by Matt Rogers
10
Utterly alone on the Kamchatka Peninsula, King had to avoid flinching at every footfall. The sound of his boots crunching against the flimsy bark dotting the forest floor seemed to echo across the plains, even though he knew there was no-one around to hear.
He darted between the vast trunks of the deciduous trees, one finger resting firmly against the trigger guard of the M4A1 carbine. He had the weapon set to semi-automatic, and was ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
In all likelihood, he was the only armed combatant in the entire region.
But he would never drop his guard on an operation.
It wasn’t in his nature.
His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness soon enough. He made out the road twisting and turning away into the plains, and the looming mountains on the horizon. The tallest mountains — or volcanoes — broke through the storm clouds trailing along the Russian sky. King gripped the carbine a little tighter and stepped out of the thin stretch of forest onto the dirt track.
His combat boots made less noise on this surface. He moved like a wraith, ghosting along the side of the track, sticking to the shadows on the off chance that a vehicle decided to come barrelling around one of the bends.
That outcome seemed just as likely as making alien contact this far out from civilisation.
The two-mile trek gave him time to think — which he could do rather effectively when in such a heightened state of awareness. He weighed up everything he had been told by Isla over the course of the day.
It certainly didn’t bring him confidence.
Despite the fact that he had always been detached from the inner workings of Black Force and the finer details of high-level Special Forces government planning, something about this situation bothered him. He knew nothing about why such importance had been placed on these health workers — or even who had authorised the operation.
Now, he considered the potential for politicians to use him for their own bidding.
He had to follow orders. Isla was the link between the faceless members of Command and Black Force’s operatives.
Perhaps he should request to be more involved in the behind-the-scenes workings in future.
He scoffed. That had never been of interest to him. He doubted it would in future. He shrugged off the uneasy feeling plaguing him and concentrated on the road ahead.
He was meant to operate.
Not bureaucratise.
Two miles along the trail, the dense forest on either side opened out and a smattering of traditional Russian dwellings began to appear. King shrunk further into the tree line, preferring to completely mask his presence from any prying eyes that might potentially be watching.
A noticeably vicious blast of wind howled through the trees. The accompanying wailing set King’s nerves on edge. He raised the M4A1 to his shoulder and swept the barrel over the road ahead.
Nothing.
The village seemed like a ghost town.
Fearing the worst, he snuck along the edge of the forest, scouting the land ahead for any sign of unusual activity. He passed behind one of the small wooden huts and skirted around a cluster of chopped wood in the clearing behind the property.
In one of the windows, he saw a flash of light and movement.
He continued on, unwilling to make any form of contact with the villagers themselves. The fewer people that knew of his presence in the region, the better.
The wind whistling between the trees battered the side of his face. His cheeks tingled and he began to lose feeling in the exposed skin. His face was turning numb from the unrelenting cold.
Pausing behind one of the huts, he dropped his duffel pack silently to the forest floor and unclipped the top. He rummaged around inside the bag until he found a thick black balaclava. He tugged it over his head and slung the pack across his shoulders.
If anyone came across him now, it would be a terrifying sight. A two-hundred-and-twenty pound giant in dark combat gear, armed with an automatic weapon, his face masked by a balaclava.
He continued.
Several hundred feet later, the small neighbourhood of dwellings ended abruptly and the trees closed in on the trail once more. King wondered if that was the entire stretch of village, or if the populated area was made up of several clusters of huts.
In the distance, between the tree trunks, he spotted artificial light.
His heart rate quickened. With gloved hands he gripped the M4A1 a little tighter and carefully slotted himself into the shadows as he approached.
If Isla’s instructions had been correct, the town hall lay ahead.
And someone was home.
He kept the barrel of his weapon low and his vision trained on the source of the light. From this distance, it was nothing but a soft glow emanating from the dead space between the trees.
As he grew closer, he noticed the glow changing colours in a predetermined pattern.
Flashing lights.
Red and blue.
Police.
King hunched over, constricting his large frame into as narrow a window as he could, doing his best to stay out of sight.
He rounded a narrow bend and dropped to the icy forest floor, squinting in the sudden flood of light. He scrutinised what he could see from this position.
A pair of police sedans were parked out the front of the town hall. The building was smaller than he had anticipated. It appeared derelict from the exterior, with paint flaking away and wooden planks rotting in their slots. Significant portions of the roof had caved in.
The vehicles themselves were empty.
The entire building had been cordoned off with rudimentary yellow tape, signifying an active crime scene. Its entrance doors lay wide open. Pale yellow light spilled out of the hallway within, adding to the flashing of the police lights outside.
King glimpsed a blurry figure pass through the hallway and disappear into an open doorway.
From here, nothing else was visible.
He kept his stomach pressed against the frozen grass and considered the ramifications of what he was seeing.
