘We had … some difficulty. Ten people are hard to subdue all at once. We had some resistance.’

  ‘I assume you handled it.’

  ‘We did.’

  Mikhailov slammed the hatch closed, locking the ten WHO workers inside the Kaya. ‘You did well. Get back to the village and sterilise the hall. If you caused commotion there might be some undesirables poking their noses around.’

  The driver hesitated. ‘I thought you paid the authorities off…’

  ‘I have. But you can never be too careful. We’re dealing with foreigners here.’

  ‘What do you want us to do with them?’

  ‘Leave them here,’ Mikhailov said. ‘I’ll take them underground. The viewers are ready.’

  6

  Twenty minutes out of Gamla Stan, Carter turned onto a winding potholed road that led away from the more populated regions of Stockholm and twisted through an industrial zone on the way to the airport.