Something had certainly happened to the health workers. What that was would be difficult to ascertain unless he came to a decision shortly. The police would likely be as clueless as he was about their whereabouts if they truly had vanished, but King knew he wouldn’t get anywhere by ghosting around the village and keeping to the shadows.
Despite that, his alertness remained high. The improvisational part of his mind made a suggestion, and he ignored it.
Then it grew on him.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. If he wanted to interact with anyone, he would have to disguise his true intentions.
He knew exactly how to do that.
He peeled the balaclava off and slung the duffel bag off his back once again. He dug his hand through the cold-weather gear and extra supplies within until he came across the hard metal object in the centre of the pack, insulated by clothing.
The Glock-22.
He checked the magazine was fully loaded before slotting the pistol into the allocated holster at his waist. He tucked his undershirt over the weapon, concealing it from prying eyes.
Its fully automatic safety system ensured that in the off chance of confrontation, the pistol would be ready to fire as long as he depressed the trigger safety correctly.
King left the carbine rifle, the duffel bag and the balaclava in the snow and staggered toward the town hall with wide eyes and a perplexed expression on his face.
11
A hundred feet away from the building, he spotted a Russian policeman step out of the entranceway and light up a cigarette in the freezing night air. A thin trail of smoke wafted away from him as he inhaled deeply.
Then the man noticed King stumbling up to the building and the cigarette fell from his mouth.
‘Stop,’ he commanded.
King hesitated, wondering if the man spoke English and how the hell he knew to use it. Then he recalled that the word stop
was exactly the same in Russian as it was in English, and he settled.
He raised both hands in the air, indicating that he was unarmed. ‘Please help.’
The policeman cocked his head. He had been in the process of reaching for the firearm at his waist, likely shocked by King’s massive form trundling toward him. As the man heard the tone of King’s voice he visibly relaxed. What at first sight appeared to be a dangerous mystery man now seemed like a terrified traveller…
King sauntered up to the policeman, lackadaisical in his movements. He took caution not to display any kind of outward threat. The officer was young — in his twenties, more than likely — with short hair and a pronounced jawline.
King pointed at the town hall. ‘Where are my friends? I’m a health worker.’
The policeman gazed at him blankly, not registering what was being said.
He doesn’t speak English.
‘Iosif!’ the policeman yelled, turning to face the entrance doors.
Ten seconds later, two more men dressed in identical garb strode out of the hallway. They both seemed older, more experienced, sporting similar haircuts to the first policeman. No-one else emerged from the hall.
Three of them.
King thought he could handle that.
The man on the left — sporting a permanent scowl and heavy, thickset eyebrows — stepped forward and looked inquisitively at the new arrival.
King raised both his hands again, in a gesture of compliance. ‘I’m looking for my friends. Do you speak English?’
Iosif raised a hand and tilted it from side to side. ‘Some. Who are you?’
‘I’m with the World Health Organisation,’ King said. ‘I had to stay overnight in the village after I lost my way. I can’t get into contact with all the other workers. What’s going on?’
He talked fast, feigning unease and panic. The three policemen watched him squirm with deadpan expressions. The two who didn’t speak English looked at each other briefly, weighing up what to do.
King got the general sense that they hadn’t expected to be disturbed.
But why?
He noticed the body language of the trio. They were standing equidistant from one another, forming a rudimentary barrier between King and the entrance to the town hall. Like they were subconsciously protecting whatever lay inside.
‘I am sorry,’ Iosif said. ‘Your friends are missing. We do not know where.’
King let his face fall and his eyes widen. ‘What?!’
‘Yes. I am sorry.’
There was a palpable shift in the air as the subsequent silence stretched into a considerable length. King knew that there were proper procedures to adhere too — a crucial person to the development of the case had just turned up. The policemen should have been scrambling to take statements, or comforting him after the news that his entire party of co-workers had gone missing.
Instead, they stood awkwardly on the spot, shifting back and forth, trying to figure out what to do.
It couldn’t have been more obvious that they were hiding something.
King had intruded on some kind of cover-up. He couldn’t put anything together yet, but it was a start.
The soft touch of the Glock-22’s holster at his waist became more noticeable.
His pulse quickened, and he got the sense that he might have to use the weapon before the night was over.
Iosif’s beady eyes flicked across to his two comrades. They said nothing, but their eyes said everything.
They were nervous as hell.
King continued the facade of innocence and confusion. ‘What could have happened to them? I need to contact my superiors…’
Iosif blanched. ‘I do not know. Come to car over here. We will sort it out.’
King twitched nervously — a fake act — and went to move past them. ‘My gear…’
Before either of the three could react he had scurried between them and was heading straight for the entrance to the hall. His instincts heightened, to the point where he was ready to react to the slightest hostile action.
But the trio of officers were too surprised.
They hesitated, letting him through, probably wondering just what the hell to do with him.
King strode into the dimly-lit hallway and made for the open doorway at the end.
He came out into the main area, which took up ninety percent of the space within the hall. He had made the brash move of powering into the building because he needed confirmation that the three policemen really did have something to do with the disappearance of the workers.
He wanted a clear conscience if he needed to act.
Instantly, alarm bells rang in his head. Fluorescent lights shone overhead, revealing the bare wooden floor of the room. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture or identifiable equipment in the space.
It had all been cleared out.
More importantly, the floor was covered in soap suds. A pair of mops lay near the entrance, abandoned when the first policeman had called to his friends.
King spotted patches of soap in various areas that were tinged pale red.
They were mopping up blood.
Wiping down the scene.
Eliminating all evidence of a scuffle.
As soon as King registered what he was seeing, he knew the three policemen would not let him out of the hall alive.
They probably figured they had cornered him by letting him into the town hall.
In one fluid motion, King lifted his thermal shirt up and wrenched the Glock-22 out of its holster. He took one measured step to the right, away from the doorway, and slipped a finger inside the trigger guard.
Then he waited for the three men to storm into the building with guns blazing.
12
It took mere seconds.
Like the amateurs they were, the trio hurried into the vast room single-file, standard-issue firearms aimed at the space in front of them, searching for a target but moving through each other’s crossfire in the process.
The first man to enter — and the first man that King met — didn’t stand a chance.
King glimpsed the automatic pistol in his hand and registered the officer’s intentions.
He didn’t hold back.
He pumped the trigger three times in quick succession, cutting a vertical line down the front of the man. The unsuppressed reports were so loud in the confined space that the other two men flinched hard, not used to a genuine firefight. King didn’t imagine they experienced much resistance in the Russian Far East.
The first .40 S&W round smashed through the delicate bone between the policeman’s eyes and blasted through into his brain, killing him instantly.
The other two shots were just for good measure.
One punched through his chest wall, sinking into his heart, and the other smashed through the guy’s ribcage. Blood spurted from three separate exit wounds and the sheer force behind the bullets sent him twisting away.
His limp corpse slapped the floor loud enough to seize the attention of the other two officers.
They couldn’t help it.
They had probably spent half their life working with the dead man in front of them, and the shock of his violent death caused them both to hesitate.
King revelled in foolish hesitation.
Close enough to touch the other two, he darted forward and shot Iosif through the side of the skull. He twisted on the spot and thundered a combat boot into the third man’s solar plexus, sending him sprawling across the wet floor.
The third guy’s head whiplashed against the soapy wood just as Iosif’s lifeless body tumbled to the ground beside King.
King ignored the dead man. He was no threat.
He raised the Glock-22 and put three rounds through the last policeman’s heart in quick succession.
Tap-tap-tap.
The guy died before he had even realised what was happening. Previously scrambling for purchase on the floor, his limbs went slack and he sprawled onto his back, a th
in trail of blood leaking down the front of his uniform.
Clinical.
Precise.
Efficient.
King ejected the Glock-22’s 15-round magazine and confirmed how many bullets he had used in the firefight. He nodded in satisfaction when he realised his count had been accurate.
Seven rounds. Three corpses.
Not bad.
He wondered if the locals had heard the commotion. More than likely, he figured. There was such little activity in these parts of the world that the sound of a gunshot would resonate for a mile in any direction.
He glanced at the three dead officers bleeding profusely all around him. The fluids pumping out of their wounds mixed with the soapy residue on the floor, turning it crimson.
King shook his head in disappointment.
It shouldn’t have come to that. He felt nothing over killing the three of them. After all, they had been intent on finishing him off when they had stormed into the hall with weapons raised.
An eye for an eye.
But above that came a sinister feeling, a deep knot in his stomach that made him grimace with unease.
The WHO workers hadn’t been riding out a snowstorm. They hadn’t been dealing with malfunctions of their communication equipment.
They really were gone.
And King had three dead policemen on his hands who had been directly involved with the cover-up.
Instinctively, he touched a finger to his ear.
‘Isla,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ she said almost instantaneously. ‘You’re at the hall, I see.’
‘I was with a group of police officers,’ he said. ‘The scene’s been cordoned off.’
There was urgency in her tone. ‘What are they saying?’
‘Was being the crucial word.’
Silence. ‘King…’
’They were halfway through covering something up. There’s blood on the floor — I mean, apart from theirs. They were in the process of mopping it up.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Isla muttered. ‘I’m sure you understand that this is exclusively up to you now? If there’s any link between dead officers of the law and an American operative there’ll be hell to pay. We’re going to deny all knowledge of your existence if you get caught.’